Alice's Arc

Chapter 7 of 20

Wednesday came slower than Saturday had. Alice spent the afternoon at the kitchen table with her map, marking a fresh route along the low end of the ridge. The trapper wanted crossed drags and a false line. She wanted one more thing first. The ranger had asked for a working dog in four weeks, and dusk was when hikers went missing. If Biscuit could hold a scent as the light dropped, he could hold it anywhere. She packed her satchel with a scent tin, a whistle, and a folded cloth she had rubbed against her father's coat that morning. She left the house at five. The sun was already low behind the pines. Alice tightened her grip on her walking stick and thumbed the switch at its base. The ball on top brightened to a soft white. She had carried the stick since she was small. The light was for her, not for Biscuit. Tonight she meant to use it for both. At the trailhead she laid the plan out in her head. She would tie Biscuit at the marker stone, walk a curved line into the trees with the cloth, hide it under leaves, and circle back. Then she would send him. If he found the cloth before full dark, she had her answer. She walked the line. The light on her stick threw a clean pool ahead of her boots. She could see the scuffed dirt, the roots, the pale bellies of fallen leaves. She pressed the cloth into a hollow beside a stump and covered it. On the walk back a small bird with a red head and blue wings watched her from a low branch and did not move as the light passed under it. Biscuit was standing when she reached him. She unclipped the lead and gave the word. He put his nose down at once. He worked the curve she had walked, not the straight line between them. His tail stayed level. Twice he lifted his head, checked the air, and dropped it again. The light on her stick moved with him, lit the ground a step ahead of his nose. He did not need it. She did. She kept up. He sat hard at the stump. Alice knelt and lifted the leaves. The cloth was there. She fed him from her hand and let him lean against her knee. Full dark was still ten minutes off. She had her answer before she needed it. On the walk out she wrote it on the back of her hand under the Wednesday note. Dusk, passed. Then she stopped at the trailhead. Biscuit could track her father's scent in low light. That meant the ranger's next call could come at any hour, and she would have to say yes. It also meant Wednesday's session with the trapper was no longer the hardest thing on her week. The hardest thing was whatever the ranger sent her into first.