Across a Thousand Miles

by Nadia Nichols

  Two snowmobiles were parked near the entry door. Beech’s and Wilton’s teams were staked on the far side of the roadhouse and the smell of wood smoke was a welcome invitation to the warmth that waited within. Rebecca desperately needed that warmth. Mac walked to where she was already firing up her dog-food cooker. “I can do that for you. Go thaw yourself out,” he offered. “I’ll call you when it’s ready to serve up.”

  She shook her head, unsheathing her ax to begin the painstaking process of chopping the block of frozen meat into the smallest pieces possible and throwing them into the cooler. As she worked she scooped snow into the water pot to melt. “I’m all set,” she said. “See to your own dogs.” She glanced at Beech’s and Wilton’s teams. “How long do you figure they’ve been here?”

  Mac glanced over at the other teams and shrugged. “At least long enough to have fed their teams, but not all their dogs are sleeping yet. An hour, maybe?”

  The roadhouse door opened. Wilton stepped out. “Hey!” he shouted. “Either of you two got any medical experience?”

  Rebecca stood up, still holding her ax. “What’s wrong?”

  Wilton shut the door behind him and walked toward them. “We’ve got the pilot of that plane in here. He landed about twenty minutes ago. I don’t know much about this stuff, but he looks pretty sick to me, you know? He was on his way to Circle and put down here when he saw smoke coming from the chimney. There’s no radio at this cabin, just a couple of folks keeping the place warm for us. We could send one of them by snowmobile back to Biederman’s to radio for help from there. I guess that’s the best bet.”

  “There must be a radio in the plane,” Mac said.

  Wilton shook his head. “We asked. The guy said it didn’t work. It’s an old plane.” He shrugged helplessly. “I think it’s his heart. His face is gray.”

  Mac glanced at Rebecca. “I’ll go check on him,” he said. “You finish up here.”

  Rebecca watched him walk back to the roadhouse and felt a knot forming in the pit of her stomach. She looked at the plane parked down on the river ice, its yellow wings rocking in the wind. She stood there watching it until one of her dogs whined impatiently, and she dropped back down to her knees to finish making supper for the dogs.

  WILTON WAS RIGHT about the pilot of the plane. He was conscious and he was talking, but he was obviously in a great deal of pain, all of it in his chest and left arm. There were two race volunteers who had arrived the day before to get the roadhouse warmed up and provide a huge pot of stew for the mushers who would stop there. The pilot, Guy Johnson, was sitting at the table. Mac dropped into a chair across from him and cut to the chase.

  “How much fuel is in your plane?”

  “Filled her up in Circle,” Johnson muttered. He lifted anxious eyes to Mac’s face. Sweat beaded his pale brow. “I was on my way to Eagle when—” he drew a few shallow breaths and swallowed “—I had to land.”

  “Do you have charts in the plane?”

  Johnson nodded.

  “But no radio?”

  Johnson shook his head. “Meant to get it fixed. Don’t need one much around here.”

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” Mac said, leaning over the table. “I’m no doctor but I can fly a plane, and if yours is gassed up and ready, I can get you to Fairbanks. They have a good hospital there. What do you say?”

  Johnson lifted his head. Hope flickered in his eyes. “You can fly?”

  “I have over three thousand hours in navy jets. If you can show me how to start that old girl, I can sure as hell fly her.”

  Johnson nodded. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Mac got to his feet. “Wrap him up in blankets or a sleeping bag and carry him down,” he said to Wilton and Beech, tough mushers and more than capable of the task. Mac pulled his parka back on and headed out to where Rebecca crouched over her cooker. She stood as he approached. “Listen up,” he said. “I’m going to fly this guy to Fairbanks. He needs to get to a hospital right away. I hate to ask it, but I need you to feed my dogs for me.” He fumbled with the parka’s zipper and pulled it up. “With any luck I should be back before noon tomorrow, but I don’t want you to wait for me. I want you to haul yourself out of here in eight hours, just like we planned. Snack my team before you go and tell the folks up at the cabin to keep an eye on them till I get back.” He paused and eyed her keenly. “Are you listening to me? If I get back here and you’re still hanging around, I swear I’ll kick your ass down the trail.” Her blue eyes were so blank that he grabbed her shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. “Rebecca?”

