Silver

by Gloria Whelan

  I was brought up with sled dogs and I always liked playing with them, but until I had Silver, one dog was sort of like another. Silver was all mine. I got to know all about him—how his tail had a funny bend in it, how he rolled over so you could Scratch his stomach, and how, even though the other puppies were bigger than he was, he pushed and yelped until he managed to get as much milk from Ruff as they did.

  Silver knew a lot about me, too, because I told him. I told him how even though she doesn’t say anything, Mom worried a lot about Dad when he was racing. I told him Mary Sue said I was her best friend and when she went to New York City and got on television she would invite me to come and spend a weekend in her skyscraper condo. I told Silver I liked Kevin best of all the boys in my class because he brings such great things to school—like rocks that are a million years old and a deer mouse in a little house he made just for it. I told Silver I thought I had the largest feet of any girl in my class. Silver just licked my face. Dogs make good listeners.

  5.

  Each morning, when I woke up, the first thing I thought about was my dad. It seemed like he had been away forever instead of just three weeks. The Alaskan spring had already started, but you could hardly tell. One day the chinook, the soft wind from the ocean, would blow, turning the snow into wet puddles. The next day a cold wind would stir up a snowstorm. Then the mountains turned into great white humps and school would be closed because the buses couldn’t make their way through the snowdrifts. When I was stuck at home I would get out the postcards Dad had sent and read them over. Most of them were just a few scrawled sentences about the race. That’s because he was always in a hurry, but on one of them he told how he had seen the northern lights flashing in the sky. The whole sky was different colors, he said, just like a hundred rainbows.

  One afternoon, just before school was out, it started snowing. We were all tired of the snow, and everyone groaned. It had been over three weeks since Dad had left. I was wondering if it was snowing out on the trail when Mrs. Brace, our principal, announced over the loudspeaker that the Iditarod was over. My dad had come in third and was already on his way back from Nome. Everybody cheered and congratulated me, even Mary Sue. In the Iditarod, third place is really good.

  I couldn’t wait to tell Silver, but it took forever to get home from school. First there was a moose in the middle of the road and the bus driver, Mr. Jenkin, had to honk his horn about ten times to chase it away. Then the snow was so heavy that Mr. Jenkin could only creep along. He started singing “Amazing Grace,” like he always does when the driving is bad.

  By the time the bus dropped me off it was late. So instead of going into the house for cocoa, I just ran to the shed. I wanted to tell Silver about Dad coming in third. I knew Mom and the ladies would have the radio on and know all about it already. When I got to the shed I saw that the door was open. I had forgotten to latch it that morning when I brought Silver his cereal. Sometimes when I’m in a hurry I do dumb things. Ruff was yelping wildly and straining on her leash. I could see only four puppies. I counted again. Silver was missing. My heart flip-flopped like a fish when Dad catches it and throws it on the grass. I ran outside. There were large tracks sort of like dog tracks in the snow, but all our dogs were either with Dad or in their kennel. I forgot about the cold and the snow and hurried along in the direction the tracks took. All I could think about was finding Silver.

  The tracks followed the curve of a little river where my dad catches salmon and trout in the summer. A thin coat of ice lay like white lace along the edge of the water. I crossed an open patch where my mom and I pick huckleberries in July. A snowshoe hare, all white but for the beginnings of his brown summer coat, bounded across my path. Then a flock of startled snowbirds flew up as though someone were scattering bits of white paper into the sky. The trail led into the woods, where the fir trees were frosted with snow. Their branches looked scary, like giant white arms reaching out for me. I didn’t know where the tracks were leading or whose they were, but I was sure whatever it was had taken Silver.

  I was getting to be a long way from our house. I began to wish I had told my mom so she could have come with me, but I couldn’t turn back because the snow was beginning to fall harder and the tracks would be covered over in no time. Then I might never find Silver.

  The tracks suddenly turned into a lot of tracks circling a big old spruce tree. At the base of the tree something had dug a cave into the roots. At the entrance to the cave was a pile of small, white bones. Bones! They scared me so much I wanted to run away, but I made myself scootch down and look into the cave. I could just make out four pups huddled together, their yellow eyes gleaming in the dark. Wolf pups! A little distance away from the pups was a fifth wolf puppy lying on its back, its stiff legs up in the air. It was dead.

  Then I heard a familiar whimpering coming from a dark corner of the cave. When I looked closer I saw not two yellow wolf eyes, but one blue eye and one brown eye. It was Silver. As I reached into the cave for him, the largest of the wolf pups snarled at me, baring its sharp teeth. Silver growled at the wolf pup, scaring him away. I scooped Silver up in my arms. He licked my face and nuzzled me. I put him inside my jacket to keep him warm. As Silver snuggled against me I couldn’t tell whether the trembling I felt was the puppy or my own heart.

  6.

  I began to run, afraid that any minute the father or mother wolf might come back. I hoped I was running toward our house. The sun had begun to set and the darkness seemed to be coming to meet me. Mom and Dad and I had often walked here in summer, but now everything that was familiar was covered with snow. I wasn’t sure where I was. Silver was growing heavy, but I held on to him and tried not to think what would happen to us if I got lost.

