by Sue Henry
“That’s okay,” he told her. “Don’t push it. But if you do remember . . .”
“Right.”
“One other thing.”
“Anything.”
“This is serious. Keep it to yourself. Whoever did it won’t know we’ve figured this out. It may be important.”
“Sure. Don’t worry. There’s nobody I’d tell.”
“Don’t Ryan and Bomber ask questions?”
“Yeah, but I don’t have to answer them. They did get a little curious this morning.” A frown crossed her face.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. Bomber was just a little weird.”
“Weird how?”
“Oh . . .” She hesitated, self-consciously. “I think he’s more concerned about my talking to you than in what we talk about.”
She thought for a minute, then turned to look at him straight. “I like you, Alex. I think he knows that and doesn’t like it.”
“Does he have some right not to like it?” he asked carefully.
“None at all. I had to discourage his interest a year or so ago, but it came out okay.”
“How about Ryan?”
“Jim’s fine. He’s a good friend and I’m glad he’s there. But Bomber can be a bit much.”
Uncertain whether to ask her, Jensen was quiet for a minute. “Do you remember an incident a few years ago when a musher was caught beating his dogs?”
“Oh God, that again? Won’t they ever drop it?”
“Who was it?”
A long, tense silence; then, shaking her head, she told him. “Bomber, but . . . No, Alex. No. It was much further into the race. He was tired. He got off the trail and his dogs quit on him. He just lost it for a minute. It could have happened to anyone.”
“Would it have happened to you?”
She considered. “No, I guess not. But . . .”
“Do you mean he doesn’t do it now, or he doesn’t do it in public?”
“Well, he’s little rough sometimes, but I don’t think so.”
“Would you like to get out of the threesome?”
She was quiet again for a bit. “No. There’s no reason to make an issue of his attention. Part of it’s probably because he’s more upset about George than he lets on. He thought a lot of George. I think I know Bomber. There won’t be a problem I can’t handle. And if I need him, Jim’s there too.”
“Sure?” He waited to make certain she meant what she said, forced to trust her judgment. He wasn’t entirely at ease, but it was, of course, her call.
“Yeah . . . Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Well, if you get split up for any reason, make sure you wind up with Ryan.”
He was on his feet, ready to go back to his own camp, when Bomber and Jim returned.
“Jensen.” Bomber nodded and introduced his companion. “You and Jess got it all solved?”
There was a slight bitterness in his tone, but no specific affront.
“I wish I could say yes,” Alex replied carefully. “We’ve just been reviewing your trip through the gorge today.”
“We made it. That’s all that counts. Saw you fly over, taking it the easy way.”
Something in Alex refused to put up with this needling, but he held his irritation in check, not wanting to cause Jessie any trouble.
“Want to trade?” he asked.
“No, thanks. I’ll stick with my friends here.”
He turned away to his sled and began to unroll a sleeping bag.
Ryan looked questioningly at Jessie. When she shook her head, he too began to get out his sleeping gear. She turned to Alex and shrugged, giving him half a smile.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. “Good night.”
As he crossed back to the tent, he was glad he had held his temper. Bomber had said nothing that couldn’t be taken more than one way. Anger would only have brought instant denial. As opposed to the cooperation he had shown in Happy Valley, he was now subtly confrontational and a touch condescending. That it had to do with his relationship with Jessie, Alex had no doubt, but did it have any other basis? Was the man too clever, or not clever enough? It wouldn’t improve his image with the lady he sought to impress.
Maybe he just didn’t like cops. Fatigue had probably relaxed his inhibitions and released his hostility, but he was walking a thin line. Alex went to bed and to sleep quickly, knowing he would be watching Cranshaw from here on. Schuller now seemed a minor annoyance.
Although he woke several times during the night to the sounds of a camp full of people and dogs, and once to the distant howl of a wolf, it was peaceful enough. He quickly slept again, warm in the tent and heavy bag.
15
Date: Wednesday, March 6
Race Day: Five
Place: Rohn Roadhouse checkpoint
Weather: Clear, light to no wind
Temperature: High 2°F, low –8°F
Time: Early morning
Before the relatively flat area of the Farewell Burn was a combination of tundra and spruce forest crisscrossed by streams and creeks. In July and August of that year a wilderness wildfire tested the efforts of more than three hundred fire fighters and destroyed over 361,000 acres before burning itself out. All that was left standing were charred stumps and tree trunks.
During years of good weather and deep snowfall, the burn can be crossed carefully by dogsled, although it is an obstacle course of muskeg hillocks, hidden stumps, and potholes. It has been done, from Rohn to McGrath, in less than half a day. During other years the wind, without trees to break its strength, howls across the plains, sweeping the trail down to gravel and fallen trees. Conditions infuriate mushers, who watch with sick fascination as their sleds literally disintegrate under them, or nurse injured dogs along slowly to avoid carrying them in the sled basket. In bad years mushers usually wind up running behind their sleds for a large part of the seventy miles from Rohn to Nikolai, then for forty-eight more to McGrath, arriving in a state of exhaustion. For this reason, some wait for their twenty-four-hour rest until they have crossed the burn.
