by Henry, Sue
Time to go, she told herself. With one last look at the splendor of the heavens, she turned and went to fasten the sled bag and whistle up her team. When they were trotting rhythmically along the trail again, the reflective tape on their harnesses winking as it caught the light from her headlamp, Jessie was glad to be almost home and began to consider what awaited her back at the cabin on Knik Road.
Her snug log cabin would be empty, but not cold, for Billy Steward, the dependable young handler who cared for the rest of her kennel in her absence, would have maintained at least a small fire in the potbellied stove to keep the house from freezing. A couple of chunks of wood would soon have its cast iron cheerfully glowing and would quickly spread comfortable warmth through the small living space. In the refrigerator she had left enough of a large kettle of stew for one meal, knowing she would be tired and in no mood to cook when she returned. The rest of the stew had gone with her on the training run, but after eating it for two days, she now found that the idea of more did not appeal in the slightest to her growing appetite. Another lesson relearned, she realized, and began to mentally revise the menu she would prepare and have shipped to checkpoints for her first attempt at the Yukon Quest in February.
From several years of running Alaska’s most famous distance race, the Iditarod, between Anchorage and Nome, she had noticed that having a variety of foods perked up her appetite and gave her something to satisfy the hunger produced in the strenuous physical requirements of a thousand-mile race. Long days of racing with little rest drained mushers and exhausted their bodily reserves, necessitating a calorie-rich, high-energy diet. But an exhausted musher could lose all desire for food, or crave certain things she had forgotten to include in her supplies. It was too easy to concentrate on planning just the right food for the dogs and ignore the human athlete in the equation. A well-balanced, successful team required both.
So…what do I want for dinner tonight? The thought made her tired, knowing that caring for her team would continue to demand her undivided attention when they reached the dog yard. Ready for a long rest, the dogs must still be watered and fed before they settled for the night. With the handler gone home for the night, it would be up to Jessie to feed and carefully check each animal for small injuries or strains, though this would also give her the opportunity to pet and congratulate each on a job well done. But with these chores ahead it would be at least an hour before she even went through the door of the cabin.
She wished that someone else would be there when she arrived. Not to care for the dogs—she liked doing that herself—but someone who had already put wood in the stove, someone with dinner waiting. More than anything, she wanted a shower and not to have to make decisions. It would be wonderful to have a plate—of anything but stew—put in front of her on the table when she was clean. How nice it would be to curl up warm and stationary on the big sofa by the stove, wrapped in a cozy afghan, with a mug of hot peppermint tea that someone else had made for her. However much she loved running with her dogs, she also loved coming home and relaxing into the comfortable fatigue that resulted from long, successful days on the trail.
“Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly?” she sang out.
The dogs pricked up their ears at the sound of her voice and trotted a little faster down the trail.
Alex, where are you when I want you? she thought, feeling, not for the first time, the absence of her friend, housemate, and lover, Alaska State Trooper Alex Jensen, and wondering again just how long he would be away.
It had been after eight o’clock, at the end of a training run much like this, when she had arrived at home to find him tossing clothes hurriedly into a suitcase. Just a week before Christmas.
“Hey, trooper, where’re you off to?”
Tall and rawboned, he turned from his packing, handlebar mustache askew, light hair with just a touch of silver at the temples standing up from where he had run his fingers through it, a grin replacing the frown on his face. Gathering her into a hug, he kissed each of her wind-burned cheeks and her chapped lips, tousled her short honey-blond curls, and looked down into her wide gray questioning eyes.
“You’re home, but you’re still cold. Must have been a lot of flying snow today,” he said.
“Yeah, it was blowing a bit and piling up drifts out there. Where’re you going? Out-of-town case?”
He stepped back to hold her at arm’s length, his expression once again serious.
“Not this time. My mom called an hour ago, Jess. Dad had a stroke last night. He’s in the hospital and I have to go down.”
“Oh, no, Alex. How bad was it? Is he going to be all right?”
