8

 

On Death Peak

 

The monks put out the dogs. What else could they do? They pushed out Biscuit, howling because of the terrifying darkness, and Baker, trying to keep his chilblained feet out of the snow. They pushed out Brutus, who got giddy on a kitchen table, and the whimpering Bouncer and boozy Beelzebub with his barrel...

And then, while the younger monks went down to the village for help, the rest of them went back into the dining hall and waited for disgrace and ruin.

Con had known all along, really, what he had to do. When a child’s life was at stake you had to take a chance. Even Lady Agatha, he knew, would have wanted him to let the yetis out. Only they could save Leo.

He went over to the fire where Ellen was helping to care for the delirious Mr Letts as he rambled and blamed himself for the accident. Then he slipped out of the monastery and, with his head bent against the gale, ran back downhill towards the yellow lorry.

The yetis when he reached them understood at once. “Don’t worry, my boy,” said Uncle Otto reassuringly, “we shall find him. Remember, we can see in the dark.”

“After all, we are rescuing yetis,” said Ambrose smugly – and while Perry made his way down to the village to join a stretcher party, and Con set off for the monastery once more, the yetis padded up the steep sides of the quarry and were gone.

 

Even for the yetis it was bitterly cold on the Death Peak. As they padded across the treacherous glacier, leaped crevasses, peered into gulleys, the snow beat against their faces and the wind scythed like a rapier through their fur. But they let nothing hinder them in their search for Leo. Patiently, clinging with their eight toes on to knife edges of ice, they squeezed down chimneys of rock, dug into snowdrifts, raked the darkness with their saucer eyes...

There was nothing. No answer to their calls. No trace of the boy.

“I don’t want him to be dead,” said Ambrose in a quavery voice, clambering up a pinnacle of ice. “I don’t want anyone to be dead, ever.”

But things were beginning to look very bad for Leo. And now Grandma was in trouble. She was, after all, over four hundred years old. Shivering fits shook her, her breath came in painful gasps, her legs felt like matchsticks.

“Come on, you stupid old yeti,” she scolded herself. “Here’s a poor child in trouble and you totter about like an old blancmange.”

But though she was cross with herself, she couldn’t make her heart pump harder or her muscles pull her up the towering cliffs of rock.

“I’ll just rest for a moment,” said Grandma. “I’ll crawl into this little cave here and then I’ll be as right as rain.”

She dragged herself into the cave and flopped down on a slab of stone, but still she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. Grandma did not often feel old and sad and useless, but she felt it now.

And then, in the back of the cave, she saw something stir: a fair blur; a faint, small shape. She moved closer, bent over it.

And after that she didn’t feel old and sad and useless any more; she felt as happy as she’d ever felt in her life. She had found Leo.

 

And now a solemn procession wound itself down the Death Peak towards the monastery below.

First came Uncle Otto; path-finding, responsible and serious. Then came Ambrose, beaming with pride because Grandma, who was still feeling rather tottery, had let him carry Leo. Tottery she might be, but not so tottery that she couldn’t constantly peer over Ambrose’s shoulder and tell him what to do with the boy.

“Gently, now, don’t let his neck hang like that, support his head, that’s right. Mind that leg...”

Behind Grandma came Lucy, her gentle blue eyes full of pity for Leo, who lay, still as a leaf, with closed eyes in Ambrose’s arms.

They were just starting to cross the glacier when Clarence, who was bringing up the rear, suddenly stopped.

“’og,” said Clarence firmly.

The others sighed. It was so important to bring the boy to safety quickly.

“No, Clarence, there’s no bog here, the ground’s as hard as nails,” said Lucy soothingly.

“And there certainly aren’t any logs,” said Grandma. “We’re much too high for trees.”

But Clarence kept on pointing and suddenly they saw what he meant. Wedged between two boulders, lying flat on his back with his chilblained feet stuck in the air like table legs, was a large and frost-covered St Bernard.

They had found Baker.

