Books by Sue Henry

by Henry, Sue

  “Come on in, Don, and shut the barn door,” Jessie directed, cheered by his irrepressible presence. “You’re heating up the whole outdoors.”

  He moved inside and allowed them to see that he was not alone. Close behind him came Billy Steward, the enthusiastic young junior musher who was Jessie’s daily handler. Gangly, all elbows and knees, he appeared small next to Don, though he was actually close to six lanky feet tall and still growing.

  “Hi, Billy. Thanks for changing the straw in the nursery shed while I was gone this afternoon.”

  “That’s okay. Gave me a chance to bond with the pups. Have you named them all yet?”

  “Not all, just Daisy and the male that looks like Tank. I’m going to call him Jeep. You pick one yet? Any but that one. I’ve decided to keep him.”

  “Naw, I’ll wait till they’re a little bigger, thanks.”

  “Good idea. Just let me know when you’re ready.”

  Divesting themselves of coats and boots, Don and Billy crossed the room to join the others at the table and the conversation grew slightly less animated as all five made appreciative inroads into Linda’s lasagna. By the time they reached pie and coffee, the subject had switched to their plans for the upcoming Yukon Quest.

  These four friends would be Jessie’s support team for the race from Whitehorse to Fairbanks the following month. When he heard she was planning to enter the race, Don had called to volunteer, surprising and pleasing Jessie because he had past Yukon Quest experience as a handler. The four would be driving two trucks: Jessie’s, with its space for extra dogs and equipment, and Don’s, which was fitted with a camper in which they could rest, cook, and wait for her to arrive at checkpoints. They would provide whatever assistance was allowed by the race rules and pick up any dogs dropped from her team at accessible checkpoints.

  At least half the route of the Yukon Quest was run through checkpoints in the Yukon and Alaska that could be reached by road. Though the first half did not follow the highway from Whitehorse, wandering instead farther west through the wilderness, it met the road at the Carmacks checkpoint and again at the famous gold rush community of Dawson City, where the racers would have to take a thirty-six-hour mandatory rest stop.

  North of Dawson the graveled Top of the World Highway was drifted closed in the winter and dog teams took off into wild country, crossed the vast American Summit to reach the isolated town of Eagle, Alaska, on the banks of the Yukon River, and followed it to Circle, which was connected to Fairbanks by another long road. Support teams had to return 333 miles south to Whitehorse, turn northwest, and drive 602 miles to Fairbanks, then east another 162 miles to Circle, the historic mining community at the end of the road that was only 50 miles south of the Arctic Circle itself.

  The eleven hundred miles of driving took at least two days to reach the site where the Quest racers came off the river, and had to be done in all kinds of winter weather conditions, at times frustrating support teams as thoroughly as mushers. In February it was always cold in the interior of Alaska and the Yukon, but on clear sunny days the trip was pleasant enough, if wearing. If a storm swept in, it could be a nightmare of blowing snow and howling wind that rocked and shook trucks carrying loads of dogs, equipment, and tired handlers, adding hours, sometimes days to the journey.

  Since Jessie planned to drive herself, the team, and Billy to Fairbanks, then on to Whitehorse two weeks before the race, the group now at her table decided that Cas would fly Linda in his Maule M-4 on skis, to meet them there four days before the race. While the three finished last minute preparations, he would return to Palmer and join Don in his truck for the trip to Canada. After the start of the race, the four handlers would drive the two trucks to Dawson, meet Jessie, and, when she had rested and checked out on her way to Eagle, would take turns driving the long road back to Fairbanks in one long run, and stop there overnight before continuing on to Circle.

  “This would be a whole lot easier if we lived in either Whitehorse or Fairbanks,” Billy commented, when they had finally worked out the details of the trip, the packing and shipping of food and equipment Jessie would need for the race, and some of the hundred other details that would need to be taken care of before she left Knik.

  “Would you rather stay here and take care of the rest of the dogs?” Jessie asked with assumed innocence. “I could get somebody else to—”

  “No!” His response was loud and definite enough to make them all smile, knowing how much he was looking forward to the whole experience. “You wouldn’t. Would you?”

  “No, Billy. Don’t panic. I was just teasing. Ron Franks has already agreed to stay here at the kennel.”

  By the time everyone had gone home, it was after nine o’clock and had been a long day. While Jessie went out on another training run the next day, Don and Billy would finish packing the food she wanted to ship for the dogs. Jessie felt good about the plans they had made and was glad to have friends who were willing to carve time from their busy lives to help with such a massive undertaking. But, as the rumble of the Caswell truck going down the driveway faded, she once again found herself alone and thinking of Alex, who had intended to be part of it. He seemed farther away than ever after their unsatisfactory conversation that morning. He had wanted to be on the support crew. Would he possibly make it back in time?

  She doubted it.

  3

  “They were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence, puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of space.”