Jessie had never met Alex’s parents, who lived on a ranch a few miles outside Salmon, Idaho, but she had grown quite fond of Keara Lacey Jensen through frequent letters and phone calls. For Alex’s father she felt a warmth and respect, gleaned mainly from his son’s affectionate comments, for, after a reserved greeting, the reticent Nels Jensen invariably passed the phone to his more loquacious wife.
“It was evidently pretty bad. They medevaced him up to the big hospital in Missoula and the doctors say they won’t know much for a few days yet. For now it’s one of those wait-and-see things.”
“How’s your mom?”
“Mom’s doing okay, I guess, considering, but she sounded frightened and sort of fragile. I’ve never heard her sound like she was just barely hanging on. Wish it wouldn’t take me till sometime tomorrow to get there.”
“Shall I come with you?”
“There just isn’t time, Jess. Besides, you need to be here to take care of the dogs and get ready for the race. I’ll see how things are and let you know, okay?”
“Sure. Whatever works best. I could come later, if you need me.”
“Right.”
“What can I do to help, then? When does your plane leave?”
“I have a reservation on the red-eye to Seattle, where I can catch a Horizon flight to Missoula at six-thirty tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll drive you in. Just let me grab a shower and something to eat. There’s time, right?”
“You won’t have to, Jess. Caswell’s already on his way here. I didn’t know for sure when you’d be home, so I called him as soon as I’d made the reservations. Don’t know how long I’ll be gone, so I’ve got to stop by the office and get the paperwork on my cases in some kind of order to turn over to Becker. He and Ivan are meeting me there.”
Jessie knew that if Ivan Swift, the post commander, was showing up, it definitely meant Alex might be gone for quite some time. Jessie, typically, swung into action mode.
“Okay. What else can I do? Have you had dinner?”
“Yeah, I ate a little, but I’m not really hungry. There’s a roast chicken keeping warm for you in the oven. You could make me a couple of sandwiches to take on the plane—mayo, mustard, maybe some of that sharp cheddar. I can’t eat that plastic food.”
“You’ve got it. What else?”
“An orange? Maybe a couple of your Snickers.” He smiled, knowing Jessie bought Snickers by the box as high-energy trail food and that they both ate oranges for the vitamin C.
“There’s a load of laundry in the drier. You could fold it when it’s dry. I’ll need to pack some of it. Socks. Long underwear. Won’t be any warmer there than here.”
“Sure.”
In less than an hour fellow trooper Ben Caswell had come hurrying into the cabin, said, “No, thanks,” to a drumstick, and efficiently swept up Jensen and his duffel.
“I’ll call you when I get there,” Alex told her at the door. “As soon as I know…whatever.”
“Let me know if you need anything. Give your mom my love.”
“You know I will.”
Looking up at his face after he kissed her good-bye, she assessed the distraction in his eyes, the lines of concern that framed the mouth below his handlebar mustache, and laid a palm on his cheek.
“I’ll be here. Better call me late. I’ll be running the mutts almost
every day.”
His focus shifted to her and he smiled. “Do good work, musher. That race is coming up fast. I love you.”
She nodded. “Too.”
He turned, clattered down the front steps, and climbed into his friend’s waiting pickup, which was quickly swallowed up in the dark as it turned onto the road from the long driveway. Red taillights flashed momentarily between distant tree trunks and he was gone.
Jessie had closed the door, enveloped by a silence that seemed loud after the clamor of unexpected departure.
On this late evening in January, when Alex had been in Idaho almost three weeks, Jessie changed her mind and went into her empty cabin as soon as she arrived. She pulled up by the front steps, stomped in the snow hook, and dashed inside, where she added wood to the still-glowing coals in the stove and left it to warm the house while she went back out to the yard to take care of her team.
More than an hour later she took a long steaming shower, ate a cold tuna sandwich with a hot bowl of canned tomato soup, went directly to bed, and slept for eight hours, uninterrupted, except once when she woke to hear several of her dogs barking in the yard.
