FINDING THE LOST, Jeanne Tody Beroza [reading tree txt] 📗

an area with her first, Cristi, she might get discouraged. Do you agree?”

“I agree we don’t have time for clearing large areas. If we can narrow it down to a portion of the camp where Janie might have been or where she was at some time for sure, it would be a lot better.”

“Ok,” Charlie said. They all watched him intently. Maybe his cop experience could help them out here. “ Smith drove his van on the dirt road into the camp. He had to have gotten close because I don’t think he carried the little boy and girl in here and I don’t think they could have walked or crawled very far on their own. We know the gate is locked up at the top of the hill at the entrance to the camp. I think he must have thrown the kids we just found out there and they headed to the cabins looking for safety.

He may have let Janie out there also, or she may have gotten out of the van while he had the door open. The fire was closer then. If she was afraid of the fire and the embers falling all around, she might have run into the trees from the gate area. Or she may have gotten out of the van farther down the road, when he stopped to set the fire.”

“We can’t take Blaze to where he started the fire,” Cristi said. “The scorched ground and the smoke will coat the inside of her nose and make it impossible for her to sniff for scent. We have to keep her away from burned ground and smoke.”

“Say,” Denny spoke up from where he’d been sitting on the deck. “I saw a show where they had to take a dog through a patch of burning ground to reach some rubble they needed the dog to search. They tied a damp cloth over the dog’s muzzle. It supposedly helped to keep the smoke out of the dog’s nose and the moisture in the cloth was said to also enhance the dog’s ability to take in scent. You think that’s got any merit?”

“It might work,” Cristi said. “The dog’s nose is supposed to be wet to pick up scent and the cloth might help it not become lined with the soot of the smoke. We can try it until we want her to start looking for the trail, then we can take it off.” Blaze wasn’t too keen on having a handkerchief tied over her muzzle but after a little stroking, a couple commands to ‘leave it’ and then a big ‘good girl, good leave it’, she left the wet handkerchief in place where Cristi had attached it to her collar on one side of her head and pulled it across over her nose to the collar on the other side of her head. “Let’s get started before she rips it off,” she said, standing to look at her handiwork.

The two teams walked up the hill to the gate then split up to search each side of the road for any sign of a recent vehicle passage, footprints, scuff marks or items being dropped. Their goal was to walk to the area where the fire had started then turn around, scent Blaze off the girl’s items, and walk back down the road hoping she would pick up a trail.

It was almost three hundred feet from the gate when Denny found a grocery store plastic bag with trash in it. It looked relatively fresh; not covered in dust or pine needles and it hadn’t been rained on. “Think this might have fallen out of the van?” he asked. Everyone walked over to see the trash. It contained three empty beer cans, a couple empty plastic water bottles and granola bar wrappers. “Who knows,” Mike said. “Let’s try here. Some one put that bag here, it could have been Smith.”

“Ok, the way Jana would do this is to go another fifty feet or so up this side of the road, turn around, scent JJ and then start walking back down the side of the road. If JJ even turned her head to the side Jana would check that place out for a trail. I’m going to try that with Blaze. You guys all stay behind us so she is not distracted.”

They did just that. Blaze stopped and checked out the trash then continued on. She turned her head to the side about five feet past the trash then continued on sniffing back and forth in a zigzag pattern along the side of the road.

“You think the wind overnight might have dispersed the scent?” Charlie asked. “This gravel road is hard as rock and so dry I can’t see it holding anything. The scent could have blown down or up or across it. Plus the smoke would have covered this area earlier in the day.”

“Maybe,” Cristi said and turned around to walk back up the road. Blaze kept sniffing the area, back and forth. Near the trash she circled to her right, around Cristi. Cristi stood her ground and let Blaze circle, let her hunt for and find the scent on her own. It wouldn’t be until she committed fully to a trail that she could actually say she thought Blaze had the scent.

It took three circles, each bigger than the last until Blaze stopped in the trees to the north of the bag of trash and started a zigzag pattern, nose to ground further into the trees. She didn’t have a good trail yet because she hadn’t committed her body to running it.

Once she was committed to a trail she would straighten out like an arrow, her body in a tight, every molecule alert, straight line from her nose to her tail. However, Cristi thought they had the right area because Blaze was finding bits of scent. If she hadn’t had anything that smelled like the girl, she would have just moved on down the road.

