Arne lay in the drift with his face in the snow. He could hear the calf breathing beside him. He could hear Albin breathing. He lifted his head.
"Fly," he said.
Nothing. The wind. The heifer bawling somewhere off to the right in the pen.
"Fly!" He was on his knees. He did not know when he had gotten up. "Fly! Fly, come here! Here!"
Nothing.
Albin rolled over in the snow, got up on one elbow, and whistled. Not a working whistle. A long, slow, falling note, soft at the end, the note Ilse had always used at the end of the day, when the sheep were penned and it was time to come in. That'll do, she had called it. That'll do, Fly.
Out of the white, from the direction of the pen, came a dark shape, low to the ground and going on three legs, holding the left front one up. She came straight to Arne. She came into his arms in the snow and pushed her face into his neck, and he got hold of her and held on, his whole body around her, and he was crying now. He could feel it freezing on his face. He did not try to stop.
"She's all right," said Albin, after a while, from the snow. "She was out with the heifer. She held her in the corner for you."
"I kicked her," Arne said into the dog's fur. "I kicked her, Albin. She was trying to tell me all day. Since six this morning. I thought she was scared of the barn because of Ilse. I thought it was grief. I thought it was her grief, and it was the roof, and I kicked her for it."