The team was shaping up, too. With the cripples and weaklings gone, I had fourteen good dogs that pulled hard together and did what I told them. I had one problem, and I was afraid it might be a big one. Monkey, who had always been my lead dog, was getting old. He was just as smart and tried just as hard, but he didn’t really have the strength any more to set the kind of fast pace that is called for in a major race. I hated to pull him out. A good lead dog means everything: he is the one who follows the trail and answers the driver’s commands, and the other dogs just do what he does. Besides, I felt a little sentimental about Monkey. We had been together a long time and, after all, I was old too. I finally compromised by taking him out of the lead harness and putting him back near the end of the team where he wouldn’t have to work so hard. You could see that he was puzzled by this and not too happy. He kept looking at me and whimpering. But good dog that he was, when I yelled, “Go!” he dug right in and ran. Then I went to work training my new lead dog.
By February first I was well satisfied with the team. On the fifteenth, I loaded them on the mail plane and we took off for Fairbanks, on the first leg of the trip to Anchorage, where the Alaskan Championship was scheduled for a week later. The people had collected all they could for my fare, but it was only enough to get me to Fairbanks. I thanked them and said I’d make my own way from there somehow. What I did was to go to a used-car lot, pick out a ’51 Ford pickup, and make a deal with the owner. I told him that if I won any of the first three places, I’d come back and pay him $700, which was more than the rig was worth. If I didn’t, I’d just return it to him with my best wishes.
Getting the pickup turned out to be the easiest part. I knew I had to have a driver’s license, so I went to the police station, and an officer got in the cab to see how I could do. Since the only things I’d ever driven before were cats and bulldozers, I didn’t do too well. Once, halfway through a stoplight, I hit the brakes so hard that I almost put the poor man through the windshield. I think the only reason he gave me a license was because I was a musher on my way to the big race. “Better be real careful for a week or so,” he said. He seemed happy to get out.
I put a plywood house on the back for the dogs and left early next morning to beat the traffic out of town. I had nearly four hundred and fifty miles to go. For a while things went fine, although I stuck to my own speed and every other car on the road passed me as though I were standing still. I stopped at Big Delta for a cup of coffee and stood at the junction reading the road signs for a long time. Then I promptly took the wrong turn. I had gone about fifty miles when I came to where some men were plowing through a snow slide in a mountain pass. Chatting with them as I waited to get by, I found out I was headed for Tok, not Anchorage, and had to go all the way back to the junction.
That really put me in a fine mood. I tromped down on the gas pedal and made tracks back to Big D. By the time I got on the right road, I was not only mad, but had all the confidence in the world in my driving and was kicking up quite a snow cloud as I sped along. When I caught up with an Army convoy, I didn’t even hesitate about pulling out to pass it, and that was another mistake. Army convoys can stretch out forever: when I had passed twenty trucks in this one I still couldn’t see the front of it. Meanwhile, I was in the wrong lane of a two-lane road and halfway up a blind hill, and only luck had kept me in one piece this far. Well, my luck didn’t last. A car came zooming up over the top of the hill and I just had time to yank that wheel over and turn off into the ditch. Snow flew every which way and the pickup slowly laid down on its side.
I scrambled out of there. I was positive I’d really had it this time. The pickup looked as though it was settled in for winter, and I knew I could never drive the dogs to Anchorage in time. But the last couple of trucks in the convoy stopped and the Gl’s, after giving me a good roasting for driving like a cowboy, helped me get the dogs out and tied down. They hooked a chain onto one of the trucks, turned the pickup right side up, and hauled it back on the road.
I was certainly grateful to those boys. Once I’d brushed some snow off the motor and poured a couple of quarts of oil in, I was ready to go—and this time I stayed a respectable distance behind the convoy.
