by Scott O'dell
I cooked a small meal for the dogs. They were not on the trail pulling a sled at ten miles an hour, so they didn't need full rations. They didn't need them, but they set up a howl nonetheless.
Black Star was the worst. He scolded me with various wolf sounds, the sounds that were stronger than words.
There were three days of food for the dogs. They could go without food for two weeks, even longer. For myself, I had some chocolate bars and a supply of caribou chunks. Since the meat would not thaw in this weather and fuel for the cooker was low, I would eat frozen caribou.
Water would not be a problem. A thick coating of snow lay on the ice, and this we could drink.
The danger was not from lack of food or water. We could survive on short rations—or on none at all—for weeks if we had to. Nor was it the weather. Here on Norton Sound, the big storms were always over by the middle of March. I knew this because I was born less than forty miles from where I was stranded now.
There was a greater danger than starving or dying of thirst or freezing to death. We were drifting quickly away from the shore. Every hour, the wind and tide bore us farther toward the Bering Sea. At any moment, if hot weather came, our island could break up and be washed away by the waves. Already the edges of the ice where the waves struck were honeycombed and streaked with yellow.
By tonight or surely by the next morning, when I didn't check in at Koyuk, a search party would be sent out to look for us. They would use the trail, if it had not broken up. They would see the makeshift flag.
How they would reach it, I didn't know. A half mile of open water stood between us and the trail. By morning it could be two times that distance. The searchers would have to return to Koyuk or Womengo and bring back canoes or a boat if they could find one.
The mist burned away before noon. The sky was a clear gray and cloudless. But in an hour a warm wind from the land began to blow, at first in stiff gusts. Then it settled down and blew with a high whining sound. Green waves built up and beat against the land side of the island.
The wind and waves pushed us steadily seaward. We moved faster now than we had since the island broke away.
Shortly before dark a new sound rose above the sounds of wind and wave. A bright red and blue spot glinted against the gray clouds. It was the mail plane from Anchorage on its way to Nome.
The plane was flying low, just beneath the bank of clouds. As it flew over us, it made a wide circle, dipped its wings, and flew on.
The pilot had seen the camp. He had seen the flags and the dogs. He would know that it was not a seal hunter's camp, for this was not sealing time. He would reach Nome in minutes and report us.
When night came, I fed the dogs and myself. I ate more than I had for days. Now I felt sure that someone would come for us that night or the next morning, surely.
I climbed the eewoonucks where the flag was and from time to time during the night flashed the headlamp. The batteries ran out and I put in new ones. The island rocked gently. Now and then a piece of ice would break off with a roar. But most of the night it moaned like a wounded animal.
At dawn a wind blew in from the land. Then it rained, and the water collected in pools and the pools made holes in the ice. My thermometer read nine degrees above freezing. It made the dogs with their heavy winter coats uncomfortable. They dug holes in the soft ice and slept most of the morning. I had nothing to feed them.
Through the rain I couldn't see Koyuk or Womengo, nothing except great pieces of ice that had broken loose from the coast and were floating out to sea. There were no signs of a search party.
Then, a little past noon, a small plane flew over and dropped a package of food. It contained fish for the dogs, sandwiches for me, and a scribbled note that said, "Help is on the way and will reach you this afternoon. Be of good cheer."
The rain stopped. The wind grew cold and the pools of water began to freeze. I climbed an eewoonuck and watched until dusk. No one came.
I fed the dogs and ate the food the plane had dropped.
At nightfall I turned on my headlamp, set it high on the hill of ice, pointed it toward the coast, and waited. Stars came out. Then the stars disappeared in a shower of lights. The lights changed color, they blazed and faded away as if the sky itself were breathing.
It was while a silver sheen covered the ice and the water that I heard the sound. It was not the sound of ice breaking up nor waves striking the island. It was different. And it came not from where my headlamp was pointed but from somewhere behind me.
I got down from the hill and walked, carrying my headlamp. I heard nothing more for a time.
I stopped and listened. It was very quiet. I put on my headlamp and stumbled toward the far side of the island. The light shone on a boat run up on a shelf of ice. A short, stooped man stood beside the boat. I ran toward him and he grasped my hands.
"What are you doing here?" my father asked in a trembling voice. "This is no place for you to be."
I couldn't speak to him. I was safe. The dogs were safe. We would not drift out to sea to starve and die. Yet my thoughts were only with him. He had returned to the places he had fled in horror. He was a crippled, fearful man, yet he had come back to the dangerous waters. In the light of my headlamp I saw that his hooded face was a ghostly white.
We were silent for a while. The island had shifted. It was now tilted to one side. The ice made creaking sounds as waves broke over the edge where the boat was moored.
"We are losing time," my father said. "You're still in the race."
I had given up all thoughts of the race. "Three whole days were lost. More than forty drivers are ahead of me. Fifty, at least. I'm finished."
My father put on his mittens. He raised his hands and brought them down hard, one on the other. "You're not finished until you cross the finish line in Nome," he said.
18
My father's skiff was not meant for two grown people, a seven-foot sled, and seven dogs. But by daylight we were settled. I stretched out on the sled with two dogs beside me. The Sound was covered with cakes of floating ice, so he couldn't use the sail.
