Across a Thousand Miles

by Nadia Nichols

  She told him and he nodded slowly. “Pregnant? Huh! I’ll be damned!” He rubbed his chin, thinking. “You remember that day your truck broke down in Dawson and I fed your dogs before I came to pick you up?”

  Rebecca looked at him with growing suspicion. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, I forgot to mention it in all the chaos that happened afterward, but there was a dog loose in the yard when I fed them. I hooked him back up, and that was that.”

  Anger surged through her. “The very least you could have done was tell me about it! Cookie was in heat! I could have given her a mismate shot and I’d still have her right now! You probably don’t even know which dog was loose, do you!”

  Mac hesitated. “It was a male Alaskan husky,” he said.

  “Great. Thanks a lot for nothing, Mac! I’ve just lost my main leader.”

  Mac rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry, Rebecca. But don’t worry. We’re traveling together. Merlin’ll take us to Fairbanks, no sweat.”

  Rebecca gave him a stony stare. “I don’t need to travel with you, Mac. I’m perfectly capable of traveling on my own. Maybe I should just do that.”

  “I hope you plan to grab a little rest first. Can I bring you a cup of coffee?”

  “I don’t drink coffee on a race. The caffeine gives me too many…”

  “Yes, I know. Caffeine gives you wicked highs and lows. But I’ll take the highs whenever and wherever I can get them.” Mac glanced around. “This is a pretty nice checkpoint, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll bring you a bowl of caribou stew. They’re dishing it out in the checker’s cabin.”

  “No thanks, I’m not hungry,” she said, feeling very discouraged. Mac disappeared but returned within minutes, carrying two steaming bowls of stew. He dropped into the straw beside her and sat crossed-legged, handing her one of the bowls. She took it from him and prodded it with the spoon.

  “Eat,” Mac ordered, “before it freezes solid. It’s good. I’ve already had two bowls.”

  Rebecca dipped and raised her spoon. He was right. The stew was delicious. “How far ahead of us are the other teams?”

  “They’re all still here,” Mac said around a mouthful of stew. “Number one and two teams came in three hours ahead of us. And you saw the third and fourth teams when we were coming down that last stretch. They can’t have more than a five-minute lead. We’ll leave them in the dust in the next stretch, Rebecca. The checker said that the closest teams behind us are still fifty miles back. We’ve got a huge jump on them.” Mac finished his third bowl of caribou stew and sighed contentedly. “The bad news is, there’s a storm brewing and it looks like a whopper. They’re predicting it’ll hit in the next day or so, just in time to blow us all off Eagle Summit.”

  Rebecca moaned.

  “No sweat,” Mac said. “We’ll rest our teams well when we get to the checkpoint at Central and take the summit one step at a time. Listen, I’ve staked a couple of bunks out for us in one of the cabins. Let’s go get some sleep.”

  “You go ahead. I’m not tired,” Rebecca said. “I’m going to sit here with the dogs for a while.”

  “Your dogs are fine. They’re all sound asleep and they’ll stay like that for another six hours. In the meantime, you’re going to get some sleep.” Mac pushed to his feet and reached a hand down to pull her up.

  “I’m not tired!” Rebecca said, glaring.

  “I don’t care. You’re going to lie down and take a nap. Come on.”

  “Where do you get off, ordering me around?”

  Mac squared to face her. He took the empty bowl from her hand and stacked it on top of his. “Rebecca, when this race is over, you can hate me all you want. You can ignore me, you can yell at me, you can give me the cold shoulder. But as long as we’re traveling partners, we have to stick to the same schedule of running and resting. Everyone else is resting. They’re going to be blowing out of this checkpoint in a few hours. We need to rest, too. The next leg is 175 miles, and we’ve got to catch the front-runners before we reach Central.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want them coasting on our heels going over Eagle Summit. This storm will work in our favor. I want to get far enough ahead of those other teams so that our trail is stone cold and snowed in. I want them to bog right down when that wind hits them on the Summit because I know that Merlin won’t. He’ll forge right up and over. Nothing will stop that dog. Once we’re over the Summit, we’re home free. Rebecca, we can win this race if we don’t blow our strategy. How’s that sound?”

