Spare These Stones [title in keeping with the genre]

By Paula Munier

“Good friend for Jesus' sake forbeare,

To dig the dust enclosed here.

Blessed be the man that spares these stones,

And cursed be he that moves my bones."

—William Shakespeare (epitaph) [Are bones to be found shortly?]

The woods were blessedly cool, even in July [Where’s the woods? Why does she hate being hot?]. The northern hardwoods of the Southern Green Mountains were in full summer leafing, towering birches and beeches and maples draping the forest in shade. After several years in the desolate white heat of the Afghanistan desert [Is that why she hates heat? What was she doing there? Was she a soldier? Did she get hurt?], Elvis and I loved the gelid greens and blues and silvers of the trees [Who’s Elvis? Who names anybody Elvis?]. We welcomed the soft sweep of moss and lichens and pine needles beneath our feet, the warble of wrens and the skittering of squirrels, the crisp scent of mountain air breathed in and out, in and out, in and out [Why does she love the woods so much? Does she have PTSD?].

This was our happy place [Why?]. The place where we could leave the hot, whirling sands of war behind us [What happened to them there?]. After that last deployment, the one where I got shot and Elvis got depressed, we’d both been sent home [Where did she get shot? Was it his fault? Is Elvis still depressed?]. It took me a year to track down the Belgian shepherd—think German shepherd, only sleeker and smarter—and another three months to talk the private contractor into letting me adopt him [Elvis is a dog? Smarter than German shepherds? Really? She adopted him?]. But in the end, Elvis and I prevailed—and entered retirement together [She’s retired? Now what does she do?]. Two former military police—one thirty-three-year-old two-legged female Vermonter with an exit wound scar blighting her once perfect ass and one handsome six-year-old four-legged male Malinois with canine PTSD—reclaiming our minds and bodies and souls in the backwoods, one hike at a time [Military police? Shot in the butt? Dogs get PTSD? Who knew?]. U.S. Army Sergeant Annie Carr and Military Working Dog Elvis reporting for permanent R&R [Military Working Dog? What did Elvis do?].

Today was the Fourth of July [Ironic, huh?]. The holiday I once loved most [But not anymore? Why?]. But now Elvis and I spent every Independence Day independent of the trappings of civilization [Why?]. We didn’t like fireworks much anymore. Sounded too much like Afghanistan on a bad day [What happens on a bad day?]. Elvis and I worked explosives there; he’d sniff them out, and I’d call in the EOD team [Bomb-sniffing dog?]. On good days, it was just that simple. On bad days, it was all noise and blood and death [What all did they see and experience over there?].

Here in the Lye Brook Wilderness, all the sounds we heard were made by nature, not by man [How remote is this place?], save for the crunch of my old boots on the overgrown path and the whoosh! of Elvis as he bounded ahead of me, blazing the trail with no thought of IEDs. At least I hoped Elvis had no thought of IEDs here [Is that why he has PTSD?].

Deep in the timberland there was no past, no future. Only now [Now what?]. The terrain grew rougher, steeper, tougher [Are they both in good physical shape?]. I adjusted my pack, which at only 20 pounds barely registered on my body [Twenty pounds?], once burdened by nearly 100 pounds of gear [How could she carry all that?], including body armor, flak, weaponry, and an IV for Elvis if he got dehydrated in the desert [How often did that happen?].

All I carried now was a leash, lunch, and drinking water for me and Elvis, compass, hiking GPS, flashlight, lighter, power pack, sunscreen, bug spray, first-aid kit, duct tape, and extra batteries [That’s all?]. My keys, wallet, and smartphone were distributed among the many pockets in my cargo pants, along with my Swiss Army knife, dog treats, and Elvis’s “rabbit,” the indispensable squeaky Kong toy critical to his training and his joie de vivre [Should I get my dog a Kong?]. One squeak and I had his full attention every time [One squeak?]. He lived for these squeaks, which signaled successful completion of the task at hand—from sit, down, and stay to alerting to explosive devices [What else can this dog do?].

