Emily led Officer Edwards and two other policemen into the woods. First to the site of the struggle, marked by crushed undergrowth and a dark stain in the duff, then along the staggering path the wounded man had taken.

"Done much tracking before, have you?" Edwards asked, a hint of humor in his voice.

"Thirty-some years of keeping thousands of books in order on the shelves," Emily said, "and I can see anything amiss, even here."

It was not so much the occasional broken branch that marked the path but that uncanny cat-sight of hers. Gossamer strands of light, already beginning to fade, stretched from footprint to footprint.

"Don't get too far ahead now," Edwards said, stopping to untangle a prickly bramble from his pants leg. The other officers also blundered into creeping blackberry vines.

Emily slowed, gazing all around, drinking in the peace of the forest. The soft sweet scent of sun-warmed fir drifted down from the canopy high above. Davy's voice, touched by a faint Welsh lilt, echoed among the pillared aisles.

Welsh miners had been the original settlers of small-town Skowalko, nestled in the coal-riddled foothills of the Cascade mountains. The first of the pale-skinned settlers, that is. The Smalkamish tribe had lived here for thousands of years, farming patches of camas bulbs and harvesting great hauls of salmon from the river in the abundant spring and fall runs. Emily had read every book of local history and lore she had acquired for her library, taking up a whole rack.

Her library. Emily missed the soft whispery scent of books, dust motes drifting through beams of light from high windows into the aisles between towering book-laden pillars, the hush and peace shared by those drinking in knowledge from millions of pages.

She shook herself. "Come on, fellows! Need to go on while the traces are fresh!"

Still they struggled, getting more and more tangled. How the Smalkamish would have laughed at the sight! She sighed. "The thorns are barbed like fish hooks. Don't fight like hooked trouts. Back up! Gently!"

From then on the three men followed Emily's footsteps like meek ducklings. Through thickets of vine maple. Under fallen trees leaning drunkenly on their neighbors. Across muddy rivulets. The glittering traces of the wounded thief wound uphill, then down, then back.

"Have you lost him, Mrs Katz?" Edwards asked.

"No, he's wandering around."

They came to a huge rotted tree stump. "Western red cedar," Emily told the policemen. "Look, a hollow. See all these May-lilies crushed at the entrance. Oh drats! He trampled a trillium. Well, this may have been the original hiding place of the loot, but it's gone now."

She gazed around again. Light was fading, both the glow of daytime and the tracery of gossamer threads. They went on again and came to a gully. Plain to see, skid marks showed where the thief lost his footing and slid to the muddy bottom.

"You win, hands down, Edwards," one officer said, peering down the gully.

Emily looked at Davy.

He grinned sheepishly. "We'd heard about your knack, and at first joked about taking you on as a bloodhound. Then came the robbery. When I said, 'Let's do it. What have we got to lose?' the fellows placed bets."

Emily glared at him like a librarian scolding a noisy kid, then had to chuckle.

A weak call sounded. "Help!"

Way down the gully they found the thief, pale with pain, clutching a duffle bag, wet and muddy and trapped in the barbed wire snares of brambles.

.

prompt: "original"