small contribution made him feel a little less ashamed of the Iditarod trash blowing through the streets outside. It may have been piled neatly when the front teams passed through Koyuk, but ten days of wind had spread the mess the length of the street.
Leaving Sepp working the broom, I crossed the street to my team. The males, now rested, were enraptured by Raven’s alluring scent. Cyrus was a hopeless case. The young male was on his feet, straining toward Raven rigid as a pointer, barking and barking. The other dogs stretched and sniffed each other as I moved through the team checking their feet. Their paws looked remarkably good, even those that had been sporting cuts a few days before. Coastal snow was kinder to sled-dog feet.
A sudden snarl spun me around. Harley had Chad on the ground, with his big jaws clamped around Golden Dog’s neck. You could hardly call it a fight. Chad, limp, was on his back in complete submission.
Herrman had come over to look at my team. He understood the situation instantly. “You have a bitch in heat. Yes?” the German said. “The males fight for the lady’s love.”
No blood was spilled. I shifted Harley to the rear of the team and tried to shelter Raven among the females up front. The lesbian promptly spun around and tried to mount her.
Herrman remained behind in Koyuk, but caught me within the hour. We shared a snack in another crude shelter cabin, then he left me behind.
Out of habit, I grabbed teetering markers whenever I could, firmly replanting them for the teams following behind. Did that for an hour or two, before a startling thought stopped me in midmotion. I was again mushing the last team on the Iditarod Trail. Chuckling, I slipped the marker into my sled bag. With Nome a mere 100 miles away, I had room for a souvenir alongside that damn Lantern.
If it weren’t for the rooftop-high drifts and the spider web of snowmachine tracks, Elim, population 220, could have been a small suburban community anywhere in the United States. The streets were laid out in a grid with matching modular houses arranged in neat rows, the legacy of a federal housing project. Within those homes, however, resided a traditional Eskimo community, which had taken root here around the turn of the century, tending the local reindeer herd.
Daily was staying with a family that had only recently moved into their new government house. There was no curtain on the new shower, but the musher wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity for a soak. He cranked the hot water valve and nearly leaped out, scalded by the first truly hot water to touch his skin in weeks.
A feast was waiting at the family’s dinner table: moose, caribou, and fresh buttery cinnamon rolls. Afterward, Daily’s hosts sat down around their television to watch an hourlong Iditarod special.
“If you folks don’t mind, I think I’ll take a nap,” Tom said.
He’d been asleep for about an hour when a conversation on the family’s CB radio roused him. In a voice that creaked with age, a village elder delivered a warning.
“Don’t let those mushers leave,” the man said. “They’ll be lost on McKinley.”
The argument continued over the CB, with what seemed like half the village chiming in. A young-sounding local musher declared that he would personally lead the Iditarod teams across Little McKinley, a treacherous hill overlooking Golovin Bay. Listening from his bunk, Daily thought that we probably ought to do what the old guy said.
My host was a young teacher. Sue and her boyfriend, Marty, shared a house in the center of the village. Outside, children, sporting furry parkas, flocked around, spreading out straw for my dogs.
As I requested, Sue awakened me after a two-hour nap. “Is there anything I can get you?” she asked.
Three more checkpoints lay between me and Nome. White Mountain was the only place I planned to stop. My thermos was already filled with hot Gatorade. I had the teacher place a few spoonfuls of instant coffee in a sandwich baggie. It was a secret weapon for the final push. I was ready to start racing again.
Sue’s boyfriend Marty led me out of Elim on his snowmachine at about 11:30 P.M. It was dead calm and dark. Snow was falling in wet, feathery clumps. About a mile out of town, I saw a headlamp behind me. The team closed in on us depressingly fast. It was Plettner. Exchanging a few words, she took off like a rocket.
Snow was coming down hard as my team climbed Little McKinley. Rainy and Harley weren’t the least bit bothered. I was running blind myself. There were hardly any markers. I was thankful for the tracks of the other teams. It was hard to miss the groove, six to eight inches deep, which they had kindly left behind.
Descending the formidable hill was more of an adventure. It was a steep sidehill slope. The teams ahead had cut an erratic weave of traversing paths. I tipped my sled, riding on one runner, fighting to hold the team in a straight line. But it was hopeless, too many of the teams had already slipped sideways, carving cutaways that repeatedly slammed my sled into downhill bushes and trees. Roughly halfway to the bottom, I caught Plettner and the others. The convoy was stalled. Our lone Iditarod veteran was furious.
“None of them knows how to find a trail,” Plettner said. With a sigh, she slouched down against her sled.
After a lengthy pause, word was relayed back up the line that Sepp Herrman was in trouble. That was a jolt. I hated to imagine a situation Sepp couldn’t handle.
More shouting back and forth yielded word that Herrman’s team had charged off a mountain cliff, or something to that effect. Cooley and a few others had heard the trapper shout “help” from below. Doc was leading a party to investigate. Naturally I was curious. But our parking spot was precarious. It wouldn’t take much for the team to bolt and crash into the others directly below us.
“Send a gun!” Cooley’s message was relayed by Urtha Lenthar, who was positioned midway down the hill.
“What?”
“Cooley says to send down a pistol,” Lenthar repeated.
Terhune figured the comment was directed at him. Cooley knew Terhune was packing a large-caliber pistol. Well, the vet was asking the wrong guy for help. Terhune had no intention of lifting a finger to assist Super Trapper. “Fuck Sepp,” he snarled.
I turned to Plettner.
“What could be going on?”
“Maybe he injured some dogs, and Cooley wants to put them out of their agony,” she suggested, shaking her head at the thought.
Throwing my sled on its side, I stuck my borrowed. 357 in my pocket and set forth down the slope. The snow on the hillside was waist-deep. Half-walking, half-sliding past scrubby bushes, I made my way to Urtha.
“Give it to me,” he said, demanding the gun.
“No way,” I said. “It’s my gun, I intend to see how it’s used.”
Joined by Daily, I continued slogging down the hillside. It was a long hike to where Cooley was waiting. Using snowshoes might have been a good idea. It also occurred to me that it was going to be a lot tougher climbing back up.
We found Cooley bent toward the ground, studying tracks left by Herrman and the local musher.
“You brought the gun?” he said.
I handed it to him.
“Good. They must have been attacked by a moose,” Cooley said, aiming his headlamp several feet ahead. “Look at those tracks.”
A line of moose holes stretched across the tracks of both dog teams. The intersection was marked by a large patch of churned snow. “I didn’t want to go any further without a gun,” Doc explained. “Be careful, we might have an angry moose on our hands.”
Shouting Sepp’s name, we trailed the sled tracks into the thickets. It was hard work. Every third step the crust would give way beneath our boots. The effort was wasted. We never found Herrman, or any sign that either musher had so much as paused.
“I just can’t understand it,” said Cooley, who thought very highly of Herrman. “Where I come from, you don’t yell ‘Help!‘ and take off. And I heard him. I know I heard him.”
Later, listening to the story, Terhune decided that Herrman probably did cry for help, and that it was probably a deliberate trick. Now that Herrman was close enough to make it to Nome without bumming dog food, Terhune figured the so-called cry for help was a trick to slow everyone else down. Terhune chuckled at the way Super