  “You’re crazy, Mac,” Rebecca said wearily. “Stark, raving mad.”

  He grinned his brash grin and nodded. “You bet I am. But then again, so are you. Would either of us be here if we weren’t?”

  MAC LAY ON HIS SIDE and watched Rebecca sleep. She was lying flat on her back on the bunk across from him with a gray wool army blanket pulled up to her chin and her feet poking out the bottom. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was slow and even, so quiet he could barely hear it. Her hair was still braided but mussed from her hat, and several unruly wisps had escaped the confines of the braid. They softened the contours of her face. Her arms were beneath the cover, her slender fingers curling over the upper edge of it. She had been sleeping like that for three hours, and Mac had been watching her for almost as long. He knew he should try to get some sleep himself, but he was afraid that if he closed his eyes she might disappear. After all, she had threatened to leave the checkpoint without him.

  He couldn’t imagine her not being there with him. Most of the racers traveled in pairs, and he could understand why. For the front-runners it was probably to keep a close eye on each other, but for others it was perhaps more for safety reasons than anything else. Mushers could look out for each other, help each other through the tough spots, bolster flagging spirits.

  Mac studied Rebecca. She was undoubtedly one of the strongest people he’d ever known. Never once had she complained about the cold or about being exhausted, or hungry, or lame and sore. He’d heard plenty of moaning from the other mushers, but not a word from Rebecca. She was one of only two women who had entered the race. The second one had dropped out—scratched— along with several other mushers back in Dawson.

  He was in love with her, no doubt about it. He’d willingly lay down his life for her. He longed to touch her, to take her into his arms, to feel the smooth skin of her face beneath his fingertips, to trace the outline of her lips, to taste the tender sweetness of her kiss. If he hadn’t been so exhausted, he might really have gone stark, raving mad with this painfully unrequited love. Instead, he leaned on his elbow, head propped on his hand, and studied her in the dim light.

  They had the bunk room to themselves, courtesy of one of Eagle’s many generous and warmhearted residents. In the cabin’s main room, soft voices droned in conversation. He heard someone open the woodstove and then a heavy thump as another log was fed into the fire. A squeak, a clank, and the stove was closed again.

  Rebecca opened her eyes. She lay for a moment staring up at the ceiling and then she turned her head and looked directly at Mac. Her eyes widened, startled. “What are you doing?” she whispered, raising a hand to brush the strands of hair away from her forehead.

  “Watching you sleep,” Mac said. “Just making sure you followed orders.”

  “What time is it? Have the other racers gone?”

  “Almost midnight. Beech and Wilton have checked out. Gurney and Kinney are still here. Go back to sleep. You have two more hours.”

  She pushed herself up onto her elbows. “Why are you awake?”

  “Just woke up,” Mac lied. “Must be getting hungry again. Go back to sleep.”

  “How long have our teams been resting?”

  “We got into Eagle around 6 p.m.”

  Rebecca rubbed a hand across her face, wiping the sleep from her eyes. “I’m starving,” she said.

  “Salmon?” Mac offered, reaching for his parka
, laid across the foot of his bunk. By leaning and stretching they passed the smoked salmon without leaving their bunks. She pulled a bag from the foot of her bunk and unzipped it, drawing forth the thermos of tea. She poured two cups and handed one to Mac.

  “What would happen,” she said, chewing on the awful dried fish, “if we were to cut our team’s rest a little short here?”

  “How short?”

  “Oh, say, one hour.”

  Mac chewed contemplatively. “There’s a shelter cabin forty miles from here. Then there’s Biederman’s cabin another forty miles beyond that, and Slaven’s. There are plenty of shelter cabins on the next stretch. We could take a break at all of them if we wanted. Rest the dogs a lot. I think they’d be okay.”

  Rebecca took a sip of tea and swallowed. “What if we left right now?” she said.

  Mac glanced at her. “Getting a little anxious, are we?”

  “We could snack our teams, get them ready to go and be out of here in thirty minutes. We run to Trout Creek and give them a break there, maybe two hours. Run to Biederman’s, rest another two hours. Run to Slaven’s and rest four. Then run on into Circle. It’s downriver all the way.”

