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S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 3 2 But when he'd see that his old friend with the cameras and cheese crackers wasn't following, he would return to reclaim the lead. He must have thought that this human sidekick of his was a real nimrod, pressing on into the biting wind and not nearly smart enough to know when to come in from the storm. But he would not under any circumstance abandon his poor misguided charge to his own ignorance, and he stayed close to him all the way to the end of the ridge where it finally fell away into the swirling sky. For half an hour they stood there, the man with his impulses and imagination, the big shepherd dog with his love and loyalty and impeccable sense of duty. But when at last the man capped his cameras and turned back along the trail, old Crockett broke for home, quickly vanishing into the storm. But a few seconds later he reappeared to check on his snow-plastered compadre and make certain he wasn't lost. Then again he turned and tore away into the white-out, only to reappear a few seconds later. And that's the way it went all the way back off the ridge and clear around the southwestern face of the mountain: The dog would not abandon the man, and when they finally got back to the lodge, Crockett shepherded him all the way down to his room, where they stowed the cameras and broke out the cheese crackers. But alas, dogs' lives are all too fleeting when measured against our own, and old Crockett's liver finally failed. The last time he'd seen him had been following a breakfast meeting at the ranch with a group of financial types, the morning he was to leave for home. After it was done, he'd finished packing and then come back in to Frank's office to say adios. It had still been crowded, but Crockett had slowly risen from his bed behind Frank's big oak-and-granite desk and had laboriously woven his way through all the people and made his way over to him to bid his own farewell. To this day he remembered how the two of them had sat there in the floor together, and how he'd hugged his old friend and scratched him behind the ears and then kissed him atop his big bushy head, and how Crockett had given him a weak wet slurp across the face. And now he couldn't recall exactly how they had parted . . . Note: Signed copies of Michael Altizer's Nineteen Years To Sunrise can be ordered online from Sporting Classics at www. sportingclassicsstore.com/ collections/books?page=4, or by calling 1-800-849-1004. The author always welcomes and appreciates your comments, questions, and input. Please keep in touch at Mike@AltizerJournal.com.