very familiar name. Mirage pulled the file out and began to read through it. "That’s interesting," she found herself saying out loud, which she would soon regret.

, she thought and began to search through the same cabinet for a Mr. Patrick, but to no avail. Mirage was just about to give up when something caught her eye over in a wastebasket. Sticking out of the trash among other papers and a rotten banana peel was a very familiar name. Mirage pulled the file out and began to read through it. "That’s interesting," she found herself saying out loud, which she would soon regret.

"Who’s there?" said a dog in the hallway. It was the Mr. Toussaint’s, the owner of the cannery, dog, Napoleon. He was a feisty Miniature Pinscher who had gained a considerable amount of weight from all the tuna his master gave him. He was very hot tempered and dogs in Nome knew to leave him be when he and his master came into town as he was short tempered and almost always got into fights. He usually slept in his master’s bedroom, which was just above the cannery, but Mirage had inadvertently awoken him as she had opened up the cabinets. He came barging into the office, but it was too late. Mirage was gone and had left no trace of her coming.

............................................................................................................................................

"How’s Comet doing?" asked Ewan as he and Orde waited on the porch for Mirage to return.

"The poor chap’s not feeling so well," Orde replied. "I tried to get him to come close to the body, but all I managed to do was get him to touch it once and then he threw up. I believe the lad has weak stomach."

"It’s his first body," mused Ewan thoughtfully, "He’ll get used to it eventually.

"I guess you’re right," said Orde. "I remember when you saw your first dead body. You wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole and you still threw up."

"Ha, ha very funny," said Ewan sarcastically.

"Well, lookie here," said Mirage strolling up to the two, "the happy couple."

"Good evening Mirage," said Orde.

"It’s nice to see you too Orde. Ewan won’t let you sleep?"

"I’m afraid not," said Orde. "But that’s quite all right. I want to see the end of this, even if it takes all night."

"So what did you find out?" asked Ewan.

"This might be some help to you guys," said Mirage. "Last night Mr. Normoyale was working aboard a vessel that was out to sea."

"That explains why he was washed up on the shore, but that doesn’t help us tremendously."

"That’s not the interesting part," said Mirage. "I found his file in the trash can."

"Trash can?" asked Orde. "It sounds to me like these buggers don’t want us to know what this man was doing that night."

"And get this," said Mirage. "He was onboard a boat with the manager himself."

"Found dead on the beach with a wad of cash on hand, file thrown away at work, if you ask me," said Ewan, "this looks like the work of some pretty fishy business."

"Bother," Orde groaned. "Don’t start with the lame puns, Ewan."

"Whoops, sorry Captain. That one kind of slipped."

"Now that you know this what will you do?" asked Mirage.

"Sorry Mirage," said Ewan apologeticly, "I'm going to have to give you a rain check for tonight. Orde and I got some work to do this evening."

"Better get Comet while were at it," said Orde. "We might as well make it his first stake out."

..............................................................................................................................................

On a hill overlooking the cannery the three dogs sat quietly or at least two did. Comet was ecstatic about being at his first stake out and had seemed to completely forget about the corpse that evening. "Oh boy," said Comet. "This is so exciting. We’re going to get the drop on the bad guys."

"Easy there lad," said Orde who was sitting under a blanket he had brought for the occasion. "Being a police dog isn’t all rough and tumble action. It’s a lot of quiet observation."

"Why’d you bring that thing?" said Comet pointing to Orde’s blanket. "You look like a big sissy under that thing."

"First of all," said Orde, "it’s dark and hides my form from detection, second its standard police equipment on stakeouts, and finally it’s cold and I have thinner fur than either you or Ewan."

"Well I don’t care how cold it is," said Comet. "A real police dog doesn’t need a blanket."

Orde was beyond irritated but decided to keep his tongue and the stakeout resumed for awhile without interruption. That is, until an hour later when Comet piped up whining, "I’m bored."

"Quiet," said Ewan. "Stakeouts require careful observation and silence."

"Obsa-whata?" asked Comet.

"Observation, it’s the art of using your senses."

"Boring," said Comet. "Let’s just break in and bust them."