Blaze kept up the zigzag pattern through the trees, rocks and low-lying juniper shrubs. At one shrub she appeared to have lost the tiny bit of scent she had been following. She circled the juniper then went to another and circled it and then to another and circled it.

“The scent must have pooled in these bushes,” she said for the guys’ benefit. “She hasn’t got a good, straight trail but that would be expected, I guess. A six-year-old running for her life isn’t going to make a straight trail. Plus, the wind has blown the scent around and mixed the smoke in with it.”

Blaze kept searching. She held her nose to the ground when she was hunting for the scent. When she seemed to have found it she raised her nose to its normal, most comfortable level and moved out faster pulling on the line in Cristi’s hands. They crossed a downed log, then entered a depression that Blaze circled a couple of times, then moved up into some big rocks.

The rocks must have protected the ground from the wind, somewhat, because the minute Blaze hit the rocky area she picked up speed and turned down a slope towards the water. As they turned Cristi realized the wind had picked up and was now at her back.

She heard static on all four radios then the IC’s voice called out Mike’s SAR number. “Rescue 38, IC, the wind has picked up and turned, the fire has shifted directions. It’s crowning and heading back your way. Do you copy? You need to leave the area, get back to the camp and out of there.”

“Roger that,” Mike replied, “but we’ve got the girl’s trail. If the fire’s turned it will get her if we don’t find her first.”

Oh God, Cristi thought, Oh God, the fire’s coming our way. Oh Blaze, I’ve done it, I put you in front of a fire.


CHAPTER SEVEN:

Cristi didn’t dare say a word to distract her little dog but she prayed, run Blaze, run fast. Find her fast baby. They were headed for an area of huge rocks bordering the lake. The area was solid granite, a good six hundred feet up into the air from the lake level and a good mile long in terms of the lake shore covered from one end to the other. The rocks were huge, depressingly so because Cristi had to climb them, fast! They were also covered in scattered pine trees and littered with pine needles.

“We get up in there and we’re going to be trapped,” Mike said.

“Yeah, but it’s where she is,” Charlie said. “Call it in Mike and ask if they have any way to get us off those rocks or to pick us out of the water if we can get down to it.”

Blaze was moving towards the rock at a steady trot. She had the trail now. This was her normal working speed. Cristi jogged behind her, totally willing to run full out if only her little dog would pick up speed. She could feel the wind, hot on her back. Embers had begun to fall around them. It sounded like a huge train was behind them but she had a feeling that was just the sound of the fire. As she ran she could hear dry trees explode as the sap in them ignited and the wind roared above her head, up and over the rocks.

“Why is it moving so fast?” she asked Charlie as they both ran behind the dog. “We’re going up hill again,” he said, “and the wind has picked up, plus it’s really hot right now. I think the fire is producing its own wind right now. The trees are so dry, they’re igniting from the heat.”

Suddenly the helicopter rose into the air behind the rocks ahead of them. It must have dropped down into Bismark Lake to fill its bucket. It hovered just above the trees, a dangerous place to be when there was a fire with downdrafts and cross winds. One he spotted them, the pilot flew just over the top of the trees to drop his water on the ground they had just covered. Then he veered off to return to the lake for another load.

Cristi felt tears come to her eyes as she ran. Nothing had ever been that beautiful or that dramatic a picture as the helicopter roaring up over the rocks to find them. Even if the fire was closing on them from behind she felt like they could do this.

Mike caught them from behind and told the whole group as they jogged behind Blaze. “There’s a mine access road just on the other side of the lake. We’re near the north end, I guess. I stopped just long enough to give them our GPS coordinates. They’re bringing in ATVs and are carrying an inflatable dingy and the ice rescue boat.”

Denny laughed at the idea of the team bringing in the ice rescue boat to paddle across the lake toward them. “Well I guess it does float,” he said. “I’ve been in icy cold Stockade Lake when a fisherman fell through soft ice and I had to use that boat to get him out. It does float.”

“Don’t knock it,” Mike threw back at him. “Whatever it takes, whatever they have, we’ll welcome it! They’re three miles out from the lake right now. They can’t get ATV’s all the way in but they’re going to run like hell down to the lake shore and put the boats in. We need to get to the water for