by Henry, Sue
Tank and Pete both turned to give her looks that questioned her sanity at going up into such a maelstrom. You really sure about this? they seemed to ask. If you are, you’re crazy. This is no fun and we’d just as soon not, but if you’re sure…
It was almost impossible to hear the shouted command that was instantly snatched away by the wind, but Tank was familiar enough with her gestures to know that she really wanted forward motion and gave it, abandoning his initial reluctance. Here was a challenge. Throwing himself against his harness, he pulled the gang line tight and started the others uphill with the heavy sled. Though Jessie had packed carefully and emptied her sled bag of everything that was not absolutely essential in food and gear to get them to Eagle, it was still a considerable load to pull in such poor weather. Slowly but steadily, however, they moved up a grade that would have taxed their strength even on a calm, clear day, making Jessie proud.
The trailbreakers had placed the stakes with their distinctive reflectors that marked the trail carefully and more closely together, but many had been blown down and buried in the drifting snow that covered them almost as fast as it blew away the trail they had marked. Looking behind her, Jessie saw that the lines made by her sled runners were filling and disappearing almost as soon as she left them. She could see no recognizable sign of sleds passing ahead and would have to trust that Tank would be able to find the trail by his brand of scent radar whenever possible, knowing there wasn’t another dog more capable of doing just that. He had proved it many times in the past when they were caught out in similar storms, and worse, but this track was steep and the blowing storm a torment.
She presently found herself, as Ryan had predicted, pushing behind her sled, working as hard as the dogs, but they seemed to be staying on the track. Periodically she watched a marker move slowly past as they progressed, yard by hard-won yard. She was soon exhausted, hot and sweaty with the effort she was making, and hoped her clothes wouldn’t freeze when she was finally over the crest and on her way down.
The storm made it hard to breathe, for the wind seemed to steal away the very air, and with each breath it felt as if she took in as much ice as oxygen. Tense muscles were soon burning with the strain and her back and legs ached with lifting and shoving. It quickly seemed as if she couldn’t make one more step in the cast-iron boots she was suddenly wearing, or force her lower body through one more drift after the sled, but somehow she did.
The hill grew steeper and the team slowed a little. There was absolutely nowhere to escape the brutal assault of the wind-driven ice. She could see that snow had begun to fall from the sky as well and the whole world became a blinding whirl of white. They would move for a few yards, stop to rest and regain their strength, then start again. Several times Jessie staggered forward to break off the ice that formed on the dogs’ faces and brush away part of what had packed itself into their coats. They struggled on, ever upward, knowing that somewhere it had to end.
Jessie knew that there would be approximately ten miles of this punishment in a landscape as stark as the mountains of the moon, whether she could see it or not. The slow pace they were maintaining made it seem much longer, but at least they were making progress. Hell, she thought, would be a trail just like this that never did end, then smiled as she immediately contradicted herself and put it into perspective. No, hell would be not being allowed to do this once in a while, along with all the better parts of driving a team of dogs in this kind of country—being denied what she loved and had learned to do well. This kind of situation and misery were temporary. Driving a dog team was what defined her and what she couldn’t imagine doing without, or doing in any other place, for she knew she loved the vast country of Alaska, whatever it had to offer her.
They reached the first switchback, which Jessie recognized only when she suddenly made out a shadow that was Tank turning to one side in the white curtain, and thought for a second that he had become disoriented. Panting to a stop just beyond the switchback, she once more cleaned ice from the dogs’ faces. Her own cheeks burned, stung by the flying grains of ice. For a moment, she covered her face with her mittens and checked to be sure she could still feel her nose. It hurt, so it wasn’t frozen, and felt slightly better for the brief time in the temporary shelter of the fur mitts. She thought of her mask, but didn’t want to take off the mitts in order to put it on, so she snugged her hood up around her face and prepared to go on.
With no place to rest, the only solution to the situation was to continue to the top and go down the other side until the wind abated. She knew better than to expect any kind of shelter where no one would be foolish enough to build one; it could never succeed against the wind and weather, even for a spectacular view on the very few clear and windless days. From this summit, Jessie knew it was possible to see for what must be a hundred miles in several directions.
As she paused, the dogs had defensively curled into nose-to-tail balls of fur in the snow. She called them up, yelling to be heard, and up they came, still game to attempt the rest of the climb. What a great team. She would reward them handsomely with all their favorite treats the minute she had a chance in Eagle. But, for now, the trail upward went on and on, just as Ryan had predicted. They reached a point of exhaustion where everything seemed a perpetual purgatory of cold, wind, and driven snow, then, in starts and stops, it went farther.
They had just come to a second switchback, which Jessie recognized by a marker or two, before Tank abruptly halted the team. Through the driving haze of the blizzard, she could see no reason for her leader to stop and called out to get him going again. He looked back in response, but refused to move. Several of the dogs lay down and curled up. Dammit, she thought. Just when I was giving them mental trophies for endurance. What the hell is wrong? They can’t be giving up on me. Not this team. She wallowed forward around the sled through a drift that came to her waist, and, as soon as she reached the head of the team, saw what had inspired the halt.