I made a camp in a nice patch of timber where there were plenty of spruce boughs for the dogs’ beds, and rolled into Anchorage the next day just after dark. That town made me seem as puny as my first trip to Fairbanks, only more so because Anchorage is a lot bigger. There was a good thick snow falling so that ten feet in front of me all I could see was a brightly lit fog and an endless stream of cars going by on the other side. The streets were piled high with snowbanks. At every corner, a scurrying mob of people pushed in front of the pickup and behind it, and I was sure I was going to kill somebody before I got out of that teeming mess.
As it turned out, I came close to killing myself. Gawking around trying to spot a quiet street or a place to stay, I took my eyes off the car in front of me just long enough to go plowing into his rear end when he stopped for a light. He came swarming back at me, yanked my door open, and in a few thousand well-heated words proceeded to tell me where drivers like me belonged. I didn’t say anything. I just sat there staring straight ahead, listening to the lecture and the horns honking behind us and wishing there was some way I could disappear from the face of the earth for an hour or so.
Finally we pulled around to a side street and parked and it turned out there was hardly any damage to either car. Then he realized that I was a musher, and his whole attitude changed. Suddenly he was my best friend. He told me about a nice inexpensive place to stay just outside town where I could keep the dogs right with me, and he showed me exactly how to get there. And when I came back into town next day, after a good night’s sleep, darned if he wasn’t looking for me on Fourth Avenue to lead me along the streets the racecourse followed out of town.
I could see that was going to be a big problem. It was a mile and a half through the city before the trail came into open country, and I didn’t know how my dogs were going to do running through the clatter and crowds of people that would be watching. Nor was the rest of the course any breeze. It crossed several main highways, and though all traffic is stopped on race day, open roads are very tempting to dog teams, and you can easily find yourself going the wrong way. Then it went over a couple of bogs and well up into the foothills of the Chugach Mountain range before turning back to town.
The trail was every team’s headache, but I had one of my very own. On the night before the first heat, thirty-two mushers were entered in the race—the largest field ever—and when we drew lots for starting positions, I came up with number thirty-one. That meant the trail would be all chewed up by the time I got out. Even worse, I was going to have my hands full holding my dogs while they watched thirty other teams take off ahead of them.
When I came into town next morning, it looked as though they were giving away free money. I had never seen so many thousands of people in my life. The sidewalks were packed tight all the way down Fourth Avenue, and men were running out into the street to take pictures, and the poor dogs—mine and everybody else’s—went crazy with excitement. I hung onto the towline for all I was worth, trying to calm my team and thinking that I’d never be able to hold them down for the hour or more we had to wait until it was our turn to start. If they didn’t break loose, they were bound to start fighting with one another. And if one of those crazy camera bugs wandered close enough they’d chew him down to the knees.
Then some lady came out of the crowd and asked if she could help me. I told her to stand on the brake, which gave me a chance to go up and tell those dogs a thing or two. I never saw that lady again, but she was certainly a friend in need, and I’ve always been sorry I didn’t get to thank her. Maybe she’ll read this and remember.
A hundred years later the announcer called out: “Jimmy Huntington, the Huslia Hustler!” and we came tearing down that starting chute like a bolt of lightning. The dogs were just about wild now, and I knew that
until we got out from between those masses of people I was just along for the ride and my big job was to hang on.
It was quite a job. We hadn’t gone five blocks when somebody shot off one of those flashguns at us and the team got scared and wheeled right into the crowd, climbed the sidewalk and swerved left again barely in time to keep from splashing me through a plate glass shop window. If I were just watching it all I’d have laughed myself silly at the looks on the faces of those people as they scrambled out of our way, some of them diving over each other and others upended as the dogs bolted straight ahead along the building line. I knew I couldn’t stop them now, and if I tried to turn them back out into the street there was every chance they’d wind themselves around the parking meters. So I just held my breath and rode along, hoping nobody would be foolish enough to try grabbing at the harness. By the time we came to the intersection, they had let off a little of their steam and I gave them a good loud “Haw!” and they turned back out into the street. We were safely on our way out of town.
