I led Kona back to the truck where he’d first started to work the trail. Then I guided him into the wind, which was blowing out of the north and stirring up a fine cloud of snow. Kona worked a few yards, but again stopped. Once more, I led him around the vehicle, hoping he might pick up another trail.
At the passenger side, Kona’s tail began to wag as he lowered his head. He was on. He followed the trail up a fifty-yard climb, making switchbacks from time to time, and occasionally losing the trail over some of the rocks. As we reached the top of the ridge, Kona lost the scent. The drop down the other side of the ridge was rocky and steep, with smooth boulders perched just over the edge like monuments. My best bet was that Amy Raye had climbed up there to survey the area, and then descended in the same direction she’d come.
We headed back down to the truck. “Nothing,” I said to Dean, who was waiting for me at his Cherokee. “She was definitely here, but every trail leads to a dead end. Might as well get hold of search and rescue and see what they can find.”
Dean cupped his hands around his mouth. “Amy Raye!” he yelled, drawing the name out. Dean and I waited, motionless, but heard only the whine of the wind.
Dean got on the radio. He told the dispatcher to go ahead and send the search-and-rescue crew out. He’d meet them at the Kum & Go in Rangely.
“You want to ride back to town with me? Grab a sandwich?” he asked.
“No, thanks. I ate on the way. I think we’ll keep working the area.”
“You know what Colm would say.”
“Colm’s not here,” I reminded him.
Searches involved teams. Solo work wasn’t allowed, and a dog didn’t count as a partner. The last thing a search-and-rescue team wanted was to be looking for one of its members in addition to the missing subject. Still, good daylight was like water between the fingers.
“Leave me with a radio,” I said. “I’ll check in with anything I find.” I wasn’t looking at Dean, but was scanning the edge of the surrounding ridges, checking for any patch of color or sign of movement. “We still got a good three hours before sundown.”
“He’ll chew my ass,” Dean told me.
“You’re a tough guy.”
Dean walked back to his Cherokee. When he returned, he gave me a handset. “Be careful,” he said.
—
Once again Kona and I followed the scent trail up to the top of the ridge. I crouched close to its edge and adjusted my binoculars to their maximum power. I glassed the area, looking eastward toward the cedar and pinyon woods, but spotted nothing. Several times I stopped to sound a whistle I wore around my neck, hoping to attract Amy Raye’s attention should she merely be lost. That was a search-and-rescue team’s first assumption with a missing hunter. But I wasn’t searching in the high timber where the aspen and spruce create a thick mesh whichever way one looks. I was at around eight thousand feet elevation in the high desert. Though there were dense stretches of pinyon and juniper, there were plenty of open vistas and cliffs where a person could gauge his or her bearings.
I had camped in the high desert plenty of times. Had brought Joseph with me to show him some of the archaeological sites that had been excavated. The first time I’d brought him with me, Joseph was nine. We were setting up camp on a ridge overlooking Soldier Creek, about sixty yards from the truck, a red and silver ’98 GMC that Joseph was now driving. I was pitching the tent. Kona, only a year and a half at the time, was tied to a tree. He was a stubborn dog who would wander off at the least distraction. It was that same stubbornness that drove me a year later to begin training him as a search dog. “He needs something to do,” Angie at the movie store had told me. “He needs to work.” It was Angie who had put me in touch with SARDOC, Search and Rescue Dogs of Colorado. I spent the next two years training Kona through the group before he was certified. Though I’d already completed my law enforcement training, it wasn’t until Kona became certified as a search dog that I’d become interested in working search and rescue.
But that day on the ridge with my son, Kona was still a headstrong puppy, despite being over a year old. Joseph wanted me to go with him to the truck to get something. Maybe he was hungry; we hadn’t brought all of the food with us to the site yet. Or maybe he’d wanted to go back and get his pellet gun.
“Take Kona with you,” I’d said.
“No, he’ll just pull me.”
I’m not sure what I said next. Something about the truck not being far, about it being good for Joseph to go alone, that there was a clear path between me and the truck.