Not that Elvis was working now. He was just playing, diving into the scrub, scampering over downed trees, racing up the rocky trail only to circle back to check my progress [Is he always this good?]. A downpour the night before had left muddy puddles in its wake, and my boots were streaked with dirt. As was Elvis, his fawn fur stippled with dark splotches of sludge [Will he get a bath when they get home?].

I kept my eyes on the slick, stone-ridden path, and my mind off my future, which loomed ahead of me with no clear goal in sight [What will she do now? What is she living on? Why can’t she decide what to do?]. Unlike this trail we hiked, which led along the bed of a former logging railroad, rising before me along a steady 20 percent incline for some two-and-a-half miles up to Lye Brook Falls [How long will this hike take?]. The falls were among the tallest in Vermont, cascading down 160 feet.

We’d hiked about two-thirds of the way so far [Aren’t they getting tired? Does the dog need a drink?]. I’d brought Elvis up here before; we both liked the trail, as much for its solitude as its scenery, provided you set off early enough [Doesn’t she like any people at all? Are they always alone?]. We began at dawn, and so often had the trail to ourselves, even on glorious summer mornings like this [Does she have insomnia? Where is everyone?]. Of course, this being the Fourth, most New Englanders were not hiking the wilderness, they were celebrating with family and friends at town parades and neighborhood barbecues and bonfires on the beach, a national fracas of hot dogs and beer and fireworks Elvis and I were content to miss [Is she completely anti-social now? Why?].

Elvis plunged through a swollen stream and disappeared into a thicket of small spruce. I saw no reason to follow him; I preferred my feet dry. I tramped on, dodging the worst of the mud and careful not to slip on the wet stones [How slippery is it? What happens if she falls? Who would find her? Would the dog go fetch someone?].

After about half a mile, Elvis had still not returned [Where’s the dog? What happened to him?]. This was more than unusual; it was unprecedented [Why is she so worried? Should I be worried too?]. Elvis’s job had always been to walk in front of me, scouting ahead and alerting to danger [Where’s the danger here?]. The only dangers here were the ubiquitous clouds of biting black flies—and the occasional bear [Black flies? Biting? Bears? Don’t bears bite too?].

I whistled and waited [Is Elvis trained to come when she whistles?]. Elvis darted out of the scrub onto the path [Where’d he been?]. He skidded to a stop right in front of me and jangled his head [Why?]. In his mouth he held what looked like one of his rabbits [What’s in his mouth?]. But it wasn’t a doggie squeaky toy [What is it?].

“Drop it.” I held out my hand [Will he put it in her hand?].

Elvis obliged, releasing the canary-yellow object into my open palm, his bright eyes on me and his new plaything [What is it?]. I held it up and examined it in the light filtering through the trees [What is it?].

“I think it’s a baby teether,” I told Elvis [Baby teether? What baby?]. About 5 inches long, the teether was shaped like a plastic daisy with a thick stem, the better for a baby’s grip, and a flower-shaped lion’s head blooming at the top. Apart from Elvis’s drool, the little lion toy was clean, so it wasn’t something that had been abandoned in the woods for long [Drool? How did it get there? Where is the baby?]. I bent over towards Elvis, holding the teether out to him. “Where did you get this” [What will Elvis do?]?

Elvis pushed at my hand with a cold nose and whined [What does that mean when he does that? What is he trying to tell her?]. With another quick yelp, he leapt back into the underbrush [Now what? Will she follow?]. I tucked the baby toy into one of my cargo pockets and followed the dog, as he obviously meant me to do. I cursed under my breath as I sank into a marshy patch, mud seeping into the tops of my boots as I stomped through the mire after Elvis [What’s in that mud?]. Sometimes Elvis behaved erratically as a result of his PTSD [How erratically?]. Most of the time, I could anticipate his triggers: slamming doors, thunderstorms, fireworks [How? Do all loud noises scare him? Does he have flashbacks like some soldiers do?]. But at other times, his triggers eluded me [Why?] and were known only to Elvis: scents, sounds, and situations that went unnoticed by my human senses and were only ascertained by his superior canine senses [How superior is his sense of smell?]. But baby toys had never been among them [Where’d it come from?].

