by Donna Ball
All the time I was on the phone, I absently turned Cameo’s pink collar around and around between my fingers. I had left it on my desk to dry after scrubbing it, so now she was out in the wilderness without even a collar. Not that it would have made a difference, with no tags, and even the little tracking button I’d found removed. But what was I supposed to do? I had a full kennel for the weekend, more day care dogs coming in, and a half day’s worth of grooming to do. I couldn’t just take off into the woods looking for a dog who wasn’t even mine.
Cisco tilted his head toward me in a way that looked remarkably like a reproach.
I heard Marilee come in, followed in a few minutes by Katie, and I went out to introduce the girls to Corny. They wrinkled up their noses when I sent them off to clean the kennels, but Corny intervened. “Already done,” he told me brightly. “It doesn’t take long if you have a system.”
I was impressed. If he could do twice the work of the two girls in half the time, already he was saving me money. I told the girls, “Okay, go sweep the dog hair out of the playroom, and fill the swimming pools outside. Then you can start taking the boarders out to play two at a time.”
They hurried off, glad to be out of kennel-sanitizing duty, and I heard the first of our day care clients pull up. It had been Melanie’s idea to leave flyers advertising doggie day care in all the pet-friendly hotels, campgrounds, and cabins in this and surrounding counties, which resulted in almost more business than I could handle. I’d actually considered closing down the day care, despite the boost in income, because even with the help of the high school girls it was too much to keep up with. However, if Corny continued to prove as efficient as he had so far, this would be my most profitable summer ever.
I spent the next hour or so showing Corny how to check in our day care and grooming clients, although the truth of the matter was that he probably could have shown me, and his gushy bedside manner was so over the top that even the clingiest dog went happily with him to the playroom, and moms and dads left with carefree grins on their faces. I am always pleasant to my clients, of course, but I tend to be a little less demonstrative with my admiration than Corny was. Judging from the way the clients—not to mention the dogs—responded to him, however, I wondered if I should reconsider my approach.
I sent Corny off to bathe Petals the bull dog and started out to the play yard to set up the agility course for tomorrow morning’s lesson. I was stopped by Cisco, who lay with his nose pressed so pathetically against the crack at the bottom of the door that I didn’t have to be a pet psychic to know what he was thinking. How could I really go about my day as though nothing had happened when I knew there was a lost golden retriever out there somewhere? How could I give up before I tried everything in my power to find her?
I went into the grooming room, where Corny was just lifting Petals into one of the drying cages and crooning to her about how pretty she was. A beagle and a cocker spaniel waited their turns, munching on chew strips, and soothing classical music came from the radio in the corner. The entire room smelled like lavender, with barely a hint of wet dog. Usually the grooming room was a madhouse of barking dogs and blow-driers, flying fur and soap suds. Grooming was not my favorite thing and my technique probably showed it. But today the place reminded me more of an upscale beauty salon than the barely controlled chaos to which I was accustomed.
I waited until Corny latched the cage and turned the drier on low to clear my throat. “Um, Corny—”
He turned expectantly.
“I hate to leave you alone on your first day,” I began, “but I lost a dog last night and …”
His eyes flew wide and he clapped a hand over his heart. “Oh, no! Oh, who was it? No, don’t tell me, I can’t bear it. You must be heartbroken! How could you even come to work today? Please, let me—”
“No, no.” I held up both hands to protect myself from the flood of his compassion as I said quickly, “Not lost as in dead. Just lost. I took in a rescue yesterday and she got out of the house in the middle of the night …”
“She ran away?” If possible, he looked even more distressed.
“I’m afraid so. We had some excitement in the middle of the night and I left the front door open, and when I got back she was gone.”
“Oh, no.” He sank to the grooming stool, his eyes filled with dismay. “Oh, I’m so sorry. That’s terrible.”
“Well, the worst part is she was lost to start with so she has no idea how to find her way back here, and I really don’t know where to start looking. But I feel like I should at least try. So if you can manage by yourself here for a few hours, I want to take Cisco out to search the woods, maybe ride up and down the highway to see if I can spot her.”
“Maybe she went back home,” Corny suggested hopefully.
“I doubt that. Home is Virginia. I think her family was just traveling through.”
“Well,” he said, trying very hard to be helpful, “if I were a dog and I were lost, the first thing I’d try to do is find my way to the place where I wasn’t lost. If only you knew where that was.”
“Thanks, Corny, but …” Then I hesitated, looking at him thoughtfully. The Hemlock Ridge Campground was only about five miles from here as the crow flies—or the dog runs. Once my collie Majesty had walked all the way from my house to my Aunt Mart’s house in the dark and the rain, and that was practically all the way to town. Golden retrievers are known for their tracking sense; what if Rick had picked her up as she was on her way back to the last place she had seen her folks?
“You know something?” I looked at Corny with a new and cautious appreciation. “You may have a point. It’s worth a try, anyway.”
I took a business card from the holder on a shelf and scribbled my cell number on the back of it. “I’ll bring one of the girls up to answer the phone, but I’ll only be gone a couple of hours. Go ahead and start Max’s bath, and don’t be afraid to call me if you have any questions.”
