A Bloodhound to Die for (14 page)

The light was fading. I couldn’t glimpse enough sky
to judge if it was low thunderstorm clouds heavy with rain or just the sun easing behind the tall forest that would block the receding rays. Whatever the reason, I didn’t like the coming darkness. Stumbling around in this tiny corridor with only a headlight and a flashlight was not conducive to easy walking. I was now having to watch for the almost hidden small cypress roots that can send you sprawling on your hands and knees if you trip on them. This meant we were getting closer to the water, but it was also slowing our forward progress.

Jasmine and Ramona should be joining us soon. Even though she had left minutes behind me, I had been slowed by chopping back the obstructive vines and protruding limbs. The path should be easier for her and they should be traveling faster. I was looking down at my feet and almost stumbled over Gulliver because he had suddenly stopped trailing and was turned sideways and sniffing at something in the clump of six-inch grass. I caught a faint odor of urine and saw a small pile of feces and some faint stains on a handful of pulled-up grass. Miz Beulah had made a rest stop.

I stood there worrying about her running into the numerous vines that had tried to claw me on our trip. She might not know how to or couldn’t avoid them, and if she was scratched, the cuts could become septic in a short time in this heat. I also belatedly remembered that I hadn’t questioned Mr. Hiram very carefully about her health problems. I felt a pang of guilt. She could have adult onset diabetes, and if so, by now
might be hypoglycemic. Nothing was mentioned about insulin, but many people take a couple of pills a day and are supposed to watch their diets but don’t consider themselves as having a disease. I tried to find comfort in the fact that Mr. Hiram took excellent care of her and would have mentioned the illness, hopefully. However, he was also upset and feeling guilty about her slipping away and might have temporarily forgotten. Diabetes could exacerbate any infection. I also remembered the thin moccasins that covered her feet.

I was surprised when Gulliver turned and headed back toward me. His stance was rigid and his expression seemed intensified as he nosed around tracking the scent. He was going over the same ground that we had just passed.

“Hey, Gulliver? What’s happening?”

I was working him on the six-foot lead, as we didn’t have much room and he always wanted to move like a freight train. I tugged him backward and finally stopped him.

“Why would she turn around here?” I asked him, confused. “She was heading toward the creek. Let’s try it again a little farther along this trail, before we backtrack. We know she couldn’t have made it turning off the path. She couldn’t have moved three feet through the heavy brush.”

Gulliver didn’t seem impressed with my reasoning, but I got him to turn around, reluctantly, and head in
our original direction. I should have known better than to argue with his gifted nose. Less than fifteen feet of his casting back and forth and humming a low, frustrated whine, he pulled up short and stood slouched, then turned his head in my direction looking lost and uncertain.

I peered ahead of him and saw the reason. The path had simply petered out. All that was in front of us were heavy vines, a thick growth of gallberry bushes, and solid trees several years old. A dead end. It was that time of day when the natural light was muted, and too soon for a flashlight or headlamp. I stooped and patted Gulliver’s head and rubbed his ears.

“I should have known your nose is better than my guesses. You are a great man trailer and I’m a klutz. Shall we turn around?”

A few yards back down the trail, we heard Jasmine and Ramona seconds before we saw them making their way toward us.

“Are you all right?” Jasmine called out anxiously.

“Fine. We’re just lost, like you two.”

Gulliver and Ramona greeted each other like long-lost relatives. They twisted their short leads together and whined and smelled each other with delight.

“Let’s take a break,” I suggested and slumped against a raised mound at the base of a gnarled water-oak trunk. Jasmine took a moment to inspect a safe area and slid down near me.

Jasmine’s face looked drawn in the subdued light.

“You look tired.”

“I’m sitting too long in too many classes trying to finish my second year. And the heat is getting to me. I’m cutting down next month. I’ve already filled out my schedule for fall.”

“Great. Rosie’s offered to take two of our regular search visits each week, and I’m not taking any more new contracts until we can get another trainer who can handle Rosie’s and your overflow. It’s too much for both of you.”

“Why are we lost? Did Gulliver lose the scent?”

“Gulliver and I agree that she must have doubled back. This path dead-ends a few yards behind us. With her traveling this area twice, it made the trail easier to scent. My guess is that she took the right path back at the Y crossing and Gulliver failed to catch it, or she decided to step off this path on her way back and take a shortcut through this monstrous growth. She has fifty years of memories of this land in her confused mind. I don’t have any idea what she might think of next. I didn’t notice anywhere she could have left the trail coming in, but I wasn’t checking it too closely because Gulliver was confidently covering ground on the path. If she decided to blaze her own way to the creek, I’ll tell you true, we’re in a whole heap of trouble.”

“So now we slow down and check both sides of this trail on the way back … with lights,” she added.

“That’s the plan,” I said with a sigh. “You take the left, and I’ll check the right side.”

Standing, I stretched and we both started untangling the dogs’ leads. We took out headlamps, and adjusted them to shine straight in front of where we looked. I held my lead in my left hand, and carried the five cell in my right. It had a wider beam and was worth carrying the extra weight. Thick, dark green foliage with black shadows absorbed the light and reflected an unwavering wall of gloom. I occasionally clenched my eyes then stretched them wider to try to achieve better night vision. It didn’t seem to help much.

Gulliver was impatient with the slower pace and kept trying to pull ahead. He was following a strong trail and couldn’t understand why we were stopping so often to check the bushes. He kept glancing back at Ramona and Jasmine, working behind him. He started a soft whine of discontent.

“Take it easy, Gulliver, we want to make sure. Slow down, ease off.” I repeated the refrain often to reassure him that he was doing a good job.