The switchback circled a slight rise in the ground that would cause a sled to tip precariously away from it, forcing the musher to work as a brace along that side to keep it from overbalancing. The sled traveling just ahead of her had done a disastrous job of negotiating this hazard. It lay on its side below the turn, where it had tumbled over as it fell, dragging the dogs after it to land in a jumble. They had somewhat sorted themselves out, and curled up to rest, burrowing into the loose snow for shelter. But the driver was nowhere to be seen.
Staring intently at the half-buried sled, Tank barked, a thing he seldom did, even in the yard at home, leaving the noisemaking to canines of lesser dignity. Now he barked, then barked again, focused on the pile-up, and over the moan of the wind, Jessie thought she heard a thin voice.
“Help,” it called weakly. “I’m down here. Help…me.”
18
“It is not the way of the Wild to like movement. Life is an offence to it, for life is movement; and the Wild aims always to destroy movement. It freezes the water to prevent it running to the sea; it drives the sap out of the trees till they are frozen to their mighty hearts; and most ferociously and terribly of all does the Wild harry and crush into submission man—man, who is the most restless of life, ever in revolt against the dictum that all movement must in the end come to the cessation of movement.”
—Jack London, White Fang
THERE IS NOTHING TO JUSTIFY THE ASSUMPTION THAT MEN make better sled dog racers than women, though the two have slightly different skills to contribute to the sport.
Men usually have more upper body strength, which makes it easier for them to wrestle heavy sleds, manhandling them around and over difficult sections of the trail. But women quickly learn to compensate for this by being agile and using their wits instead of muscle to conquer the same obstacles. They learn to think and move a little faster, keep their sleds lighter, choose their dogs with this in mind, and it sometimes works to their advantage. A lighter woman and her sled may not break through rotten ice that will dunk the extra
weight of man and sled.
Though all good mushers are physically fit, being powerful is not necessarily a requirement for sled dog racing. A driver of either sex needs only enough strength to get the job done, not to win displays of muscular development and definition.
When the sled that Jessie discovered on the American Summit switchback had overbalanced, it had been an accident that could have happened as easily to a male musher as to the woman who lay under it in the snow. Acting as brace for the weight of the sled, she had been within the arc of its falling, unable to move away quickly enough to avoid it, awkwardly held in the grip of the deep drift of snow through which she was fighting and floundering. It had effectively pinned her to the ground and thereafter solidly resisted any attempt she made to move it or to dig herself out. Worse, it had fallen with the narrow edge of one sled runner directly across her legs, fracturing one of them just below the knee.
“Gail?” she yelled over the shriek of the wind. “Gail Murray, is that you?”
“Yes,” the answer came back faintly. “Gotta get…this thing off me…I’m freezing under it.”
The temperature had been steadily falling as Jessie went up the hill toward the summit. Now, figuring in the windchill factor, she knew it had to be more than fifty degrees below zero—a condition that would reward inactivity with frostbite in a very limited amount of time.
As she struggled through the snow around the sled to reach Murray, she kept up a constant shouted conversation against the wind, both to encourage the woman that she was coming to her aid, and to find out what she could that might aid in a rescue.
“How long have you been under there?” she called.
“Don’t know. Knocked out for a bit…. I think…maybe half an hour. Ever since that damned…snowmachine came out of nowhere and startled me.”
Bad. Half an hour was bad news. It didn’t take long to freeze in this kind of cold and she’d already been under there for at least half an hour.
“Snowmachine? What was a snowmachine doing up here on this trail? Trailbreaker?”
Or could it have been the contact Jessie expected to meet?
“I don’t know. It didn’t…stop. It was gone as fast as it came, and I was under this damned…sled before I could…get out of the way.”
Jessie stopped wondering about the cause of the accident and concentrated on Murray and what could be done quickly.
“Where’re you hurt?”
“Head hurts. Leg hurt, too, like a son of a bitch, but it’s gone numb…now. I’m afraid it’s freezing…can’t feel my feet.”
Arriving at Murray’s side, Jessie saw immediately why the woman’s head was hurting. A stanchion had knocked her in the right temple, breaking the skin and, evidently, knocking her silly for at least a few minutes. Blood, now frozen, had run down the side of her head into her hair and the hood of her parka, which was twisted slightly to one side, exposing one side of her face. Pale patches on her cheek and nose signaled an initial touch of frostbite, but she was probably not aware that any part of her face was colder than another—didn’t need to have another worry added right now.
Frostbite was as insidious as it was dangerous, and—Jessie had always imagined—that was the reason they had used the word bite in describing the condition. Quick as a snake, it could slip up and strike, if you were not vigilant. The only defense was to dress correctly, be sure you had the right gear, and keep moving.
So, the first thing she did was yank her own mask from her pocket and pull it over Murray’s head, covering her face. Then she shifted the woman’s hood so it fit correctly and fastened it securely with the Velcro strip at the throat, closing as many gaps as possible to keep out the cold and snow.
Through the eye holes, Murray looked up at her gratefully.
