Alice's Arc

Chapter 11 of 20

Alice woke Wednesday before the alarm. The article would run the next morning. She thought about what the ranger had said in the gravel lot: the phone would ring, and some of those calls would be for her. If strangers came to the ridge looking for the famous dog, Biscuit's training would break. He would learn to expect hands and voices at the end of every trail. She sat up in bed and made a plan while it was still dark. She called the trapper first. She said she needed one hard session before Thursday, harder than any they had run. She needed proof Biscuit could work through people who wanted him. The trapper said he could bring five friends to the town park at ten. He said he would tell them to crowd the dog, offer food, and call his name. Alice said that was what she wanted. At the park she laid a scent drag through the picnic tables and around the pavilion. The trapper's friends walked in loose groups, eating, laughing, holding out hands. One knelt and called Biscuit by name. Alice watched from thirty feet away. Biscuit's ears went flat once. He sat down hard. Alice waited. He looked at her, then at the ground, then stood on his own and put his nose back to the drag. He found the tin behind the trash barrel in four minutes. They ran it three more times. The trapper made the crowd tighter each round. On the last run, a woman waved a hot dog under Biscuit's nose. He turned his head one inch, then kept working. He found the tin under the bench. The trapper walked over and did not smile. He said the dog was ready for Thursday. He said Alice was the one who had to hold the line now. Strangers would come. She had to keep them off the training ground and away from the dog's face. Alice drove home and wrote two signs on cardboard. One said WORKING DOG. DO NOT APPROACH. The other said RIDGE TRAINING GROUND CLOSED TO VISITORS. She nailed the first to the trailhead post and the second to the fence at the lodge road. She called the ranger and asked him to add her father's number to the article as the contact for anyone wanting to meet the dog. The ranger said he would. He said her father could screen the calls and turn away the ones that were not emergencies. Thursday morning the paper landed on the porch. Alice read it once and set it down. Her father's number was printed at the bottom, not hers. The phone rang at eight. It rang at nine. It rang at ten. Her father answered each time and wrote nothing down. Alice took Biscuit to the ridge at noon and ran a clean drag through the pines. No one came up the trail. Biscuit worked without lifting his head. She sat on a stump after and put her hand on his shoulder. He had held through the crowd. He would hold through the week. The training ground was still hers.