Five blocks from the starting line, the trail hung a sharp right turn onto Cordova Street. Rainy and the White Rat guided the team through the curve in a fine tight arc. My sled neatly skidded around the berm piled on the corner. Riding the handler’s sled, my brother Coleman wasn’t so lucky. Slamming into the hard snow wall, his sled flipped over sideways. Coleman understood that I wasn’t going to stop, certainly not as long as we were leading the pack. Fortunately this was the one mushing maneuver my brother had actually practiced.
The week preceding the race had largely been consumed with official meetings and last-minute chores. The dogs, sitting on their chains in Cyndi’s yard, had energy to burn. My brother Coleman also needed a sled-riding lesson if he was going to man that second sled. Finding a few hours free, I grabbed the chance to take the dogs on a short run. It would be my family’s first chance to see a real dog team in action. Bonnie, who was three months pregnant, asked if she could go along for the ride.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think it would be a good idea, Bon.”
She was disappointed and somewhat offended by my protective attitude. I felt guilty. Her father had made this thing possible. But bringing her along would be asking for trouble. I was taking 14 dogs, leaving behind only Skidders and the two casualties. Too many things could go wrong.
We didn’t get started until after dark. Coleman was zipped inside heavy Carhartt coveralls, wearing bunny boots and a headlamp for the first time.
“These dogs are stronger than they look,” Blaine said appreciatively, unloading them from the truck. Until that moment, when he felt his arm being twisted by my squirming bundles of muscle and fur, my younger brother hadn’t been impressed by sled dogs.
As the moment of departure drew near, Screech and Digger began leaping in place, straining to go. The excitement spread, and my sled bounced and wobbled under the team’s pressure, but we were firmly tied to a pole. I positioned the second sled about ten feet behind mine, attached by a thick poly towrope. Coleman planted himself on the runners.
Bonnie was feeling apprehensive. The dogs were much wilder than she had imagined. The landscape stretching before her, an icy field giving way to a dark mass of trees, was forbidding. “I would feel a lot safer if we were doing this in daylight,” she said.
Coleman’s sled trailed slightly at an angle to mine, but I figured it wouldn’t matter.
“Ready?”
“You got it,” Coleman said.
I yanked the anchor rope. The dogs surged forward, whipping both sleds across the hard-packed crusty snow.
Coleman’s sled slammed into the anchor pole, and he lost his footing on the runners. Remembering what I had said about never letting go of a dogsled, he hung on for all he was worth. The dogs dragged him, facedown, into the darkness.
My eyes stayed glued on the dogs, alert for hints of a tangle developing in those first crazed minutes. Coleman’s sled remained upright, and I didn’t realize he was down until we had traveled about a quarter of a mile. When I finally stopped the team, Coleman staggered to his feet. He was weary and winded, his hair was gray from sprayed snow, but otherwise he was fine. He’d been shielded from harm by the heavy coveralls.
“That was a rush!” he said, chuckling as he dusted himself off. “You dragged my ass a long way.”
Coleman strapped the headlamp back on his hat before we continued, but the light slipped free. He was too nervous to let go of the sled and reach for it, so the headlamp dangled, still lit, from the end of its power cord.
As they stood and watched, Bonnie and Blaine couldn’t see much beyond the two lights steadily moving across the open field. The lamp in front moved smoothly away, floating several feet above the dark line of dogs. But the trailing headlamp, the one Bonnie knew was strapped to Coleman’s forehead, continued bouncing on what had to be the hard, icy ground. Bonnie was horrified by that awful dancing light; she pictured her husband’s head being battered to a pulp. Blaine bellowed with laughter.
After the lights were swallowed by a line of trees, Bonnie was nearly overcome with dread and grief. Coleman had only recently gotten over pneumonia. Even if he wouldn’t admit it, Bonnie knew that her husband was still weak. What kind of insanity had brought her here, to Alaska, to this dismal edge of known creation, to watch him dragged to his death? Bonnie hugged her stomach, swollen with the pregnancy. To think that she had wanted that dogsled ride. She felt tears coming as she imagined having to explain Coleman’s death to Sarah and Devin, the children they left at home. She and Blaine drove back to Cyndi’s. The waiting was just too awful to bear.
Coleman and I took the dogs on a ten-mile loop. After the rough start, Coleman remained tense for several miles, expecting the sled to flip again. Nothing bad happened, and he finally relaxed, leaning into the corners and having fun. Riding a sled was like getting your sea legs, he concluded.
Coleman put on a show for the crowds lining Anchorage’s Cordova Street. He was dragged, facedown, for about a hundred yards, then righted the sled with a twist and pulled himself aboard the runners. He was riding the brake with one knee when he noticed a pedestrian running alongside.
“I’ve got your hat! I’ve got your hat!” cried the sprinter. The man had snatched the hat from the snow and dashed after us. He had chased the team three blocks before Coleman heard his cries. With his sled righted, we were pulling away. The man made a last desperate throw with the hat. It fell short.
Unbeknownst to us,
That first morning I didn’t expect my two-minute, lead would hold up long. Team number 3 was driven by Brian Stafford, who had dusted us in the Klondike.
“We got company,” Coleman shouted, as Stafford’s dogs began closing in on us. We held him off for a few more blocks. But he was coming on strong as the trail shifted to a bike path and continued on into the woods.
A short tunnel gave me the edge. Rainy and Rat sailed through it. Stafford’s leaders threw on the brakes. I pulled away as he sorted out a tangle. Fifteen minutes past the starting line, the lead in Redington’s Last Great Race remained mine. All mine.
Minutes later, Barve’s team appeared from behind. I had to hand it to the veteran. We were approaching the exact spot he described at the banquet.
“Stop your team. Now,” he cried, pulling alongside.
I braked. The Iditarod had a new leader. But, it had been fun while it lasted.
Beginner’s luck had run its course. Seconds later, rounding an easy turn into the woods, Gnat dodged the wrong way around a tree. His thin neckline snapped, as it’s designed to, but that didn’t arrest the accident in motion. A 17-dog team doesn’t stop without major persuasion. “Whooa!” I shouted, braking as hard as I could. The team rolled on, yanking Gnat backward by his tug line. He slammed into the tree and spun back around its trunk, yelping horribly.
Damn wolves with collars, that’s what the ranchers in Colorado called Tom Daily’s sled dogs. Real dogs wouldn’t raise the unholy howls that were heard coming from the hippie’s place. The simmering resentment was getting to the easygoing, longhaired musher. Tom and Fidaa, his Saudi Arabian-born bride, were itching to move to Alaska, where Tom dreamed of mushing the Iditarod. But where were they ever going to get the money?
The snow was on the way out. Daily figured his season was over, when a four-member group booked rides. The party included the owners of Track ’N Trail, a sport-shoe company. Daily had his hands full, keeping his dogs in line while answering their usual questions. The Iditarod came up, of course. Daily admitted that competing in the great Alaskan race was his personal goal. He described how he had once spent a few months helping at Redington’s huge kennel in Knik. It was nothing he hadn’t told tourists a thousand times before. He almost hated talking about it. The dream felt tainted by such small talk. Daily didn’t take it seriously when the clients mentioned that they might be interested in sponsoring him.
“It costs a lot of money,” he snorted. “Thirty thousand or so. You don’t even want to think about it.”
Two days later, the shoe-company owners called Tom and offered him full Iditarod sponsorship for two years. It was like winning the lo tery, only he hadn’t even bought a ticket. It was karma. Fate. The gods were speaking through his dogs. Packing their lives aboard a truck, the Dailys moved to Alaska.