Elvis led the way to a stream that paralleled the trail, a rushing of water over a bed of rocks. He jumped, clearing the 6-foot wide current easily [Can all dogs jump that far? Can she jump that far?]. I splashed after him, not willing to risk breaking a leg or twisting an ankle in a poorly landed leap [How deep is the water? Isn’t it cold?]. The cold water came up to my knees, and I was grateful it was July, or the water would have been even colder. Elvis waited for me, his ears perked and his dark eyes on me [What does he know that we don’t?].

I clambered out of the brook and stumbled over the stones into a thick copse of young birch trees. There Elvis sat down on his haunches in the middle of a large blowdown area littered with tree limbs [What’s the dog doing? What does it mean?].

“What you got there, buddy?” I squatted down next to him [Shouldn’t she be careful? What’s this got to do with the teether?]. Elvis looked at me, dark eyes lively, ready for his reward—his own toy or a treat or both [Why does he think he gets a reward?].

But he could not earn his reward until I could figure out what he’d found [If she doesn’t know, who does?]. Like all military working dogs, Elvis was trained as a patrol dog, to guard checkpoints and gates, detecting intruders, secure bases, apprehend suspects, and attack on command [How smart is this dog?]. But beyond that, MWDs were specialists; they were trained to sniff out drugs or cadavers or explosives. Elvis was an explosive-detection dog, trained to find weapons and to detect a number of explosive odors [What kind of explosives? What kind of odors? Is there a bomb in the woods?]. When he alerted to a scent, that scent was typically gunmetal, detonating cord, smokeless powder, dynamite, nitroglycerin, TNT, or RDX, a chemical compound often found in plastic explosives [Then why did the teether pique his interest? How smart is this dog?].

Elvis looked at me as if to say, “Okay, my job here is done. Where’s my rabbit” [Where’s his rabbit? Is she going to give the dog a break or what?]?

I looked at the ground in front of his paws [Why? What’s there?]. The forest floor was thick with detritus—dead leaves and twigs and pine needles—as well as mushrooms and moss and ferns and what looked like poison oak. No evidence of trespass here [Trespass?]. No evidence of explosives [What did Elvis smell?]. And no evidence of a baby to go with the baby toy, either [Where’s that baby?].

On the other hand, Elvis had an excellent track record—and the best nose of any dog I’d met, either in training or in Afghanistan [The best nose? Then it’s still possible that there is danger nearby? How smart is this dog, really?]. He’d never been wrong before [Never? What does this mean here and now?]. What were the odds he was wrong now?

“Good boy,” I said, scratching that favorite spot between his pointed ears. I slipped a treat out of my pocket and held it in my open palm, and Elvis licked it up [What kind of treat?].

“Stay,” I said [Why?].

Why Elvis would alert to a scent here in the Vermont woods was unclear to me [Why indeed?]. If we were on a mission, we’d call in the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team, responsible for bomb disposal [So what will she do instead?]. We never touched anything; the EOD guys took it from there [How dangerous was it?]. But here in the Lye Brook Wilderness, half a world away from the Middle East, I wasn’t sure what to do. There was no EOD team trailing us; we weren’t wearing flak or body armor [Does she need it? What about the dog?]. I wasn’t even sure Elvis had alerted to explosives [Why not? Is it the PTSD?]. Who would plant explosives in a national forest [Who indeed?]?

Or maybe they were just fireworks [Fireworks?]. It was the Fourth of July, after all. Apart from sparklers, fireworks were illegal in Vermont [Really?]. Even supervised public fireworks displays required a permit [Really?]. But who would bother to bury fireworks in the woods—and even if someone had done so, you’d think they would have dug up them up by now for the holiday [Who buries fireworks in the woods?].

I slipped my pack off my shoulders and retrieved the duct tape [what will she do with the duct tape?]. I used the duct tape to rope off a crescent around Elvis and the target area, using birch saplings as posts [Why is she doing this? Is it dangerous? Will she get blown up?].

