by Henry, Sue
In addition to this mandatory gear, each musher was required to have eight booties to protect each of the dogs’ feet, either in the sled, or worn by the dogs at checkin. Dozens of booties were used between checkpoints in the Quest, but this rule ensured that there would always be some extras available. Not mandatory, but recommended by the race committee, was a compass, a map, flares, and dog blankets, all of which Jessie had packed in her sled along with items of her own choice, including food for herself and her dogs, extra clothes and mittens, two disposable cameras, a first-aid kit, buckets, her cooker and fuel, feeding pans, water bottles, an insulated cooler that she would use to keep food and fluids from freezing—and an assortment of odds and ends of personal gear. She usually included her Smith and Wesson .44 and ammunition for it, but, because handguns are not allowed in Canada, she had not packed it and would run without a weapon.
Carrying a rifle or a handgun was not unusual for distance mushers; many routinely took them along even on training runs in case of a threatening tangle with a moose. Bears hibernated during the winter months, but hundreds of hungry moose roamed the north country and could be a problem. They grew cranky with little to eat and found the trail packed for and by racing teams easier to negotiate than deep soft snow. Met on a trail, they often refused to move away from it and sometimes attacked, viciously, kicking with their powerful sharp hooves, devastating sled dogs that were trapped by their harness to the gang line, unable to escape. Small planes flying over the race route periodically identified the track of a sled that had made a wide half circle, detouring away from and returning to the trail, to go around a moose that stubbornly declined to clear the way.
Fortunately, Jessie did not have to carry supplies for the entire trip. Food and other necessaries for later in the race had already been sorted and packed in bags of no more than sixty pounds, clearly marked with her name and a designated checkpoint. Two or three of these had been flown out to each of the checkpoints, where they would be waiting for her along with bales of straw to be spread on the snow to provide warmer resting places for her dogs. Jessie, trailwise from past Iditarods, knew what was essential and what was unnecessary, thereby lightening her load and shipping costs considerably.
“I sort out everything I might need,” she had explained to Linda, as they had worked together in Knik to bag the things to be shipped. “Then I take out at least a third of it, more if I can.”
Though a rookie in this race, she was nonetheless a veteran musher. Still, as always before a race, Jessie could feel a tension in the pit of her stomach and across her shoulders; she was as anxious as her team to be gone. With everything packed, wearing her favorite, as well as warmest, red parka and the rest of her cold-weather gear, all she could do now was wait until it was time to hitch her dogs’ tug lines to the gang line and head for the starting line.
Satisfied that she was as ready as possible, she was pouring a last cup of coffee from Caswell’s oversized thermos when a familiar voice hailed her.
“Jessie Arnold. How the hell are you?”
“Jim Ryan!” She stepped forward to give an old friend a bear hug. “Haven’t seen you since the fall after you tangled with that moose in the Iditarod and I had to haul you to Ophir with your head sliced open.”
“Right. Thanks again. And those dogs you sold me that fall are doing great. Got three in this team.”
“Darn it.” She grinned. “I probably gave you good ones I should have kept. If you beat me to the finish I’ll be sorry. But it’s still good to see you back in the game. I saw your name on the mushers list and was hoping to have a chance to say hello. I missed you at the drawing Friday night.”
“Yeah, I saw you, but there was a whole roomful of people in the way, so I decided to wait and catch you later. So, you’re running the Quest this year…back to being a rookie, huh?”
“Right, and looking forward to it.”
“Got your really cold-weather gear? It was forty below for almost the whole damned race last year.”
“That’s what I heard, but it hasn’t been so bad yet. I just hope it stays below zero. Any warmer will be tough on the dogs. But if the thermometer decides to take a plunge, I’ve got everything I need and will wear it all at once if I have to. Come and meet my support team.”
She introduced the compact musher with the cheerful face to the Caswells and Billy Steward. She was glad to know he was in the race, for they had started racing sled dogs about the same time and had run many miles together in past competitions. Turning to the last member of her crew, she found that Ryan already knew Don Graham, who had been handler for two other Yukon Quest racers.