For several nights a moose had wandered close to the cabin, exciting the dogs and provoking them to vocalize loudly at what their tethers prevented them from chasing. Jessie had grinned to herself at the tracks she found in the snow, for the huge ungulate seemed to exhibit a sense of humor in coming exactly close enough to cause a ruckus without actually challenging so many canines. Its passing had left large divided hoofprints at the bottom of holes in the deep snow as it moved easily around the circumference of the yard on long gangly legs, munching on the willows that grew by the drive, even lying down to rest in a stand of birch and spruce to the north, pointedly ignoring the protests of the restless dogs.
Now, as she heard them barking again, Jessie smiled drowsily, rolled onto her left side, and drifted back to sleep in the middle of the big brass bed she usually shared with Alex. There would undoubtedly be more tracks to be found in the morning, but they were really nothing to worry about. A bear might have been different, for some bears would kill and eat dogs, especially those that could not escape. But, thankfully, all the bears, plump from a long summer banquet, were elsewhere, tucked up securely into their dens, keeping warm in their heavy fur, contentedly slumbering the winter away.
Though the dogs barked once or twice after that, Jessie did not wake again. She was unaware that, after the cabin had been dark for over an hour, a dark figure had slipped stealthily into the dog yard from between two large spruce trees; that he had watched Jessie come home from her training run, care for her dogs, and go inside. Walking slowly between the straw-filled dog boxes, he picked one, knelt, and silenced the dog by petting its head, rubbing its ears, and speaking in a low voice.
When he stood up and moved on to another, the first dog followed to where its tether should have stopped it, but found that it was unexpectedly free of restraint. It stopped, not used to being without impediment, then moved on, pursuing the man. When it found a running mate was also loose, the two decided it was time to play, and enthusiastically accompanied the provider of their liberty as he quietly made his way out of the yard and down the long driveway to Knik Road. Reaching the truck he had parked a bend or two away, they willingly jumped up into the cab at his invitation and rode away with him into the night.
“No. I won’t do that. Who do you think you’re talking to? And they would find out—somehow. I have to sign the papers that say those dogs can…”
“You’ll do it. I’ll destroy you if you don’t…and here’s how.”
The voice behind the threat was low, but sharp, cold, and as full of menace as the handsome face of the man who made it. The grin that bared his perfect teeth held no hint of humor as he flipped a yellowed newspaper clipping onto the desk behind which his victim sat angrily protesting.
The sight of the headline and picture included in the article caught the man for whom it was intended like a blow. His anger leaked away like the air from a punctured balloon, leaving him pale and sweaty, feeling as if something slimy had landed on the desk in front of him.
“Oh, Jesus. Where the hell—”
“Shut it, dummy, and listen up. The goddamned things move—don’t they?”
Almost beyond listening, the seated man had recoiled in his chair and was glancing desperately around the room for an escape that didn’t exist, mentally scrabbling for safety.
“Don’t they?”
The ominous tone of the question yanked him back to the edge of panic. He shrank into the chair, focused his horror on the yellowing scrap of newsprint, and panted out an answer without looking up.
“Yes. They can, if they’re not placed right.”
“So, they’ll just think this one moved when they can’t find it. They won’t know the difference. Pretty good chance of that, huh? Still, they’ll be unwilling to let it slide through, right? Now, be a good boy.”
“Yes…they’ll expect some of them to move, so they’ll look thoroughly—carefully. If they can’t find it anywhere, they’ll have to…Where…how did you get this?”
The shaking finger he pointed at the clipping and its accompanying photograph was ignored by his assailant, who placed both hands on the desk, leaned forward until his face was less than a foot away, and hissed, “And you’ll fix it so you do the searching when necessary, won’t you? Then you can find it. You can report it. By the time somebody else takes a look, it’ll be too damn late, won’t it?”
“But how—”
“Goddammit, you son of a bitch, I don’t care how. You’ll just do it, right?”
“But why? And why me?”
