My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [1]
I slipped off the knot anchoring my sled to the truck’s front bumper. The team bolted toward the starting line. My overmatched crew began slipping. Big Sandy and I jammed our heels on the brake claw, with little effect—besides etching a pair of fresh streaks on the ice. Cyndi wisely let go. Vicki fell but maintained her grip on the gang line, as she scooted down the lake on her ass.
“Just get out of the way, Vic. We’ve got it.”
She shrugged and let go. Two of my younger males stumbled over her. My eyes remained focused on the trail ahead. A hairpin turn waited at the end of the staging area. What would I do if they headed for the parking lot? I needn’t have worried. Out on the lake, over a dozen rippling chains of dogs were visible. Mine rounded the corner in full loping stride, whipping the sled sideways. They were determined to catch the other teams.
Race marshal Kevin Saiki waved me straight through. Sandy was no longer sharing the runners. I assumed she had bailed out, stepping off the runners as soon as she saw that the team was on track. But I didn’t see her in the crowd, which was receding fast. Actually, Sandy had been flung clear at the turn. Cyndi watched her skidding away and was reminded of a bowling pin.
The Klondike’s opening miles passed through a network of frozen lakes. Through most of it, the dogs had me at their mercy. I just rode the brake, watching others taste disaster. One dog team went careening down a driveway and over a snow-machine, ripping off its windshield. I saw local kids chasing through the woods after another team that was missing its driver.
I had passed the man, a veteran Iditarod musher, seated in the snow. He smiled and waved at me like a casual spectator. His manner struck me as odd, but I had no time to wonder why. My lead dogs leaped over a fallen log, and the others swiftly followed. My sled smacked the thick trunk, went airborne, and I steered it through the air.
Later I learned the cause for the musher’s strange expression. As his dogs jumped that same fallen tree, the unlucky racer had caught a leg under it. Something had to give against the pressure exerted by his 12-dog team. He let go as his leg splintered in a compound fracture. Another racer paused long enough to prop the injured musher in the snowbank, where I saw him, while local kids fetched help. Shock was apparently setting in by the time I passed by.
Leaving the lakes behind, we climbed a few hills then entered a broad lane through thick trees. The trail here was well-packed, a sign of heavy traffic. Not far ahead, I knew, a sharp turn was coming, one I’d been warned not to miss. From that point onward, Klondike racers followed some 70 miles of the Iditarod Trail, a historic gold-rush route to the Interior mines.
I was still looking for that turn when Casey showed signs of lagging. No surprise there. We’d been on the trail more than an hour, and that was Casey’s usual limit for leading. I swapped her with Raven, but my little black-haired princess wasn’t in the mood to run out front. She kept darting left and right, tripping Rainy, her coleader, and the swing dogs running directly behind. After several pauses to untwist lines wrapped around careless paws, I played a hunch and moved Harley up front.
Harley and Rainy made an odd, but effective pair. Rainy was one of our kennel’s smaller dogs, weighing 35 to 40 pounds at most, with brown hair and squirrellike movements. Harley cut a hulking figure, twice her size and splotched black, white, and brown. When he ran, Harley’s ears flopped up and down, keeping time with his lumbering stride.
I’d only used Harley in lead once before—on a dark night marked by mutiny and desperation. On that occasion, Harley and Denali, the only dogs still showing any confidence in my miserable sense of direction, led the final miles back