“Mac? What is it? I’m right here! I’m right behind you!” A light flashed on, strong and blinding, and Mac came fully awake. He was standing on the runners of his sled, gripping the driver’s bow, and his team was trotting steadily into the darkness. “You all right?” Rebecca called. Her lead dogs’ noses were practically at his feet.
“Sure,” he called back, wiping a mittened hand over his face. “I’m fine.”
“I thought I heard you shout my name.”
“No, I was just talking to my dogs.” Mac turned to face front, feeling foolish. Dawson City seemed like a hundred years ago. Why was he so tired? They were headed for Eagle and had turned off the Yukon River, taking a westerly tack up the Fortymile. Two hours ago they had stopped at a trapper’s cabin five miles from the mouth of the Fortymile and been offered a bowl of some kind of stew. The stew had been very hot, but Mac had no idea what was in it, nor did it seem polite to ask. He had never tasted anything quite like it before, and he was still tasting it now.
The night was really cold. It had to be close to fifty below. Rebecca had given him some of her chemical warmers, and he’d put one in each of his boots, one in each mitt and one in his battery pack. They helped, but nothing could truly thwart cold that intense. Maybe it was the cold that was making him sleepy. He could easily close his eyes and drift off again. He switched on his headlamp and checked his team. The dogs all looked good. Their faces and shoulders were frosted white from their breath. All fourteen were still going strong, and this was a source of great pride to him. Brian had dropped two dogs by the time he’d reached Dawson last year. Mac wanted to finish the race with all fourteen, all of them healthy and happy. And, of course, it went without saying that he wanted to finish in first place.
He and Rebecca were still running in fifth and sixth position, but they had closed the gap on the teams ahead. At the trapper’s cabin they learned that just four hours separated them from the two teams in first and second place, and the third-and fourth-place teams were only an hour or so ahead. He and Rebecca were slowly gaining ground. Their running and resting routine, combined with the hourly snacks, seemed to be working. Mac switched his headlamp off to save the batteries, which didn’t function well in extreme cold. “Lithium batteries are the way to go,” Rebecca had told him earlier when he had complained about short battery life. “They work much better in the cold. But they’re very expensive. I can’t afford them.”
Money. Everything boiled down to money. Life was all about getting by, making do and doing without, all of which related to how much money one made. Mac had never been wealthy, but he’d never been destitute, either. He didn’t like living this way. A man had to be able to provide for a woman before he could even consider asking her…
Asking her what? What would he ask Rebecca? He let his imagination take over. She’d be fussing over her dogs, and he’d stride up and say, “Excuse me, Rebecca, but I’d like to ask you something, if you don’t mind.”
If he was lucky, she’d stop what she was doing and look at him, but she probably wouldn’t. She’d keep on with her task, stirring dog food, smearing ointment on paws, rubbing liniment on tired muscles, following her strict routine. “What is it?” she’d say.
He would draw a deep breath to fortify his courage. “Well, I was kind of hoping you might seriously consider marrying me. Wait! Before you reply, hear me out. I may be penniless now, but in another year or so I plan to be a rich man. That’s right. Rich. Wealthy. Dripping with money! On the cover of Forbes magazine dressed in a designer suit.”
“Oh, really?” She might glance up at him but maybe not. “What’s your financial strategy?”
“I’ve been offered a job flying for British Airways. Huge salary. I’m going to fly with them for two years and invest all my earnings in the stock market.”
“British Airways? But you’re an American.”
“They don’t care. They’ve forgiven us for the Boston Tea Party.”
“What about the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812?”
“They like the way I fly. I’m not going to argue with them. It was either flying Concordes or signing on with Delta. I kind of liked the idea of supersonic. So what do you say? Will you marry me?”
She would stand up and wipe her hands on her bibs. “Marriage, Mac? Why on earth would I want to marry you?”
That was the clincher. That was the killer question she was bound to ask. How would he answer? “Because it would work out perfectly. I’d be off flying and most of the time you’d be rid of me, but I’d send you a big money order every two weeks so you could live like a princess. What could be better than that? The only thing I’d ask is periodic visitation rights. The right to look at you in person. Hold your hand. Maybe indulge in some heavy petting.”
