Alice's Arc

Chapter 10 of 20

By the time the ranger reached the deadfall, the sky had gone gray at the edges. Alice watched the medics lift the hiker onto a litter and carry him down the ridge. Biscuit stood at her knee, tail low, ears up. She thought they would walk home and sleep. Instead, when they reached the trailhead, three cars were parked on the lodge road, and a woman with a notebook was already climbing out. The woman said she wrote for the neighborhood paper. She had heard the radio call at the ranger station. She wanted a photo of Biscuit and a few words about the rescue. Behind her, a man held up a phone and filmed the dog. Two more people walked up from the lodge road, drawn by the lights. Alice counted them and did not like the number. A story in the paper meant more people on the ridge. More people meant more scent, more noise, more distraction for a dog she still needed to train. Alice knelt and put her hand on Biscuit's shoulder. He was tired. His flanks moved fast. She thought about what the trapper had told her in the park: a working dog is ruined by strangers who want to pet him after a job. She stood up. "No photo of the dog," Alice said. "You can write that a girl and her dog found the hiker. You can use my name. Not his." The reporter frowned. She said a photo would help people care. Alice said she did not want people to care that way. She said Biscuit worked for the ranger now, and the ranger needed him clean. The reporter looked at the ranger, who had come up behind Alice. The ranger nodded once. He told the small crowd that the ridge was closed to foot traffic until sunrise and that any article should list the trailhead as off limits at night. He said it in the voice he used on the radio, flat and final. The man with the phone lowered it. Alice gave the reporter three sentences. Her name. Her father's name. The fact that Biscuit had tracked the hiker through the pines in under an hour. She did not mention the cap, or the bird, or the point of gold light she had seen cross the sky. Those were not for the paper. The reporter wrote it down and closed her notebook. The cars started up and pulled away down the lodge road. The ranger walked with Alice to her father's truck. He said the article would run Thursday. He said his phone would ring after that, and some of those calls would be for her. He asked if she was ready for that. Alice looked down at Biscuit, who had finally sat on his own in the gravel. She said she would be by Thursday. Then she opened the truck door and lifted him in.