  “You can’t do this!” she blurted. “You can’t fly that plane! You haven’t flown a plane in a long time and you’ve never flown that plane! The radio doesn’t work. How will you let Fairbanks know you’re coming in? What’s going to keep you from crashing into jetliners when you get near the airport? If the radio doesn’t work, what else might be broken? Its almost dark, and—”

  “Rebecca, eight hours and you’re out of here!” The roadhouse door opened and Beech and Wilton emerged, carrying Johnson in a sitting position in the cradle of their joined arms. “I have to go. Take care of yourself, Rebecca, and beat those two guys, okay? That’s an order.”

  He let go of her and trotted down the riverbank toward the Beaver. The engine was still warm so she’d probably start just fine. He bled the fuel line and did his preflight walk around the old aircraft with fatalistic calm. There was no way of knowing how well the plane had been maintained. Rebecca was right. If the radio didn’t work, what else might be wrong with her?

  Beech and Wilton hoisted Johnson into the passenger seat and helped him get strapped in. “Hey,” Mac said, buckling his own harness, “send one of those volunteers back to Biederman’s. Have the ham-radio operator call ahead to Fairbanks airport and let them know we’re flying in. It’s 1600 hours now, our ETA should be 1730 or somewhere thereabouts. It’ll be darker than hell. Tell ’em to leave the lights on for us and have an ambulance standing by.”

  He started the Beaver’s engine—no problem there— then let it idle while he pored over the air charts and plotted his course. “It’s going to be a bumpy takeoff,” he warned Johnson, who nodded weakly and muttered that it had been a bumpy landing.

  Magnetos, oil pressure, fuel gauges, everything checked out. No time to waste. He put aside the charts and checked rudder, ailerons, flaps. “Here we go, old girl,” he said, advancing the throttle and settling himself into the seat. “Let’s rock and roll.”

  The stiff wind made for a short takeoff roll on the rough terrain, which was probably the only reason Mac didn’t lose all his fillings, but the old engine roared smooth, deep and sweet, all nine cylinders firing well, and when he pulled back on the yoke, the Beaver lifted obediently off the ice and climbed steeply into the darkening sky. Mac caught a glimpse of Slaven’s Roadhouse as he banked around and took a compass heading of 240 degrees south of west. He saw Rebecca standing on the riverbank, looking very small and defenseless. Saw her lift her arm in a wave and he dipped the plane’s wings in response. And then the roadhouse was behind him. Rebecca was behind him. Something deep inside him churned with a particularly intense anguish all the way to Fairbanks.

  REBECCA STOOD rooted in place long after the plane had disappeared. She couldn’t believe he was gone. Just like that! One moment they were starting to feed their dogs, and the next he was climbing into an old yellow plane and flying off into the gathering darkness. She felt completely abandoned and alone, standing on the bank of the frozen Yukon River and staring westward across the vast, snow-covered wilderness. It was the cold that galvanized her into action. The cold and the sound of a snow machine starting up, revving its engine repeatedly and then speeding down to the river and back toward Biederman’s.

  Feed the dogs, Rebecca, feed the dogs, insisted the nagging voice inside her head. Was it Mac’s voice or hers? No matter. She set to the task of feeding her own team and then Mac’s. She put coats on all the dogs, and when they were cu
rled up and sleeping, she took her sleeping bag and her supper sack and walked to the roadhouse on leaden feet. Beech and Wilton were still up. She sat down at the table and thanked the volunteer who promptly set a bowl of stew in front of her. She spooned it automatically into her mouth, not tasting, not hearing the bantering words around the table, not seeing the faces. Thinking only of Mac. What if the engine failed? What if the plane crashed? What if he was killed?

  “Hey, Beck,” Wilton’s voice prodded. “Becky. That guy. What’s his name again? MacKenzie? How long’s he been driving dogs?”

  “Less than a year,” she replied dully.

  Wilton whistled. “No kidding!” he said. “He’s pretty good. He was starting to make me nervous. We figured he’d burn his team out a long time ago. I don’t mind tellin’ you that I’m glad he can fly a plane. Too bad for him, though. He’s blown any chance he had, and he had a damned good chance.”