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and turned it on [Who’s she calling? Will her cell phone work in the woods?]. No bars [Is there any service close by?]. No dial tone [Where will she have to go to be able to make a call?]. Coverage was spotty [Now what?]. One bar [Can she make the call now? Is that enough?]. Dial tone [Will she get through? Are there any cops in the woods?]. Quickly I dialed 911 and hoped that I’d get through [But what if she doesn’t?]. But the connection died just as quickly [What will she do now?].

Elvis and I would have to head for higher ground and a stronger signal [Will that really work?].

“Come on, Elvis.” I headed over to the edge of the clearing, Elvis bounding ahead of me, disappearing into the brush [Where is the dog going now?]. That’s when I heard it [Heard what?]. A thin cry [From what?]. Followed by another. And another, growing in volume with each wail [Is it a baby? The baby who lost the teether?]. Sounded like my mother’s cat Alice back in Quincy, meowing for breakfast [Cat or baby?].

But I knew that was no cat [What is it then?].

Elvis bellowed, accompanied by a burst of bawling [Why is Elvis so alarmed? Where is that baby?]. I broke through the leatherleaf and bog laurel and came into a small glade [Where is the child?]. There in the middle sat a squalling baby in a blue backpack-style infant carrier [Is the baby alright? Where’s the mother?].

A baby girl, if her pink cap and long-sleeved onesie were any indication. A red-faced, cherub-cheeked baby girl, her chubby arms and legs flailing against an assault of black flies [Flies? Is she going to do something about those flies?].

I hurried over and fell to my knees in front of the pack, swatting away at the swarm [How do you get rid of black flies? What effect will their bites have on the infant?]. The baby appeared to be about six months old, but that was hardly an educated guess [What does she know about babies?]. Everything I knew about babies was based on my sister’s toddler Tommy, whose infancy I’d mostly missed [Because she was in the military? How much has she given up for her country?].

This baby seemed okay, but her little neck and face and fingers were dotted with angry red marks left by the mean bites of black flies [Will they make the baby sick?]. I reached for my pack and the bug spray but then thought better of it [Why? Why won’t she get rid of the black flies?]. Nothing with DEET in it could be much good for babies [How bad is DEET for anybody?].

She kept on screaming, and Elvis kept barking [Is the baby okay? Why doesn’t she pick the baby up?].

“Quiet,” I ordered, but only the dog obeyed [Is this the perfect dog or what?]. I looked around, but there was no mom in sight [Where is the mother? Father? Who left this baby out here in the woods? Why? Who would do such a thing?]. So I unbuckled the straps on the carrier and pulled the child out of it [Is she okay?]. She lifted her small head up at me, and I stared into round sky-blue eyes rimmed in tears. I took her in my arms and stood up. I held her against my chest, then backed up to a tree to steady myself as I pulled the ends of my hoodie together and zipped it up around her as protection against the flies [Will that work?]. I bounced her up and down until her sobs subsided [Is she okay?]. Within minutes she was asleep [Is she just exhausted or what?].

“Now, what?” I looked at Elvis, but he just stood there looking back at me, head cocked, ears up, waiting for our next move. Whatever that might be [What is she going to do?].

One of the rules of the universe should be: Wherever there’s a baby, there’s a mother close by [Where is that mother? Was the baby abducted?]. But I’d seen plenty of babies without mothers over in Afghanistan [What else did she see over there?]. I just didn’t expect to come across one here at home, in the Lye Brook Wilderness [Isn’t it safe anywhere?].

“Where’s your mother?” I asked the sleeping child [Where’s your mother, indeed?].

Maybe she’d gone off behind some bushes to pee [Really?].

“Hello,” I called. “Hello” [Is anyone there?].

No answer. I kept on calling and bouncing [Now what?]. The baby gurgled into my shoulder. Maybe her mother had fallen or hurt herself somehow [How will she find her?]. I walked around the clearing, eyes on the ground [What’s she looking for?]. The leaves and detritus on the forest floor were disturbed around the backpack, but then both Elvis and I had been there [So what does that mean?].

