Alice's Arc

Chapter 6 of 20

Saturday came heavy and bright. Alice packed a fresh scent tin, a short lead, and a whistle. She walked Biscuit into the town park at five to six. The park was worse than the trapper had promised. A food truck sold sausages near the gate. Children chased a ball across the grass. A group with a grill sent smoke over the fence. Wind came off the lake in gusts, then stopped, then came again. Biscuit's nose lifted at everything. Alice felt her stomach tighten. This was the test. If Biscuit could work here, he could work anywhere the ranger needed him. The trapper waited at the far corner with a canvas bag. He nodded at her and pointed at a stretch of open grass. "I'll lay three drags," he said. "You keep him sitting. Don't call him until I wave." Alice put Biscuit in a sit and held the lead loose. The trapper worked the wind, dragging the rag in a long curve behind a bench, past the grill smoke, and around a trash bin where a raccoon in a blue-green shirt was picking through wrappers. The raccoon watched him pass and went back to chewing. The trapper hid the tin under a loose board and waved. Alice unclipped the lead and gave the word. Biscuit lifted his nose. He took two steps toward the sausage truck. Alice's chest dropped. Then his ears set. He swung wide of the grill, cut around the bench, and put his nose down at the board. He sat hard. He did not move. Above the trees, a winged woman passed high over the park with a wolf watching from the base of a pine at the edge of the grass. Biscuit's ears twitched once at the shadow and stayed on the board. A small bird with a red head and blue wings dropped onto the fence, hopped twice, and flew off. Biscuit did not look up. Alice walked to him and lifted the board. She fed him from her hand. They ran it twice more. He found the tin both times, once through a knot of running children, once with a dog barking ten feet off. The trapper coiled his drag rope and said, "He's ready for harder ground. Bring him back Wednesday. I'll cross the drags and add a false line." Alice said she would. On the walk to the gate she wrote Wednesday, six on the back of her hand under the older ink. Biscuit trotted at her knee, loose and level. She had four weeks to give the ranger a tracking dog. After today she believed she could. She also understood what Wednesday meant. The trapper was not finished teaching, and she was not finished standing next to him to learn.