  “Yes.” Rebecca nodded. “He did.”

  “What about you, Becky? You gonna give us a run for our money?”

  “You can count on it,” she said without conviction.

  “Oh, I do,” Wilton said, pushing out of his chair. “You’ve had us on the run for the past two hundred miles. I didn’t think you were planning to give us any rest.” He kicked Beech’s chair. “C’mon. Let’s get some quality snore time in before Rebecca rousts us out of here.” The two mushers climbed upstairs with their sleeping bags in hand.

  Rebecca finished her stew. It was nearly 7 p.m. She was due to depart the roadhouse at midnight. Without Mac. She would sleep until 10 p.m., then begin the preparations for leaving. She’d feed her own team and Mac’s one more time before heading for Circle. Mac should be in Fairbanks by now. If only she knew whether or not he’d arrived safely! She poured herself a cup of tea and drank it slowly, then poured a second one and drank it, too. She should be sleeping, like Beech and Wilton, but how could she sleep when Mac might be in trouble?

  She poured herself a third cup of tea and slumped over the table. She was dizzy with exhaustion and there was a constant buzzing in her ears—or was it the sound of an approaching snowmobile? She lifted her head and listened. Yes! It approached rapidly, climbed the steep riverbank, and the engine cut out. Moments later the second volunteer tramped into the roadhouse, shrugging out of his heavy clothing.

  “Well,” he said before anyone could speak, “the ham-radio guy at Biederman’s got the message sent okay. I hung around to see if they made it into Fairbanks and they did. Guess it was a pretty tricky landing, too. Snowing like crazy there and blowing hard. That storm must be heading this way fast.”

  “He’s okay?” Rebecca asked, relief flooding her.

  “I don’t know. They trucked him off in the ambulance. But he was alive when he got there,” the volunteer replied, thinking she was talking about the sick pilot. Then he grinned. “There was a message for you,” he said. “The guy who flew Johnson into Fairbanks. MacKenzie, is that his name? He said for you to check out of Slaven’s at midnight and not a second later.”

  Rebecca couldn’t help but smile. He was safe. Mac was safe! She swallowed the last of her tea and stood, holding her sleeping bag in one hand. Her feet seemed to weight fifty pounds apiece and she climbed the stairs slowly, the muscles in her thighs burning with the effort. She picked an empty bunk and unrolled her sleeping bag. Beech and Wilton were both snoring, but not loud enough to keep her awake. She pulled off her boots and bibs and crawled into her sleeping bag. Her head spun as she lay down, and she felt as exhausted as she ever had, but her own discomfort didn’t matter. The race didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Mac was safe.

  “CAN’T YOU MAKE this thing go any faster?” Mac asked the oil-truck driver, who glanced at him and grunted.

  “Impatient sum bitch, ain’t you?” he said, his upper lip bulging with Copenhagen snuff.

  Mac slumped back on the truck’s cracked vinyl seat. The headlights beamed into the darkness but did little to penetrate the wall of wind-driven snow. The Steese Highway, connecting Fairbanks to Circle City, was 162 miles of narrow, twisting, treacherous unpaved road that in the middle of summer had some flatlanders clutching their steering wheels with white-knuckled grips. He’d been lucky to find a ride at eight o’clock at night. A race official in Fairbanks had offered to take him to Circle the following morning, but Mac hadn’t wanted to wait that long. Instead, he’d parked himself inside an all-night gas-station-and-convenience store on the edge of town and asked every trucker who passed through where he was headed. Most of them weren’t going anywhere until morning, but the oil-truck driver had an emergency delivery in Circle.

  With any luck they’d make Circle by midnight, Mac thought as he stared out the windshield at the strip of road ahead. He’d shanghai a snowmobile to get him the fifty miles to Slaven’s Roadhouse, and by morning he’d be on the trail again with a very well-rested team of dogs. Of course, by that time the front-running teams would be miles and miles ahead of him, and there was no way he could make up that lost time.

  “Nope,” the truck driver, Wardlow, said suddenly. The truck was slowing. Slewing a bit as it did, but not out of control. Just sliding gently on the snow-covered surface. Wardlow downshifted, downshifted again. “Nope,” he repeated with conviction, rolled down his window and spat, rolled it back up again. “It’ll just have to wait till morning.” His big fists were turning the steering wheel, and then Mac was looking at a big log building with a sign out front that read Chatanika Lodge.