They stagger wearily into McGrath, sometimes all but carrying their equipment, running on nerve. Some quit, fed up and angry. Some hardly speak until they have slept long enough to discover they’re also hungry. Even during years of good snow cover, dogs don’t trot into town with their tails wagging, ready to go straight on. If the team and its driver ever need rest, both physical and mental, it’s here.
Late Monday evening, two mushers, T. J. Harvey and Rick Ellis, had headed into the Farewell Burn without declaring a twenty-four at Rohn. Feeling their dogs were up to it after several hours of rest, they sought to run rabbit—establish a jump on the rest of the group and take their layover in McGrath, hoping to retain part of their lead and make the others give chase. By running the South Fork of the Kiskokwim River at night, in sub-zero cold, they might make better time than those traveling in the daytime. They could then cross the most difficult part of the burn in daylight.
By the time Dale Schuller left Rohn on Tuesday evening, they had successfully crossed the burn, gone through Nikolai, and were nearing McGrath. Two other racers, Murray and Martinson, checked out ahead of Schuller in the evening, their twenty-fours complete.
The team leaving Rohn directly in front of Schuller was driven by Tim Martinson, which put Dale into fifth place. Two more teams would leave a few hours later. Most would reach McGrath before the rabbits had completed their mandatory rest stop.
All this was explained to Jensen by Harv at six-thirty Wednesday morning as he added new figures to Alex’s list of times.
“Everyone has a plan, you see,” he chuckled. “They work on them all year, along with their psychological warfare. This isn’t just a race from here to there. It’s a strategy, with nobody telling anyone else what they’re up to.”
“I’m beginning to see that,” Jensen agreed.
“Just wait till further into it. Some of them will wait till a rival gets his dogs fed and bedded down, then take theirs out of town. It may force the other guy to follow and find ‘em bedded down five miles farther on. I love to watch it.”
He grabbed a huge bite from a bacon sandwich as the radio crackled to life.
“Hey, Harv. Where’s the vet?” someone shouted from the door across the room.
Flapping bacon and bread vaguely southward, his cheeks bulging, Harv finally managed to croak, “Out with Lindholm. He just checked in with sick dogs and a sprained wrist.”
“What happened?” asked Alex, watching him wash down the remains of the mouthful with orange juice.
“Caught a bad hole in the Dalzell. Dunked four of his dogs and almost lost one of his wheelers that got hung in the harness between the ice and the bow. He’s pouring water out of his boots, I bet.” Harv turned to respond to the radio.
Pleased that he could understand what had just been said to him, Alex wrote a large “Thanks for everything. We’re off to McGrath” on a piece of scratch paper and laid it in front of Harv, who nodded, waved, and went on telling Anchorage who had checked in and out since his last report. In Rohn at least, it seemed things were getting back to normal.
Before heading for the airstrip, Jensen went by Jessie’s camp. There he found Ryan, standing in the middle of what looked like everything he carried in his sled. Near him, three cookers of dog food simmered. While he waited, he was rearranging his belongings.
“Hey,” he greeted the trooper with a smile. “This has to be done periodically, or I lose track of essential things, like dogs or toilet paper. Ten minutes ago it was my Buck knife.” He held it up triumphantly. “Of course, I found it in my parka pocket, where I had already looked twice. You want Jessie?”
“Yeah,” said Alex.
“She and Bomber just went for water. They’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“I’ve got to help load the plane. Will you ask her to come over to the strip when she gets back?”
“Sure. You going out?”
“Soon.” He paused, not knowing exactly how to phrase the other thing he wanted to communicate to Ryan.
His silence caught the musher’s attention.
“You guys going to be okay?” Jensen finally said.
Ryan looked solemn. “I’ll make sure of that.”
Alex nodded and left.
They had the plane loaded and were having a last cup of coffee when Jessie came through the trees to the fire. Her face, pink-cheeked with cold, was clean and scrubbed, her hair combed. Though her parka and insulated pants showed stains from charcoal and, probably, dog food, to Alex she looked great.
She pulled a hand from a deep pocket to shake hands with Becker and Caswell and gratefully accepted coffee.
“I haven’t had time for breakfast yet. The dogs take the first couple of hours.”
“How are the sore-footed ones?” Alex asked.
“Better. I greased them up again. They’re healing pretty well.”
“What’s that stuff you put on their feet?” Becker questioned.
“It depends. There’s two kinds of salve, an alcohol-based to help keep their feet dry while they’re running, and a grease to keep them from getting too dry, for checkpoints or sore feet. We all use different kinds. I mix mine with stuff from my vet. It’s good for my cuts and scrapes, too.” She held out one hand, marked with several scratches and abrasions.
“Sometimes in the cold you don’t feel it when you get pinched in a toggle while you’re hurrying to change the dogs around. This one’s a burn from the dog-food cooker.”
“Bet those sting when they warm up,” Becker said.
“Yeah, well, they get a little stiff. I really watch it with an ax or my knife.”
