Books by Sue Henry

by Henry, Sue

  Outside, the snow had stopped and it was growing light enough to distinguish shapes against the stark white of the ground.

  The sounds were louder now. Definitely dogs.

  Stomping on the boots she had left near the door, she went out to the corner of the cabin and looked in the direction from which the howls and barks were coming—between the willows she had stumbled through last night to reach the structure.

  Tangled in a snarl of line and harness, below the bank, on the ice that had silenced the voice of the creek’s gurgling water, was her own team, struggling to get out, the heavy sled tipped over and lying on its side next to them.

  “I don’t believe this,” she said, glancing back at Debbie, who had followed her to the door. “Those are my guys. Somehow they’ve followed me and found us. I absolutely do not believe this.”

  But it was true, and as soon as she had zipped her parka and donned her mittens, she hurried to unscramble the knot they had fallen into in their attempt to cross the creek.

  Tank greeted her with a wide doggy grin. The Darryls licked her ears as she hugged them both at once, and Pete responded to an affectionate head-rubbing with a yip of hello. The rest were vocal, but Bliss was ecstatic, leaping to set both front feet against Jessie’s hip to be petted, a thing not usually encouraged. Jessie did not reprimand her, understanding the feeling of delight so strongly herself that it brought tears to her eyes.

  “Oh, you beautiful mutts. Such good, good dogs you are. Good puppies to come so far and so well.” Sinking to her knees, she took her leader’s head between her hands and kissed him directly between the eyes, caressed his ears. “Tank, I love you. You are the very, very best leader ever. How smart you are and what a good job you’ve done. Good, good dogs, all of you.”

  Swiftly, she untangled their traces and got them lined up in order on the bank. With their pulling and her pushing, they managed to right the sled and pull it out of the creek bed to a position next to the cabin door.

  Debbie still hovered in the half-open door, smiling widely.

  “Are they really yours? How did they get here?”

  “The only way they could have is to have followed my track from the summit. It’s incredible. They came all that long way by themselves, without getting stuck or tipping the sled over. I don’t know how—it’s hardly possible—but they clearly did it.”

  “What great dogs.”

  “You’ve got that right. Now we have food, Debbie. And not only that. I have an extra pair of boots in the bag—I always travel with them, just in case. But the first thing I have to do is water these guys and feed them the very best meal I can come up with.” Jessie was so relieved and overwhelmed that she heard herself pouring it out in words and couldn’t seem to stop. “Don’t build up the fire again, will you? It’ll be too warm and I’m going to bring them inside for breakfast and a good rest. They’ve earned it. How do you feel about sausage and pancakes before we plan how to get out of here?”

  “I feel just fine about them. Have you got any more of that peppermint tea?”

  Turning, Jessie gave Debbie a warm smile, and slowed down a little to appreciate the importance of such a simple request after all the younger woman had been through.

  “I do, indeed.”

  Just after noon, as the two women headed uphill for American Summit, the sun showed up between the clouds that were rapidly dissipating, and sent long beams of glowing gold between the trees. It reflected from the soft, powdery snow in sparkles that seemed a celebration of their deliverance.

  The world through which they passed was drifted high with clean white so deep that it could easily become traps for the unwary, but it also covered anything ugly or unsightly. It was not perfect—there were still answers to be found for the many questions in Jessie’s mind—but it seemed particularly sweet, as she drove her thankfully recovered team, and appreciated the quiet windless sunshine, though the temperature read several degrees under forty below on her thermometer.

  Tank led his teammates steadily forward, casting a look back every now and then, checking to be sure she was still riding the runners on the back of the sled, where she should be. Debbie Todd rode in the sled, her feet warm in Jessie’s extra boots, hands in similarly loaned mittens, over a pair of wool socks. Like the dogs, she and Jessie were both well fed and filled with new energy generated by rest, food, and their relief at the unexpected, extraordinary solution to the situation they now agreed had been more desperate than either of them wanted to admit or dwell on.

