by Ilsa J. Bick
“Trust your dog.” Josie hung back, out of Sarah’s line of sight. The older woman knew where James was, but the whole point was for Sarah to read her dog’s body language, not Josie’s. “The dog will tell you when he’s caught the scent.”
“Yeah?” She wasn’t so sure about that. So far, her shepherd hadn’t found much of anything except interesting places to snuffle and roll around. Exasperated, she watched the black blur of her dog as he tore along, weaving through a tall stand of spindly pine, the cow bell around his neck clanging. Normally, she’d never put a bell on a dog, especially not in these mountains where, yes, the grizzlies did roam. Some hikers wore bear bells, which seemed to be some kind of fashion statement she’d never make unless she wanted to be caught dead. Another friend—park service ranger at Glacier—once said that while adult bears knew to avoid the noise, cubs were curious creatures. Wear those things, it’s like ringing the dinner bell, her friend said.
“Yeah,” Josie echoed. “Don’t sound so discouraged, Sarah. I’ve seen way worse.”
“Bet you’ve seen way better dogs, too.” She glanced down at her handheld GPS. According to it and her map—because GPS was iffy up here in the Black Wolf and a map never ran out of batteries—she and Soldier had covered about two hundred and fifty feet of their quarter-mile grid search. At this rate, James was going to be a Popsicle before this was over.
“Come on, have some faith, kiddo. Your dog had what it took in the Army, right? Worked under fire, held up his end of the bargain, and he sure has the energy. He’ll eventually get there.” Josie paused as the black shepherd, who was bulleting past a wild, high patch of thick snowberry, suddenly spun around, dropped onto his back for a good roll and squirm, paws paddling the air. “Or maybe not.”
“Oh, crap.” Literally. Both grizz and black bears loved snowberries, and the shrub where Soldier was doing his happy-dance pig-in-shit routine was completely denuded of ripe berries. “Soldier!” Sarah rapped. “Leave it!”
Springing to his feet, the shepherd bounded back, tail wagging, long pink tongue lolling in a goofy grin. With him came an aroma most definitely not dog.
“Well, think of it this way,” Josie said. “Coulda been a skunk. Then you’d have to buy stock in a tomato juice factory. He’s probably got it out of his system, though.”
“Every single time we go out, he has to get it out of his system? Seriously? Every time?”
“He’s a high energy dog. He’s driven, Sarah. I think it’s just that he doesn’t quite get what his job is now. The conditions are so different, and so is his, well...for lack of a better word, his mission.”
True. Still, maybe she was kidding herself. What if trying to find another mission for Soldier was a mistake? Yeah, but what’s the alternative? A dog with PTSD, who went batshit at the sound of anything resembling weapons fire, didn’t exactly make for the world’s greatest pet. Life was messy and random. Cars backfired. Balloons popped. Doors slammed, and thunder boomed.
The handlers at Lackland knew this, of course. They’d refused her, at first. Her being a veterinarian had finally tipped the scales in her favor. Still, the day she picked Soldier up, a senior handler took her aside. You have to understand, Dr. Grant, this dog’s got his wounds, and they’re deep. He’s not broken, exactly, but he’ll never be what he was.
“Oh now, come on. What’s with the long face?” Josie gave Sarah an awkward pat on an arm. “Buck up.”
Buck up? Did people say that anymore? Like a lot of dog people—veterinarians, too, come to think of it—Josie was sometimes a little squirrely when it came to actual people, so how she made it as a realtor was anyone’s guess. On the other hand, the woman had twenty years of search and rescue experience under her belt. For that, Sarah was willing to deal with awkward. Some days, she wasn’t too well put together herself.
“Yeah.” Sighing, Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose between a thumb and forefinger. “It’s just kind of discouraging.”
“Nothing more training won’t cure.” Though this wasn’t technically true; Josie had regaled her with stories of dogs who couldn’t cut it either by virtue of temperament or because their owners wouldn’t invest the time. “Put him to work again.” Josie waved a hand. “Show him who’s boss. Tell him to sit and get him ready.”