It was a long, cold journey to Womengo. We didn't get there until late in the afternoon.
Our home had changed in the two years we had been gone. The climbing rose that my mother protected every winter had died. Its dead tendrils spread out like long gray fingers. The window was boarded up tight. Moss grew in the cracks of the door.
The whole village came down the road. They brought food, more than I could eat in a month. They fed the dogs choice pieces of reindeer steak. They sang the gay songs they always sang when the sealers went out in the winter.
I was too excited to enjoy anything. All I wanted was to hitch up the dogs and leave for Koyuk.
Bartok said, "Come and sleep."
He took me up the path to the house and put his hand on the doorlatch. He fumbled with it. For a moment I thought it had stuck. But it hadn't. He was struggling with himself. He was gathering courage to enter the home he had fled. I opened the door and we walked in together.
I slept for an hour. Then I woke up, feeling sleepier than when I lay down.
The big stove was gone. But Bartok had built a fire on the hearthstones and was sitting beside it, working on my towline, which had been cut by sharp rocks on the trail.
"If your line breaks on a hill, you're in trouble," he said. "And there are two bad hills between here and Koyuk, one going out of here."
He was using strands from an old tow rope. It was the same one that I had hung across the room the day he was lost among the eewoonucks. It must have reminded him of that terrible time.
He fumbled with the tow rope. It's hard to work with rope when you have only six fingers altogether.
"You liked the school in Ikuma?" he asked.
"Oh, yes." This was the first time he had talked about my school.
"Better than the old school in Womengo?"
"They were different," I said. "I had more friends in Womengo."
> "Eskimo friends?"
"Yes."
"In Ikuma you have more white friends. In Ikuma your teachers were white, too. You are beginning to speak like them. You used to speak Eskimo. Now you don't anymore. To me, right now, you are speaking like a white girl."
He got up and put wood on the fire. He stared around at the empty room, the bare floor, the bare walls, the boarded window.
"The climber has gone," he said. "The rose I gave your mother for her birthday once. I never did like it. The catalogue said it was red and it turned out pink."
They had lit torches outside and the light came through cracks in the door. They shouted for me to come out.
"I like Eskimo talk," Bartok said. "White talk goes along smooth like a racing sled on an icy trail. Then there's a big loud bump that jars the teeth in your mouth."
"This English is hard to learn," I said. "Words like 'write' and 'right' sound the same but aren't. I still think in Eskimo. Then I translate the Eskimo words into English. My teacher wants me to learn to think in English first and not have to translate."
Bartok frowned. "If that happens you will be a white girl, not an Eskimo girl. This, I do not like much. What are you now, Eskimo or white? One thing or the other?"
"Eskimo," I said, to please him.
"Good! I am glad to hear you speak this way."
Out in the yard the singing stopped. Now everyone was shouting.
Bartok's eyes gleamed in the firelight. "It is good to hear Eskimo sounds again."
My friends were impatient. They wanted me on the sled, not talking, not eating, not sleeping, but racing to Nome.
Bartok held the towline and examined it foot by foot. He put out the fire and we went outside. He ran up the road and returned with an iron bar. He pried the boards from the window and carefully put them away in the house. He scoured the village and found a sled and five dogs.
"There's no trail from here to Koyuk," he said. "I'll make one. A good one."
It was snowing now, big fat flakes that floated down through the dark night like white butterflies. The village blazed with torches. Whale oil smoke hung in the air. Everyone cheered as we moved out of Womengo. Bartok led with a heavy twelve-foot sled that was used to carry water in the summer. It made a good trail through the knee-deep snow.
Koyuk was nearly eighty miles away.
The snow stopped before midnight, then sea fog crept in and Bartok had trouble making a trail. He had been traveling by sights on the North Star. Now he had to guess where he was going. The dogs were slipping on punchy snow, snow that was mostly ice. We stopped twice to dig it out of their paws.
Bartok went to his sled, got his deerskin pouch, and took out a bear's claw. It was curved and yellow and big. I had seen it many times before. For some reason, he had forgotten to carry the claw the time he got lost on the ice.
He held it out. "I leave you at Koyuk. Carry it to Nome. It will protect you."
I hesitated to take the charm.
"Take it," my father said.
I still hesitated.
A surprising look came into his eyes. "I see you don't believe in charms anymore."
"Not like I used to. Sometimes..."
"You can't be a half believer. Charms have no power unless you put true belief in them. I am sad that you have lost your faith while going to the white school," he said accusingly.
He closed his hand on the charm. I took it from him and hid it inside my parka.
"That's where it belongs," my father said.
I did not answer as we headed for Koyuk.
Koyuk is a small fishing village. Everyone seemed glad the drivers had gone and that they had the place to themselves at last. But some of the schoolchildren came out to greet us. It had turned warm, about twenty degrees. They brought jugs of ice water to cool us and the dogs. Sled dogs need lots of water.
A little girl in a flowery summer dress appeared while I was checking in and gave me a candy bar wrapped in a ribbon.
"I hope you win," she said.
"Next year, maybe," I said, trying to smile.