  “You make it sound so easy,” Mac said.

  “I’m thinking about that storm,” she said. “When that hits, it’ll slow us down to a crawl. The farther along we are before that happens, the better off we’ll be. Maybe we could even make it over Eagle Summit before it gets too bad.”

  “Maybe,” Mac said. “But I doubt it.”

  FORTY MINUTES LATER they were signing out of the Eagle checkpoint in third and fourth place and dropping down onto the Yukon River for the long run to Circle City. It was dark and cold, though not as cold as it had been on the Fortymile. By 6 a.m. they had reached Trout Creek. The front-runners were still camped there, but when Mac and Rebecca pulled in, they were quick to ready their teams and depart.

  “Did you see that?” Rebecca said to Mac while they prepared their dogs’ breakfast. “Their teams were looking tired. I don’t think they’d been here more than two hours. I think we should stay for three.”

  “Three? I thought you planned on two.”

  “We cut our rest short in Eagle. If we shave things too close, our teams will be exhausted.”

  “Wilton and Beech only stayed four hours in Eagle. We stayed six,” Mac pointed out.

  “We’ll rest here for three and see how they do on the run to Biederman’s. If they slow down too much, we’ll rest four hours there.”

  Mac nodded slowly. “You’re the boss.”

  “I think if we push too hard now, we’ll burn them out,” Rebecca said. “We still have a long way to go, and I want to keep my dogs happy. I want them smiling when they cross that finish line.”

  A three-hour rest was barely enough time to tend the dogs, eat their own meal and ready their gear for the next haul. They sat together on Rebecca’s sled, side to shoulder, leaning against each other. Mac handed Rebecca a piece of smoked salmon and Rebecca handed Mac his portion of chili. They communicated with a series of grunts and gestures. No need for words. Words wasted too much energy.

  Rebecca’s eyes burned with fatigue, and the cold was a constant torment. She had shipped hundreds of chemical warmers in her food drops to the checkpoints, and she doubted there would be a single packet left by the end of the race. Being warm was a fantasy she indulged in when she drifted toward sleep. She chewed wearily on the piece of salmon and, eyes closed, leaned against Mac’s shoulder. Mac. She couldn’t imagine life without him. For the past several days she had shared an incredible odyssey with him, and it seemed as though he had been a part of her life forever, as much a part of it as the dogs and the race and the checkpoints and the miles and miles of trail. Whenever she dozed off, she’d awake with a jerk, wondering if she’d overslept, wondering which checkpoint she was heading for—or was already in. Wondering where Mac was, and if he was okay.

  What would happen when the race was over? Would they go their separate ways, politely shaking hands and maybe giving each other a chaste farewell kiss? Would Mac leave the Territory as Brian had predicted? And if he did, would he miss her? Would he ever think about what they’d been through in this wild arctic land, running behind a team of Alaskan huskies while a blue norther drove winter deep into both of their souls?

  Rebecca drew a deep breath of polar air into her lungs. Probably not. He would most likely do just as Brian had said he would. Be drawn by forces more powerful than the land, more seductive than a woman. Technology and big bucks. Maybe Sadie would drift with him on her way to becoming a doctor. Maybe Sadie and Mac would marry.

  “Fruitcake?” Mac said, interrupting her thoughts.

  She poured the tea while he divided the last of the precious fruitcake. They ate and drank. The dogs curled on their snowy beds and slept. By the time Kinney and Gurney drove their teams to the Trout Creek cabin and stopped for a break, Mac and Rebecca were ready to depart. They exchanged a few words with their fellow mushers but were soon back on the trail. There was no time for socializing. No time to share a cheery campfire and the camaraderie of the long trail. This was a race, after all, and the finish line was a mere 365 miles away.

  The pressure was on.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE RUN TO BIEDERMAN’S cabin was nasty, with strong, gusting winds pushing their sleds around on an icy river trail. A light snow made visibility poor, in spite of the strengthening daylight. Rebecca was glad they weren’t making the run at night. Beech and Wilton must have had a rough time of it. She and Mac kept to their schedule of hourly stops to snack and check their dogs, and when Biederman’s cabin came into view five hours after leaving Trout Creek, both were startled to see two dog teams staked outside it. Rebecca, whose team was leading, turned on her runners. “Do you see what I see?” she asked, a surge of excitement purging the fatigue and frustration from her.