She gave the command and, as the dog obediently plopped onto his haunches, she positioned herself parallel to the slope and held out her right hand to study a long strip of lightweight orange tape tied to her wrist. After a moment, the tape twitched, floating on a light raft of air sighing up from the cut in the mountain below them. The physics were simple. Cold air sinks; warm air rises. James was a little on the tubby side. Being out of shape, she doubted he would want to work up a sweat plowing his way upslope. Which meant, if she was right, James was below them. With the breeze working for them, his scent pool ought to reach them even here, halfway upslope.
Satisfied, she pulled a big blue Kong from a pocket. Contrary to what most people believed, dogs weren’t completely color-blind but perceived violets, blues, and bright yellow. The Kong Pete had used was red, something Soldier would see as dark gray. So color wasn’t the issue. Scent might be, though, and Sarah hadn’t wanted there to be the slightest confusion for Soldier between his mission then, with Pete, and his new mission with her now.
In more honest moments, though, she also understood that the dog wasn’t the only one who needed a reminder that things were different.
“Okay, Soldier.” She waited until the dog clamped his jaws tight and came to attention, gaze locked on her. “Ready to work? Go find!”
Wheeling around, the dog raced off. As they followed, Sarah kept one eye on her GPS and the other on the dog who was no longer tearing around like his tail was on fire but moving fast, nose to the ground, snuffling first right and then left, working his way back and forth across the slope. Wow. Her mouth split in a grin. This might actually work out okay.
A moment later, though, Soldier took off upslope toward the spine of a narrow gray esker in what was probably the absolutely wrong direction, and she groaned. You jinx. “Crap.”
“No, no, this is fine. Remember, scent pools spread. They start low, go high, get wider. If this was a live search, maybe your missing person climbed up there to sit for a spell and get his bearings. So your dog might sniffing that or scenting a stray wind. No way to tell for sure until the dog lets you know one way or the other… And there now. See?” Josie sounded pleased. “Look what he’s doing.”
At the very tip of the spine, Soldier had come to a halt, raised his head, and snuffled a few times. When the women stopped walking, the dog didn’t look around either but dropped his head for another long, considering sniff at the rock. Then, apparently satisfied, the dog pivoted and scampered down from the esker.
“See? He’s got this, Sarah. Atta boy, good boy,” Josie said as Soldier, tail whisking, quickly trotted up. “This circling routine where he comes back to us? Entirely normal, especially for shepherds and border collies, so don’t get down on him… That’s a good boy.” Josie ruffled behind Soldier’s ears. “You’re just checking back on your people, aren’t you? Want to make sure what you smell isn’t me or Sarah.”
“Uh-huh.” How had Pete ever trained the dog to alert to explosives? Did MWDs meander, too? Not like she could ask Pete anything anymore. At the thought, the back of her eyes suddenly burned. Crap, not now. She had to get a grip. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
“All right, that’s enough distraction. Go on now, Soldier.” Straightening, Josie gestured toward Sarah. “Say hi to Mom and then get your butt back to work.”
“Hey, there.” Screwing on a grin, Sarah gave the dog a quick pat as he nosed her thigh. “Yes, it’s me. Now, go on.” As if sensing her distress, the dog whined and washed her right hand with a long, sloppy lick. Come on, focus. “It’s okay, boy. I’m good. Go find.”
They started again. Having begun high on the slope, they worked their way down, stitching grid lines back and
forth, as straight as trees and rocks and other natural obstacles would allow.
After a few minutes’ silence, Josie cleared her throat. “When are you supposed to leave?”
“The lookout?” She was alternately switching her gaze between her GPS, the map, and her dog. “Uh…middle of October.”
“You ever get lonely up there? Chaney Peak’s a ways from town.”
She got asked that a lot. People were curious about why any person in her right mind would hike the backcountry eleven miles, six of them straight up, to squat in an old Civilian Conservation Corps fire lookout tower for months at a time. “Not really. I’ve got the dogs, plenty to read.” She rubbed a calloused thumb between equally calloused fingers. After a week of blisters, her palms had toughened now to something resembling rawhide. “I’ve cut a lot of wood.” Hauled a ton of it out of the woods, too. Chaney Lookout was above the tree line. Between chopping and hauling wood, tramping through the forest below the lookout, and dragging jugs of water up from a spring on the other side of the ridge where the lookout perched, she was probably in the best shape of her life.
