by Sue Henry
Danny dropped to his knees beside the pen and reached through the metal bars with one hand to feel the fleece that some 4-H youngster had obviously carefully washed clean before bringing the animal to be judged. In a moment he was back on his feet and moving along to the neighboring pen, where two lethargic llamas rested in their bed of straw, meditatively chewing their cud, legs tucked neatly under them. This time Danny could barely reach the flank of one of them with the tips of his fingers, but he accomplished the seemingly impossible by stretching his arm to the limit the bars would allow.
“These are softer than the sheep,” he told his older friend, glancing up with a pleased expression and reaching again as the llama shifted to a position that was a little closer to the bars of the pen.
Still in a thoughtful mood, Frank Monroe stood leaning on the cane he had been using most of the day to alleviate a dull ache in his left knee. He appraised the people who milled about, noticing that many of them had children in tow or in strollers. As he watched, a father lifted a small boy of perhaps three years old so he could look down at a sow and her piglets in a nearby pen.
As a child, Monroe had lived on a farm in Ohio, where pigs, cows, chickens, and other animals were all a part of his environment. It seemed that fewer farms these days meant that fewer children were acquainted with farm animals. What had been common to him was slowly becoming as exotic to them as animals in a zoo. Currently, most domestic animals were closely confined and raised commercially in huge cooperatives for their meat, milk, and eggs. Even small farmers often possessed more machinery to work their fields than animals for their families—a few chickens, a cow or two, perhaps a pig. The idea made him sad.
But he couldn’t help smiling at the giggles of the little boy, who was now reaching to touch the snout of one small piglet that had trotted up to the bars of the pen. The adventurous porker squealed and retreated to its mother, who was lying on her side to feed her brood and who reacted to its shrill complaint with only the unconcerned twitch of an ear.
Straightening his shoulders to relieve another slight ache from his night on the floor, Monroe allowed his gaze to sweep the huge interior of the barn, coming to rest at last on the people coming in through large bays at the front. Just inside, the line for the petting zoo was longer than it had been when they passed it earlier, and the space within the fence was crowded with children and a number of animals that were not too large to frighten or injure them. As he watched, however, two men shoved through the line and headed into the barn, catching his attention. Both wore security black and intently examined the people they pushed aside and passed.
“Danny,” he said softly in warning and laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“What?”
Alarmed at his tone, the boy tried to stand up, but Monroe increased the pressure of his hand, keeping Danny on his knees. “No—don’t move, just listen.”
The boy grew still, but tensed to spring, he waited.
“The man who chased you has just come in with another security guard, and they are searching, I would guess, for you.”
Another wiggle from Danny.
“I said listen. I want you to do exactly as I say. Remember that they won’t recognize you immediately in different clothes, if at all. Now—when I tell you, get up and stand behind me. We’re going to walk across the open space behind us to that display of scarecrows along the wall. When we get there and I give you the word, you are to take the hat off the head of that one in the green shirt. Put the hat on and pull it down so it covers most of your face. Then you must sit down next to the one that’s propped on the bale of straw. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Whatever happens when they come this way, I want you to stay very still, as if you were a real scarecrow. Can you do that?”
“Yes, but won’t they…?”
“Not if you do nothing to attract their attention. The timing of a distraction is my job. You just do yours. They’re walking around the petting zoo and looking the other way now. Come quickly.”
It worked perfectly. The man walked the boy across to the wall. Hat appropriated and on his head, the boy slipped in to sit as directed. The man walked away casually, leaving his young friend, one among many, though with much more in his head than straw, a large part of it fear of discovery.
Doubting that he himself was an object for their attention, Monroe appeared to take no notice of the approaching security guards or of the straw men he had just left behind. He strolled back across the open space at a leisurely pace and found a spot behind a pen of several goats, where he faced the scarecrows. From a distance, Danny, holding perfectly still, blended in well with the stuffed group, and Monroe approved his effort to remain motionless.
The guards came closer, still searching the face of every boy of Danny’s size and age, stopping every so often to question someone. The old man could imagine what they were asking: Have you seen a boy of this description? Without positive results, they came closer.
Two goats, curious and hoping, he assumed, for a handout, wandered up to the bars of the pen next to where Monroe stood anxiously watching without appearing to do so. As the guards reached a point midway between him and Danny in their search, one turned his head to glance at the collection of scarecrows. Immediately Monroe used his cane to direct a swift poke at the flank of the nearest goat. It bleated in indignation at the unexpected assault and leaped away from the bars of the pen, bumping into another goat in the process, which elicited more audible protest.
The sudden scramble and noise from the goats drew the attention of both guards toward the pen, where an innocent-looking elderly man appeared wide-eyed in surprise at the sudden hullabaloo the animals were causing.
As one guard shrugged and made some comment to the other, Monroe used his peripheral vision to watch them move on toward the rear of the barn, working to keep a smile from his face. This, he thought to himself, was actually almost fun, a game of sorts. It had been a long time since he felt quite so young and diabolical.