I could see the trail we’d left behind as we’d barreled into the clearing from the south. But leading out in the opposite direction, I saw broken branches and rustled leaves and faint boot prints tamped in the mud [Maybe the mother’s boot prints?]. Elvis and I followed the trail out of the glade into a denser area of forest thick with maples and beeches in full leaf. We hiked for several minutes through the wood. The traces ended abruptly at a rollicking stream some 10 yards wide [So should she cross the stream?]. Too far to see across, too far to jump, and too far to ford across holding a baby [How’s the baby?].

I yelled again. Elvis barked. We both listened for the sounds of humans, but all I heard were the sounds of the water and the trees and the creatures that truly belonged here [Where is whoever left the baby behind? Foul play?]. The baby stirred against my chest. She’d be hungry soon and tired and cold and wet and all those things that made babies uncomfortable [How will she keep the baby comfortable?]. Not to mention those mean black-fly bites [What will be the long-term effect of those bites? Does the baby need to see a doctor?]. I was torn: I wanted to find her mother or whoever brought her out here [What happened to them?]. But I knew the baby needed more care than I could provide deep in the woods [What will she do? Shouldn’t the baby come first?].

“We’re going back,” I told Elvis, and together we retraced our steps to the baby carrier. I carefully unzipped my hoodie and strapped the dozing child into the carrier [What’s she doing that for?]. Then I slipped off my small pack—thank God I was traveling light—and hooked it to the baby backpack [Why?]. I squatted down on my haunches and pulled the infant carrier onto my shoulders and pulled myself up to my feet. The fit was good. Not as heavy as my pack in Afghanistan but not exactly light, either [How strong is she?]. And my pack in Afghanistan didn’t squirm [How will she manage?].

“She’s waking up,” I told Elvis. “Let’s go home” [Home where?].

We walked back to the Lye Brook Falls Trail, where I hoped my cell phone would work [Will it work?]. I wasn’t exactly comfortable taking the baby, not knowing where her mother was [But what else can she do?]. But I couldn’t leave her there, as someone else had obviously done [Who leaves a baby in the woods?]. How anyone could do such a thing was beyond me. But I’d seen firsthand that people were capable of all manner of cruelty [What has she seen? Does it still haunt her?]. I just tried not to think about it these days [How can she not think about it?].

Elvis set the pace, leading the way home [Where is he going?]. You never had to tell him twice to go where his bowl and bed were. I stepped carefully to avoid jostling my precious cargo, who apparently was napping again [What might the baby be suffering from?].

If my cell didn’t work, we’d hike down to the trailhead [Is that the beginning of the trail?]. The sun was climbing in the sky now, so there should have been more people out on the trail [Will they meet someone who can help?]. We passed the area I’d roped off with duct tape, and I thought about taking it down [Why?]. But Elvis had alerted for explosives there, or maybe that’s where he found the baby teether [Are there explosives there? Was the dog confused?]. I didn’t know why he’d designated that spot. Maybe he was just confused, his PTSD kicking in [Is that possible? What does canine PTSD look like?]. But PTSD or no PTSD, I would never bet against Elvis and his nose [Is his nose that good?]. I left the tape alone and kept on walking. Elvis vaulted ahead, leading our way out of the forest.

When we reached the trail, I marked the spot where we’d gone into the woods with tape [Why?]. I figured the authorities would want to know where we found the baby [Will they search the woods?]. They could follow our path quite easily since we’d left a stream of muddy tracks and broken twigs and brush in our wake [What will they find?].

I pulled my phone from my pocket. Two bars [Is that enough?]. Worth a shot. I dialed 911 and held my breath [Will the call go through now?]. The call rang through on the third try [What will she say?]. I spoke to the dispatcher and had just enough time to say that I’d found a baby alone in the Lye Brook Wilderness when we got cut off [Now what?]. She called me back and told me she’d informed the authorities and that I should stay put until the game warden arrived [Is the game warden enough? How long will that take?].

“Roger that,” I said, and promptly lost service again [What will happen now?]. I sighed, pocketed my phone, and sat down next to Elvis. I shrugged off the baby carrier and tented my hoodie over it to keep away the bugs [Will that be enough?]. The baby slept on.

A cloud of black flies settled on me and Elvis [How can she get rid of them?]. Swatting them away with one hand, I pulled the bug spray out of my pack with the other. Time to reapply, for me and Elvis.