  —Jack London, White Fang

  FOR ANYONE WHO DID NOT CARE FOR CROWDS, FIRST AVENUE in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada, was the last place to be on the first Sunday in February, packed as it was with a huge, excited, milling throng of people who lined the street to watch the start of the Yukon Quest sled dog race. The noise level was enough to induce auditory overload with an all but deafening combination of the race announcer’s blaring loudspeaker, mushers, handlers, race officials, and spectators shouting to each other, and the yelping and barking of hundreds of dogs ready and yearning to run—to get out on the trail in the beginning of the annual thousand-mile trip to Fairbanks, Alaska, through some of the wildest, most isolated country imaginable.

  Though the dogs that made up the forty-seven teams of racers that registered for this race had no way of knowing where they were headed or how far, they had learned from past experience that they were about to go somewhere, and that was enough. Going was what they were trained for, eager for, what they and the mushers who owned and managed them liked to do best. Leaping against their tethers and barking, the dogs expressed their anticipation enthusiastically.

  Among the mushers, last-minute tension manifested itself in checking and rechecking equipment and supplies as they eyed each other’s dogs in an attempt to figure out who had the fastest, most dependable teams that might become front-runners in the race. Psychology played a large part in racing strategy, some striving to convincingly sell the idea that their dogs would be among the finest on the trail, others trying to keep a low profile, dismissing the idea that they might possibly have a strong team, or that anyone should be at all interested or concerned with keeping track of them.

  Drivers new to distance racing were understandably more nervous than the veterans who were familiar with what would be required of them. While the rookies couldn’t stand still and continually fidgeted with their dogs and gear, former Quest racers went competently, confidently about the tasks that were essential to getting themselves out of Whitehorse, or stood casually conversing with other old hands, at least outwardly calm as they waited their turn at the starting gate.

  The trailbreakers, members of the Canadian Rangers, were already long gone. Much earlier, they had headed north into the wilderness, towing sleds filled with equipment and survival gear behind their whining snowmachines, to create a trail that would lead the mushers and their teams 175 miles to Ca
rmacks, first in a series of seven checkpoints between the start and finish of the race that each team would have to pass through on their way through parts of two countries in the next two weeks. From Carmacks the Rangers would proceed in stages ahead of the racers as far as the border between Canada and Alaska, near Forty Mile on the Yukon River, where they would be met by American military counterparts, who would continue to break the trail to its eventual end on the frozen Chena River in downtown Fairbanks.

  At a banquet two nights before the race, the mushers had drawn numbers for starting positions. Now those who would leave Whitehorse first were harnessing their teams and rechecking the contents of their sled bags, fearful of forgetting some essential item. Most rookies carried more than they should, unfamiliar with the trail and its exacting requirements, afraid of needing something they had left behind. But even the sleds of the veterans could weigh in at over three hundred pounds, for checkpoints in this race were farther apart than other distance races, and mandatory gear added to the food and equipment necessary to cover the miles between them made up a sizable load.

  Trucks with dog boxes, some large, some small, were strung out for blocks on the sides of the street behind the starting line in reverse order, those who would leave last parked closest to the gate. This allowed crews to pack up and leave as soon as the racer they supported had gone, without the risk of driving through teams still waiting to start.

  The week before the race had seemed more than usually fraught with problems for several of the mushers, starting the rumor of a jinx among the handlers and volunteers.

  Two of Jessie’s dogs had eaten something that made them sick and forced them to be isolated; she could only hope it was not something that would spread to the rest of the team, taking her out of the race completely. Their energy suppressed by the illness, the two would be unable to race, and would be transported back to Fairbanks with the support crew. Tux, a sweet, willing young dog, injured a paw on one of the last training runs and came close to being left out of the racing team as well.

  Several dogs owned by another Alaskan musher had somehow broken loose, disappeared from their tethers in a local kennel, and hadn’t been found, though one of them had been sighted loping along the bank of the Yukon River near Whitehorse. A whole team had canceled out at the last possible minute, all the dogs sick with some kind of virus or poisoning. A crew of handlers quit, leaving the racer frantically making phone calls to find someone—anyone—to drive his truck and provide support. Another lost the brakes on his truck coming down a hill into town, putting him in the hospital and out of the race in the resulting crash with an eighteen-wheeler headed for Alaska with a load of freight.

  In spite of all the trouble, the race would start as scheduled, with two fewer teams, as the musher without handlers had managed to recruit a replacement crew of young Canadian would-be racers. How well they would perform was something to be discovered as the race progressed.

  Just before one o’clock, an official called the first team to the line. Like many who would follow, a handler rode a second, or drag sled immediately behind the first to slow the excited dogs that leaped, barked, and howled in a frenzy to be off. Others might leave with only a handler balanced atop the heavy sled, which, with an attentive driver and a team accustomed to spectators, as some were, would probably be enough to keep the dogs under control in such distracting conditions. An out-of-control team and sled could be dangerous to themselves and the spectators that were crowded along the temporary fences set up to keep them off the street. Hopefully none of those watching would have been inconsiderate enough to bring a canine pet to watch the start—a practice that made mushers growl derogatory remarks about “Fifi” and “pampered poodles”—for if any nonracing fido escaped into the path of an outgoing sled, it could ruin a smooth start, often resulting in a team thoroughly tangled in their traces and a totally panicked pet, not to mention possible injuries to animals or people.