“You have my sincere apology, Billy,” he apologized under his breath to the animal that was now nosing its insulted flank. Turning away, he strolled around the pen to watch the two guards complete their search and exit through the barn’s back door.
If they had stood where they had paused in the middle of the open space, directly opposite the group of scarecrows plus one, they would have been able to see, as he saw, one red-plaid-shirted straw man roll and sag his shoulders in an enormous sigh of relief.
You should have seen the tension leave Danny’s face when he was sure they were gone,” Monroe told the assemblage in Jessie’s living room with a chuckle. “He made a very good addition to the scarecrow band, though—held completely still when necessary.”
“Then I moved, and that little kid told his dad the scarecrows were alive,” Danny added, remembering. “But his dad didn’t believe him.”
“That’s correct. I had almost forgotten the incident,” Monroe agreed. “The child’s eyes, over his father’s shoulder, were great saucers of amazement when you stood up and walked away from that gang of straw.”
CHAPTER 11
Jessie’s morning had been full of questions to be answered and items to sell in the Iditarod booth. She was surprised to find it was after noon when Joanne told her to take a break. Intending to make a visit to the animal exhibits, she left Tank with Joanne, knowing that, though well behaved, he would be unwelcome there.
Eating a quick lunch, she strolled across the central plaza toward the barn, enjoying the fact that the threatened rain had not put in an appearance and the afternoon was warm and sunny.
A crowd had gathered near the sand sculpture, where its creator was back at work shaping and smoothing his medium. The people stood in a large circle but were not watching the sculptor. Instead they were focused on a young juggler on a unicycle that raised him perhaps six feet in the air. Skillfully he balanced himself on the single wheel and kept three flaming torches spinning in the a
ir while he provided a humorous verbal patter that kept his audience laughing.
Jessie paused to watch before going on toward the barn at the edge of the plaza. Just before she reached the building, her attention was caught by two alpacas in a pen beside a booth that was selling sweaters and other items knit from their fleece. The black alpaca had been recently sheared, except for its tail and the top of its head. The other had been left fluffy with white fleece so soft it seemed unreal when Jessie put a hand between the bars of the pen to touch it. The animal had a shaggy fringe of black on top of its head that hung down in front, almost obscuring its vision. But it was the huge eyes of the animals that attracted her. With no definition between pupil, iris, or sclera, they were so completely dark that it was difficult to tell where the alpacas were looking. Framed with incredibly long lashes, their eyes reminded Jessie of still pools of water that gleamed with reflections on the surface but kept the secrets of their depths. So calm and slow-moving they seemed almost sleepy, the two animals stood staring into the distance beyond those who stopped to admire them, but she had a feeling that their enigmatic liquid eyes missed very little of what went on around them.
Entering the barn, Jessie stopped to decide what to see first. A long line of children stood waiting to gain entrance to the petting zoo, where only a few were allowed in at any one time. Taking a right, she entered a separate section of the barn reserved for poultry, rabbits, and some exceptional achievements of the area’s local vegetable gardeners, including a cabbage that had weighed in at 70 pounds. Enough sauerkraut for the whole winter, she thought with a smile. Next to it was a list of other vegetable giants from years past: a 347-pound pumpkin, a 29-pound zucchini, a 75-pound rutabaga. Rich earth and the extended daylight of northern summer months were of great assistance to folks who babied their vegetables into such mammoth sizes.
Beyond the vegetables, the majority of the large room was taken up with poultry and rabbits. Jessie stopped to admire a pair of domestic geese and a turkey so enormous it almost filled its cage. Though most turkeys raised for the market seemed to be white, this one could have posed for a traditional Thanksgiving picture. Its naked head and wattle were mottled red and blue and a snood hung over its bill. The rest of the bird was covered with dark feathers, and as Jessie watched, it spread its tail and strutted proudly within its narrow confinement.
Continuing toward the back of the room, she passed by dozens of cages of rabbits of varied colors and types, after which a door led her back into the main part of the barn. There the cows, sheep, goats, pigs, llamas, more alpacas, and other domestic animals were confined in successive pens.
She was about to leave and head back to her job at the booth when she noticed a group of people that with much laughter and enthusiasm were working on something in a clear space along one side of the barn. Walking over to take a look, she found they were taking part in a scarecrow-building contest: creating humorous figures out of straw and items of used clothing—jeans, plaid shirts, floppy hats—that looked as if they had been rescued from the nearest thrift store. Several of the humorous figures had already been completed and propped against the wall, and Jessie couldn’t help being amused at the empty, exaggerated grins painted with markers on some of the faces.
Until she glanced at her watch, she briefly considered making a scarecrow of her own, but noticing the time, she hurried back out of the barn. Taking the most direct route to the Iditarod booth, she found Joanne standing outside next to the truck that had been donated as the raffle prize, smiling at a man to whom she had just sold a ticket.
“Good luck,” she told him as he walked away, then turned to Jessie. “Hey, how was the farm exhibit? I haven’t been over there yet.”
