Paws before dying

forged ahead, pulling as if he’d been trained for pack ice instead of the show ring.
    “Easy there,” I called to him. “Slow down.” Then I braced myself and made him halt for a few seconds while I ran the light over a triple fork in the path ahead. It seemed to me that the trail we wanted was the one to the right. Or straight ahead?
    “Which way, boy?” I asked confidently, but felt as though I might as well have flipped a coin. He hadn’t been taught to track. I’d meant to do it someday. I’d been busy. I’d been lazy. Rowdy’d choose a path for us, of course, but he might head us directly toward the backyard hutch of some family’s pet rabbits or take us to the nearest bitch in season.
    Even so, I let his lead go loose and tried to let him pick the trail on his own. Trouble reaching decisions? Forget those management courses. Get a malamute. Doubt never crosses a mal’s mind. Rowdy turned right. Did he smell something? Or had he merely read my mind? I didn’t know, but I followed him. Only a minute or two later, when I hauled him in, stopped briefly, and ran the light over the low branches ahead of us, I felt ashamed of having doubted him. Now that I was searching for them, the wisps of Kimi’s undercoat on the low branches were impossible to miss. We tore ahead.
    Our run ended sooner than I’d expected. Rowdy and I stood m a small clearing. The trail forked. One path climbed sharply uphill to our right, another wandered ahead. But to our left was a low, rough fieldstone wall overgrown with vines and weeds. A streetlamp shone nearby. We were directly across the street from Jack Engleman’s house.
     

Chapter 26

     
    I once had a hundred-pound dog named Rafe who was afraid of thunder. At the first rumble, he’d start shaking and salivating. My presence was his only comfort. Whenever a storm hit during the night, he’d cannonball into my bed and quiver so powerfully that the mattress would vibrate. I’d dream I was sleeping in a cheap motel with a Magic Fingers and an endless supply of quarters. Rafe was also scared of elevators, garbage trucks, letter carriers, veterinarians, sirens, whistles, and bicycles. My anxiety, however slight, instantly communicated itself to my poor Rafe; any trivial worry of mine became Rafe’s terror.
    Rowdy was no Rafe, but their attitudes toward danger were equally senseless: Rafe feared everything, and Rowdy feared nothing. I don’t think he could even grasp the concept of fear. As we paused in that little clearing in the woods across from Jack’s house, for instance, he probably misinterpreted the tension in my body, the rapid beating of my heart, and the catches in my breath as signs of the joyous anticipation he always felt himself at the prospect of an imminent slash-and-tear dog fight.
    I took a deep breath, blew it out, turned off the flashlight, and clambered over the wall ahead of Rowdy, who cleared it in one bound. Just as he landed, a clap of thunder rolled and a summer torrent let loose as if his agile leap had shaken the earth and ripped open the sky. No lights showed on the first floor of Jack Engleman’s house, but a bright glow radiated from the second story on the side facing the driveway and the Johnsons’ house.
    “Rowdy, this way,” I called softly as I took a few wet steps along the edge of the pavement and tugged on his lead. “This Way.”
    The water, I thought. He’d always hated it. The first baths I’d forced on him had been battles of will, and, even now, he’d howl when I scrubbed his underbelly. I’d seen him go swimming only once, when Kimi had accidentally knocked him off the dock and into the pond at Owls Head. He’d immediately rushed out, shaken himself off, and spent the next ten minutes tearing wildly around in indignant protest. But this was nothing, a shallow puddle, and, after all, he wasn’t afraid of water. He simply loathed it.
    “Rowdy, this way,” I repeated insistently, and was about to call him to heel when my conscience pricked me. I remembered the First Commandment of the late St. Milo Pearsall, founder of modern obedience methods: Thou shalt listen to thy Dog and see things from His point of view.
    “What is it?” I tried to sound faithful. Even if he’d been tracking the scent through the woods, hadn’t the downpour washed it away? Or was it something he could hear? Or simply the familiarity of Jack Engleman’s house, the memory that we’d been here before? Like all good sled dogs, he