  Jessie listened contentedly to the soft, familiar shush of the sled runners on the snow, feeling there should be some kind of musical accompaniment. Huge orchestral swells with lots of strings and trumpets would have been appropriate. She couldn’t seem to stop smiling.

  Curious, and a little anxious to know exactly where the snowmachine riders had gone, Jessie followed the tracks that were just visible under a layer of snow that had been deposited before the storm abated. As Debbie had predicted, it was clear that they had not decided to disappear onto the highways of Alaska, but, upon reaching the road that would have taken them there, had turned and gone back up instead, toward the summit and either Eagle or Dawson. Not wanting to run into them accidentally, both women watched carefully, and were glad that, in the clear sun-filled air, it was not difficult to see a reasonable distance ahead.

  Even with Debbie’s extra weight in the sled, the dogs pulled easily and well, keeping up an enthusiastic, steady pace that drew them to the summit faster than Jessie had hoped. There the wind had died and it was possible to see practically forever over the rolling plateau with its twisted trees that no longer looked half alive, but merely wind-tortured into their strange unearthly misshapes.

  The team carried them back up along the snowbound Taylor Highway which Jessie had been forced to cross in the opposite direction the day before, and finally brought them to where the Yukon Quest race route joined it for the downhill run to Eagle. In all that way, they saw no one. Now Jessie stopped the sled to give the team a rest, as well as to examine the junction to see if there were any sign of which direction the two men on snowmachines had gone. There were marks of all kinds in the snow—those of sleds and the feet of dogs, and a confusing number of snowmachine tracks.

  Debbie had climbed out of the sled, stretched to relieve a few kinks from bouncing over the irregularities of the trail, and gone forward to pet the dogs, when she suddenly straightened, her attention drawn to a distant rise in the direction of Forty Mile.

  “Jessie,” she called, with a hint of tension in her voice. “Hey, look, there’s someone coming.”

  Jessie stood up from her careful scrutiny of the tracks, and shaded her eyes with one mittened hand to see, momentarily concerned. What she saw soon relieved her anxiety.

  Coming up the trail, too far away to identify, was a team of sled dogs, their driver pumping hard with one foot, then the other, from the rear runners of the sled.

  They waited and watched as the racer drew slowly closer, raised one hand, and waved, long before he was close enough to communicate vocally.

  “It’s Lynn Ehlers,” Jessie said with a smile, when he was near enough to recognize. “He’s coming back up from taking Gail Murray to Forty Mile.”

  “Forty Mile? Why?”

  By the time Jessie had filled Debbie in on the accident Murray had suffered on the summit, Ehlers had covered the remaining distance and pulled up next to them, grinning broadly.

  “You found her. Terrific. Good going, Jess.”

  “Yes, well…not exactly through super sleuthing,” Jessie told him. “I just…stumbled into the same place. We sort of saved each other, with the help of my team.”

  “Where? What happened?”

  “Let me make a fire and get some food going for these wonderful, intelligent, talented, fantastic dogs of mine, and I’ll tell you.”

  “Sounds like they’ve been exceptionally good at something.”

  “You couldn’t guess the half of it.
There has never been a team like this one.”

  “Aw—all you Alaskan mushers are inclined to see things larger than life. Has to come from living in such a big place—the water, the air—something.”

  She laughed. “Maybe. Whatever it is, I love it. This wild, wonderful country is the best place I can even imagine. I’m afraid I’m hooked—couldn’t live anywhere else.”

  26

  “You’ve thrust the soul from a living man’s body…the hand of all mankind is against you, and there is no place you may lay your head.”

  —Jack London, “Which Make Men Remember”

  THE REMAINING FIFTY MILES TO EAGLE TOOK THE TWO TEAMS just over ten hours, including time for one extended rest break. They came down to the small community on the banks of the Yukon River just after midnight on the steep plowed road that was the last of the Taylor Highway, glided through town toward the checkpoint next to the old schoolhouse, and were rewarded by the reverberating clamor of the bell that was rung to announce the arrival of each and every racer.

  People began to appear on the street, pouring from doorways to run alongside the sleds.

