by Henry, Sue
“Have they found Debbie Todd yet?”
“Not yet. But everybody’s looking.”
“Damn, that’s so strange, don’t you think? How could she just disappear like that?”
It was good to know that word of the abduction had not made its rounds of the notoriously gossipy racing group, but Jessie shook her head and tried to change the subject. “I have no idea. Are you ready to go out?”
“Just about. What time do you leave?”
“Eight-forty. You?”
“Eight-fifty-three.”
He would be right behind her by thirteen minutes. It wasn’t an unwelcome thought.
“What number did you start?” she asked him, a half-formed idea drifting through her mind.
“Eleven.”
So—he had started between her and Debbie. But she didn’t remember passing him before Braeburn, so he must have passed Debbie and been ahead of them both. Still, he had to have been running very close to the girl when she disappeared.
“Did you see Debbie between Braeburn and the Chain of Lakes?”
“No, but I think she left ahead of me. I was still taking it easy with the dogs, making sure they didn’t run themselves into the ground.”
Well, he could have missed her somewhere, passing without seeing her.
More paranoia, Jessie decided. Why can’t I let it go, even long enough to eat lunch? She settled back in her chair and poured cream into her coffee.
“Well, what do you think of it so far?” she asked Ehlers. “Everything you imagined it would be?”
“And more. What great country. I’ve got to come back up here in the summer and spend some time exploring this gold rush country; it’s fascinating. Have you been to Dawson before?”
“Yes, and it’s great. Up and down the rivers all around here are historic locations—mines, discoveries, old log cabins. There’s even a steamboat graveyard across the river. What kind of a kennel do you have in Minnesota?”
“Not as big as yours, I’ll bet. I’ve got thirty-two dogs—maybe a few more when I get back, since I left a bitch about to have pups.”
“Got someone good to take care of them while you’re gone?”
“Yeah, another mushing buddy. We trade off when one of us wants to be away, racing, or whatever. I’ve never been gone this long or this far before, but then, I’ve never run a Quest, either.”
“No family?”
“No. I’m afraid my obsession with racing finally got to be too much for my marriage three years ago.” He frowned and a resigned expression flitted across his face. “No kids, which was good, I guess.”
Another mushing casualty, Jessie thought. Some relationships survived, some didn’t, and she shouldn’t blame it all on running dogs, she supposed. Still, it was a time-intensive sport that also demanded most of the musher’s energy, focus, and money, leaving too little for a family who did not always understand or agree with these expenditures. Some spouses, on the other hand, became as enthused as their partners, which could turn into a competition that might also be lethal to a marriage or relationship.
Once again, she refused to let herself dwell on an assessment of her own alliance with Alex. Turning her attention to her lunch companion, she realized that she was attracted to the man who sat across the table, and only partly because they shared an interest. He looked up at her and smiled in response to her reflective look.
“A penny?”
“Ah…what?”
“A penny for your thoughts. You looked a long ways away.”
“Oh…that?” She smiled. “Not worth it.” And pulled her concentration back to sled dog racing.
“Is this very different from racing at home?”
“Not much. Some slightly different rules, but mostly they’re the ones that make this race unique and are required to make it run smoothly.”
The lunch they had ordered arrived and their conversation drifted into sporadic comments as they both turned their attention to it. For the first waking moment since she had arrived in Dawson, Jessie relaxed and let herself simply enjoy the food. What would be, would be. All she could do was go along with whatever was required of her, and she didn’t have to do it right now. She was glad Lynn Ehlers had appeared when he did. He was easy to be with, and as comfortable with silence as with talk. Just what she needed at the moment.
When Jessie drove her team through the dark to the checkpoint that evening at eight-thirty, Ryan had already left Dawson on his way across the summit to Eagle. Ehlers would soon be behind her on the trail.
She was not surprised to find Ned Bishop acting as checker, and Leland hovering nearby, clearly in sight.