  “No!” Mac sat up straight. “We can’t stop! The road’s not that bad. There can’t be more than six inches on the ground!”

  “You ever been over this road before, son?” Wardlow said, parking the big rig in front of the long line of guest-room doors. “You ever been over the Summit in a bad snowstorm?”

  Mac stared back. “What about the family that’s out of oil?”

  “They won’t freeze to death. Most of ’em have woodstoves. Indians, you know. Most of ’em that live in Circle are. Survivors. Anyway, I’ll call ’em. Tell ’em I’ll be there in the mornin’.” Wardlow climbed down out of the cab and looked at across the seat at him. “C’mon, son, I’ll buy you a drink or two. You can drown your sorrows, and a hot shower sure wouldn’t do you no harm, come to think of it.”

  Mac followed him reluctantly into the lodge where they settled side by side on bar stools in the saloon. Mac had exactly twenty dollars, Canadian, in his pocket. When he told Wardlow that, the older man just chuckled. “Save it,” he said. “I’m buying. Consider me one of your race sponsors. I’ve always admired you crazy sum bitches, driving those crazy dogs across all those miles through all that country in all that bad weather. Never understood it and never wanted to do it myself, but I always admired your sand. Now belly up to the bar, son, and enjoy yourself.”

  Mac hadn’t eaten anything in over twelve hours nor slept much at all since Dawson, and by the time he finished the third generous drink that was set before him he was almost too far gone to lift his head off the bar. Wardlow propped him up on the way to their room, leaned him against the log wall while he fished the room key out of his pocket. When he’d gotten the door open, he dragged Mac inside. There were two twin beds and Wardlow steered him toward the closest one. The bedspread was cream-colored, and as it floated up toward him, Mac thought that he’d better get his parka off. It was dirty, would make the bedspread dirty… Too late! The bedspread hit him in the chest and there was a soft mattress beneath it. Mac closed his eyes and never did get his parka off.

  BY MIDNIGHT, the wind had died. The silence was vast and palpable. Rebecca stood by her team and breathed ice into her lungs. It was time to go. Her dogs were ready, everything was packed up, her sled bag was cinched down tight. No snow, no wind. Maybe they’d been wrong about the storm. Maybe it had changed directions and was heading out to sea. She punched her headlamp’s bumper switch, and bright light flooded forth. She panned her team, all of them on their feet and awaiting her command. She
panned behind to where Mac’s team remained picketed. Merlin was standing, gazing solemnly at her.

  She drew a deep breath and faced front again. Maybe she should wait here until Mac returned. What if the volunteers in the cabin forgot to feed Mac’s team and they all starved to death?

  Come on, Rebecca, the little voice chided. Get your team in gear. Wilton and Beech had left a good two hours ago. Kinney and Gurney had arrived an hour ago and would probably rest four hours at least. The night was calm and still, perfect for traveling. Come on, Rebecca…

  One last look at Mac’s dogs. Merlin was still watching her. She felt a twinge of guilt as she pulled her snub line and freed her sled. “All right, Raven,” she said, and her team moved forward, trotting over the steep riverbank and onto the river trail.

  An hour later a gust of wind came out of nowhere and nearly flipped her sled over. After that, the night became a desperate struggle against the wind and the snow, which fell lightly at first, then with increasing strength. Her team’s pace slowed with the worsening trail. She stopped hourly to snack them, to switch dogs around, to give Raven a break and try another dog up front. None of them was happy. It was a wild night and getting wilder. The hours dragged, and what should have been a four-or five-hour run into Circle took her almost seven. It was 7:30 a.m. when she arrived in the tiny settlement on the banks of the Yukon. The checkpoint was at the Yukon Trading Post, and she was gratified to learn from Kanemoto, who anxiously awaited her, that Cookie was doing just fine and that Wilton and Beech were still there. In fact, though they had left Slaven’s two hours ahead of her, they had arrived in Circle scarcely an hour before she did.

  “It’s going to be a heck of a storm,” the checker told her. “Supposed to last a couple of days. We’re expecting at least a foot of new snow, maybe two.”