It was an embarrassing moment for the yetis. They knew that St Bernards were famous for rescuing people and it did not seem right just to pick the dog up as if he were a baby. But Baker, frenziedly wagging his tail, made it clear that he expected just that, and it was with a St Bernard hanging like a gigantic, snuffling muffler round Clarence’s neck that the party moved on.

They didn’t so much find Biscuit as fall over him. He was rolled into a whimpering ball of fur, half-covered in snow, and even when Lucy picked him up and hung him over her shoulders he refused to open his eyes. No one was going to get Biscuit to look into that awful darkness.

Brutus and Bouncer were lying together under an outcrop of rock. Brutus must have got giddy and fallen from it because he had passed out cold. Bouncer was trying to dry his feet in Brutus’s armpits.

“This is a very strange mountain,” said Uncle Otto, picking up the dogs and tucking one under each arm. “It seems to erupt dogs.”

But the mountain had not finished with them yet. As they came off the glacier on to the last stretch of scree before the monastery, they heard a most unexpected sound.

Somewhere, close by, someone was hiccuping.

Like an old warhorse scenting battle, Grandma lifted her grizzled head. “Wait here for me,” she said grimly.

She stumped off down a little gulley. When she came back she was half dragging, half carrying, the large, befuddled and sheepish-looking Beelzebub.

“You disgusting brute,” she was yelling at him, “Don’t you know what drink does to your liver? Do you want to end up in the gutter?” And all the way down the mountain, Grandma, her grey hand clamped like iron round Beelzebub’s collar, threatened him with an Early Grave, an Alcoholic Dogs’ Home and a Beating He’d Never Forget.

But now they had arrived at the monastery gates. Very gently, Ambrose lowered Leo on to the ground beneath a clump of wind-gnarled firs. Then the others put down the dogs. This was hard to do because the dogs most definitely did not want to be put down, but the yetis were firm.

There was only one more thing to do and Grandma did it. Filling her scrawny chest with air, she threw back her head and yodelled.

And then, carefully leaping from rock to rock so as not to leave footprints on the snowy ground, the yetis vanished.

And so when Con, with the monks at his heels, came rushing out, they found the five dogs clustered in a warm and sheltering huddle round the little boy – and no one else in sight.

“He’s safe! The dogs have rescued him!” cried Con, crossing his fingers inside the pocket of his anorak. “They must have done!”

“No ... it can’t be,” stammered Brother Peter. “It would have to be a miracle.”

But the monks were men of God. They were used to miracles. If God could make five loaves and two fishes go round five thousand people – well, maybe he could make some of the silliest dogs in the world carry out the most heroic mountain rescue of the century. And as they carried the little boy gently in to the warmth of the fire and put him down beside his joyful father, it was all the monks could do to stop dancing and singing and shouting, they were so happy.

So far from being sent away, Baker and Brutus and Biscuit, Bouncer and Beelzebub became the most famous dogs in the land. Stories were written about them in the papers; they appeared on television; statues of them were put up in the village square. The American who bred them sent the monks even more money so that they were able to build a new chapel with the most beautiful bells that pealed across the valley, and everyone who passed through Feldenberg stopped off and climbed the steep path to the monastery to gaze at the lion-hearted dogs. But after the accident to the Englishman and his little boy, no one was allowed to go climbing on the Death Peak without a proper guide, so there were no more disasters. Which was just as well, because for the rest of their long and happy lives, Baker had chilblains, Brutus got giddy, Biscuit had to have a night light in his kennel and Bouncer refused to wet his feet. Only Beelzebub got a bit better. Sometimes he would take a little Coca-Cola with his brandy. But only sometimes...

As for Leo, there were no bones broken; he only needed quiet and warmth. But the first night in the hospital in Feldenberg he was restless and stirred in his sleep and said: “My ... furry animals ... I want ... my furry things.” And the night sister, who knew children who are ill often act younger than their years, went and fetched him a teddy bear from the cupboard in the children’s ward. But fortunately by that time Leo was fast asleep.