“Here’s your package, Jessie,” Bishop told her, stepping close enough not to be overheard, and tucking it into her sled as he checked her required gear. It was wrapped in black plastic and, as required, taped securely with easily identifiable red duct tape.
“They’ve narrowed the field somewhat by giving us a broad clue of where they may make a try for it—where you’ll be most isolated, up on top. Not much, but maybe some help, okay? Delafosse says to be extremely careful. These people are clearly not to be taken lightly. He thought about sending someone in your place, but is afraid you were picked because they know you and would see through a switch in a minute.”
Startled, she tried not to show it. Anyone could be watching now, but that was the idea—that they could see but not hear what was said. Delafosse had evidently changed his mind about waiting until she had gone, which didn’t make her unhappy.
“Del’s talked to you? Does Jake Leland know?”
“Yeah, he knows. He’s not too happy with you, Jessie. But he’ll get over it. If you had to go to someone—and I personally think it was a good idea—you clearly went to the right person. The inspector evidently knows how and when to keep his mouth shut, from what I’ve seen so far—which is almost nothing of him, but a fair amount of a friend of his from the museum staff. It’ll be all right.”
Del was clearly making more use of Robert Fitzgerald than just delivering handguns.
“I hope so. I’m the one out there, if anything goes wrong. Don’t let Leland get crazy and do anything to cause trouble. He must be pretty upset, and he’s used to doing things his way.”
“We won’t. I don’t think he’d risk it anyway, but it’s Jill we’ll be keeping an eye on. She’s really not doing well with all this, furious with Jake, and terrified for Debbie. The minute you get to Eagle get in touch with us. We need to know that you’re okay, and how and where the drop went down.”
“Once they have it, I’ll be making a fast run to Eagle, or wherever is the closest place I can call from. Tell Del I said thanks for the…protection.”
“Yeah, we know about it.” He grinned as he patted her on one shoulder, and said quietly, showing his teeth in a teasing grin that she knew was intended to lighten the exchange, “Try not to use it in Canada, Jessie. If you have to…ah…protect yourself, do it in Alaska. Less hassle for everybody that way.”
“Ned, you turkey. If I need it, I’m not going to care, but I’ll keep it in mind.”
As she pulled away from the checkpoint, she caught a glimpse of the familiar blue and yellow parka she had seen earlier in the race. So, Rick Roney is here to watch me leave, she noted. Or maybe he’s about to go out, too—minus Lowery. He wouldn’t have anything to do with killing his own handler—would he? She had no way of knowing, but their leave time would be close. It was always possible that he could be her secret, silent observer. Anyone could. Best to be watchful and careful of anyone she did not know well enough to trust. She would keep an eye out for him on the trail, especially through this part of it.
Ten minutes later, she was alone and gliding through the night, the reflective tape on the harnesses of her thoroughly rested and rejuvenated dogs flashing in the light from her headlamp as they trotted eagerly along the river ice, settling into a run she hoped would result in the return of Debbie Todd. She had no idea how, where, or wh
en she would find out about dropping the $200,000 she carried in the sled, but the handgun was securely zipped into a convenient pocket of her red parka, where she would be able to reach it quickly if necessary.
15
“There be places where there is a fall to the river, and the water is unruly, and the ice makes above and is eaten away beneath. In such a spot the sled I drove broke through, and the dogs.”
—Jack London, “An Odyssey of the North”
DAWSON CITY WAS LOCATED AT THE CONFLUENCE OF THE Yukon and Klondike rivers. The added water of the smaller river increased the flow and created rough and rugged winter ice, with huge blocks that had jumbled up in the freezing and refreezing—blocks as big as boxcars or small houses that the mushers were forced to run between on a winding track laid down by the trailbreakers on their snowmachines.
People from Dawson had worked hard with chain saws, sledgehammers, and axes to clear the way through this silent city of ice, making it as safe as possible for the dogs and drivers. But, after a mile or so of twists and turns, Jessie found herself once again forced off the ice for three or four portages onto the historic freight and mail route that had been used by mushers in the old days. It took complete concentration and quick reactions to avoid crashes, as she ran the team back and forth between this trail and the river track below it on the Yukon.