“Kissing?”
“I made a promise to you about that, Rebecca. Remember?”
“A promise made is a debt unpaid,” she said.
Hmm. What did she mean by that? “Will you at least think about it?”
“Absolutely not. Mac, I don’t love you. It’s Bruce I love and I always will.”
“Bruce is dead! Rebecca, can’t you see that I’m crazy about you?”
“Crazy? Yes, you’re definitely crazy. But not about me.”
“Rebecca…”
“The answer’s no, Mac. How much clearer can I be?”
Mac slumped. It was hopeless. Rebecca was not in love with him. She would never be in love with him. His brother had been right. Rebecca would always be a lone wolf, gazing behind her into the past and remembering the love of another man.
Cold! Had he ever been this cold before? Not even close. It was clear, so clear he could see enough stars in one small patch of sky to spend the rest of his life counting them. And now the moon was rising, paling the heavens, dimming the stars, bathing the snow in an unearthly glow. So quiet, just the huffing of his dogs, the dry squeak of the sled runners, the musical jingle of harness snaps. Small sounds in a vast and silent wilderness. He looked behind. Rebecca’s leaders were still right on his heels. “Do you want to pass?” he called back.
“No, I’m fine. Unless you want me to.”
“Not unless you want to.”
“Well, let me know if you do.”
“Okay.” Mac faced front again. Why couldn’t he talk more intelligently when he spoke to her? Why did he have to sound like a damn Neanderthal? He blinked his eyes, wiggled his toes inside of his boots. Had to stay awake. Count the stars in the Yukon sky. One, two…
A flash of light ahead startled him. His grip tightened on the driver’s bow, and he stared up the river trail, transfixed. He squinted, leaning forward. “My God!” he breathed, unable to believe his eyes. It was incredible! Unbelievable! A huge paddle wheeler was coming down the frozen Fortymile right at them! “Gee over, Merlin!” he shouted urgently. “Gee over!” Merlin swerved to the right, dragging the entire team off the packed trail. “Gee, gee, gee!” Mac jumped off the sled and frantically pushed it through the deep snow. Son of a bitch! The monstrous thing was going to run them down! “Get off the trail!” he shouted behind to Rebecca, who had stopped her team dead in the middle of it. What was the matter with her? Was she blind? “Hurry up!” he waved his arm wildly at her. “Get off the trail!”
“Mac!” she said. “What are you doing? It’s not time to snack the dogs yet!”
“Can’t you see it?” he said, then swung to look back up the trail—and to his astonishment, the trail was empty! He blinked and switched on his headlamp, panning slowly back and forth in disbelief that such an apparition could just vanish. But he had seen it! Bigger than life! Every minute detail of it had been vividly shadowed and delineated in the moonlight! He turned back toward Rebecca. “There was a huge boat coming down the river toward us,” he explained, realizing the moment he spoke how foolish he sounded. “A stern-wheeler,” he added weakly.
There was a moment’s pause and then Rebecca’s laugh came clearly to his burning ears. “Mac, you’re hallucinating.
The only thing you might have seen was the flash of a headlamp. It looks to me like we’re catching up to some teams.”
Mac looked up the river. He shook his head. “Maybe you’d better lead for a while,” he called back to her, an unnecessary suggestion since her team was already moving ahead. He spoke to Merlin, and the dog swung the team back onto the trail. They fell in behind Rebecca and resettled into their brisk, steady trot. He burped and the taste of that strange stew came back up. “I wish I could just puke and get it over with,” he moaned aloud.
It was going to be a very long night.
AT THE TOP OF Fortymile River there was a cabin, and parked outside were four teams. While Mac and Rebecca tethered their dogs, the cabin door opened and a man walked out to greet them. His boots squeaked loudly in the dry snow.
“Well, hello,” he said to Rebecca. “Never seen you here before.”
“Never been here before. I’m Rebecca Reed, this is my friend Bill MacKenzie. Is it all right if we camp here?”
“You folks get your dogs settled and come on in. The cabin’s crowded but it’s warm. Warmer than it is out here. Right now I’d guess it’s running fifty-six below, but I could be wrong. I’ll have to check my thermometer. Last time I looked it was only fifty-five below, but I’m sure it’s dropped since then.”