“You helped me repair my sled in Dawson last year. Good to see you, Don.”
The big man grinned, offered his hand. “You, too, Jim. Got a stronger one this year?”
“You better believe it. We almost didn’t make it to the finish line last year. Say, Jessie, you got a minute? There’s somebody I’d like you to meet.”
“Sure, if we’re quick. It won’t be long till I need to hitch up.”
He led her past three trucks in the direction of the starting line and across the street.
“What number’d you draw?”
“Sixteen. You?”
“Twenty-seven. But don’t worry, I’ll catch you before Carmacks.”
“Well, we’ll see. I’ve got a pretty good team.”
“So do I. It took a while to replace the team that moose stomped so bad. I really miss those dogs, especially Mike, the leader I lost. I took a couple of years off before I got back into the racing game with this race last year, but I’m back up to speed, so watch out.”
Jessie grinned, knowing how mushers worked to psyche each other out before and during a race. You never knew how much was real and what part of their bragging was just hot air. Almost everyone had their best team ever before a race began. After that they soon sorted themselves out in terms of potential winners.
As they approached a green truck with a LELAND KENNELS sign painted on the side, a musher wearing a red knit hat who was helping the crew hitch dogs to the gang line of a sled glanced up and saw them coming.
“Leland?” Jessie questioned, reading the sign. “I didn’t know Jake was in this one.”
“He’s not.” Ryan grinned.
As they drew nearer, they could hear a female voice admonishing a dog that was barking at a passing team.
“Stuff it, Squirt. Your turn will come soon enough.”
The woman—girl, really, of nineteen or twenty—finished what she was doing, stood up, and gave them a smile touched with a hint of shy respect. She was shorter than Jessie and her face, framed in strands of coppery hair escaping from under the hat, was bright with excitement and anticipation. Like Jessie and Jim Ryan, she wore a race bib of two rectangles that hung over her shoulders, tied around the waist with tapes on both sides, and displayed her starting number—ten.
“Jessie, this is Deborah Todd, Jake Leland’s stepdaughter and a real rookie. This is her first long race.”
Jessie held out her hand and smiled. “I’m Jessie Arnold.”
“Oh…I definitely know who you are,” Debbie said. “I thought you’d be running in the Iditarod, though.”
“Well, I decided to try something new. I’m glad to meet you, Debbie.”
As Jessie spoke, a handler in a well-worn black snowmachine suit came around the back of the truck leading two dogs, a collar in each hand.
“Hey, Jake. You been demoted to crew? Outclassed, huh?” Ryan needled his good friend.
Jake Leland, dark as his stepdaughter was fair, was one of the state’s best-known sled dog racers, had earned his reputation with participation in many distance events, once won the Iditarod and twice the Yukon Quest. The dogs from his kennel were the best in the business—strong and dependable, painstakingly bred and trained. Though sizable, the prize money he won annually was small compared to amounts commanded by the dogs he was willing to sell. The kennel definitely brought in a substantial living fo
r him and his family, and allowed him to afford the best in equipment for the races he entered and several assistants in his dog yard. He carefully screened young mushers, who were eager to learn his methods and secrets, and who paid Leland for the experience of working and training with him.
He grinned, pointedly ignored Ryan’s jibe, and greeted Jessie instead as he clipped the dogs into place on the line.
“Hi, Jessie. You’re keeping questionable company hanging out with this Ryan wannabe. See you’ve met Deb.”
“Yes, thanks. You starting a dynasty of winners here? I know what to expect if you taught her all you know and she’s driving some of your dogs.”
“Oh, well—I don’t know. She’ll run her own race, won’t you, Deb? Can’t teach ’em much at that age.”
“Wait a minute,” Debbie contradicted him indignantly. “I listen…most of the time, anyway.” They grinned at each other and Jessie noted their easy affection: evidently a good alliance for step-relations.