“Take a left, Tank—go gee. Up now, onto the bank. Good boy. Haw—go haw now. That’s it. Good dogs.”
Her leader gave her a glance over his shoulder that told her she needn’t have bothered with instructions, that he was totally capable of negotiating the obstacle course on his own, as he moved with experienced confidence up the riverbank and along the trail.
After this demanding section, Jessie noticed that the land around the river had begun to widen, allowing its banks to spread farther apart, and the slowing of the current had made smoother ice as it froze in the autumn. Because of this, and also due to the many small rivers and creeks that poured into it during the warmer months of the year, the broadening Yukon showed the first signs of becoming a really big river.
Through the night, she ran alone, neither passing, nor being passed by, another musher. Once she thought she heard dogs barking a long ways behind her, and, going around a bend in the river more than two hours after leaving Dawson, saw a flash of light that might have been a musher’s headlamp, but it did not reappear. For the first time in several years of mushing, she felt very much alone and vulnerable. It reminded her of the fear she had experienced during one Iditarod race when she had known there was a killer on the trail somewhere. Tension tightened her neck and shoulder muscles, and kept her awake and alert, on the lookout for anything unusual.
The temperature had dropped a little more and the sky was overcast, allowing no light from moon or aurora borealis to add definition to the trail with soft light and deep shadows. The dogs kept up a good pace, well rested and eager to run, as they always were when starting a new race. After the long layover in Dawson, this seemed like a new race, but she knew that the feeling was also because her objective in running had decidedly shifted. Now it was much more a race to deliver the ransom and less a race to Fairbanks. It no longer mattered so much to her where, or even if, she placed well in the Yukon Quest.
Where and when, she wondered, would she find out how to drop the money she carried? Who would pick it up? How would the kidnappers contact her? Was anyone keeping track of her progress? It would be difficult for anyone to come near her on the trail without her knowledge. But the kidnappers could certainly find out where she was at a couple of unofficial stopping places along the river between Dawson and Eagle.
A stiff and chilly breeze had come up, swirling dry grains of snow across the ice in ripples and waves, moaning enough to make it difficult for anyone at a distance to hear the scraping sounds of her runners over the ice and her infrequent commands to her dogs, though her headlamp would be a bright, moving point of light in the darkness. Her vision was limited to what fell within the circle of light from that lamp, so she saw very little of what she was passing.
Mushers, intent on winning a race, trying to keep other racers from knowing how fast they were traveling or exactly where they were, sometimes turned off their headlamps and ran in the dark, trusting their lead dog to keep the team on a trail other dogs had passed over before them. This could be misleading if the front-runner took a wrong turn, and it was not unheard-of for several racers to wind up lost together and retracing their own trail.
It was pleasant to run dark when the northern lights were putting on a show overhead, but in the inky blackness of this overcast, Jessie had no inclination to switch off her headlamp, for she found that even the single, narrow beam was a comfort compared to the immensity of the wilderness that surrounded her. This was a foreign feeling, for she often found it more comfortable to be out with her dogs in the wide, welcoming, open spaces of the north than confined inside walls and behind closed doors. Now she was constantly aware that anything, or anyone, could be out there, unseen. She felt observed, as if some threatening watcher knew exactly where she was and followed her every move from some hidden location. The feeling made her swallow hard and glance often behind her, though there was never anything to see, and if there had been, she could hardly have seen it anyway, light-blind as she was.
At one long curve of the river, high on a west bank that Jessie felt was there but could not make out, a figure was watching as she steadily moved past on the ice below. The bluff was not as high as that on the Takhini a few days earlier in the race, but it was farther from the track the racers followed, for the river here was much wider and the trailbreakers had found the smoothest ice near the center of it.