We could have a long wait ahead of us, and the black flies seemed to know it [How long will they have to wait? Will they all be okay? What will happen when the police arrive?].

Spare These Stones

By Paula Munier

“Good friend for Jesus' sake forbeare,

To dig the dust enclosed here.

Blessed be the man that spares these stones,

And cursed be he that moves my bones."

—William Shakespeare (epitaph)

Every morning Mercy Carr rose at dawn and hiked five miles through the Vermont woods in search of peace. Her way of banishing the ghosts of war that haunted her and Elvis, the bomb-sniffing dog that had saved her life more than once. At least during the daylight hours.

But today the wilderness held a hush that unnerved Mercy, the same sort of hush that Sergeant Martinez always called a disturbance in the Force when they went out on patrol. Bad things usually followed.

Elvis didn’t seem to notice. He raced ahead of her and plunged through a swollen stream, disappearing into a thicket of small spruce. Mercy considered following him, but like all soldiers she preferred her feet dry. She figured he’d circle back to her shortly, as he’d been trained to do.

They’d hiked nearly a third of the way up to Lye Brook Falls. The trail led along the bed of a former logging railroad, rising along a steady 20 percent incline for some 2-and-a-half miles up to the falls. The woods were blessedly cool and empty of people so early in the day. Towering birches, beeches, and maples in full leafing draped the forest in shade. A downpour the night before had left muddy puddles in its wake, and Mercy’s boots were streaked with dirt. She tramped on, dodging the worst of the mud and taking care not to slip on the wet rocks, her eyes on the slick stone-ridden path and her mind off her future, which loomed ahead of her with no clear goal in sight.

After that last deployment, the one where she got shot and Elvis got depressed, they’d both been sent home. Still, it took Mercy six months and a lot of string-pulling to talk the private defense contractor into letting her adopt Elvis. In the end she prevailed, and they entered retirement together. Two former military police—one thirty-three-year-old two-legged female Vermonter with an exit wound scar blighting her once perfect ass and one handsome six-year-old four-legged male Malinois with canine PTSD—reclaiming themselves in the backwoods one hike at a time.

The terrain grew rougher, steeper, tougher. Mercy adjusted her pack, which at less than 15 pounds barely registered on her body, once burdened by nearly 100 pounds of gear.

In Afghanistan Elvis’s job had been to walk in front of her, scouting ahead and alerting to danger. The only dangers here in the Southern Green Mountains were the ubiquitous clouds of biting black flies—and the occasional bear. Still, after about a quarter of a mile, Mercy paused to listen for the sound of a happy dog diving into the scrub, scampering over downed trees, racing up the rocky trail—but all she heard was the rush of the nearby brook, the warble of winter wrens, and the skittering of red squirrels.

Enough, Mercy thought. She whistled and waited.

The Belgian shepherd darted out of the scrub onto the path, his fawn fur stippled with dark splotches of sludge, his black muzzle muddy. Even dirty he was a pretty dog, a standard-bearer of his breed, far sleeker and smarter than any German shepherd, if you asked Mercy.

Elvis skidded to a stop right in front of her and jangled his head. In his mouth he held what looked like one of his squeaky toys.

“Drop it.” Mercy held out her hand.

Elvis obliged, releasing the canary-yellow object into her open palm, his bright eyes on Mercy and his new plaything. She held it up and examined it in the light filtering through the trees.

“I think it’s a baby teether,” she told Elvis. About 5 inches long, the teether was shaped like a plastic daisy with a thick stem, the better for a baby’s grip, and a flower-shaped lion’s head blooming at the top. Apart from Elvis’s drool, the little lion toy was clean, so it wasn’t something that had been abandoned in the woods for long. She bent over towards Elvis, holding the teether out to him. “Where did you get this?”

Elvis pushed at her hand with a cold nose and whined. With another quick yelp he leapt back into the underbrush. Mercy tucked the baby toy into one of her cargo pockets and followed the dog, as he obviously meant her to do. She cursed under her breath as she sank into a marshy patch, mud seeping into the tops of her boots as she stomped through the mire after him.