“Thanks,” Rebecca said. “We’ll be up as soon as we’ve fed and bedded down our dogs.”
They had to melt snow, and tending their teams took much longer than normal in the intense cold. Two hours later the dogs were curled up and sleeping in their fleece-lined dog coats. Rebecca and Mac made their weary way up to the cabin carrying their own supper and a sack of dog booties that needed to be dried.
The cabin was very crowded. Both bunks were occupied, a third musher slumped at the table, head pillowed on his arms, and the fourth lay on the floor against the far wall, his feet propped up on an empty chair. The sound of four men snoring lustily filled the cabin. Mac and Rebecca stood for a moment inside the doorway looking around, and then Mac took Rebecca’s sack of booties out of her hand. “I’ll hang them up,” he said. “You sit down. Eat.” Rebecca sank into the only empty chair. The heat inside the cabin was overwhelming after the cold outside. Her face was burning. She stripped off her mitts, her hat, her parka. She took a slurp of her chili, then put the bag and thermos atop the table. The elderly man who had come out to greet them was sitting in a rocking chair next to the stove, reading a book by lamplight and smoking a pipe, perfectly content. He paid no attention to them at all until Mac had finished hanging up the booties, and then he folded over the page of his book and glanced up.
“It’s fifty-seven degrees below zero,” he said. “I checked just before you came in. I bet it drops another degree before dawn. It’s always the coldest then, and that’s another two hours away. I bet it gets down to fifty-eight below. I’ve seen it hit sixty below a couple of times, but not yet this winter. Sixty below. Now that’s cold, I want to tell you! You really feel it when it’s sixty below.” He nodded at his own words, stuck his pipe back in his mouth, picked up his book, opened it to the folded page and continued reading.
“Smoked salmon?” Mac said, pulling yet another strip of the endless greasy fish from his pocket. Rebecca took it and stuffed it into her mouth.
“Homemade chili?” she mumbled around the mouthful of fish, handing Mac the half-eaten meal of the endless homemade chili. She moved over on the chair and he sat down beside her. They leaned against each other in fatigue. Rebecca melted into the welcome warmth and strength of him.
“Homemade chili. My favorite,” he said, taking it from her and squeezing the contents into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed. “You remember that stew we ate back at the last cabin?”
“How could I ever forget?” Rebecca said, chewing on the hard, greasy fish.
“I think it just about did me in.”
“I think it was very nice of him to offer it,” she said tactfully.
A loud belch from a sleeping musher punctuated the background of snores and was followed by a moan of pure misery. “Another victim,” Mac said. “Tell me something. Why do people do this? Why do people race sled dogs?”
“I’m still trying to figure that one out,” she replied. “I’ll let you know when and if I ever do. In the meantime, you might ask Ellin. She has her own opinion.”
They sat for a while after eating, drinking their hot, strong tea and listening to the chorus of snoring. “Do you realize that right now,” Mac said, “we’re all tied for first place?”
Rebecca took a sip of tea and looked at him, bleary-eyed. “Not really. They got here a few hours before we did. They’ll leave here before we do.”
“I know. But right at this very moment, we’re all in the same place at the same time. It’s a six-way tie.” He looked around calculatingly at the sprawl of sleeping mushers. “I just wonder…which one of us is going to finish first?”
“Maybe it’ll be someone who isn’t even here yet,” Rebecca said. “We still have a ways to go, Mac. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”
The proprietor of the cabin pushed out of his rocking chair to put another stick of wood in the stove. He hitched up his suspenders and walked over to the door, opening it briefly and then slamming it shut again. “Well!” he announced as he turned back toward the stove. “It is now officially fifty-eight degrees below zero. Dropped a whole degree in less than an hour. We could see sixty below tonight. Yessiree, it’s been known to happen! Sixty degrees below zero!”