Secreted in the black silence of the night, a lone individual stood beside the snowmachine that had carried him to the spot an hour earlier. There he had waited, frequently moving to make sure his feet were warm in their insulated boots, swinging his arms and tucking his hands in their heavy mitts into his armpits a time or two—not because they were cold, but because it seemed that they should be, with the temperature hovering at less than twenty below. As the bobbing beam of Jessie’s headlamp fell onto the scarlet bag of gear in her sled, it illuminated the white letters of the name painted on the side, ARNOLD KENNELS, and from his lookout the watcher knew this was indeed the musher for whom he had waited. He stood without moving near one of the trees that lined the banks of the river and waited until the dancing light disappeared around the next bend. Then he waited a while longer and, twenty minutes later, was rewarded by the appearance of another light following the same track.
He did not bother to ascertain the identity of this racer, wanting only to know how closely Jessie was being followed by the next team, but did not start up the engine of the snowmachine until this light had also vanished around the bend. Then the machine roared to life, shattering the peaceful stillness.
Another musher, still out of sight, heard it and raised her head from the standing doze she had fallen into on the runners of her sled, wondering what on earth anyone could be doing out along an uninhabited section of the Yukon in the frozen dark. The sound was faint, however, and had ended by the time she rounded a curve and approached the location where the watcher had stood, so she shrugged it off and continued toward Forty Mile.
Running on the ice of a river, though rough at times, was always essentially the same—flat. Flowing in broad bends through a sweeping expanse of country, following the path of least resistance, rivers lack sharp curves, and do not give mushers and sleds the up-and-down motion of a trail on solid ground. Adding to the sameness was an odd feeling that Jessie was making no headway at all in the total dark, that the forward motion of the team was merely an illusion and she was remaining in the same place—like a jogger on a treadmill.
Clouds overhead reflect light back to the earth, when there is light to be reflected. In the enormous almost-deserted wilderness between Canada and Alaska there is seldom any light at all and what there
is comes only from the tiny fire a musher may build for warmth or food, or the glow from a cabin’s window that barely reaches the snow-covered ground outside. Such slight gleams are easily snatched and swallowed up by the encroaching dark.
Traveling through the blackness on ice over water often gave Jessie a sensation of being somehow suspended, that she was floating, not really touching the earth, though the surface, in most places frozen several feet deep, was more than substantial. She had noticed the same feeling close to the end of the Iditarod as she traveled across the sea ice of Norton Sound near Nome.
Sometime before midnight she pulled up the bank and stopped for a short rest at a tiny wilderness cabin that belonged to a former Quest racer, then continued for another hour and took a long one in a spot on the riverbank where she found Ryan bedding down his own team, cooker already alight under a kettle of melting snow.
“Hey,” he greeted her quietly, careful not to disturb the team that was resting close to his, another musher soundly sleeping on a pile of straw near his dogs.
“Who’s that?”
“Gail Murray. Glad you made it. Everything okay?”
“Just fine. It’s pretty black out there, though. I didn’t get to see much of the country.”
“Like running in a tunnel, isn’t it? I’ve made a daylight run through here before, going the other direction, and you didn’t miss much but riverbank and miles of ice. The wind’s picking up—it’ll be howling down the channel soon. Guess you were right about the weather changing. We’re supposed to catch some more snow on the summit.”
“At least we’ll be going over most of that in the daylight. I think I’d rather be blinded by snow than only be able to see what my headlamp hits and have to imagine the rest.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Ryan agreed. “Still, it could be a real struggle. This summit doesn’t have a lot of switchbacks, just a couple of quick ones. It just goes up and up—straight up the mountain at an angle so steep you’ll be pushing your sled to help the dogs keep it moving, when it’s just about all you can do to move yourself. You think it’s never going to end, then it goes on some more, and that’s in good weather. In bad weather it can be a real bitch. There’re always teams that quit and refuse to go on until they’ve rested and made up their minds to it, and there’s no place to rest that’s out of the wind and blowing snow.”