“Thanks, Jessie. God, it’s good to see you. I was so afraid that I’d—”
“You’d have been glad to see anybody, Gail,” Jessie interrupted the frightening thought. “And someone stronger might have been more helpful. It’s going to be a bitch to move this sled off of you. May hurt some, too.”
The lower half of Murray’s body was hidden beneath the sled, mashed into the snow.
“I think my right leg’s broken. It got sort of twisted over the other one as I fell and the runner came down on top.”
“Well, let’s see what we can do to get you out. I think if I unpack your sled I can get it off of you, hopefully without causing any more damage or hurting you too much. Right? We can’t wait for someone else to come along. It could be…who knows how long?”
“Right. Like I said, the leg’s numb…now, so just go ahead and…do whatever you have to…to get me loose. If it hurts…well, it’ll just have to…hurt…so ignore any howls. I’ve been trying to unload the bag, but…couldn’t reach much.”
“Looks like you were doing a pretty good job at what you could reach.”
Odds and ends of Murray’s gear had been pulled from her sled bag and were scattered around her, being rapidly buried by the blowing snow.
“Yeah, well…seemed good to do something.”
Her speech had slowed even more. She grimaced, and Jessie could hear her teeth chattering.
Hypothermia setting in, Jessie thought, knowing time was critical. Have to get her warmer.
Pulling gear from the sled bag, she located Murray’s cold-weather sleeping bag, unrolled and laid half of it under as much of the woman’s body as she could, wrapping the rest over her, tucking it in.
“Can’t have you freeze while I get this thing off you, can we?”
“Thanks. I was…getting…pretty cold.”
Quickly Jessie began to pull out and toss everything still remaining in the overturned sled.
When the bag was empty—all the equipment and food piled into the snow—Jessie threw her weight against the sled and found it, if not easy to lift, at least possible. As fast as she could, she cleared the snow away on the downhill side, then, unfastening Murray’s team of dogs, slowly, carefully worked at lifting and moving the sled into that space a foot or two at a time. Gradually, with Murray helping a little to hold it away from her legs, it was worked clear of her lower body.
The injured driver lay where she had been flattened into the drift by the weight of the sled, right leg twisted over the left, but Jessie had no way of knowing how bad the break was under the heavy bib-overall snowmachine pants the woman was wearing. There was no sign of blood on the fabric, but, just the same, she cautiously unzipped that pants leg and carefully investigated for a compound fracture, which, to her great relief, she did not find.
“Not as bad as it could be, Gail,” she told her friend encouragingly. “We’ll have you out of here and back to somewhere warm and safe in no time. Now let’s get you into this sleeping bag, so you’ll stay warmer while I get set to give you a ride down the hill.”
Leaving the pile of gear, she called Murray’s team of dogs from their rest in the snow and, fighting the wind and flying snow, untangled the gang line and got them lined up in the right order on the downhill end of the sled that was still on its side, and hooked the gang line to a stanchion. With the team pulling, and the sled in motion, it was a little easier to tip it back onto its runners again. She moved the dogs to the front of it, where they belonged, and let them help turn it around till it was headed downhill.
“Hey, good…going,” Murray told her, as she was helped to an upright position and half carried, hopping feebly on her good leg, to her sled, where Jessie had put back anything that had been in the bag that could help cushion Murray’s ride down the hill and keep her as warm as possible—extra clothing, dog jackets, a blue plastic tarp. The rest she had ignored as retrievable later, or not. It was unimportant and extra weight to carry. In her own sled there was enough food to last the two teams until they reached Forty Mile.
As carefully as possible, padding it with a piece of foam that had been used for packing around some of the gear, she fastened Murray’s injured leg to the handle of the ax sh
e had carried, the best splint she could devise.
Have to pass this one on to Ned Bishop, she thought in amusement. He can tell Charlie and use it the next time a musher questions the rationale behind making an ax required equipment.
Retrieving the thermos of hot peppermint tea from her own sled bag, she made Murray drink as much as she would, then left it in the second sled with her.
At the last minute, she went to the injured musher’s team, took two of the dogs off the gang line, and put them into the bag with Gail for warmth—sheer animal body heat that would undoubtedly be more effective than tea. The two snuggled down close beside their musher and she smiled.
Turning her own team around, Jessie fastened Murray’s dogs to the back of her sled and prepared to go back the way she had come, one team and sled after the other. First she went back to fasten the bag completely around the hurt musher.
There was no choice. She would have to be taken back to the unofficial Forty Mile checkpoint, where they could contact the Yukon Quest officials in Dawson for medical assistance, which would probably come in the form of a helicopter.
“I’m…sorry to…interrupt your race…this way,” Murray said sleepily.
“Oh, hell, it’s only a race, Gail, and there are lots of races. I didn’t really want to get to the top of this sucker…ah…anyway…Oh, damn.”
Totally focused on helping an injured fellow musher in trouble, Jessie had completely dismissed anything but what must be accomplished in this crisis. Now it suddenly occurred to her that there was, and still remained, a reason unrelated to the race that had made her anxious to attain the summit—the delivery of Debbie Todd’s ransom.