  Sled at the starting point, gang line taut from the combined energy of the eager dogs connected to it by their tug lines, the first musher stopped in place and dug in the snow hook to await the official countdown. The announcer shouted out the name, where the musher was from, past history of other races, and whether or not this was a first attempt at the Yukon Quest. He then counted down the last ten seconds.

  It took almost as many handlers as there were dogs to keep the team from false starts, and the minute the word “Go!” echoed from the loudspeaker and they were released, the team sprang away full of energy and adrenaline, loping enthusiastically down the snowy street. They were always so hyped that if a driver was not careful and vigilant the dogs could wear themselves out from the simple joy of running in the first day or two of the race. Experienced racers knew how to carefully restrain them without dampening their spirits until the team settled into a normal distance-covering trot, falling back on what they had learned over hundreds of training miles.

  As soon as the sled had cleared the line, another group of handlers moved the second team forward, held it in place, and the announcing began again. For the next hour and a half, racers would regularly leave the gate every two minutes until all forty-five were on their way. The uproar would lessen slightly with every team that cleared the gate, until the last would finally go out, leaving an odd silence in its wake. The difference in the starting times would be adjusted in Dawson, where the teams would make the longest mandatory rest stop.

  Officials and some of the spectators would then quickly turn their attention to heading for Carmacks, the first checkpoint. Others would go home to watch the progress of the race on their television sets, videotaped by reporters who covered it, always trying to be one jump ahead of the mushers, which wasn’t too difficult considering that the teams seldom traveled faster than six to eight miles an hour.

  Some of the media crews, like the support crews, would drive the only available miles of road, making the long journey to Dawson, then to Fairbanks, and Circle. Others would fly in small chartered ski planes from one checkpoint to the next, making it possible to reach those inaccessible by road. Like the handlers, none would get much sleep, however they traveled. Arriving in checkpoints, they might have to wait hours for the race leaders to appear, so they would catch naps wherever they could find an out-of-the-way corner in a roadhouse or a vehicle, wear the same clothes for days, and eat whatever they could buy, beg, or carry along. But at the start, fresh and ready to go, Canadian and American cameramen and reporters surrounded the starting line, recording each and every musher and team to begin the toughest race on record.

  The morning of Jessie’s rookie attempt, Quest racers and their handlers, as usual, had arrived early at the starting area, before it grew light and long before all but the most die-hard of spectators, knowing there was still much to accomplish and prepare before they were ready to go. Nerves frayed ragged for many as they worked to complete their preparations and account for everything they would need in the next thousand miles.

  As the race got under way, far down the street, sixteenth in order of start, with twenty-nine similar trucks between herself and the line, Jessie had already unloaded fourteen of her dogs, hooked their tethers to the bumpers and sides of her truck, and given them water. The four she would not use in the team stuck their heads through the holes in the doors of their dog box compartments and watched the activity around them with interest and a growing sense of disappointment, knowing they were about to be abandoned in favor of their kennelmates.

  These dogs were only alternates until the race started. During the race neither Jessie nor the other racers would be allowed to add dogs to their teams. Dogs might be dropped at designated locations along the route, but a racer must start with no fewer than eight and no more than fourteen dogs. The racers had to finish with no fewer than six dogs, and all dogs must be either on the towline or hauled in the sled.

  Early on, without the blaring loudspeaker to encourage excitement, most of the dogs around the truck lay down calmly. Dep
endable Pete even snoozed, head on paws, but the rest alertly eyed the activity, while Billy watched them and put booties on all fifty-six of their feet. As straining, yelping teams in harness began to pass on their way to the line, Jessie gave the last four in their compartments an apologetic pat or two and focused on the fourteen who were all up and moving restlessly, infected by the desire to go that was sparked by their awareness that a race was imminent.

  Don and Cas had lifted the heavy sled down from the top of the truck and Linda had checked all the necessary items off on a list as Jessie identified them in the sled bag, and moved a few, taking care to balance it as well as possible. She had also attentively examined the sled itself one last time, for it was different from sleds she had used to run Iditarods past. Not allowed to change sleds, participants had to drive the same one throughout, hoping it would survive the entire race. It was, therefore, stronger, heavier, and “capable of safely negotiating a 1000 mile trail, and of hauling any injured or fatigued dogs and the required food, materials, and equipment,” as stated in the Yukon Quest Rules.

  The last thing she had done was recheck the mandatory gear that each driver must have in his or her possession at all times during the race, which included a good cold-weather sleeping bag, a hand ax at least twenty-two inches long, a pair of snowshoes with an area of at least twenty-two square inches, her veterinary records for each dog in the team, and a packet of mail that each racer must carry to Fairbanks for the Quest committee. The limited-edition envelopes in the packet, with stamps that were canceled in both Fairbanks and Whitehorse, would be sold later as collectibles. All these things were of supreme importance, for in the event that any item was missing at a checkpoint, the driver would be required to acquire or replace it before being allowed to check in and continue, and would be assessed a time penalty of thirty minutes per item at the last mandatory checkpoint in the race.