A drift had nearly covered the cloak.
"You shouldn"t"ve traded the horse for those snowshoes back at the last place," said Gaspode.
"The poor thing was done in. Anyway, it wasn"t exactly a trade. The people wouldn"t come down out of the chimney. They did say to take anything we wanted.
"They said to take everything, only spare their lives."
"Yes. I don"t know why. I smiled at them."
There was a doggy sigh.
"Trouble is, see, you could carry me on the horse, but this is deep snow and I am a little doggie. My problems are closer to the ground. I hope I don"t have to draw you a picture."
"I"ve got some spare clothes in my pack. I might be able to make you a... coat - "
"A coat wouldn"t do the trick."
Another howl began, quite close this time.
The snow was falling a lot faster. The hissing of the fire turned into a sizzle. Then it went out.
Gaspode was not good at snow. It was not a precipitation he normally had to face. In the city, there was always somewhere warm if you knew where to look. Anyway, snow only stayed snow for an hour or two, and then it became brown slush and was trodden into the general slurry of the streets.
Streets. Gaspode really missed streets. He could be wise on the streets. Out here, he was dumb on mud.
"Fire"s gone out," he said.
There was no answer from Carrot.
"Fire"s gone out, I said..."
This time there was a snore.
"Hey, you can"t go to sleep!" Gaspode whined. "Not now. We"ll freeze to death."
The next voice in the howl seemed only a few trees away. Gaspode thought he could see dark shapes in the endless curtain of snow.
"... if we"re lucky," he mumbled. He licked Carrot"s face, a move that usually resulted in the lickee chasing Gaspode down the street with a broom. There was merely another snore.
Gaspode"s mind raced.
Of course he was a dog, and dogs and wolves... well, they were the same, right? Everyone knew that. So-oo, said a treacherous inner voice, maybe it wasn"t exactly Gaspode and Carrot in trouble. Maybe it was only Carrot. Yeah, right on, brothers! Let us join together in wild runs in the moonlight! But first, let us eat this monkey!
On the other paw...
He"d got hard pad, soft pad, the swinge, licky end, scroff, mange and something rather strange on the back of his neck that he couldn"t quite reach. Gaspode somehow couldn"t imagine the wolves saying Hey, he"s one of us!
Besides, while he"d begged, fought, tricked and stolen, he"d never actually been a Bad Dog.
You needed to be a moderately good theological disputant to accept this, especially since a fair number of sausages and prime cuts had disappeared from butchers" slabs in a blur of grey and a lingering odour of lavatory carpet, but nevertheless Gaspode was clear in his own mind that he"d never crossed the boundary from merely being a Naughty Boy. He"d never bitten a hand that fed him. He"d never done It on the carpet. He"d never shirked a Duty. It was a bugger, but there you were. It was a dog thing.
He whined when the ring of dark shapes closed in.
Eyes gleamed.
He whined again, and then growled as unseen fanged death surrounded him.
This was clearly impressing no one, not even Gaspode.