“You don’t need to know why. And it’s you because I have…this, you pervert. Because I say so. Right?”
“Right.”
Strangled by frustration and fear, his resignation was expelled on a breath, barely above a whisper.
“Louder.”
“Right.”
“If you screw up—”
“I won’t.” It was almost a sob, as he covered his face with both hands.
There was silence, the soft sound of a door closing gently, and when he looked up the office was empty. The repugnant newspaper clipping lay where it had been tossed on the desk.
He did not look at it directly again, but after a minute or two struck a match taken from a desk drawer and held it to one corner of the paper. Obsessed with the burning, he watched it blacken and curl until it scorched his fingers, forcing him to stomp out the last scrap where it had fallen to the floor, leaving a narrow black scorch on his office carpet.
2
“They had dropped out of the world…. They had come and gone, some said this way, and some that, and still others that they had gone to the country of the Yukon.”
—Jack London, “An Odyssey of the North”
JESSIE WAS FRANTIC THE NEXT MORNING WHEN SHE FOUND two of her dogs, Bliss and Pete, missing from the yard; she had been planning to use both of them in the upcoming race. She wondered if, tired from the long run, she could have somehow missed securing them to the chains attached to the top of the metal posts planted firmly in the ground beside their boxes. The tethers lay slack, with no sign of damaged links in the chains or broken swivels.
Pete was a reliable older dog. She could even turn him loose when they ended a run, for he always went straight to his box and lay down in the straw to wait for food and water. She might have forgotten to clip his collar to the tether, but would not have expected him to leave the yard or get himself in trouble with the others.
Bliss was another question. A bit skittish and inclined to squabble over food, she might roam, given the opportunity, so Jessie was always careful to keep tight hold of her collar, walk her across the yard to her place, and assure herself that this dog was well fastened. Even though, hungry and glad to be home, she had been running on automatic pilot the night before, she was convinced she had fastened Bliss as usual. So where was sh
e? And where was Pete?
It was impossible to follow tracks. The dog yard was full of them, the snow flattened by thousands of canine prints and those of Jessie and her handlers. She called and whistled down several trails that led out of the yard into the surrounding woods, but neither of them responded.
While she worried about finding them, she set about feeding and watering the rest of the dogs. She had just finished with this chore when a bark drew her attention to the trees just south of the cabin and Pete came trotting into the yard. Going directly to his own box, he immediately thrust his nose into the water pan she had just hopefully filled.
Jessie crossed to where he was drinking thirstily and set down the bucket that still held a little food.
“Pete, you good old mutt. Where have you been?”
She rubbed his head and shoulders affectionately and he looked into her face, tongue hanging out, panting as if he had been running hard for a long ways. He flopped down in a little straw that was scattered in front of his box and sighed as he laid his head down on his front paws, slowly wagging his tail as she examined his collar to see if it might be the problem, but it was fine.
“Hey, buddy. How’d you get loose? Why’d you take off? Where’s Bliss? You two been chasing that moose?”
I must have forgotten to tether him, Jessie thought, frowning at her mistake. Got to be more careful.
At least now she would only have to find Bliss. And if Bliss had gone with Pete, she might still come back on her own. Jessie decided to wait awhile to see. If not, after a planned trip to the vet, Jessie decided she would take a few dogs and the sled, and make a quick search of the surrounding area, before expanding the hunt to kennels up and down Knik Road.
She fed Pete and gave him more water, both of which he consumed in record time before going to sleep, and went into the cabin to get her own breakfast, keeping an eye on the dog yard from the large window that faced in that direction.
Still watching for Bliss, Jessie enjoyed a third cup of her favorite morning coffee and considered names for the puppies she had brought inside for a bit of socialization. It was important to establish relationships with puppies while they were still young and imprintable. Becoming a positive, normal part of their lives as early as possible made their training easier and helped them develop skills for working with people and other dogs as a team. Since dogs, like wolves, are naturally members of a pack, she made herself the alpha leader of her pack, automatically accepted by them all as dominant—the boss.