The girl shifted her attention. “Hey. There goes number eight. We’d better get moving. Nice to meet you, Jessie.”
“You, too. Good luck. See you later.”
She and Ryan watched as the crew, plus a few official Quest handlers, walked the eagerly straining team, with its beaming driver riding the back runners of the sled, into line behind racer number nine and headed for the starting line. Debbie looked back once to wave, then focused her attention on what lay ahead. Jake Leland rode a drag sled behind her, clearly proud and looking slightly amused.
“Well, I’d better see about getting my own mutts in line,” Jessie told Ryan, turning back toward the truck, where she could see that Billy and Don had begun to move dogs to the gang line of her sled. “See you in Dawson—if you make it that far.”
“Oh, yeah. But you’ll see me before that, if my guys have anything to do with it.”
Half an hour later, she had pulled her sled into position at the line and was walking along her team, checking harness and gear, lifting Sunny, who had leaped over in his excitement, back across the gang line to his regular place. Each husky looked up as she spoke to it and laid a mittened hand on its shoulder or head, attentive to the familiar sound of her one voice among the many from the crowd.
“Wart, you ready to go? Good boy, Two. Hey, Mitts.”
On one knee in front of her leader Jessie rubbed his ears and crooned affection. “Good old Tank. Time to go. You ready to take us to Fairbanks? Good boy. Steady, now. You’re my main man.”
“Ten seconds,” the loudspeaker blared.
A last pat, as even Tank began to bark and strain forward, and she stood up to begin the walk back to her sled.
“Five…four…three…”
She stepped onto the runners and reached down, ready to pull the snow hook.
“…two…one…GO! And she’s off, folks. Jessie Arnold, top Iditarod finisher, on her first Yukon Quest. Good luck, Jessie.”
She barely heard the announcer as she yanked and stowed the hook, the handlers released her dogs, and they leaped forward against harness and line to jerk the weighty sled into motion.
“Hang on,” she called to Billy, who sat grinning proudly atop the bag of supplies and equipment. “They’re gonna take us out of here like a rocket.”
4
“The bleak vastness stretched away on every side to the horizon. The snow, which was really frost, flung its mantle over the land and buried everything in the silence of death.”
—Jack London, “The Story of Jees Uck”
IN FEBRUARY, A MONTH AND A HALF PAST THE WINTER SOLSTICE, the sun still rose late and set early in the far northern latitudes where the Yukon Quest was run. On the Sunday this race started it came up at almost nine in the morning and went down at approximately five in the afternoon, a gain of approximately seven minutes of daylight over the day before. By June, it would be light until after midnight and grow light again by four in the morning.
From the starting gate in downtown Whitehorse Jessie trotted her team through a series of streets, concentrating on keeping her dogs on the right course while avoiding spectators, parking meters, kids, and other distractions before passing out into the more open country the team was used to. All along the route, people waved and cheered as she went, some standing around fires or barbecues, enjoying winter cookouts and keeping warm. Several recognized her and called out her name along with their encouragement.
At the end of town, where the trail went down onto the ice of the Yukon River, she found her support crew waiting with the trucks and paused to let Billy off her sled.
“Hey, good luck, Jessie,” he told her with a grin. “We’ll see you in Carmacks.”
“You sure you don’t want us to stop in Braeburn, just to check?” Linda Caswell asked.
“No, it’s only a rest stop, not a checkpoint. I’ll be fine. The trail’s supposed to be pretty reasonable as far as Carmacks.”
“Okay. We’ll be waiting when you get there.”
She drove over the bank and onto the river to join the other mushers, still running close together, some singly, some in groups or trains, one after the other. The two-minute gaps between them widened or narrowed as some went faster than others. The teams followed the bends in the river on the track established by the trailbreakers until it was joined by the Takhini River, which flowed in from the west. By the time Jessie reached this confluence and turned to run up the winding Takhini for a few miles, she had passed, and been passed by, several teams.
The trail was good and easy running and on the rivers she could often see other racers as much as a mile ahead or behind her. With lots of room to pass, there was much jockeying for position as they began to sort out the order of running.