"Comet, we don’t even know if they’re doing anything and even if they are we can’t just barge in and bite first ask questions later."

"Well," huffed Comet, "I thought police work meant doing something."

"Comet," said Ewan, "you’ll learn that the most important work you can do on the force is careful observation."

Time passed on again without interruption. The hours waned away as the moon moved slowly across the night sky. Suddenly it became darker as a cloud moved in front of the moon. Ewan suddenly felt much colder when he realized that something was lightly falling on him. It was snow, the first of the season.

"Snow?" said Ewan as the white powder fell down upon the three of them.

"Snow!" said Comet excitedly. He had not seen snow since he was a young pup and the memory had since faded. He was very excited to see snow again.

"Snow..." groaned Orde, who had not the slightest interest in the cold that it was bound to bring.

As time passed the snow fell more and more on the small party until the three of them were covered in little piles of snow as a thick blanket lay all around them. Comet had grown bored with it within the first five minutes of the snowfall and now he was freezing.

"Orde," whined Comet. "Any change I could squeeze under that blanket with you."

"I don’t know Comet," said Orde. "I seem to recall a certain pup saying that it was for sissies."

"Please," he begged. "It’s so cold."

"Oh alright," said Orde, but before he could finish Comet had already darted under the blanket and huddled in silent contentment, shivering the cold away.

Again more time passed on and on. Finally, around 1:00 a.m. the trio noticed some movement down at the main gate. There must have been at least three or four burly men and they were pushing wheelbarrows with large crates in them. It was far too early in the morning for the cannery to open for normal operations. Something was going on down there.

Quiet as mice, Ewan, Orde, and Comet crept down to the main gate and darted through, hiding behind a nearby barrel of tuna. As they hid, two of the men came in with a wheelbarrow and picked up a crate and loaded it onto the wheelbarrow.

"I don’t see why we could do this earlier," said one man. "I got a day job too you know."

"Shut up ya moron," snapped his partner, "You know what the boss said. We gotta do this now when no one’s around to see it. We don’t want to be attracting any attention."

"Alright," said the other man. "But I’m going to be calling in sick tomorrow. My back is killing me," he said stretching.

As the two men lifted the crate and wheeled it away, the trio came over to examine the remaining crates. One of them was open and the three of them were shocked to discover an enormous array of rifles, handguns, and knives.

"Doesn’t look like they’re canning just fish here," said Ewan wryly.

"Indeed," said Orde. "It appears we’ve stumbled on some sort of smuggling operation.

"Wow," said Comet ecstatically. "This is just like on the radio shows!"

"Be quiet Comet!" Ewan and Orde both said together.

"The question is, what is to be gained by shipping these items and to whom are they sending them to?" said Orde.

"We’ve got to get Rex out here tomorrow," said Ewan. "If they’re smuggling this stuff out then we should be able to find what they’re getting in return and how they’re doing it."

.............................................................................................................................................

The next day Ewan and Orde were pacing back in forth in the station waiting for Rex to return from his inspection of the place. Rex was the best sniffer on the force, one of the reasons he was the chief. If there were smuggled goods in this building, Rex was the one to find them.

"Don’t worry," he said before he left. "I’ll find the goods faster than I can find a treed coon." But Rex was gone all morning and late into the afternoon. When he finally came back to the station he bore a downtrodden look on his face.

"Well?" asked Ewan. "What happened?"

"Did you find them?" asked Orde.

"I searched that place up and down," said Rex, "but I couldn’t get a whiff of anything out of the ordinary in there. The only thing I smelled were fish and machinery. If there’s contraband in this place, I sure can’t find it."

"What? Not even a hint of anything?" asked Ewan.

"Sometimes I thought I smelt something by the freezer, but I couldn’t find anything anywhere. I don’t know, Ewan. Maybe we’ve just got them wrong."

"No," said Ewan. "I know what I saw. There’s something going on down there, and I won’t rest until I’ve proven it."

"Well, while you’re not resting could you at least find Roland and tell him that we’re going to have to end his early vacation early? Unfortunately for him Jason’s mate has gone into labor and he doesn’t want to leave her side."

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