"This year," my father said and shouted to the dogs.
They were well rested after the slow pace from Womengo. He swung his long whip over their ears. They pulled up the anchor and bounced away. I had to run hard to catch them.
"Do not forget the claw of the mighty bear!" my father shouted.
"I'll remember," I shouted back.
In answer, his long deerskin whip cracked in the wind.
19
The third hour we made only one mile. A fierce north wind held us back. There were thin clouds that didn't move in the sky and pale sunlight along the horizon.
Here below, a ground storm built up. It was filled with icy splinters, so many I couldn't see through my goggles. The dogs couldn't see. I had to stop and let them wipe their faces. While they were busy with their paws, I made snacks and fed them a lot of melted snow.
The ground storm beat us for two more hours. We scarcely moved. We came to a place where the trail branched right and left. The marker had fallen and was covered with snow. There were no sled tracks on either of the trails.
I decided to go to the left and after several miles saw a light. It was the light from a trapper's cabin. The trapper came out and hailed me.
"End of the trail," he said. "You should have gone right, not left. But welcome. Come in and Ell fry you a beaver tail."
He was a giant of a man with freckles, a red beard, and a squint.
"Thank you, but I'm in a hurry," I told him.
"Had dozens of mushers drop by the last few days. Took the wrong trail, just like you did."
"Why don't you fix the marker out there? Then they won't take the wrong trail and bother you."
"No bother at all. I get lonesome. It's good to have people to talk to."
He disappeared into the cabin and returned with a platter of sourdough pancakes two inches thick and a jug of honey. I ate one of the cakes and gave the rest to the dogs.
"How far is it to Nome?" I asked him.
"Most of forty miles. You'd best come in and wait for daylight. Trail's bad for a mile or two."
"Thank you, but I'm in a hurry."
"Shouldn't be. You're near to last. Enjoy yourself. Come in and talk. I'll tell you some fancy tales you never heard."
I thanked him and spent some time waxing the runners. They were in good shape. Altogether, I had waxed them five times.
After the pancakes and honey, the dogs were ready to run. We stopped where the trail branched. I dug around in the snow, trying to find the marker. I wondered if the trapper had buried it on purpose.
While I was at this, a musher came along, a woman with a team of bedraggled dogs. Her hair was gray, sticking out in strings from under her hood. She was old enough to be my grandmother.
"Which way do we take?" she asked. "Or don't you know?"
I found the marker. I stuck it deep in the snow, pointed it to the right, and piled snow around it.
"Are you sure that's pointing the right way?" she asked.
"I'm sure," I said and began to tell her what had just happened to me, but before I could finish, she shouted to her dogs and was gone.
The trail was bumpy for a few miles. In the bad places I ran beside the sled, pedaled with one foot when the trail got better. The gray-haired woman was close in front of me. I caught glimpses of her headlamp bobbing along.
As the sun rose, a brush plane flew low over the trail. It was blue and glittered in the sunlight. Under the wings was a sign that read: WELCOME TO NOME! CONGRATULATIONS! WEISS AND GIBSON!
Congratulations on what? I was the last driver in the race, the very last.
The woman was less than a mile away. Her gray hair flew out behind like a banner. She had a whip in her hand. I heard the whip crack. I heard her shout, "Go, you hellions!"
I did not need to shout. Black Star didn't like to see a team in front of him any more than I did. He lunged against the towline. The whole team came
alive.
We raced into Main Street. Black Star brought us even with the other sled. But at that moment he made a terrible mistake. As we were about to pass, he swerved in and gave the woman's leader a sharp nip on the ear.
We lost a second, two seconds. Not more than three. Yet that was enough. We sped under the Iditarod Arch just behind her, spattered with ice and slush from her sled.
20
I drove back to the finish line slowly. Flags hung down from the Iditarod Arch, faded and stiff in the cold. Under the arch stood my father and mother. Bill Weiss and Frank Gibson were wrapped in their parkas and their breaths hung frozen in the air.
Mr. Weiss had a bouquet of flowers in a box, but before he could give them to me, my mother had her arms around my shoulders. She was crying.
My father clapped his hands and acted as if I had come in first instead of last. Mr. Gibson said that he had engaged a room for me at the hotel so I could rest and dress up for the banquet.
The winner's banquet had been held already. The girl from Willow Creek had won the Iditarod and $50,000 of the $200,000 prize money. But a lot of people came to the banquet that night, more than a hundred. A woman official spoke a few words and gave me the two thousand silver dollars I had won for being the first musher to reach Iditarod.
But that wasn't all, not nearly. She handed me a check for $2,500. "This is the prize for winning the Sportsmanship Award," she said.
$2,500! I had never heard of the Sportsmanship Award.
"It is given for the best display of sportsmanship during the race," she said. "For going out of your way to help other mushers, even though it cost you time in the race. Ralph Stone, the checker at Kaltag, reported that you were helpful to a friend and his injured dogs. Ms. Jacobs reports that you took valuable time to find and put up a lost trail marker."
Then she handed me a red lantern, the kind that hangs on the back of a train's caboose. Everyone clapped their hands and laughed. I laughed, too, but not very much.