Yet, she couldn’t shake the emptiness. It wasn’t loneliness. She didn’t think. Actually, she wasn’t sure. At first, she thought it was having too much time to dwell on Pete, which was one of the reasons she’d decided to re-train Soldier for search and rescue. Now, she wondered if this emptiness wasn’t due to some other problem she wasn’t quite ready to face.
“I do okay,” she said. “Maybe the only biggie is I can’t just wander into a bar whenever I want.” Or pack in too much booze, probably a blessing. The last time she’d hit a bottle alone was back at her house in Kalispell, and in the company of a shotgun. When she let herself think about that night, she thought the only reason she didn’t pull a Hemingway was worry over what would happen to Soldier and Daisy, her little Heinz-57 mutt.
“Doesn’t sound too different from me, and I only live fifteen minutes out of town. Bars are overrated anyway. Same bad country coming out of those speakers. You know where you’re going next?”
“Mmmm...” Checking the map and then the GPS, Sarah looked toward where Soldier had been and frowned. Crap. No Soldier in sight, though she heard the distant clang of his bell from somewhere beyond a near rise that was not in her search grid. Call the dog back?
“Be patient. Remember…”
“Trust your dog.” Sarah laughed. “Yes, ma’am. Sure you’re not a mind-reader in real life?”
“No, just a humble realtor… Okay, here we go. I hear the bell.”
So did she and, in another moment, the dog bounced over the rise, threw them a doggy grin then dropped his nose and headed back across the slope.
As they followed, Josie asked, “So what about it? You going to stay?”
“After the park service kicks me out? I’m not sure.”
“But you got that veterinarian job, right? Going around to farms and ranches?”
“Itinerant vet, yeah.” During vet school at Cornell, she’d fallen in love with mountains and the outdoors and big animal medicine. When an opening for an itinerant for northwestern Montana surfaced, she’d jumped at the chance. For almost four years, she’d traveled from her home base in Kalispell, making a circuit of rural communities and ranches as far north as Eureka before looping west to Yakt and then south as far as Plains before meandering back northeast and through the Flathead Reservation. By and large, she treated big animals like cattle, horses, sheep, goats, llamas, the occasional emu. Tending them, she discovered what her professors had neglected to point out: emus bite, and llamas spit.
“Well, I know they miss you. I heard a friend in Happys Inn says your replacement isn’t half as good.”
“I haven’t made any decisions yet.” After Soldier arrived, she’d put her life on hold and took a leave from her job with the idea that time, quiet, and space would be good for them both. She had no other ties. Her mom had been gone—cancer—since she was ten, and with what her dad had left and investments, she didn’t really need to work at all. Anyone might be forgiven for thinking her life was charmed, a little bit of a fairy tale, and it was—had been—after she met Pete and stayed that way until the end. Nowadays, though? Not so much. “I really don’t have to be anywhere, actually. Kind of a free agent right now.”
“Let me know when you have decided, then. Got a couple rentals you might like… Look.” Josie nodded downslope. “Think your dog’s got something.”
Soldier’s head was up, ears swiveling, nose high. His tail was curved to a high question mark. After another few seconds, the dog took a few hesitant steps then stopped and turned to look back over a shoulder.
“No, no.” Josie put a hand on Sarah’s arm. “I know it’s tempting, but don’t go toward him just yet. He’s checking to see if you think what he’s doing is right. He’s like any other little kid who wants Mom to tell him he’s doing good. A real search and rescue dog has to know he’s got something. He’s boss right now. Let him show you.”