  “Let’s burn right on by without stopping,” Mac said. “That’ll shake ’em up good, maybe force them to cut their rest break short.”

  Rebecca knew Mac was right, but she longed to stop. She wanted to sit beside a warm stove and toast her cold bones. She could see smoke whipping out of the cabin’s chimney and she closed her eyes. “All right, Raven,” she commanded through frozen lips. “On by, Thor. Good dogs!”

  There was a ripple of noise from the staked teams as they passed, and the cabin door opened. A man stepped out and waved to them. Rebecca waved back. There was a ham-radio operator stationed at Biederman’s for the duration of the race, and he would relay information about which mushers had passed by. “Reed and MacKenzie!” she shouted to the man, who waved again in acknowledgment. He stepped back inside and shut the door against the cold. Rebecca closed her eyes again. Warm cabin gone. Her teeth chattered and she clenched them together with a vengeance. “Wimp,” she muttered to herself.

  Mac was right about the race strategy. She turned to look back at the cabin. Mac was watching, too. Just before the bend in the river obscured the cabin, they saw the door open again and two mushers emerge, moving quickly to their teams. Mac’s teeth flashed in a triumphant grin. “Told you so,” he said, and she laughed and turned her back to the strong wind.

  In less than an hour Beech and Wilton had caught up and passed them. They had strong teams, there was no denying it. But how long could they run on so little rest? It took them some time to pull ahead of Mac and Rebecca’s teams. Only when Mac and Rebecca stopped for their hourly snacking did they disappear completely.

  “We’ll definitely see them again at Slaven’s,” Mac said as they shared a cup of tea. “We can’t be far from there now. And we’ll be right on their heels coming into Circle. I was hoping we’d pass them before then, but now I’m not so sure. It all depends on how their teams hold up.”

  “It looked as if some of their dogs are not liking the pace.”

  Mac nodded. His scruffy beard and the fringe of hair that escaped his hat were coated with ice. The steam from the tea turned to ice
on his eyelashes and he rubbed it off impatiently. “When this race is over, I’m going to sleep for at least a month,” he said. “Maybe two, depending.”

  Rebecca bit her tongue to keep from asking him where he’d be sleeping. Would it be California or Great Britain? A wave of emotion swept over her so unexpectedly that tears were freezing on her cheeks before she could stop them from forming. Mac was in the act of lifting his cup for another drink and he stilled. “Rebecca? What is it? What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head and swiped the back of her mittened hand across her cheeks. “Just tired, I guess.” She turned away and walked to the head of her team to finish her tea in privacy, leaving Mac to watch and wonder.

  On the trail again, she struggled with her wildly fluctuating emotions. One moment she’d think everything was fine, that her dogs were doing great, that maybe Mac was right and they might win. The next moment her throat would close and she’d struggle against tears, thinking about how cold and tired she was, how much she hated racing and would never, ever race again, and most of all, how much she dreaded losing Mac.

  Losing Mac? How could she possibly lose what she’d never had to begin with?

  Wake up, Rebecca! she’d chastise herself. Quit feeling sorry for yourself! And then she’d concentrate on her dogs, on the trail, on the next bend in the river and the bend after that, the miles passing slowly in a blur of wind-driven snow as daylight faded into dusk.

  THERE WAS A PLANE parked on the river below Slaven’s Roadhouse. It was a big yellow deHavilland Beaver on the obligatory skis, and Mac admired it as they drove their teams up the riverbank and tied them off beside the roadhouse. The plane hadn’t been here long. Snow hadn’t yet dusted its leeward side, and the landing tracks were still clearly defined. Mac’s eyebrows raised. It must have been a bumpy landing. The river was a mile wide here but jumbled with chunks of ice. The plane had come to a stop right along the shoreline, almost on top of the race trail. The river ice was smoother there, but a far cry from flat.