He took the card. “Don’t worry, Miss Stockton,” he assured me fervently, “I’ll take care of everything. I’m just … so sorry.”
He looked so earnest that I had to smile. “I appreciate that, Corny, but it’s not your fault.” He really had to learn to stop taking things so seriously. He reminded me a lot of Pepper in that regard. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
~*~
I left Katie in charge of the phones, and Marilee, who was, if I had to make a choice, the more responsible one, in charge of the dogs—including Pepper, Mischief, and Magic—in the playroom. I threatened to Tweet pictures of them without makeup across the universe if they were not still here when I got back, and loaded up Cisco into the SUV. I didn’t actually have pictures of either one of them, with or without makeup, and I wasn’t entirely sure I knew how to Tweet a picture even if I had, but they didn’t know that, and the uneasiness on their faces when they heard the threat made me pretty sure they weren’t going to try to sneak out early again.
I could hear Cisco’s excited panting from the backseat as we made our way up the mountain toward the ranger station. The area I intended to search was actually on the other side of the mountain, but it was protocol to check in. Besides, I owed Rick the courtesy of an explanation about how I’d lost the dog.
But when I reached the ranger station at the top of the mountain, I could tell Rick had bigger problems than a lost dog. The front parking lot was crowded with four sheriff’s department cars, including the K-9 unit, and, from the look of the back lot, half the jeeps in the Forest Service had been called in. A half dozen deputies and rangers bent over a topographical map that was spread on a table on the front porch of the rustic log cabin that served as the main office of the ranger station. I could see Jolene, notebook in hand, interviewing a rather harried-looking man in the shade of a picnic shelter a few feet away. The man kept tossing anxious looks at Nike, her gorgeous Belgian Malinois police dog, who sat in perfect attention at Jolene’s side, but I could understand his consternation. Most people are a
little afraid of police dogs.
I parked on the grass on the opposite side of the road, rolled down all the windows, and told Cisco I’d be back in a minute.
Rick looked up as I crossed the road and waved me onto the porch. “Good,” he said, “they called you. I was afraid you wouldn’t have time to help.”
“Help with what?” I shoved my hands into my jeans pockets as I came up the steps, trying not to look around too anxiously for Buck. It was inevitable we’d run into each other sooner or later, but I really wasn’t ready for it yet. “Nobody called me. I’m just here looking for a dog. What happened?”
Rick nodded in the direction of Jolene and the man she was talking to at the picnic shelter. “Fellow says his wife went for a walk last night and hasn’t come back. They’re in the RV section of the Bottleneck Campground.”
I frowned a little. “Kind of hard to get lost over there.”
Bottleneck was so named because of the way the nearby creek narrowed and then exploded into a waterfall, but during tourist season its popularity gave the name a double meaning. Throughout July and August the bottleneck of campers sometimes meant a two-hour wait to sign in on the weekends, and the place was wall-to-wall with tents and RVs. The hiking trails were all flat and well marked, and they all led right back to the campground.
Tim White, a deputy I’d known a few years, explained, “We think she might’ve gotten turned around in the dark, maybe hurt somehow, or met with foul play. Her husband said she didn’t have her phone. Did you bring your dog?”
Before I could answer, Jolene said behind me, “That won’t be necessary. Nike works best alone.”
I lifted my eyebrows and turned to face her. “Two dogs are better than one,” I pointed out, as nicely as possible.
“Two dogs only confuse the scent trail,” she returned, making no visible effort to be nice.
“Nike is a great dog,” I replied, “but Cisco is wilderness certified. And he knows these woods. If you want—”
“Look,” Jolene said, sharply enough to make Rick turn and look at her. “I know you’re used to being the hot ticket around here, but amateur hour is over. The sheriff’s department has its own dog now, and we’ll be handling things from now on. Get used to it.”
“I’m not an amateur!” I objected, temper flaring. “I’m as qualified as you are, maybe more! Cisco, too!”
Her tone was cool. “Nike is a deputy with the Hanover County Sheriff’s Department. We are paid to do this. You are not even qualified to be here.”
I drew in an outraged breath, but she cut me off. “This is a police matter, Stockton,” she said. “Don’t make me cite you for interfering with an investigation. You need to take your dog and get out of our way.”
With a flick of her finger she called Nike to heel, and the beautiful dog glided to her side. As much as I wanted to give Jolene a piece of my mind, I certainly could not fault Nike’s training. And clearly Jolene considered the discussion to be over. She turned her back on me and bent over the map, addressing the assembled deputies and ranger. “The husband says he thinks she went west. That means she was likely to have taken one of these trails.” She pointed on the map. “We’ll work in teams of three: two rangers, one deputy. Nike and I will search the deep woods beginning here …”
I met Rick’s disbelieving gaze and gave a shrug that I hoped successfully disguised my pique. I was a volunteer, and when a police officer told me to go, I had to go. It was a good thing I wasn’t going far, though, because I had a feeling Jolene might be persuaded to reconsider turning down free help before the day got too much older.