Those dogs really made me proud. We passed seventeen teams that first day and won the heat by more than ten minutes, running the whole twenty-five miles in just seconds over two hours. This time I didn’t spend any time counting money in my head, not even after I eked out a win in the second heat. So far all I had was a couple of hundred dollars for the day prizes, not even enough to pay my expenses. The big pot, $2,500, went to the musher with the fastest total time, and I hadn’t heard that anyone was throwing in the towel yet. Everything depended on that last day.
It dawned warm and rainy, the worst kind of weather for dog racing. When I got down to the starting chute I found out that trucks had been rolling into the city all night, dumping snow in the middle of Fourth Avenue so we could at least get the sleds out of town. I came down the chute slowly, but so had everyone else and I wasn’t worried—until we got to the turn at Cordova Street. Standing right smack in the middle of the intersection was one of those photographers, his camera up to his eye, shooting away as though he were all alone somewhere taking pictures of a sunset. I could feel the dogs skitter off to the right, frightened and determined to get around that man by going straight up Fourth Avenue. Well, I don’t know what he expected me to do—I had a lot riding on this race and I wasn’t about to waste fifteen minutes getting my dogs back on course. I hollered “Gee!” and they turned, swinging in behind him and catching him just back of the knees with the towline. He went down and the camera went up—about twenty feet up—and I remember hoping he’d got good use out of it because when it came crashing down on that slush-covered pavement it splattered into no less than a dozen good-sized pieces.
That certainly whipped the dogs up. They pulled for all they were worth clear out to the flats where the going was a little smoother, and we passed our first team. At the twenty-mile checkpoint, they held up a sign saying that I was running second to the team just ahead. Pretty soon I could see him, crossing a small lake and holding the gap between us. Once we got off the ice, though, the trail was rough and I ran all the way, never setting a toe on the sled runner. And that’s when my day-in, day-out training grind back home paid off: yard by yard I closed on him, passed him and was still going away, a full minute in the lead, when I crossed the finish line, winner of all three heats and the oldest man ever to win the All-Alaska Championship. I was dead beat, but still not so far gone that I didn’t get down in the slush with those dogs and hug them until they whimpered.
I was mighty proud at the mushers’ banquet that night.
Everybody said nice things about me, and they really pinned that “Huslia Hustler” title on me for good. They gave me the trophy, and there was a lot of clapping, and then they had me up on my feet to make a speech. If they’d told me to get out there on the floor and have a dance with a bear I couldn’t have been less ready. But there they all were, quiet and waiting, and I took a deep breath and began to talk:
“Thank you very much. This cup is more important to me than the money.” This was the strict truth because the money would hardly have a chance to get warm in my pocket: I owed almost every last cent of it, and the trophy was about all I’d be bringing home. “I’m going up to Fairbanks tomorrow and try to win me another one,” I said. “I know a lot of you mushers will be going up there, too, and all I can say is I hope you don’t make it as tough for me as you did down here.”
There was a lot more clapping then and I figured I’d said enough, so I sat down. I was surprised at myself. I hadn’t even let myself think about the North American Championship in Fairbanks until now. Oh, I suppose in the back of my mind I thought that if I did well in Anchorage, I’d give it a try. But I had trained myself and handled the dogs as though the All-Alaska race was the only one in the whole world. Now, without even thinking about it, I’d committed myself to the North American. I wasn’t sorry. Anchorage had got me even. Fairbanks might yet get me that trading post.
I left early in the morning, driving easily and taking two full days to get there. This time I had some idea of what I was doing and really enjoyed the trip. Besides, it was the first relaxation I’d had since the start of the year. When I got to town, the first thing I did was pay the dealer for the pickup and the people I owed for the losses on my freighting operation. That very afternoon I had the dogs out on the Chena, limbering them up and, from then on until the day of the race a week later, I was back on the same old training routine.
