Across a Thousand Miles (20 page)

“I think it just about did me in.”

“I think it was very nice of him to offer it,” she said tactfully.

A loud belch from a sleeping musher punctuated the background of snores and was followed by a moan of pure misery. “Another victim,” Mac said. “Tell me
something. Why do people do this? Why do people race sled dogs?”

“I'm still trying to figure that one out,” she replied. “I'll let you know when and if I ever do. In the meantime, you might ask Ellin. She has her own opinion.”

They sat for a while after eating, drinking their hot, strong tea and listening to the chorus of snoring. “Do you realize that right now,” Mac said, “we're all tied for first place?”

Rebecca took a sip of tea and looked at him, bleary-eyed. “Not really. They got here a few hours before we did. They'll leave here before we do.”

“I know. But right at this very moment, we're all in the same place at the same time. It's a six-way tie.” He looked around calculatingly at the sprawl of sleeping mushers. “I just wonder…which one of us is going to finish first?”

“Maybe it'll be someone who isn't even here yet,” Rebecca said. “We still have a ways to go, Mac. Don't count your chickens before they hatch.”

The proprietor of the cabin pushed out of his rocking chair to put another stick of wood in the stove. He hitched up his suspenders and walked over to the door, opening it briefly and then slamming it shut again. “Well!” he announced as he turned back toward the stove. “It is now officially fifty-eight degrees below zero. Dropped a whole degree in less than an hour. We could see sixty below tonight. Yessiree, it's been known to happen! Sixty degrees below zero!”

 

C
OOKIE WOULDN'T EAT
her breakfast. Rebecca offered it to her in several different variations and each was politely refused. “C'mon, Cook. I need you, baby. Don't give up on me now. I know it's cold and I know you're
tired, but you're one of my main ladies. One of my main brains. I need you, Cookie. Oh, honey, please eat. Please eat just a little bit for me.” Rebecca knelt beside her, enticing her with a chunk of beaver meat, one of the few offerings that almost any dog will eat no matter how tired or ill they might be. Cookie sniffed it briefly and then lifted her dark, apologetic eyes to Rebecca's face. She wagged her tail and licked Rebecca's hand. Rebecca laid the piece of beaver meat in front of her and ran her hands over Cookie's small form. “You're such a little thing, Cookie. Such a tiny girl. Such a toughie.” She could feel nothing wrong. There was no abdominal stiffness or pain. No visible lameness, no diarrhea, no temperature. She simply wouldn't eat.

“Maybe she's just not hungry,” Mac said. He had fed his team and they had all wolfed their food with their usual enthusiasm.

“No,” Rebecca shook her head, “it's more than that. There's something wrong. I'm not going to run her. I'll load her into the sled and let her ride to Eagle.”

“That means carrying her over American Summit. That's going to be a tough haul, Rebecca. Carrying Cookie will slow you down.”

Rebecca stood and sighed. “Look, you don't have to wait for me. You can run at your own speed, Mac. In fact, I suggest you do. Right now you stand a good chance of keeping up with those boys. They're only a couple of hours ahead of us.” Mac stood silently while she packed her dogs' food bowls into her sled. He watched while she began the long task of booting her dogs. Finally she stopped and looked at him. “Well, what are you waiting for?” she snapped.

“You,” he answered simply. “I'm waiting for you.”

 

T
HE RUN UP
American Summit was grueling. Mac's team led the way, Merlin in front, his trot blazing the trail. He never wavered, never shirked. His tug line was always tight, his ears always alert, his blue eyes bright, his demeanor intense. He took his job very seriously and it showed. The extraordinary thing about Merlin was that he never wanted to run anywhere but in lead. When Mac switched him into point or swing to give him a break, he dragged off his neckline, sulked and depressed the entire team. Up front was where Merlin wanted to be, so up front was where Mac ran him.

Rebecca was glad that Mac's team was in the lead as they climbed the treeless summit. Although it was broad daylight, the trail markers were obscured by blowing snow and deep drifts. With Cookie out of commission, her leaders might not have had the savvy to feel out the trail, but Merlin certainly did. He led both teams up and over the windblown summit and then down into Eagle, the first American checkpoint in the race. After Rebecca had fed and strawed her dogs, the veterinarian checked out her team, including Cookie, whom Rebecca had carried in her sled bag for the entire run. The veterinarian could find nothing at all wrong with the little huskie.