  “Welcome to Eagle.”

  “Who is it?”

  “God—it’s Jessie Arnold…”

  “…Ehlers…”

  “…in the sled…Jake’s girl…”

  Ned Bishop was dumbstruck when she pulled up at the checkpoint. So startled to see her that it seemed all he could do to remember his job.

  “Holy shit—Jessie. Where the hell have you been? We’ve been worried sick—everyone looking everywhere for you—and Debbie Todd. Half the snowmachines from here to Dawson have been up on the summit. They found nothing but a buried pile of equipment and stuff—”

  “Gail Murray’s.”

  “How’d you find her? The planes were going out today—a helicopter coming from Whitehorse.”

  Realizing Jessie had no way of giving him answers through the storm of his questions, Bishop finally stopped trying to ask and tell everything at once.

  Jessie stomped in the snow hook and stepped from the runners to give Debbie a hand out of the sled.

  “I noticed the tracks of a lot of traffic back up there,” she told him, grinning. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you all about where we’ve been and how we came back. But I will, if you’ll check me in first.”

  “You going to finish?”

  “Why not? I’m a little behind, but I’ve made it this far. It’s gotta get better from here. Right?”

  He just nodded, his mouth hanging open as if he would never understand the way mushers operated, and almost automatically began his usual checklist of the items required of a Yukon Quest racer.

  “Deb? Debbie.”

  Calling her name, Leland fought his way through the growing crowd of spectators to reach his stepdaughter. All but knocking her from her feet with the enormity of his hug, he rocked her back and forth in his arms, tears streaming unabashedly down his face. “Oh, God, Deborah, we were so worried.”

  “Hey, Jake,” she said, her arms tight around his neck. “It’s okay. I’m fine—really. Where’s Mom?”

  “Jessie?”

  She turned from enjoying the enthusiastic Todd-Leland reunion to find Inspector Delafosse beside her, with Cas.

  “Hi,” she said. “Sorry I couldn’t—”

  “Hi, yourself,” Del told her. “No need for sorrys now. Looks like you did well enough without us.”

  “Not till those bastards are caught. I think…” She paused as he directed a nod to the space behind her.

  “Somebody else here to say hello,” Del said.

  Already knowing, she whirled and there was…

  “Alex. However did you…?”

  But she didn’t care, as she was swept into a giant, now-I’m-home embrace of her own.

  “The snowmachine came out of the trees and onto the lake, right at me—”

  “Mandana Lake?” Jake asked.

  “Yes, about two-thirds of the way across.”

  Jessie had already told the rescue tale and Debbie was telling the assembled group about her abduction. Sitting next to Jake Leland, she assessed the faces at the table in the schoolhouse, around which everyone in Eagle who had been involved in the situation, even in a small way, had gathered: Delafosse, Cas, Jessie and Alex, Ned Bishop, Ryan—who had been about to leave when Jessie showed up at the Eagle checkpoint—and Lynn Ehlers.

  “Let her tell it all, Jake,” Delafosse suggested. “Then we can ask questions and fill in the gaps, if there are any. Go ahead, Debbie.”

  “Well, the snowmachine came right at me. The man riding it had on an all-black snowmachine suit and a dark helmet that I couldn’t see his face through. It scared me. I had a run-in with another machine a while back and I don’t like those things at all. I was watching him pretty close and expecting him to turn and stay away from my team—I was obviously on the trail and all—but he just kept coming. I stopped the team and got off, ran up by the dogs, and was waving, thinking that for some weird reason he hadn’t seen me. He ran right up to us, then he started making circles around my team and sled, getting closer and closer. The dogs were all nervous and I was scared. Finally I got back on and drove off, hoping he wouldn’t be really stupid and run into a team in motion. I hoped he was just being obnoxious—you know?—and would go away.

  “But he kept right behind me, even when I went up off the lake ice and into the trees. Then, after a while, there was another snowmachine coming toward me on the trail with two people on it. With one coming behind me and one in front, I stopped again. They stopped, too, and got off their machines. That’s when the one guy—the one behind me—took out a gun and made me get on his machine and drive.”