Every day more people poured into Fairbanks. Once more a field of over thirty mushers was entered in the race, including two of my old friends from Huslia, Bobby Vent and Bergman Sam. They’d been so stirred up by my win that they’d decided to have a try at big-time racing themselves. I wished them luck, but secretly hoped they’d go home. I knew those boys, and they could really go, and if there was one thing I didn’t need it was more competition.
The winter carnival was in full swing, and anybody who wanted to could have gone from party to party twenty-four hours a day. Some of the mushers did, I guess, but I was carrying too many years for that kind of thing. I figured I had three hard days of racing left—two of twenty miles each, and the windup of thirty—and it seemed to be now or never for me. So I stuck to the dog trails and rope-skipping and got ten hours of sleep and kept telling myself that in a few days it would all be over.
It was warm the day of the first heat, and although the trail was good, built for speed, that sun was going to drain strength from the dogs. I got away well, running steadily, and by the halfway mark, just as though fate was working the whole thing, I could see that it was strictly between Bobby Vent and me. At each checkpoint the times separating us seemed to grow tighter, first Bobby ahead, then me. I gave it everything I owned coming in, and when they announced the results, I had won by one second.
I felt sorry for Bobby. He was no kid either, and we all knew that his big chance was to take that first heat while he was still fresh. Afterward he came to see me and said, “You’re going all the way, Jimmy. I’ll have to be satisfied with place money.”
He didn’t look like much of a fortuneteller at the end of the second day. Everything seemed all right going into the stretch. I was well ahead at the final checkpoint, and even eased up on the dogs, not pushing them at all so they’d have a lot left for the final race next day. We were actually in the chute—I could see the finish line!—when my leader dropped down right in his traces, lamed so badly he couldn’t even walk. By the time I got him out of the harness and packed him back to the sled, I’d lost my lead and finished more than two and a half minutes behind Eddie Gallahorn, a hard-running young Eskimo from Kotzebue. Now I was second in total time and only thirty seconds ahead of the third-place team.
But the worst calamity was losing my leader, a dog who had won four out of five heats of championship racing, on the day before the last and most important race of all. Now I had no choice except to use my weary old Monkey in the lead, there just was no time to train a new dog for the job. As soon as the word got out, the gambler
s started offering odds against me: one reason they’re so hard to beat is that they never let sympathy for an underdog interfere with their cold judgment.
The people seemed to be with me, though. I could hear them calling as I reached the holding area that final afternoon: “Come on, old man! You can do it, old Jimmy!”
It didn’t look good. The weather had stayed warm all three days, but today the thermometer had gone really freakish, right up to the middle forties. That was tough on everyone, true, but especially on an old leader and an older musher. I felt every day of all my years that afternoon, my strength worn down and my body aching with the hundred and fifteen grueling miles I’d run in the past two weeks. Today’s course was to be the longest yet, thirty miles, with the extra ten miles of trail looped around Ship Creek, the ruggedest country in the area. We were to start at three-minute intervals in order of our standing; the Eskimo, Eddie Gallahorn, ahead of me, and a strapping strong Indian from Minto, Clarence Charlie, after me.
The Eskimo made a beautiful start, all twelve of his dogs running hard out of the chute. Poor Monkey looked lost up there at the head of the team, so I took time to go up and squat by him. I said, “Just this one more time, old dog. Then they can put us both out to pasture.”
Then the timekeeper called out, “One minute to go!” And the gun went off and we came running down the chute between the great crowds of people and through all that yelling, and I knew we were making a slow start, but I forced myself not to push, not yet. We had a long way to go and if we didn’t save something for the end, the heat and those last ten miles would kill us. All I wanted was to stay close to the Eskimo and ahead of Clarence Charlie.
It wasn’t easy. That Indian was strong as a bull and pushed hard all the way. Every time I looked back, there he was, not a minute behind me. And in all the first twenty miles, I never saw Gallahorn up ahead and I began to worry that maybe my strategy was all wrong.
On the Edge of Nowhere Page 14