“She looks fine to me,” he said, stuffing his stethoscope into his parka pocket. “Everything checks out. But she won't eat? Nothing at all?”

“She ate a little bit of her soup just now,” Rebecca said. “But normally Cookie's a great eater and drinker. Scarfs it all down.” Rebecca knelt beside her leader and ran her hand over Cookie's head. Cookie gazed up at her adoringly and fanned her tail in the snow.

“This may be way off base, but when was she last in heat? Is there a chance she could be pregnant?”

Rebecca's eyes widened. The thought had never oc
curred to her, and yet the symptoms fit. She looked down at Cookie. “It was around the Christmas holidays,” she said with dismay. “But I didn't think… I mean, as far as I know, there was no hanky-panky, but…” But litters of puppies had appeared mysteriously before and probably would again. And the timing was right for Cookie to be experiencing a bit of morning sickness as the pups, if she was indeed pregnant, began to crowd her uterus. The veterinarian palpated her abdomen. “It's possible,” he said.

Rebecca made the reluctant decision to drop Cookie at the Eagle checkpoint. Kanemoto would take care of her until the race was over and they could all go back home. The veterinarian left and Rebecca slumped in the straw at the head of her team with Raven curled up in her lap. It was quite a blow to lose Cookie, whose inexhaustible good cheer and buoyant personality kept the entire team in good spirits even when they were tired.

“You look like you just lost your best friend,” Mac said, walking up and squatting beside her. “What's wrong?”

She told him and he nodded slowly. “Pregnant? Huh! I'll be damned!” He rubbed his chin, thinking. “You remember that day your truck broke down in Dawson and I fed your dogs before I came to pick you up?”

Rebecca looked at him with growing suspicion. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, I forgot to mention it in all the chaos that happened afterward, but there was a dog loose in the yard when I fed them. I hooked him back up, and that was that.”

Anger surged through her. “The very least you could have done was tell me about it! Cookie was in heat! I could have given her a mismate shot and I'd still have
her right now! You probably don't even know which dog was loose, do you!”

Mac hesitated. “It was a male Alaskan husky,” he said.

“Great. Thanks a lot for nothing, Mac! I've just lost my main leader.”

Mac rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I'm sorry, Rebecca. But don't worry. We're traveling together. Merlin'll take us to Fairbanks, no sweat.”

Rebecca gave him a stony stare. “I don't need to travel with you, Mac. I'm perfectly capable of traveling on my own. Maybe I should just do that.”

“I hope you plan to grab a little rest first. Can I bring you a cup of coffee?”

“I don't drink coffee on a race. The caffeine gives me too many…”

“Yes, I know. Caffeine gives you wicked highs and lows. But I'll take the highs whenever and wherever I can get them.” Mac glanced around. “This is a pretty nice checkpoint, isn't it?”

“Yeah.”

“I'll bring you a bowl of caribou stew. They're dishing it out in the checker's cabin.”

“No thanks, I'm not hungry,” she said, feeling very discouraged. Mac disappeared but returned within minutes, carrying two steaming bowls of stew. He dropped into the straw beside her and sat crossed-legged, handing her one of the bowls. She took it from him and prodded it with the spoon.

“Eat,” Mac ordered, “before it freezes solid. It's good. I've already had two bowls.”

Rebecca dipped and raised her spoon. He was right. The stew was delicious. “How far ahead of us are the other teams?”

“They're all still here,” Mac said around a mouthful of stew. “Number one and two teams came in three hours ahead of us. And you saw the third and fourth teams when we were coming down that last stretch. They can't have more than a five-minute lead. We'll leave them in the dust in the next stretch, Rebecca. The checker said that the closest teams behind us are still fifty miles back. We've got a huge jump on them.” Mac finished his third bowl of caribou stew and sighed contentedly. “The bad news is, there's a storm brewing and it looks like a whopper. They're predicting it'll hit in the next day or so, just in time to blow us all off Eagle Summit.”