“Pretty good,” Jessie told her, “but it seemed a little low on animals this year. There’re some great scarecrows, though. You should take a look.”
Inside the booth, Jessie stepped behind the counter to see if Tank needed more water in the pan she had left for him. The pan was there—half full. But her lead dog was not.
“Where’s Tank?” she asked, turning to search the rest of the booth, figuring he had moved, or been moved, to some other corner.
“Isn’t he right there? He was just a few minutes ago,” Joanne said, frowning.
“Well, he’s not now, or anywhere else in here.”
They stood staring at each other, startled and confused, then turned quickly to look again, sure they must have missed the husky in the shadows among the displays of sweatshirts and jackets or behind the case of pins, mugs, and belt buckles. The water pan was still the only evidence that Tank had been there at all. He and his leash were missing.
Jessie could feel her heart pounding, and a lump of apprehension in her throat made it hard to swallow. Sled dogs were worth hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars, especially leaders, and particularly those that had proved themselves in famous races like the Iditarod or Yukon Quest, both of which Tank had run and for which he had been prominently featured in the media. Many people in Alaska were well aware of this, and a few had been unscrupulous about making use of that knowledge in the past. Dogs had been stolen before. Some turned up eventually, but others had vanished forever. Taken out of state, to the northern Midwest, for instance, where many people ran dog teams, they could bring a lot of money to a thief if sold to some unprincipled person who would know enough never to bring them back to Alaskan races.
But it wasn’t a simple case of Tank’s value that pushed Jessie close to tears of dread, though that might be a reason for someone to steal him. Jessie had raised her favorite lead dog from a puppy, and the affectionate pair had spent years together. Running with a sled or not, they were almost always together, and they were well matched in temperament. Having him suddenly absent left her feeling empty and separate in a distinctly unfamiliar way, as abandoned as if Tank had purposely gone somewhere without her.
She was frightened and worried that whoever had taken him—and she was quickly becoming sure that someone had—would not treat him well. Not everyone likes dogs, and in her estimation a dog’s welfare would not be a priority of anyone who would steal one for personal gain. They would be interested only in how much he was worth. She loved this dog. It made her sick not to know who had taken him, or where.
All this went through Jessie’s mind as she hurried to the front of the booth and out onto the walkway to look carefully in both directions. Nothing.
“Was there anyone here while I was gone who seemed particularly interested in Tank?” she demanded of Joanne, returning to the booth. “Anyone at all?”
“Not that I noticed. There were only a few people who stopped. At least half of those didn’t even go inside, just bought raffle tickets. I know I’d have seen anyone who came out with a dog. Maybe Tank just wandered off to look for you.”
But Jessie had told Tank to stay, and she knew he would never have wandered off on his own. One of her most dependable dogs, he always stayed where she left him. However long it was, he would not have moved unless someone took him away.
But she knew that he, like all her dogs, was used to having other people around and to taking a certain amount of guidance from them. More than one handler periodically helped out at Jessie’s kennel, which often included moving dogs to and from training teams and their places in the yard. Junior mushers sometimes came to gain experience by working with Jessie, learning how to care for their own dogs by helping out with hers.
“There was a boy here this morning—nine or ten years old, I think. He had brown hair and eyes, and his name was Danny. Do you remember?”
“Yeah, he was asking you questions about the Iditarod while he petted Tank.”
“Right. He didn’t come back, did he?”
Jessie hated to ask. Remembering how polite and considerate Danny had been about asking permission before he touched Tank, she couldn’t imagine him taking the dog. Still, he had told her how much he wanted a dog of his own. I’d like one just like him. Was it possible? She tho
ught it improbable, but felt she had to ask nonetheless.
“I didn’t see him again,” Joanne responded thoughtfully. “Let’s ask around. Maybe someone here close to us saw something.”
In a few minutes the two women had checked with all the surrounding vendors who might have noticed someone with a dog on a leash, but to no avail. Jessie was now beginning to grow a little frantic.
“We need help,” she told Joanne. “I’m going to security.”
The main office of security for the fair stood in the center of the grounds. Dozens of employees worked out of it round the clock to make sure exhibits, rides, vendors, and shows ran smoothly and the thousands of people who visited them were protected and as safe as possible. They worked hard to supervise the gates and pubs, settle disputes, pick up shoplifters, discourage rowdies and drunks, find lost children, and generally manage just about any problem that arose. Any serious crime or situation they could not or should not handle was referred to the Palmer Police Department. A second cabin next door was headquarters for teams of EMTs and paramedics, who coordinated with security to provide assistance in case of emergency, accident, or illness.
Jessie was glad to have security spring into action within minutes after she reported Tank’s disappearance and the circumstances surrounding it. The director, Dave Lomax, a tall, competent man of about forty, seemed to take her report seriously and immediately sent a guard to each of the gates to see if anyone at the exits had noticed someone leave the grounds with a dog. If not, they were to report back on the radio each carried, then remain on watch.