by Henry, Sue
Some racers were convinced the Quest was really two races, one from Whitehorse to Dawson City and the other one from Dawson to Fairbanks. They believed, with good reason, that the success of the latter was based on how well a team and driver were able to rebound from the former, to come back from the first half of the run and begin the second half, to more or less start over at this point.
Though mushers were always more comfortable caring for their own dogs, in Dawson the support crews were allowed to relieve them of much of the work. While the drivers replenished their own flagging energies and calorie levels, at least one of the crew was always with the team, which was bedded down across the river from downtown Dawson, in an area that was a public campground during the summer months.
The mushers, however, carefully checked each animal entirely, looking for any small injury or stress indicator that could be missed by anyone else, even the veterinarians, who did not know them as well. Every paw was examined and massaged with ointment, every muscle fingered, every joint palpitated with instinctive knowledgeable hands. Crew members walked the dogs several times during their long rest to keep them from stiffening in the cold, encouraged them to eat and, especially, drink as much as they would, to rebuild reserves of energy and stamina.
A local service station opened its big bays day and night to racers who needed to repair their sleds, offering assistance, tools, warmth to work indoors, and bright light to see and carefully check every inch of wood, metal, canvas, line, and piece of hardware. Every bolt was tightened, anything worn, reinforced or replaced. Some sleds that had suffered massive damage along the trail and had been held together with prayers and pieces of duct tape and wire, were practically rebuilt from the runners up.
As the official checked off the gear in her sled, Jessie carefully but casually examined the watching crowd and soon met the expectant eyes of the red-haired woman she had hoped to see. Giving no sign she had noticed, she smiled and spoke to a reporter that she knew, and turned back to answer a question from the checker. When she looked up again, the woman had disappeared and the space where she had stood was occupied by a television cameraman.
When the necessary ritual at the checkpoint was complete, Jessie drove her team across the frozen river to the campground where they would be bedded down for their long rest in Dawson. It was far enough from the noise of the checkpoint—and a town celebrating a break in the winter to welcome the Yukon Quest—for the dogs to sleep peacefully, without interruptions. Except for the officials, veterinarians, mushers, and support crews, no one was allowed near them. Nevertheless, she and her crew would take turns staying with them at all times, especially now, although Jessie was the only one who really knew why it was so important.
She picked a spot between two trees and, with the assistance of Billy and Linda, began the chores of feeding and caring for the dogs, while Don and Cas put up the shelter that had been carried from Knik on the top of Jessie’s truck. Though the dogs could not be kept in a heated shelter, and no musher would want them to, they would be protected from wind and snow while they slept on their straw beds.
“Good dogs,” Jessie told them, as she removed their booties and checked their feet and legs, as their food heated.
“Hey, Tux. How you doin’, lover? Bliss, you hungry, girl? Food coming soon. Here’s Billy with your water, Pete.”
“You have an accident?” Cas asked, examining the stanchion she had duct-taped into reliability.
“The blasted thing gave way late yesterday,” she told him. “I’ll have to replace it. Sure glad I brought an extra along with the gear in the truck.”
Don Graham stopped to take a look and frowned thoughtfully.
“Shouldn’t be too hard to fix, Jessie. Don’t worry about it. I’ll run it down to the shop at the station this afternoon and get it taken care of, okay?”
“Thanks, Don. I’ll probably come with you to check out the rest of the sled. It’s got to last me a long ways yet. How’s the shelter working out?”
“Great.”
Behind the shelter, as she walked around to check its stability, she had a chance to give Don Graham a questioning look.
He said nothing, but gave her a nod, indicating that he had accomplished the task she had given him in Pelly Crossing. It was comforting, but she already knew his mission had been successful when she located the woman in the crowd at the checkpoint.
“Thanks, Don,” she told him.
“No problem. You okay?”
“Fine, or will be.”
“Why don’t you go and get something to eat,” Linda suggested. “We’ll take care of what needs to be done here. You need food and then a lot of sleep.”