My left arm began to ache from the strain. I couldn’t switch hands while using the flashlight because it was too awkward. I was forced to tie my extra bandanna around my forehead. It was too much effort to keep swiping my eyes with the hand that held the flashlight. After twenty minutes I called a halt, pulled Gulliver off the scent, and walked back to Jasmine.

“Let’s change sides. My left arm is killing me. He keeps pulling ahead.”

I moved to the left, and it seemed to rest my left
hand. Gulliver was still straining ahead. He surely didn’t appreciate the slow pace and I almost missed the small opening in the bushes. My light raked over it and I had only a nanosecond vision of a small tunnel, then the unbroken brush returned.

I pulled up on Gulliver’s lead and walked back several steps. Ramona and Jasmine joined us and we both investigated the narrow opening with our lights while the dogs wriggled with impatience. Ramona pushed forward and lowered her nose first. Gulliver stood still and watched her work.

“It looks like a deer, or a small-animal trail,” I said hopefully. No way did I want to stoop or crawl through the heavy brush after dark.

“Ramona wants to go in. What do you think?” Jasmine asked while leaning over and peering into the dark slit, holding firmly to Ramona’s leash.

I sighed with disappointment. “Then we try it. I’ll be right behind you. Be careful.”

Snakes crawled freely and fed in early darkness and early morning. A full cast of wild creatures lived in this environment and moved around this swamp in a two-hour cycle of forage and resting. I had no desire to meet any of them on a night trail in thick brush while stooping or crawling.

  
16
“A Less Than Perfect Rescue”

“C
an you stand up?” I called, more to keep voice contact than to get information. I didn’t like Ramona and Jasmine disappearing in the darkness and not knowing what they were doing.

“So far,” Jasmine answered, her voice already subdued by the thickness of the surrounding foliage.

I was hovering so close that I was bending over Gulliver, trying to walk by his side instead of staying behind him. After an interminable wait of thirty seconds, I called again.

“What’s happening?”

“Nothing so far,” she said, sounding a tad testy. “Do you want to lead? I think we still have room enough to change places here.”

“No, no,” I yelled quickly, “just checking that you’re all right.”

“Well… if you’re sure.”

I bit my lip and told myself to shut up. It would seem as if I didn’t trust her to lead if I kept up a running dialogue of questions. I wasn’t used to being second on a trail. In fact, I couldn’t remember an instance when I hadn’t been behind the lead man trailer. This time I managed to stay silent a full five minutes.

“Does it seem that Ramona is on a viable scent?”

When she didn’t immediately answer, I quickly surged forward and almost stepped on her. She was squatting in the path with her hand guarding her eyes to keep me from destroying her night vision with my light.

“You rang?” Her tone was wry.

“Sorry, I’m just nervous. We’ve used up a lot of time. I know it’s a cold trail. Just checking.”

“You’re having an anxiety attack because you’re not leading the pack. I would suggest that you and Gulliver take the lead and we’ll all feel better. What do you say?”

“Are you sure? It’s not that I don’t trust you …”

“Believe me, Jo Beth, Ramona and I will be much better off ten paces to the rear. Trust me on this. Move past, please.”

I turned my light on the narrow sides of the opening and sucked in a startled breath.

“What in God’s name is all this?”

My light was not penetrating more than a foot on either side of the narrow trail. I gaped in wonder at the solid wall of vegetation hemming in our clearance and the tiny opening we had to advance into.

“You mean this?” She was pointing around at the morass on all sides of her. Her voice rose, light and chirpy. “This is the new growth of Chinese tallow trees. They are indigenous to China and were imported in the nineteen thirties and planted in the South Florida Everglades to keep the topsoil from eroding away. For the past sixty years or so, they’ve been traveling north and infesting hundreds of thousands of acres. I’ve read that they’re hardy little buggers and can grow a foot a month in a wet climate. I’d judge these beauties to be about six months old. Can you imagine what they are going to look like in six years?”

I stared at the close-growing slim saplings. “Why haven’t I heard about them before, and how did you know?”

“It seems our government experts said it would take a good twenty more years for them to spread into northern Florida and southern Georgia, and who begins planning twenty years in advance for a problem? Seems that some of the experts have been saying ‘oops’ for the past three years, as they have shown up in almost every county in north Florida. Don’t you like the way they are spreading the news? I read about them about three weeks ago for the first time.”

“So when is the state gonna start eradicating them?”

“Well, they have a teensy-weensy problem.” She stared gloomily at the thick shoots. “The wind carries the seed. They don’t have any way of stopping them.”

“Nothing?”

“Not so far.”

“You would think they would have learned from the kudzu vine,” I said sadly. “They imported it from China and Japan.” Kudzu is a climbing vine that’s widespread and runs rampant in the southern United States.

“No, and we still have water hyacinths, which have taken over our lakes. They spend billions a year to kill them and we’re slowly losing the battle.”

I glanced around. “This is creepy. Let’s get out of here.”

We maneuvered around each other, keeping the dogs from tangling their leads, and I put Gulliver out front; he seemed to have no difficulty in picking up the scent. He charged forward, raring to go, and I had to keep slowing him down. He was exhibiting a lot more excitement now that he was back in the lead. I guess we both loved to hog the spotlight.

Gulliver suddenly pulled so hard that I went to my knees. I heard his raspy intake of breath and then a deep-throated bay erupt from his jaws, which was duplicated by Ramona in her next breath. They were signaling that they had found their target! I increased my forward scramble in elation and found myself suddenly jerked facedown as Gulliver’s rump disappeared from view. His entire weight was pulling me
into a black abyss. Before I could react, Ramona was slamming into my backside with equal force. She had apparently decided that since she couldn’t go around me, she’d advance by crawling over me. We both slid over the edge of a slippery twelve-foot slope of mud. I had no idea what was happening to the others, but I hit the water of the creek headfirst, Ramona on my shoulders. I felt the water close over my head.