Beginning to relax and enjoy being out and away from civilization, she watched the shadows slowly begin to lengthen as the afternoon progressed. A stiff breeze sweeping down the river was chilly, but fresh with hints of wood smoke from cabins near the riverbanks, and there were sunny spaces that presented at least the illusion of warmth, with welcome brightness. Overhead several ravens danced on the wind, effortlessly revolving on the thermals in swoops and dives, like kites anchored to strings. Jessie liked ravens. The all-black tricksters of the Arctic, they defied the snow and ice, and lingered, expressing contempt in raucous croaks and cries for their less hardy brethren who migrated south to escape the cold.
On a road that ran along the banks of the Takhini River, interested spectators had pulled off to watch the teams and drivers pass below, or to slide almost a hundred feet down the bluff onto the river ice to be closer to the trail itself. They stood, shuffling their feet to keep warm, as they waited for the racers to appear.
As the sun began to set behind the hills of the Miners Range, laying long blue fingers of shadow between the ridges and across the river ice, and tinting the snow-covered hills with a rosy glow, about three dozen people, some family members or handlers taking a quick detour on their way up the highway toward Dawson, stood watching the sleds and dogs slip past.
To those unfamiliar with sled dog racing or travel by dog sled, it seemed almost eerily silent for such an active sport, especially compared with the noisy confusion at the Whitehorse starting gate. Except for encouraging shouts to racers by friends or fans, the jingle of small bells from the harness of one team, and a short word or two of direction from a musher to his dogs, there was only the soft shush or scrape of runners across the snow and ice of the Takhini, the panting sounds of working dogs that seldom bark when they run, or the faint creak of a sled flexing over an uneven spot in the track.
A little apart from the cluster of ten or so at the top of the bank who had not clambered down onto the river ice, one man stood alone, aloof from the conversation and anticipation. Most of the spectators were eagerly awaiting the arrival of specific teams and paid little or no attention to the still figure who stood in silhouette against the sunset, almost as dark as the hills beyond. If they had examined him more closely, they might have conside
red his behavior a little odd and his attitude disconcerting, for he exhibited no enthusiasm or pleasure in watching, but stood quite expressionless and still. Interested in this first part of the race, those people who even glanced his way simply dismissed him with a mental shrug and redirected their observation to what was passing below.
He was a little above average height, but it was hard to discern his build, for he was dressed for the cold weather in a heavy, much-worn green parka, a tear patched on one sleeve with a strip of duct tape to keep the down from escaping. Insulated pants and black Sorrel boots were visible beneath it. Heavy snowmachine gloves with extended cuffs protected his hands. A cap of some questionable dark color left little of his face exposed, for above his upturned collar its bill was pulled low over his eyes and its flaps hung down over his ears. His only visible features were thin lips pulled back over even, white teeth, and a straight, slender nose that seemed to suggest an attractive shape to his face.
Clearly solitary, unsociable, unapproachable, he had neither spoken to nor made eye contact with anyone, did not even bother to respond to a woman who asked him if he had the time. Ignoring her as if he had not heard or did not wish to hear her question, he continued to stare down at the sleds gliding silently over the ice until she gave him a confused, angry frown and moved away to question someone else. Then, without turning his head, he cast a contemptuous glance after her with eyes of a curious golden brown.
Carefully, he inspected each passing racer until he was satisfied enough with that person’s identity to nod almost imperceptibly to himself, turn his attention away, and wait for the next.
One after another an even dozen teams glided by and disappeared around the next bend in the frozen river.
The man on the bank paid particular notice to the thirteenth racer, a woman. His lips narrowed slightly in what was almost a smile of satisfaction along with his consistent nod of recognition. When she had gone, the ice was vacant for close to five minutes before the fourteenth came into sight, drew even, and moved away. Again he waited before the empty river. In ten minutes, a musher in a red parka appeared and once more he focused intense interest as the driver came near enough to identify.