Sometimes Elvis behaved erratically. Most of the time, Mercy could anticipate his triggers—slamming doors, thunderstorms, fireworks. But at other times, the triggers eluded her; they were scents, sounds, and situations known only to Elvis. But baby teethers had never been among them.

Elvis barreled through the tangle of bracken and brushwood to a stream that paralleled the trail, a fast tumbling of water over a bed of rocks. He jumped, clearing the 6-foot wide current easily. Mercy splashed after him, not willing to risk breaking a leg or twisting an ankle in a poorly landed leap. The cold water came up to her knees. Elvis waited for Mercy, his ears perked and his dark eyes on her.

Mercy clambered out of the brook and stumbled over the stones into a thick copse of young birch trees. There Elvis dropped down on his haunches in the middle of a large blowdown area littered with tree limbs. This was his alert position, the posture he assumed when he sniffed out weapons or explosives. IEDs were his specialty.

“What you got there, buddy?” Mercy squatted down next to him. Elvis looked at her as if to say, “Okay, my job here is done. Where’s my reward?”

But Mercy wasn’t sure if he’d earned it. She examined the ground in front of his paws. The forest floor was thick with detritus—dead leaves and twigs and pine needles—as well as mushrooms and moss and ferns and what looked like poison oak. No evidence of trespass here. No evidence of explosives. He wasn’t trained to alert for babies—not that there was any evidence of a baby here, either.

On the other hand, Elvis had an excellent track record—and the best nose of any dog Mercy had ever met, either in training or in Afghanistan. He’d rarely been wrong before. What were the odds he was wrong now?

“Good boy,” Mercy said, scratching that favorite spot between his pointed ears. She slipped a treat out of her pocket and held it in her open palm, and Elvis licked it up.

If they’d been on a mission, she would have called in the EOD team responsible for bomb disposal. She and Elvis never touched anything; the EOD guys took it from there. But here there was no EOD team trailing them; they weren’t wearing flak or body armor. Mercy wasn’t even sure Elvis had alerted to explosives. Who would plant explosives in a national forest?

Or maybe they were just fireworks. It was the Fourth of July, after all. Apart from sparklers, fireworks were illegal in Vermont. Even supervised public fireworks displays required a permit. But who would bother to bury fireworks in the woods—and even if someone had done so, surely they would have dug them up by now.

Mercy rose to her feet, and stood in the middle of the blowdown, wondering what to do. Elvis leaped ahead of her and darted into the brush. She headed out after him.

And that’s when she heard it. A thin cry. Followed by another. And another, growing in volume with each wail. Sounded like her mother’s cat Alice back in Quincy, meowing for breakfast.

Elvis bellowed, accompanied by a burst of bawling. Mercy broke through the leatherleaf and bog laurel and came into a small glade. There in the middle sat a squalling baby in a blue backpack-style infant carrier.

A baby girl, if her pink cap and Hello Kitty long-sleeved onesie were any indication. A red-faced, cherub-cheeked baby girl, chubby arms and legs flailing against an assault of black flies.

Mercy hurried over and fell to her knees in front of the pack, swatting away at the swarm. The baby appeared to be about six months old, but that was hardly an educated guess. Everything she knew about babies was based on her sister’s toddler Tommy, whose infancy she’d mostly missed, and the injured infants she’d seen in theater.

This baby seemed okay, but her little neck and face and fingers were dotted with angry red marks left by the mean bites of black flies. Mercy reached for her pack and the bug spray but then thought better of it. Nothing with DEET in it could be any good for babies.

The baby kept on screaming, and the dog kept on barking.

“Quiet,” Mercy ordered, but only the dog obeyed. She looked around, but there was no mom in sight.

The baby continued to cry, an escalation of shrieks.

“Okay, okay.” Mercy unbuckled the straps on the carrier and pulled the child out of the carrier. The baby lifted up her small head, and Mercy stared into round, slate-grey eyes rimmed in tears. Mercy took her in her arms and stood up. She held the little girl against her chest, then backed up to a tree to steady herself as she pulled the ends of her hoodie together under the baby’s bottom and zipped it up around her as protection against the flies. Mercy bounced her up and down until her sobs subsided. Within minutes she was asleep.