“Okay, okay.” A sparkle of mingled impatience and excitement in her chest now. Soldier had the scent; she knew it. James had to be nearby. Skipping her gaze down the hill, she spotted a stand of cottonwood, mostly barren, though what leaves remained were a brilliant, startling golden yellow. Now that she wasn’t moving, she caught the faraway chuckle of water and then saw a small depression where the slope dropped in a near vertical and along which several cottonwoods had also fallen. That made sense. Cottonwoods liked water, and those downed trees made for a decent hiding place. More importantly—she checked her orange marker tape around her wrist again—the area was on a scent line with the breeze.
After another long second, Soldier took his eyes from her, lifted his head again, and then started on a rough diagonal downhill.
“Excellent.” Josie pointed. “Go. Follow your dog. Try not to lose sight, but if you do, listen for the bell. You’ll know if he’s stopped.”
Pulse ramping up, she hustled, crunching through a thick mat of old fallen leaves, trying not to hurry or slip. Soldier was all business now, not veering as much from side to side. Every ten feet or so, the dog raised his head again and snuffled right, left, center, as if to pinpoint a source. Suddenly, he sped up, rounded a fallen log, and disappeared. The clanging stopped.
“Wait.” Josie put a hand on her arm. “Wait for him to come.”
All of a sudden, the bell gave a loud clatter. In the next second, Soldier reappeared and came bounding up the hill in long, powerful strides.
He did it. Even before the dog rushed her and gave a joyful leap, bumping her chest with his paws, she knew. “Good boy. Good boy.”
“Not just yet,” Josie said, although Sarah could hear the smile in the other woman’s voice. “Okay, that’s step one. He’s just told you he found James. Now he has to take you to him.”
But Soldier was already pivoting, leapfrogging downslope to career around those dead cottonwoods. The women staggered after, bushwhacking through scrub and low, whippy branches, slithering over thick mats of long-dead leaves. As Sarah reached the dead trees where her dog had disappeared, she caught the chatter of water over rocks. The air smelled wet and metallic. Then she was rounding the fallen trees—and there was Soldier, looking very pleased, his tail beating so hard his whole rear end waggled.
“Hey.” Scrubbing Soldier’s ruff, James grinned up at them. A bluff and ruddy man, he was a study in cowboy denim and camo sprawled on an old sleeping bag set in the hollow of a root ball. Hooking a thumb at a Lee Child paperback, James said, “Man, took you guys long enough. After fifteen chapters, I worried I was gonna run out of stuff to read. You do realize Shelby’s been cooped up in her crate going on three hours now.” Shelby was James’s SAR dog.
“She’s young.” Hitching up the waistband of her jeans, Josie was looking around with a pained expression. “Be glad she’s not as old as me. Now I have to pee like a race horse.”
“Ah—” James looked as if he was about to say something then redden
ed, clamped his mouth shut, and went back to making a fuss over the dog. “Good boy. Good Soldier. Now take your stinky little self to your mom. What’d he roll in?” James asked as Soldier galumphed over to Sarah.
“Well, James, it’s like this.” Winding up, Sarah lobbed Soldier’s Kong in a hard, fast throw. Rocketing after, the dog caught the toy on the first bounce then whirled around, taking the small stream in a single leap. “I do believe Soldier answered that age-old question about whether bears shit in the woods.”
“Well, shoot.” James wrinkled his nose. “And here I thought that was an old wives’ tale.”
2
It took them an hour to hike back to James’s steel-roofed Polaris ATV parked at the end of a barely passable fire road, and then another to slowly bounce and crunch their way back over rocks to a rutted canyon road off a meadow where Josie and James had left their vehicles. As James rolled his ATV onto a trailer flatbed, Sarah let Soldier and Shelby, James’s sleek English retriever, run around and sniff each other’s butts and pee on trees before ordering each dog into a travel kennel in the back of Josie’s Expedition.
Then they caravanned back down toward town along a winding road with mountains rearing away to their right and nothing but air and a guardrail on their left. Big logging trucks, laden with sawn trunks, chugged up long grades or roared past on the downhills. Tired after the long day of tramping, worrying over what she really would do once the park service kicked her out, Sarah huddled in her barn coat of heavy, soft sheepskin, rested her forehead against cool glass, and drifted.