  “That’s just what he did to me on the summit,” Jessie said.

  Debbie nodded. “Yeah, it had to be the same guy, Jessie. We went a long way in the dark until we finally stopped at a place where there were some old cabins.”

  “Minto?” Caswell muttered to Delafosse, who nodded.

  “There were just the two of us on the snowmachine,” Debbie continued. “The other two went somewhere else with my team, I think. Jessie says they left it by the highway—and that they killed somebody’s handler?”

  “They did,” Delafosse confirmed. “We’ve got your team in Whitehorse, Debbie. It’s fine.”

  “They didn’t get Royal. I let him go when I stopped the second time. I was afraid they’d hurt my dogs, but he was the only one I could cut loose. He took off when they tried to catch him. You haven’t found him?”

  “As a matter of fact, they found him in Carmacks yesterday,” Jake told her. “He came in by himself. A musher found him sleeping with his team when he went to feed them. He’s okay, just a little thin.”

  “Oh, thank goodness. Well, after we got to…”

  “Minto,” Delafosse reminded her.

  “Yeah, after we were there awhile, the other two showed up in a truck—I heard it, but didn’t see it. Up till then, I couldn’t see their faces because they had helmets on. Before the one with me took his off, he blindfolded me and told me not to look, or they’d have to kill me. Sometime later they gave me a sandwich, a candy bar, and some water. Then they gave me a shot of some kind and I don’t remember anything else till I woke up in the cabin on the other side of the summit, where you found me, Jessie.”

  “So you don’t know how long it was between the time they gave you the shot and when you woke up in that cabin?” Delafosse asked.

  “No, but it must have been a long time, because I was really hungry. I felt awfully sick after I woke up, then I thought I’d starve. They fed me sandwiches—balogna and mustard. Yuck, I’ll never eat another one—ever. And water, they gave me water. Then they argued with each other, and the younger one was gone for a long time. He finally came back all happy with the money and they took my mittens and boots, and left.”

  “How many of them?”

  “Two, but there were more that they talked about�
��another two, I think. It was hard to tell sometimes. I kept going back to sleep, and then I just let them think I was asleep for a while, but it was so uncomfortable tied up.”

  “They tied you?”

  “Yeah—well, I was tied when I woke up the first time in the cabin.”

  Delafosse glanced at Leland before his next question.

  “Did they hurt you, Debbie? Sorry, but I have to ask. Did they…harm you?”

  She blushed and shook her head, but answered strongly. “No. The older one mentioned it once—like why not, what would it matter anyway?—but the other one told him to forget it, so he didn’t do anything. I was panicked. That’s when I thought they were going to shoot me, but they just made sure I couldn’t leave, and went away.”

  “Left her there to starve and freeze to death,” Leland exploded. “What kind of bastards would do that?”

  “It is permanently engraved on my awareness, Jake,” Delafosse told him. “And I promise you we’ll get them, somehow. Right now we need more information. They kept you blindfolded the whole time?”

  “Yes, except right as the younger one went out the door the last time. I thought he had gone, and pulled off the blindfold just as he went out and he hadn’t put on the helmet yet, so I got a pretty good look at him, but only for a second.”

  “Would you know him if you saw him again?”

  “I sure would.”

  “Tell us what he looked like.”

  “He was thirty-some, maybe thirty-five. Quite a lot older than me, but younger than you, Jake.”

  “What else?”

  “He was kind of tall and really good-looking. I’d have thought he was a nice person, if I hadn’t known better.”

  “Good-looking how? Who would he remind you of—maybe not exactly, but in kind of looks?”

  “Oh, sort of like—this is going to sound dumb—but he reminded me of the angel on our Christmas tree. Kind of thin-faced, even features, kind of…pretty. You know what I mean? Great teeth. I saw his teeth—white and straight. Kind of blond/brown hair—pretty short. I didn’t see his eyes except from the side.”

  “Some angel,” Leland growled. “Devil, maybe.”