Rebecca moaned.

“No sweat,” Mac said. “We'll rest our teams well when we get to the checkpoint at Central and take the summit one step at a time. Listen, I've staked a couple of bunks out for us in one of the cabins. Let's go get some sleep.”

“You go ahead. I'm not tired,” Rebecca said. “I'm going to sit here with the dogs for a while.”

“Your dogs are fine. They're all sound asleep and they'll stay like that for another six hours. In the meantime, you're going to get some sleep.” Mac pushed to his feet and reached a hand down to pull her up.

“I'm not tired!” Rebecca said, glaring.

“I don't care. You're going to lie down and take a nap. Come on.”

“Where do you get off, ordering me around?”

Mac squared to face her. He took the empty bowl from her hand and stacked it on top of his. “Rebecca, when this race is over, you can hate me all you want. You can ignore me, you can yell at me, you can give me the cold shoulder. But as long as we're traveling
partners, we have to stick to the same schedule of running and resting. Everyone else is resting. They're going to be blowing out of this checkpoint in a few hours. We need to rest, too. The next leg is 175 miles, and we've got to catch the front-runners before we reach Central.”

“Why?”

“Because I don't want them coasting on our heels going over Eagle Summit. This storm will work in our favor. I want to get far enough ahead of those other teams so that our trail is stone cold and snowed in. I want them to bog right down when that wind hits them on the Summit because I know that Merlin won't. He'll forge right up and over. Nothing will stop that dog. Once we're over the Summit, we're home free. Rebecca, we can win this race if we don't blow our strategy. How's that sound?”

“You're crazy, Mac,” Rebecca said wearily. “Stark, raving mad.”

He grinned his brash grin and nodded. “You bet I am. But then again, so are you. Would either of us be here if we weren't?”

 

M
AC LAY ON HIS SIDE
and watched Rebecca sleep. She was lying flat on her back on the bunk across from him with a gray wool army blanket pulled up to her chin and her feet poking out the bottom. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was slow and even, so quiet he could barely hear it. Her hair was still braided but mussed from her hat, and several unruly wisps had escaped the confines of the braid. They softened the contours of her face. Her arms were beneath the cover, her slender fingers curling over the upper edge of it. She had been sleeping like that for three hours, and Mac had been watching her for almost as long. He knew he should try to get some
sleep himself, but he was afraid that if he closed his eyes she might disappear. After all, she had threatened to leave the checkpoint without him.

He couldn't imagine her not being there with him. Most of the racers traveled in pairs, and he could understand why. For the front-runners it was probably to keep a close eye on each other, but for others it was perhaps more for safety reasons than anything else. Mushers could look out for each other, help each other through the tough spots, bolster flagging spirits.

Mac studied Rebecca. She was undoubtedly one of the strongest people he'd ever known. Never once had she complained about the cold or about being exhausted, or hungry, or lame and sore. He'd heard plenty of moaning from the other mushers, but not a word from Rebecca. She was one of only two women who had entered the race. The second one had dropped out—scratched— along with several other mushers back in Dawson.

He was in love with her, no doubt about it. He'd willingly lay down his life for her. He longed to touch her, to take her into his arms, to feel the smooth skin of her face beneath his fingertips, to trace the outline of her lips, to taste the tender sweetness of her kiss. If he hadn't been so exhausted, he might really have gone stark, raving mad with this painfully unrequited love. Instead, he leaned on his elbow, head propped on his hand, and studied her in the dim light.

They had the bunk room to themselves, courtesy of one of Eagle's many generous and warmhearted residents. In the cabin's main room, soft voices droned in conversation. He heard someone open the woodstove and then a heavy thump as another log was fed into the fire. A squeak, a clank, and the stove was closed again.

Rebecca opened her eyes. She lay for a moment star
ing up at the ceiling and then she turned her head and looked directly at Mac. Her eyes widened, startled. “What are you doing?” she whispered, raising a hand to brush the strands of hair away from her forehead.

“Watching you sleep,” Mac said. “Just making sure you followed orders.”

“What time is it? Have the other racers gone?”