“I think I’ll do just that,” Jessie told her, thinking, What I need as much as food is to talk to Jake Leland.
The water on her cooker was hot enough for her to wash her face and hands in some of it, getting rid of a couple of days’ worth of grime and dog food. Feeling much better with at least part of herself clean, she applied a soothing cream to her cheeks and nose, reddened from the cold and flying snow on King Solomon’s Dome, then took the time to brush her teeth and comb her hair.
“Getting fancied up for civilized company?” Cas teased, taking Bliss off the gang line, removing her harness, and fastening her to a resting tether near her bed of straw.
“Don’t want to scare ’em to death,” she said with a yawn.
“You go on ahead,” Linda instructed. “I’ll bring the stuff you need for a shower and your clean clothes to the hotel room in a little while.”
“Thanks, guys,” Jessie told them. “I really—”
“Get outta here,” Don interrupted. “Think we can’t do our job, huh?”
She gave him a tired grin and headed for the river, across which, in the flat white light of the cloudy morning, she could see Leland pacing the bank, waiting for her. Seriously hungry, she hoped he would be willing to talk over breakfast, but doubted that anything he had to tell her would go down easily.
12
“His face…was fair, honest, and open…the lines…firmly traced…the blue eyes gave promise of the hard steel-glitter which comes when called into action, especially against odds. The heavy jaw and square-cut chin demonstrated rugged pertinacity and indomitability of purpose.”
—Jack London, “To the Man on the Trail”
MUCH LATER, JESSIE SLOWLY BECAME AWARE OF A PILLOW under her head and the cozy, blanketed warmth of a real bed beneath her in the dark. She felt stiff and headachy, as if she had slept heavily and too long in one position. Groggily, eyes still shut, she struggled for a moment to remember where she was, for there was neither the homey scent of a wood fire in the room, Alex’s shaving cream drifting in from the bathroom, nor that of the unfinished logs of her own cabin, all slightly tinged with dog and cooking smells.
The sound of distant voices, laughter, a shout, the thud of feet on a boardwalk outside, and a vehicle passing below the second-floor room, reminded her that this was the Midnight Sun Hotel in the historic gold rush town of Dawson. It felt decidedly strange and unreal, for she had never slept in a hotel in the middle of a thousand-mile race, much less in the center of a community full of celebrants out for a night on the town. Every restaurant and saloon in Dawson, usually closed for the winter, must be open and doing a thriving business from the sound of it, thanks to the Yukon Quest.
Yawning, she rolled over and sat up on the edge of the bed, reaching to switch on a small lamp and check the time. Eight o’clock. She had slept the day away, somewhat longer than she had planned, trusting her crew of handlers to care for the team and equipment. As she stood up and stretched to relieve the stiffness in her body, her stomach growled—hungry again. Time for another luxurious hot shower and some dinner, though it seemed like only a few minutes ago she had been reviewing the situation quietly with Jake Leland over breakfast in a semiprivate corner of the hotel dining room.
“So, you haven’t heard anything yet?” Jessie had asked, pourin
g them both coffee from a thermal container the waitress had left on the table.
“No, but you just came in an hour ago.”
“I know. I just thought maybe—”
“I don’t even know where to be, where or how they’ll contact me, or even if they will, considering this unexpected death. At least I have to suppose it was unexpected. Maybe not, but who knows? So I’ve just wandered around town to keep myself obvious…hoping. Damn. I hate this waiting—this not knowing.”
“So do I. It sets me on edge. If there’s something to be done, I want to get at it right now. But, as you said, I just got in, so let’s assume that we’ll hear soon. Did you get the money?”
He frowned and looked decidedly uneasy.
“Half of it. That’s all I could get, and I don’t know what to do about the rest. I couldn’t get the fifty thousand without telling Jill, and she’s terrified and as pissed off at me as she’s ever been before. We’re hardly speaking, but she’s coming over here, with or without the rest of it.”