“Now what?” Mercy looked at Elvis, but he just stood there looking back at her, head cocked, ears up, waiting for their next move.

One of the rules of the universe should be: Wherever there’s a baby, there’s a mother close by. But Mercy had seen plenty of babies without mothers.

“Where’s your mother?” Mercy asked the sleeping child. Maybe she’d gone off behind some bushes to pee. “Hello,” Mercy called. “Hello.”

No answer.

The last time she’d held a baby over there, the child had died in her arms. An IED they’d somehow missed.

“Hello.” Mercy kept on calling and bouncing. The baby gurgled into her shoulder. Maybe her mother had fallen or hurt herself somehow. Mercy walked around the clearing, eyes on the ground.

Mercy could see the trail they’d left behind as she and Elvis barreled into the glade from the south. But leading out in the opposite direction, she saw broken branches and rustled leaves and faint boot prints tamped in the mud. Mercy was a good tracker; Sergeant Martinez used to say she was part dog. Which part, she’d ask. Their little joke.

Mercy and Elvis followed the markings into a denser area of forest thick with maples and beeches in full leaf and hiked through the wood. The traces ended abruptly at a stream some 10 yards wide. Too far to see across, too far to jump across, and too far to ford across holding a baby.

Mercy yelled again. Elvis barked. She listened for the sounds of humans, but all she heard were the sounds of the water and the trees and the creatures that truly belonged here. The baby stirred against her chest. She’d be hungry soon and tired and cold and wet. And those nasty black-fly bites had to hurt. Mercy was torn; she wanted to find the mother or whoever brought the little girl out here. But she knew the baby needed more care than she could provide deep in the woods. And she’d need it sooner rather than later.

“We’re going back.” Together she and the dog retraced their steps to the baby carrier. Mercy carefully unzipped her hoodie and strapped the dozing child into the carrier. She slipped off her own small pack, tying it to the big one with the baby. She hoisted the carrier up onto her shoulders. The fit was good. Not nearly as heavy as what she carried in Afghanistan but not exactly light, either. And what she carried in Afghanistan didn’t squirm.

“She’s waking up,” Mercy told Elvis. “Home.”

Mercy never had to tell Elvis twice to go where his bowl and bed were. He set the pace, blazing back the way they came. Mercy stepped carefully to avoid jostling her precious cargo. They headed for the Lye Brook Falls Trail, where she hoped her cell phone would work and she could contact the authorities.

Mercy wasn’t exactly comfortable taking the baby, not knowing where her mother was. But she couldn’t leave the child there, as someone else had obviously done. How or why anyone would do such a thing was beyond her. Mercy knew that people were capable of all manner of cruelty. She just tried not to think about it these days.

They came to the blowdown where she’d first heard the child. Elvis trotted over to the very same place where he’d alerted before and dropped into his alert position.

“Again?” Mercy didn’t know why Elvis seemed fixated on this spot. Maybe he detected explosives there, or maybe that was where he found the baby teether. Maybe he was just confused, his PTSD kicking in. But PTSD or no PTSD, she couldn’t bet against Elvis and his nose.

Mercy unhooked her small pack from the baby carrier and pulled out the duct tape and her Swiss Army knife, the two tools she never left home without. She used the duct tape to rope off a crescent around the area Elvis had targeted, using birch saplings as posts.

“Better safe than sorry,” she told Elvis.

Elvis vaulted ahead, steering them out of the forest. When they reached the trail, Mercy taped the spot where they’d gone into the woods. Then she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and turned it on. No bars. No dial tone. Coverage was spotty up here. They’d have to trek down to the trailhead for a stronger signal.

“Back to civilization,” Mercy said with a sigh.

The dog took the lead. As they began their descent, a cloud of black flies fell upon on them. The baby woke up with a start, and the wailing began again. Mercy swatted away at the miserable flying beasts, quickening her pace. Elvis stayed up front but close by.

They had a long walk ahead of them, and the black flies seemed to know it.