“Listen,” I told Rick, speaking below Jolene’s military-like commands, “I’m going back over to Hemlock Ridge where you found the golden yesterday. I had this crazy idea she might’ve tried to get back to her family’s campsite. I’ve got my cell phone if you need me.”
He muttered, “When we need you.”
Again I shrugged.
He nodded toward Jolene. “Is her dog any good?”
“The best,” I assured him. For sniffing out drugs or armaments or taking down a fleeing suspect on the street. But in these woods … well, we would soon see.
I turned to go back to my car, and couldn’t resist tossing over my shoulder to Jolene, “Call me if you need me. Rick’s got the number.”
Jolene did not even look up.
~*~
By the time I got to the Hemlock Ridge Campground I was feeling irritated, foolish, and more than a little sour. In the first place, Cisco and I had made seven verified wilderness rescues over the past two years, and okay, some of them were so simple they involved little more than pointing a lost hiker back in the direction of the trail, but some of them, like the little girl lost in the woods, were life or death. How many rescues had Nike made? We knew what we were doing. I should have stood my ground with Jolene. I shouldn’t have let her just kick us out like that.
On the other hand, who was I going to complain to? Buck?
In the second place, I was clearly grasping at straws to think that Cameo would return to the place she was picked up yesterday morning. Even if she wanted to, what made me think she could find this place again, or that she might have gotten here already? It could take a lost dog days, circling around, trying to pick up her own scent trail. It was far more likely that she would return to my place, which was closer and more recent in her memory, than here.
I almost got back in the car and drove to Bottleneck to join the search for the missing human, but two things stopped me. The first was the fact that, quite simply, I refused to beg Jolene to let me do my job. The second was the eager, hopeful expression in Cisco’s eyes as I stood there holding his tracking vest, debating.
I put Cisco’s vest and tracking harness on him and let him sniff the baggie of Cameo’s hair that I’d taken from the brush I’d used to groom her before bedtime last night. I brushed my hand across the dirt of the road beside which I’d parked and told him, “Track.”
He took off enthusiastically but it was clear after a few minutes he had nothing. That might have been because campers kept interrupting us with, “Mommy, look! Can I pet the dog?” and “We have a dog just like that at home!” Some parents were astute enough to point out the vest and tell their children the dog was working, even though Cisco, with his wagging tail and grinning face, looked less like a working dog than any dog I’d ever known. And since he actually wasn’t working by any normal definition of the word, I told people we were on a training exercise and took advantage of their curiosity to ask everyone we met if they had seen a golden retriever running loose that morning. No one had.
About a mile down the dirt road from the campsite there is an overlook where you can park your car, pose the family in front of the rock safety wall, and take a fantastic photo of a multilayered, blue and lavender, green and yellow, forever mountain view. Curls of fog rising off a distant peak reminded me why it’s called a smoky mountain; tracks of old logging roads and animal trails lined with bright red sourwood and sorghum always made me think of the stitching on a crazy quilt. Back when I worked for the forest service and used to patrol these roads in a jeep, this was one of my favorite spots. Sometimes I’d stop for lunch at the picnic shelter to the west of the overlook, and I’ve taken many a tourist’s photo posing with that magnificent vista in the background.
There was a family of tourists posing for a photo now; a blonde-haired mom trying to control two wiggling children on the rock wall while Dad stretched out his arm for the all-inclusive selfie. I was about to volunteer to take the photo for them when suddenly Cisco, who’d been sniffing the gravel walkway for tidbits the kids might’ve dropped, suddenly stiffened and turned his nose to the air.
It was clear he had scented something, but I couldn’t tell from which direction. To the north there was nothing but a tangled gorge so steep you looked down from here onto the tops of trees. To the south was the dirt road down which we’d just come. To the east and west the gorge sloped more
gently, but it was still a wilderness. Cisco turned his head, tasting the air with that magnificent nose of his, sorting out the thousands upon thousands of pieces of information he was gathering from it, and then, unexpectedly, he barked.
Cisco is trained to sit and bark to alert me when he has found his target. This is the one thing about which he is very consistent, but unless the innocent-looking tourist family was concealing a big golden retriever somewhere on their persons, he had not found anything. Still, I believed Cisco, and I actually turned to look at their car, wondering if they might have picked up the stray dog, when I heard, from not so far in the distance, an answering bark.
I swiveled my head around just in time to prevent being jerked off my feet as Cisco, following the sound of the bark, raced toward the edge of the overlook and, placing his front paws on the rock wall, peered over. The children, ten or fifteen feet away, laughed and pointed, and Dad no doubt got a great picture. I looked down over the sheer drop in dismay. Cisco barked again, and again an answering bark came from somewhere within that tangled gorge.
It never occurred to me that the bark might have come from any dog other than Cameo. Like I said, I trusted Cisco, and Cisco knew what he was searching for. But even if it wasn’t Cameo, any dog who was lost—or perhaps even injured—at the bottom of that drop needed my help. All I had to do was figure out how to get down there.