  The wind started up, covering my tracks as soon as I made them, so there was no way I could tell if I was going in a circle. You heard stories about this happening to people who wandered into the Alaskan winter. They were never heard from again.

  The wind stung my face and the snow crept into my boots and mittens. I had to wriggle my toes and fingers to keep them from growing numb. Suddenly the ground beneath the snow felt spongy. It sucked at my boots and I smelled something dark and musty. I had wandered into the cedar swamp that runs along our land. My dad had warned me to keep out of the swamp because of the deep water-filled holes. Now every step I took scared me. Overhead I saw a large black shadow start up from one of the trees. It was a raven. It spread its dark wings over me and flew off. Even the raven didn’t want to be there.

  When I finally found my way out of the swamp, I was so tired I didn’t think I could take another step. I was about ready to just sink down into the snow and give up when Silver began to whine. There was an answering whine. It was Ruff. She had heard us and was calling to Silver. Silver was squirming so hard I couldn’t hold him. He jumped out of my arms. In a second he was off and running through snow so deep that sometimes all I could see was his feathery tail. I ran after him. All at once there was the light from our windows. Mom was calling. I didn’t waste my breath answering. I just ran toward our house and Mom.

  7.

  The day Dad got home from the Iditarod all the neighbors from miles around came over to hear about the race and congratulate him on taking third place. Even Mary Sue and her folks were there. Mary Sue said, “I saw your dad on television! The camera wasn’t very close to him, but I recognized his parka.” I could tell she was impressed. She even said maybe she’d race in the Iditarod like I was going to—until I asked her what she thought her hair would look like after three weeks of snowstorms.

  The neighbors stayed all day and everyone was talking at once so there was no time to tell Dad about Silver. Dad had lots of stories about the race. He said it had been forty degrees below zero one night and his and all the dogs’ eyelashes had frozen shut. And he talked about seeing things that weren’t there. “When you go night after night with almost no sleep,” he said, “you start to imagine all kinds of things. I saw hundreds of trees with
green leaves, even though I was racing over treeless tundra and it was snowing out.”

  Later that night, after everyone had gone home, Mom and Dad and I were sitting in front of the fireplace. Silver was curled up asleep on my lap. His legs were twitching in his sleep as though he were dreaming of running a race. “Well, did anything happen here while I was gone?” Dad asked.

  That was the question Mom and I had been waiting for. “Rachel has something to tell you,” Mom said. “It’s as exciting as your stories about the race.” She was grinning.

  Dad had that polite look adults give you when they think what you are going to say won’t be much. “A wolf stole Silver,” I said, “but I got him back.” Then Dad really looked interested.

  After I had told him the whole story he said, “The mother wolf must have picked up the scent of Ruff and her puppies. She probably stole Silver away to take the place of her own dead pup. In wolf packs, wolves raise one another’s pups.”

  In the distance we could hear a chorus of wolves howling. Silver’s ears shot up. He sent up an answering howl. It was half wail and half growl and it nearly made me jump out of my skin. Dad looked really impressed at the noise Silver made. “I can’t believe how much that pup has grown since I left,” he said.

  “That’s because you haven’t seen Rachel giving him the entire contents of our refrigerator every morning,” Mom told him.

  “He’s brave, too,” I said, and told Dad how Silver had scared off the wolf pup when it had tried to bite me.

  “I was wrong about Silver,” Dad said. “He has the same wolf courage Ruff has. He’ll make a fine lead dog.”

  That night I dreamed I was skimming across the snow. Silver was leading the team of dogs that pulled my sled. We overtook one sled after another until we were out in front, racing toward Nome and the finish line, nothing in front of us but a gray shadow running along, fast as the wind, showing us the way.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  GLORIA WHELAN lived briefly in Anchorage, Alaska, where she experienced at first hand the Rondy celebration she describes in Silver. She says, “I enjoyed the liveliness and enthusiasm people showed during the Rondy. At the same time, I read about the first woman to win the Iditarod, one of the most physically challenging races in the world. These were my inspirations for writing Silver; a story about a little girl who dreams of one day racing in the Iditarod.”

  Gloria Whelan lives with her husband in the woods of northern Michigan, where they see a lot of dog-sled racing right in their own county.

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  STEPHEN MARCHESI has been drawing since he could hold a crayon, and one of his earliest artistic efforts was making snow sculptures in the wintertime. He has illustrated many books for young people, including The Glow-in-the-Dark Night Sky Book.

  Stephen Marchesi lives in Bayside, New York.

  If you liked reading about Rachel

  and her husky, Silver,

  you won’t want to miss…

  Balto

  — and the —

  Great Race

  Nothing the musher did could get the dog to move forward. Reluctantly, Kaasen changed the dog’s position and put a new animal in the lead.

  That dog also refused to move. The musher had seen this sort of behavior before. He knew exactly why neither dog would lead. They could no longer pick up the trail through the high winds and blowing snow.

  In other words, they were lost.

  Then, in his position close to the rear, Balto strained in his harness and barked. Still crouching by the unmoving lead dog, Kaasen turned to look at Balto. He could barely see through the haze of snow, but Balto’s body language was clear. He knew which way to go. He knew the trail!