Caswell scrubbed out his cup with snow and turned to Becker. “Let’s get this fire out and untie the plane.” He nodded to Jessie, “Nice to meet you, Miss Arnold.”
Alex walked with Jessie into the trees toward her camp.
“Everything okay?” he asked when they were out of earshot.
“Yeah. Bomber was a pain last night, wasn’t he?”
“Well . . . I think you’re right about him.”
“It’ll be fine.” She stopped and looked up at him. “You’re going to McGrath?”
“Yes. Please, be careful.”
“Don’t worry, we will.”
Looking down at her, he wanted to touch her, wanted . . .
Catching his expression, she smiled and, standing on tiptoe, reached around his neck to give him a quick but generous hug, impeded by all their insulated clothing. “Hey, trooper,” she said in his ear. “Do good work.”
Then she was gone, with a laugh, a wave, and an echo of, “On down the trail.”
Alex watched her out of sight.
For a while after they took off, Caswell’s route took them up the South Fork of the Kuskokwim River. Because of this year’s deep snow, the race would go a long way up this shallow road of ice. They watched for mushers as they flew, but saw none along the river.
Tracing the trail on a map with one stubby finger, Harv had explained to Jensen that in some years it ran up onto the bank through brush and dense spruce forest along the base of a fifty-eight-hundred-foot mountain to the west, part of the Terra Cottas. “There’s some of the original Iditarod Trail left there,” he said. “Some old blazes on the trees are twenty feet from the ground. Lots of snow back in those early days.”
In a few miles the Post River joined the Kuskokwim and the mountains began to recede from the river as the broad open expanse of interior Alaska rolled away to the north.
“What’s that?” Becker asked.
Looking down, Jensen spotted several large animals on the flat near the river. “Moose?” he suggested.
Caswell circled the plane to come back over. “Look again.”
Through the binoculars, Becker peered at the ground.
“Whoa. Buffalo,” he crowed. “Alex, take a look.”
Alex could count seven of the shaggy beasts. He would never have associated them with this part of the world. They dug into the snow with their noses and hooves to reach the grass beneath it.
“How the heck . . . ?”
“Sometime in the thirties someone brought them in here,” Caswell said. “It didn’t work out commercially, but they’re still here, in small herds. Once in a while the mushers run into them. The dogs love to chase buffalo.”
A little over twenty miles from Rohn, they flew over the expanse of Farewell Lake with its lodge and landing strip. The line of the trail crossing it was visible from above, and they saw one musher, riding comfortably on the runners of his sled. He waved as they passed. Farther to the west Jensen could see radio towers. From the map he knew it was Farewell Station, where the Federal Aviation Administration maintained a weather-reporting and navigation system, an island of technology in a primeval wilderness.
Spreading out to the north, east, and west of the mountains, the interior of Alaska leaves civilization behind. Except for its small, isolated towns and villages, modern culture has made little impression. Fairbanks, a thriving city to the east, is the result of the white man’s intrusion, but elsewhere the names given to the Great Land’s landmarks remain mostly those of the Athabaskan Indians or Russian fur traders.
The weather in this part of the state changes too. Temperatures are lower and snow more dry. Mushers have good running through clear days and nights, filled with sun and the aurora borealis.
As they flew, the mountains fell away behind them. To the southeast, Mount McKinley and Mount Foraker rose to dominate the widening sky. Passing into the Farewell Burn, the troopers could see the awesome devastation wrought by the fire.
Some recovery was evident.
Brush and small trees were about the height of scorched trunks left by the blaze. Though there were areas of rolling hills and some deep creeks, from the air it looked flat.
Watching the seared face of the burn stream under them, Jensen noticed what looked like a fog hugging the ground.
“Blowing snow,” Caswell informed him. “The wind’s picking up. It’ll probably get worse through the afternoon.”
Though there was a fair amount of snow, it was dry, and the relentless wind was uncovering large areas of grass and muskeg.
Roughly following the trail, it seemed a long way across open space before they spotted the small community of Nikolai and its Russian Orthodox church with three crosses along the roof. Later still, the low buildings of McGrath came into view. They counted a total of five mushers between Farewell Station and the airstrip where they landed against a steady blow.
16
Date: Wednesday, March 6
Race Day: Five
Place: McGrath checkpoint
Weather: Severe clear, moderate wind
Temperature: High 2°F, low –8°F
Time: Early afternoon
As the three troopers climbed from their plane, Matt Holman pulled up in a van.
“If we wait ten minutes, a support plane’ll be in from Anchorage,” he told them. “There’s something on it for you, Jensen.”
Glad to be out of the small plane, Alex fired a pipe and brought Holman up to date on the Rohn stop. By the time he finished, the support plane was on the strip and rolling toward them.
“You Sergeant Jensen?” the pilot asked.
At the affirmative answer, he handed over a large sealed manila envelope. Alex climbed into the van to examine its contents. A note gave him negative findings on both the Humane Society and gambling theories. Several other pages included the autopsy reports on the three dead mushers and the dogs. There was nothing new in these but the results of the substance tests.