COOKIE WOULDN’T EAT her breakfast. Rebecca offered it to her in several different variations and each was politely refused. “C’mon, Cook. I need you, baby. Don’t give up on me now. I know it’s cold and I know you’retired, but you’re one of my main ladies. One of my main brains. I need you, Cookie. Oh, honey, please eat. Please eat just a little bit for me.” Rebecca knelt beside her, enticing her with a chunk of beaver meat, one of the few offerings that almost any dog will eat no matter how tired or ill they might be. Cookie sniffed it briefly and then lifted her dark, apologetic eyes to Rebecca’s face. She wagged her tail and licked Rebecca’s hand. Rebecca laid the piece of beaver meat in front of her and ran her hands over Cookie’s small form. “You’re such a little thing, Cookie. Such a tiny girl. Such a toughie.” She could feel nothing wrong. There was no abdominal stiffness or pain. No visible lameness, no diarrhea, no temperature. She simply wouldn’t eat.
“Maybe she’s just not hungry,” Mac said. He had fed his team and they had all wolfed their food with their usual enthusiasm.
“No,” Rebecca shook her head, “it’s more than that. There’s something wrong. I’m not going to run her. I’ll load her into the sled and let her ride to Eagle.”
“That means carrying her over American Summit. That’s going to be a tough haul, Rebecca. Carrying Cookie will slow you down.”
Rebecca stood and sighed. “Look, you don’t have to wait for me. You can run at your own speed, Mac. In fact, I suggest you do. Right now you stand a good chance of keeping up with those boys. They’re only a couple of hours ahead of us.” Mac stood silently while she packed her dogs’ food bowls into her sled. He watched while she began the long task of booting her dogs. Finally she stopped and looked at him. “Well, what are you waiting for?” she snapped.
“You,” he answered simply. “I’m waiting for you.”
THE RUN UP American Summit was grueling. Mac’s team led the way, Merlin in front, his trot blazing the trail. He never wavered, never shirked. His tug line was always tight, his ears always alert, his blue eyes bright, his demeanor intense. He took his job very seriously and it showed. The extraordinary thing about Merlin was that he never wanted to run anywhere but in lead. When Mac switched him into point or swing to give him a break, he dragged off his neckline, sulked and depressed the entire team. Up front was where Merlin wanted to be, so up front was where Mac ran him.
Rebecca was glad that Mac’s team was in the lead as they climbed the treele
ss summit. Although it was broad daylight, the trail markers were obscured by blowing snow and deep drifts. With Cookie out of commission, her leaders might not have had the savvy to feel out the trail, but Merlin certainly did. He led both teams up and over the windblown summit and then down into Eagle, the first American checkpoint in the race. After Rebecca had fed and strawed her dogs, the veterinarian checked out her team, including Cookie, whom Rebecca had carried in her sled bag for the entire run. The veterinarian could find nothing at all wrong with the little huskie.
“She looks fine to me,” he said, stuffing his stethoscope into his parka pocket. “Everything checks out. But she won’t eat? Nothing at all?”
“She ate a little bit of her soup just now,” Rebecca said. “But normally Cookie’s a great eater and drinker. Scarfs it all down.” Rebecca knelt beside her leader and ran her hand over Cookie’s head. Cookie gazed up at her adoringly and fanned her tail in the snow.
“This may be way off base, but when was she last in heat? Is there a chance she could be pregnant?”
Rebecca’s eyes widened. The thought had never occurred to her, and yet the symptoms fit. She looked down at Cookie. “It was around the Christmas holidays,” she said with dismay. “But I didn’t think… I mean, as far as I know, there was no hanky-panky, but…” But litters of puppies had appeared mysteriously before and probably would again. And the timing was right for Cookie to be experiencing a bit of morning sickness as the pups, if she was indeed pregnant, began to crowd her uterus. The veterinarian palpated her abdomen. “It’s possible,” he said.
Rebecca made the reluctant decision to drop Cookie at the Eagle checkpoint. Kanemoto would take care of her until the race was over and they could all go back home. The veterinarian left and Rebecca slumped in the straw at the head of her team with Raven curled up in her lap. It was quite a blow to lose Cookie, whose inexhaustible good cheer and buoyant personality kept the entire team in good spirits even when they were tired.
“You look like you just lost your best friend,” Mac said, walking up and squatting beside her. “What’s wrong?”
Across a Thousand Miles Page 18