“Oh, Jake, I am sorry. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Whatever. She’ll get over it—or she won’t. That’s not the point right now anyway. I’ve got to find the rest of the cash somewhere, which seems impossible as an American in Canada, especially since I can’t tell them why I need it so desperately. Jill’s trying to borrow it in Fairbanks, but so far I haven’t heard.”
“Well, surely you’ll hear soon. Meanwhile, let’s think more about it. There must be someone—somewhere.”
He gave her a desperate nod. “Yeah, right. Nothing happened for you on the way here?”
“No, nothing. Did the race committee find anything else in their search for Debbie?”
“Not a thing. Waste of time, but we knew that.”
The waitress appeared with a huge plate of food and Jessie waited until she set it down and disappeared before continuing their discussion. Before she spoke again, she leaned over to inhale the enticing aroma of the still-sizzling breakfast steak she had ordered and lifted a heaping forkful of the home fries that accompanied it.
“Um-m-m,” she sighed, chewing slowly as she cut a slice from the steak and broke the first of three over-easy eggs to use as sauce before it quickly followed the bite of potatoes. When her mouth was empty, she could talk again, but it did not remain empty long.
“Sorry, I’m starving. Listen, Jake. I had to tell Jim Ryan—”
“Dammit, Jessie, I told you. The more people that know—”
A sip of coffee helped wash down the forkful she had taken as he interrupted.
“Whoa. Stop. I didn’t have much choice. We were running together and he figured out that something was wrong after I talked to you in Stepping Stone. I was afraid he would say something somewhere at the wrong time, or ask questions somebody else couldn’t answer and would be suspicious about, when he heard about them finding Lowery. And he was obviously going to hear about that, everyone’s talking about it. He won’t tell anyone the rest of it. I trust him completely and you can, too. Besides, he might be able to help somehow.”
“I don’t like it,” Leland growled, chin out, forehead a mass of worry lines.
“Well, it’s done. There’s nothing to worry about, so put it out of your mind unless you need him, okay?”
“For now…but, dammit, if anything else goes wrong—”
“If anything goes wrong it won’t be Ryan’s fault, I assure you.”
“Where will you be? So that if I hear from these guys, or anything else happens, I can find you.”
“Upstairs, sleeping for the better part of the day—as soon as I finish this. I’m really pooped, Jake. We ran as fast as we could to get here and the wind was blowing like a son-of-a-bitch on the dome. Then I’ll either be across the river with my team, at the station making sure my sled is tight, or somewhere—probably here—eating or drinking something. Time to fill the tank. I’ve been running pretty close to empty and the body’s starting to protest.”
“Okay. Since the last message came in through the checkpoint official, I’ll keep going back to this checker at least every hour or so, because they may repeat. I’m staying at the Downtown Hotel, a block toward the river. You could leave a message there if you had to.”
Then he had left her to finish her meal alone, but she was soon joined by Linda Caswell with an armful of Jessie’s personal items, soap, toothbrush, and clothing. By the time she had cleaned the plate, she was all but nodding over the last of her coffee. Within an hour she had showered, put on clean socks and the oversized T-shirt she liked to sleep in, and was already snoring gently when Linda went out the door of the hotel room and tried the knob to make sure it locked behind her.
A couple of hours later, the soft rattle of the doorknob didn’t even slightly rouse her, as someone carefully tried the door.
Now, at almost nine, as she towel-dried her short honey-blond hair into its customary waves, the sound of a hand on the knob, followed by a soft knock, caught her attention immediately. She threw it open to find Billy Steward and Don Graham in the hall outside.
“Hey, you’re awake,” Billy said, grinning. “Thought you’d go on sleeping till tomorrow sometime.”
“Not likely, Billy. I’ve got a lot of stuff to take care of before that.”
“Not much,” Don told her. “I already went over your sled from top to bottom. Took it up and fixed that stanchion that gave way. The rest was actually in great shape for coming all the way from Whitehorse. It’ll last the rest of the race with no problem at all, unless you decide to drive it directly into something immovable.”
