“Son of a bitch!”
The chain anchoring my snowmachine track was caught on a small, firm stump. I couldn’t lift my sled over it. And I couldn’t slide the sled backward — not with 15 dogs straining forward on a downhill slope.
“Son of a bitch!”
We weren’t going anywhere unless I cut off the stump. Double-anchoring the team with both of my snow hooks, I grabbed my axe.
I’d been trapped on a mountain in a storm. Dragged off a cliff. My sled was busted and patched with trees. Now I was playing logger in a dead forest.
“Un-” I cried, swinging at the stump, “stoppable!”
I repeated the mantra with each bite of the axe, feeling stronger with every blow. “Unstoppable! Unstoppable! Unstoppable!”
The stump gave way. The team surged, popping both snow hooks as I leaped aboard the runners.
“That’s right,” I shouted at the dogs. “We are un-stoppable!”
Plettner was doing just fine, thank you. Those pups zipped right over to Takotna. She couldn’t praise them enough. It was Urtha who had her worried. Her mushing student’s situation was growing worse with each phone call. Plettner hardly knew what to say anymore.
“The dogs won’t go right,” Urtha complained. Hansel, one of the leased team’s key leaders, “wasn’t performing,” he told her.
“Is he mentally or physically having problems?” Plettner asked.
“Well, I sure don’t know.”
Plettner instructed Lenthar to find a vet and have the dog checked out. He did, and the examination proved inconclusive. That settled matters as far as Lynda was concerned.
“Look Urtha,” she said, “take a break, but not much of a break, because you’re going very slowly and those dogs AREN’T TIRED. Then get over here to Takotna. I’m going to wait for you.”
The stray had to be a team dog. That much was obvious from the harness. And who else would be traveling the Burn this time of year besides Iditarod mushers?
Then again, Doc Cooley wasn’t an official entrant himself. The debonair mushing vet from Wisconsin was Iditarod’s so-called “trail sweep,” conducting tests on sled-dog metabolism while providing veterinary backup for teams traveling in the rear of the field. It was a new concept, something Cooley, 44, had thought up after years of frustration watching apparently healthy Iditarod dogs collapse from undetected heart problems. Doc suspected electrolyte imbalances might be the cause. The race offered the perfect opportunity to test the hypothesis.
Cooley tried to lure the stray within reach, offering the dog chunks of meat. Darting between trees, Charlie remained out of reach, barking at the unwelcome intruder’s team.
Not far ahead of Cooley, John Ace barely clipped a tree with his knee. Though only a glancing blow, it came at a damaging angle. It was as if a grenade had exploded under Ace’s sled, which tumbled down the hill. He felt like his face got the worst of it. He didn’t notice the throbbing in his leg until later.
Dawn was breaking. Ace figured he could tough it out to Nikolai. Not that he had any choice. The burly musher drove onward. The pain in his leg steadily increased, as did the swelling. Before long, Ace was precariously hunched over the sled, unable to help his dogs on the hills, and enduring terrible pain as he repeatedly capsized.
The team dragged its injured driver into Don and Catherine Mormile’s camp in the Burn. They took one look at Ace’s leg and ordered him to lie down. The leg might be broken, they warned. Ace, a former Vietnam medic, wasn’t entirely convinced. He held out hope of finishing this, his sixth, Iditarod. But he welcomed their help feeding his dogs.
Cooley arrived on the scene and lent his voice to the Mormiles’. Ace’s condition was indeed grave. On a bitter night like this, Doc told the musher, he risked losing that leg, because swelling magnified the risk of frostbite. The veterinarian convinced Ace to take shelter in his sled bag and wait there while he mushed to Nikolai for help. Just to be on the safe side, Cooley confiscated Ace’s boots, leaving him no choice but to stay put.
Race Judge Al Marple and Jeff Stokes, a local EMT, returned several hours later on snowmachines, equipped with a rescue sled. In a bumpy ride, punctuated by the musher’s groans, they hauled the crippled musher to the village. Ace was flown to McGrath Friday afternoon. X rays revealed a hair-line fracture in his leg just below the knee. He and his dogs were headed home. This incident brought the total number of race casualties to eight.
Tom Daily found the Burn oddly fascinating. He passed through the skeletal forest at night, his favorite time for mushing, chasing the tracks of a fox in the fresh snow. The team’s joyride ended at Sullivan Creek, where his dogs balked at crossing the open water. The creek was about 15 feet across. Trailbreakers had built a temporary bridge for the race leaders, but the jumbled logs and sticks looked dangerous now. A dog killer, Daily decided, after scouting the crossing.
Bridge or no bridge, the rushing water had to be crossed. After a few abortive attempts at ordering the leaders across, the musher took matters into his own arms. One at a time, he picked up his dogs and carried them to the far side, wading through freezing water well above his knees. The chore delayed Tom Daily three hours, and turned his space-age foam boots into huge clumps of ice.
Lee and Garth were studying Sullivan Creek when I arrived. My timing couldn’t have been better. We teamed up for the crossing. I rode sleds to the edge of the creek, holding the dogs to a crawl as Lee threw reluctant swimmers into the water. Garth was positioned on the far shore, coaxing the dogs forward, and ready to yank foundering critters to safety. Soggy though they were, the dogs pulled our sled across upright and dry. Between the three of us, we forded the creek with minimal delay and no accidents.
I was the last one across, riding my runners all the way and sending spray flying from my bunny boots.
Sunlight was stabbing through clouds as we stopped on the far bank and snacked our soggy dogs. I took a picture of old Skidders holding his head high, impatient to go on again. Incredible dog.
Lee grinned at the sight of my taped headlamp and the trees lashed to my sled. “I wondered what was holding you up.”
Judging from Kershner’s comments before the race, I knew I could probably arrange for Mowry to ship replacement stanchions and anything else I needed to McGrath, a large village 50 miles from Nikolai. But that might take days! After what I’d just been through catching up, there was no way I was going to let Lee and Garth leave without me. After McGrath, the next likely place for a commercial air shipment was Anvik, over 200 miles north. Could the patched sled make it that far? It seemed like a hell of a gamble.
Garth’s leaders were tiring. Lee asked if I wanted to take the lead. I nodded, and he slowed his team so I could pass.
“Catch this,” I said, tossing Lee an imaginary gift as our sleds met.
“What’s that?”
“The Red Lantern!” I shouted.
Barry Lee laughed.
“You want somebody to work on that?” said the Nikolai checker, eyeing my patched sled.
Did I? I could have kissed the guy. He sent me to Nick Petruska, an Athabaskan sledmaker.
“I have a little birch,” Petruska said, studying the damage. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I tied the team alongside Petruska’s house, pulled out the cooker, then unhitched my sled from the gang line. The Athabaskan pushed it across the yard to his work shed.
In little more than the time it took to prepare the dogs a hot meal, Petruska duplicated the shattered parts and rebuilt the back end of my sled. I was amazed. It felt stronger than ever. The quiet villager didn’t ask for it, but I gave him $100. I was back in the race. Unstoppable indeed. Catching the Poodle Man would be merely a matter of time.
I walked Skidders to the checkpoint and rousted the veterinarian from bed. Though bleary-eyed, the volunteer from the Deep South grabbed his medical bag and immediately set to work, cutting off the bandage with a pair of
