Paws before dying

forehead? I kept moving the light from the bushes to his head. Were the ears starting to flatten? I’d call loudly for Leah and try to summon Kimi. Then I’d be silent, listening, giving Rowdy the silence he needed to hear the rush of air into lungs, the beat of familiar hearts.
    At the far end of the field, where the trail that Rowdy had taken with Steve and me and the other dogs led into the woods, those pretty wedge ears folded, his head dropped about a foot toward the ground, and his lovely white tail swayed over his back with a new beat.
    “Good boy,” I told him, although it seemed likely that he’d merely picked up our old route. Sled dogs like to retrace familiar paths. “Is this it? Let’s give it a try.”
    I grew up in Maine. If I’d been frightened of woods, I’d have died of heart failure before the age of five. But city woods are different from the Maine woods, which is exactly what makes city people uneasy about real wilderness. City people get nervous when they realize they’re alone in the woods. I get nervous >f I think I’m not. Trees don’t mug anyone. Wild animals—the occasional aberrant bear excepted—avoid people. What I don’t like about city woods is that with the exception of a few squirrels and raccoons, the wild animals are human.
    And these were city woods. The path we followed was narrow but heavily packed down. As we moved along it, I played the flashlight beam back and forth on either side. Here and there, beer cans reflected it back.
    “Leah!” I shouted. “Leah! Can you hear me? Kimi, come! Kimi, good girl! Come!” I whistled and clapped my hands, but the only response I got was the wagging of Rowdy’s tail and an extra bounce in his gait.
    I stopped and rested a sweaty palm on Rowdy’s back to keep him still while I listened for any nearby sound that might stand out against the dull background hum: the deadened whoosh of cars and trucks passing along the Mass. Pike, the vague, indistinguishable almost-nothing of thousands of air conditioners, refrigerators, and packed suburban freezers dutifully fighting the heat. Then a siren broke through the white noise and grew steadily louder; the ambulance or a heralding police cruiser was on its way.
    “Let’s go, boy,” I said quietly. Sweat was dribbling down my neck and back, and when I wiped a hand over my throat, I rubbed in dog fur. I took a couple of long strides ahead, but Rowdy lagged briefly to check something out, a gum wrapper, maybe, or the irresistibly fetid odor of something decaying under a bed of leaves. The flashlight, thanks be in equal parts to God, Eveready, and L. L. Bean, threw a bright, wide spot ahead of me.
    “Rowdy!” I smacked my lips. “Let’s go!”
    I tugged on his leash, and he trailed after me. I flashed the light back to assure myself that whatever had held his attention was something meaningless to me, then shot the beam ahead and ran it back and forth across the path. As if the bright spot were spontaneously halting its own movement, the light froze on a bit of white something that clung to a low branch. I yanked Rowdy ahead and reached for what turned out to be a clump of woolly dog fur, and not from just any dog. I held it to Rowdy’s nose and then dug my hand deeply and joyfully into the thick ruff around his powerful neck. Kimi had inadvertently left us a sign, a bit of undercoat on the tip of a branch about a foot and a half above the ground. She had walked or run by here. And if either of my dogs had lost that bit of undercoat on our Sunday walk, it seemed to me, the wind would have blown it from where it rested loosely on the tip of that branch.
    But of Leah, there was no sign. On Sunday, Kimi had performed her wild, circling dance of freedom in the open field-She could be doing an encore now, leaping and dashing through the woods, free of human restraint. And Leah could be lying anywhere, a yard or two from the trail. Or far away.
    But I thought not. The Brawleys had been home, and from the looks of their guests, the whole group had been there all evening. No one runs out in the middle of a dinner party to smash a car window, attack the driver, and do God knows what with a sixteen-year-old and a big dog, only to stroll back in and rejoin the guests for brandy. And I had a sense of where we were heading, such a strong, clear sense that I broke into a run.
    It’s dangerous to take a malamute running in the heat. I slowed to a jog, but Rowdy had caught my spirit and