Flashlight beams bobbed in the darkness, and tree branches jumped out at Lewis and Aulden as they searched, and Ms. Rose bayed.
Down ravines and across creeks, the two men scrambled, their breathing emphysemic as Ms. Rose was drawn on by a scent their human noses had long forgotten how to detect.
Lewis stopped. “Mutt’s nose better not be twisted.”
“Rose is less a mutt than you. She’s got papers.”
“How’d that girl’d get this far. What in hell got into her?” Lewis spouted.
“I wonder.”
Lewis slipped the tip of his tongue through the spaces where he ought to have had teeth but didn’t. “She’s run farther than a coon.”
Up ahead, Ms. Rose fell quiet.
“Let’s go!” Lewis bellowed.
They trudged on, the cold night air metallic with coming snow. The woods as dark as the other side of the moon save for the flashlight beams cutting swaths ahead.
They followed behind the light, as if the light knew where they were headed.
“Where’s that mutt? Call her!” Lewis squawked.
“Ms. Rose!” Aulden called.
Lewis crouched, flashlight tilted under his chin to cast his face into a ghoul’s mask. He picked up a twig and snapped it as if to trip a switch in his brain that would allow him to reason out a plan. No plan came. No reason, either.
Ms. Rose bawled in the distance.
They came upon Ms. Rose, each man sweating like a spooked horse. Ms. Rose paced, burrowing her nose into the leaves as if she were a truffle pig.
“Where is she?” Aulden said.
“Find her, damn you,” Lewis said.
“Don’t curse my dog.”
“Hand me them panties.”
Aulden handed them to Lewis, who pushed them into Ms. Rose’s snout. “Find her!”
Ms. Rose wagged her tail.
“Useless bitch!” Lewis said.
“Keep it up, I’ll knock out the rest of your teeth,” Aulden said.
“Well, how in hell can she have her scent then not have her scent?”
“Wait.” Aulden walked away, circling ever wider around Lewis, Ms. Rose in step. He swung his flashlight beam. Rocks and stumps jumped out from the darkness and were eaten again by it. Ms. Rose fell into a lazy walk beside him until they came back to where Lewis stood.
“It’s like the poor thing just vanished,” Aulden said.
“Poor thing?” Lewis said. “What about me? We don’t find her we lose four hundred a month.” He swept his flashlight round, frantic, but it did not make the girl appear.