My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [107]
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