“Thanks, Don, but I’m not planning on that. How’re the mutts?”
“Doing just fine. We walked them all three hours ago and they’ve been fed again. You might as well go back to bed. The vet says they’re in good shape.”
“I want to check on them myself before they think they’ve been abandoned. Then I need something to eat—dinner in a big way.”
“The dining room and bar next door are jammed with a big crowd of noisy, booze-happy folks having a great ol’ time right now,” Don warned. “You may want to avoid ’em, if you’re tired.”
This, Jessie thought suddenly, remembering what she had in mind for later that evening, could be used. For a moment, she considered it.
“I think you’re right,” she agreed. “Maybe I’ll just go check the team, then find something to bring back up here, eat, and settle in for the night.”
“I could get you some dinner while you’re across the river, if you want,” Billy volunteered.
Perfect. Jessie nodded. “Good idea. Got any suggestions?”
“They’ve got great burgers down the street a little—like homemade only better.”
“Sounds terrific.” She handed him money for the food and he turned to go.
“Wait,” she called. “I won’t be back here for at least an hour. Bring it then, and ask them to put on bacon and double cheese, will you? Lots of mayo. Do they have good french fries?”
“Awesome, and carrot cake.”
“Large order of both, then. Milk shakes? Good. Chocolate, the biggest they have. You guys want anything?”
Don shook his head. “Naw, we ate already.”
Billy, who was always hungry, grinned. “Vanilla shake?”
“Sure. Help yourself. Gotta keep my team stoked, too. Make sure they put the burger and fries in something to keep them warm, will you?”
“No problem.” He was gone down the stairs in a clatter of boots.
Don chuckled. “He’s having a really great time. It’s all we can do to keep him from sleeping with those dogs of yours, Jessie. They’re going to be spoiled rotten.”
“More likely they’ll spoil him rotten. He’s turning into a very good handler—really treats them well. You watch, he’ll be running this race in a year or two.”
“I’d already got that figured.”
“Be sure he gets a chance to see some of Dawson and doesn’t spend all his time acros
s the river, will you?”
“Sure.”
Hair dry, Jessie put on her outdoor clothing and boots, shut the door, which automatically locked, and started down the stairs with Don, headed for the dog yard across the river.
As they passed the front desk, she glanced at the clock on the wall above it. Nine o’clock. By the time she came back and ate her dinner it would be time to take care of the rest of her business.
“You okay, Jessie?” Don asked suddenly, interrupting her train of thought, giving her a concerned look.
“Just fine. Thanks for your help, Don.”
“No thanks necessary. I’d sure like to know what that’s all about, though—when you feel you can tell me sometime.”
“You got it. When this is over, okay?”
At eleven o’clock, Jessie was back in her room, having spent time with her dogs, carefully checking to be sure each of them was healthy and resting comfortably. But rather than resting herself—as she had deliberately told everyone she would when she made them promise not to disturb her for anything less than World War Three—she had quickly eaten dinner and was dressing to go out.
Her bright red parka would not do for this excursion. Instead she pulled on two heavy sweaters and dark snow pants over her thermal underwear, and added a dark blue down vest. To hide her light hair, she rolled up a knit face mask, usually used as protection from the cold, turning it into a stocking cap and pulling it on. Taking her gloves and thrusting the room key into a pocket, she cracked open the door for a careful look at the hallway outside. Empty.
Slipping out, she shut the door softly and went as quietly down the stairway as her heavy boots would allow. Pausing at the landing, she waited until a pair of intoxicated revelers crossed from the hotel bar toward the outside door, then hurried down into the lobby and fell in behind them as they went out, following closely, making it seem they were a threesome.
“Les go down to Gertie’s.”
“Aw right.”
One of the two, a short, round man—Canadian, from his accent—noticed that they had gained company and started to turn back, stumbled, half-stepped, and wound up beside her, laying a casual arm across her shoulders to help regain his balance.