Back in the community hall, Daily stoked the barrel stove until the room resembled a dry sauna. Gear steamed from the rafters. I stretched out on a bench table and soaked in the heat, trying to absorb every possible calorie before our next scheduled bout with the Yukon.
Daily had the blues. He wasn’t sure he could face that wind again. He considered scratching. Why be macho about it? He and Fidaa could be in Hawaii right now. With such thoughts on his mind, Tom went out to check on his dogs. He struck up a conversation with a local musher, an Athabaskan who bragged he’d been raised on a dog sled. The Indian was a bitter man. He’d dreamed of running the Iditarod himself, but he said he couldn’t find sponsors.
Daily was convinced that the villager was wrong. Any musher supporting a twenty-dog kennel ought to be able to scrape together the extra cash to run the Iditarod. Get that race experience, he told the man, and then shop for sponsors. The villager wouldn’t listen. He wasn’t interested in merely running the race. He planned to be a contender. Money was all he needed, the villager was sure of that.
Daily left the musher stewing in his bitterness. The conversation reminded Tom how lucky he was. Bring on the Yukon, Hawaii could wait.
Two players were left in the Great Game.
As the defending champ prepared to leave Elim, another dog team was visible on the horizon. Butcher told KTUU’s television crew that she hoped it was Swenson. “I think it would be nice. We’re both going for our fifth. Why should I race against Runyan? I don’t respect him the way I respect Swenson. It’s fun to see Rick coming strong.”
The odds favored Susan. Rick hadn’t won the race since 1982. That was a different era, one in which the Iditarod’s champ could confidently boast to Shelley Gill that he would eat his sneakers if a woman ever won the race. But in this year’s race Swennie was fighting to the last mile. He was the driver on the horizon at Elim. He pushed through the checkpoint there without stopping and, 26 miles later in Golovin, he was still tracking the Butch like a crazed wolf stalking a polar bear.
For seven years running, the Iditarod had been won by the first musher into White Mountain, where teams rested a mandatory six hours before sprinting for the finish line, 77 miles ahead. Butcher was poised to make it eight straight as she checked in at 7:30 P.M. on Wednesday night.
Her last challenger, losing ground, didn’t reach White Mountain until 8:38 P.M. Asked by a TV crew if he still had a chance, Rick Swenson snorted with disgust. “You guys have got to be realistic,” he said. “Christsake, you got a team that’s way stronger than mine, and I’m an hour behind her. Only a lightning bolt or something is going to allow me to catch her.”
Butcher, camped nearby, radiated confidence as she evaluated her team against the competition. “I’m faster and I’m stronger,” she said. “The dogs are happy. They love the coast.”
Midnight was approaching in Anvik. Leaving the village, Barry Lee’s dogs trotted along briskly. They were refreshed by their five-hour rest. It was the musher who wasn’t ready for the raging wind that met his team on the dark river. Barry’s cheap parka wasn’t the greatest. And the blowing powder reduced visibility to almost nothing. The trail would sure be easier to find in the morning. That decided it. Awarding this round to the Yukon, Lee returned to Anvik.
To us, waiting in Grayling, the news of Barry’s retreat seemed like a death knell to his chances. The gap was only 18 miles, but we couldn’t risk further delay. Outside, a blizzard was forming.
“Are you absolutely sure about this, Doc?” I shouted, mushing from the village.
The wolf pack was breaking trail. Daily’s team held the rear. My dogs were sandwiched in the middle. There was no wind, no sound, just torrents of fat flakes cascading from above, so thick I could hardly breathe.
Cooley laughed. “Oh yeah,” he said. “We can handle it.” His leaders were amazing. “Gee, haw, gee, gee. That’s right. Go ahead.” Cooley directed the wolf pack marker by marker, and our three teams crawled ever deeper into a featureless white sea.
An hour out of Grayling, the snowfall was replaced by a series of wind storms. The sky would darken ahead. A churning white wall would then roll down the river and envelop us, and we couldn’t see past the wheel dogs. As quickly as they came, the storms passed on. In the breaks between them, the Yukon stretched before us, a massive alley through the wilderness.
We traveled miles without seeing official trail markers. We relied on cut branches thrust into the snow with unnatural regularity. We guessed that snowmachiners had left these crude guideposts for the same purpose. There was no trail here. If one ever existed on this seldom-traveled stretch of the Yukon, it was forever lost now, buried by two to three feet of powder.
Daily had an old leader named Diamond. The dog was painfully slow and hadn’t been much use on good trails, but he took orders with the precision of a marine — the perfect recommendation for this job. So Tom and Cooley rotated the point position. Mushing through the waves of changing weather and beautifully strange light, Tom felt cleansed of his recent blues. Thanks to Diamond, he had something to contribute in this stormy dimension.
It was my turn to feel useless. Neither Rainy nor Harley was much good as a command leader where trails weren’t apparent. If I were on my own, it would have been snowshoe time. Rat was usually a good chaser. I put her in lead with Chad to give Rainy and Harley a break. It was warm, at least zero under a clearing bright sky. Cooley accelerated nearing a bend in the river, taking advantage of snow hardened by the wind. Rat kept bumping into Chad. He abruptly sat down.
Concealing my worry, I played with Chad until he decided to humor me. I moved down the line, petting heads and massaging necks until everybody was happy. “All right!” I yelled, catching the sled as it passed.
Both Daily and Cooley had vanished around the curve. As far as Rat was concerned, that canceled the chase. She quit next.
Watching the other teams pull away, I had almost cried out, “Wait, don’t leave me!” Pride held my tongue, and now Tom and Doc were gone. I was alone on the Yukon fearing the arrival of another storm. Resisting panic, I calmly placed Rainy and Harley in lead. “All right.” The team promptly lurched forward.
Rounding the bend I scanned the horizon. Tom and Doc looked like tiny centipedes far ahead. Again, I battled panic. Please, PLEASE let me catch them. It took us an hour to close the gap. And when I finally approached the others, something strange was afoot. Neither of the teams was moving.
Drawing closer, I made out two sleds, two dog teams, and no mushers. Coasting to a stop, I jammed the hook down and trudged to the closest sled. Doc was on his back, lying on his sled bag. Snoring in the midafternoon sun.
Barry Lee was warned before he left Grayling, where he had refueled the team during a four-hour stop. “There’s decent trail for about ten miles, after that — nothing,” said the checker, who’d surveyed the river on a snowmachine earlier that morning.
“Well, I got the snowshoes, and I gotta go,” said Lee, feeling well rested and determined.
Two hours later, his confidence was ebbing. The trail ahead was swamped under two feet or more of loose snow. Lee strapped on his snowshoes. They were borrowed, of course, and he’d never tried them on. The homemade bindings were incorrectly attached. Each time he applied weight, the shoes nosed downward. Lee wore himself out trying to use them. After struggling for several hours, he returned to Grayling to regroup before trying again.
Daylight was going. Tom suggested we start looking for a sheltered camp. Doc wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted to reach Blackburn’s cabin, an unofficial rest cabin, which couldn’t be more than ten miles ahead.
We were out in the middle of the river when the sky rapidly darkened. Gusts of wind slapped at my sled bag. Cooley ordered his wolves toward a bluff that would offer some slight protection. Joining him, we all decided to wait this one out, using the delay to feed our dogs. With any luck, the evening squall would skip past before we were done.
It got colder, and the wind steadily increased. It was 14 below the first time Cooley checked his thermometer. When he checked again, minutes later, the reading was 20 below zero and falling. “Watch your ass,” he yelled.
