My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [111]
“We found it as soon as you left,” she said. “You didn’t need to come back for it. We would have sent it to White Mountain on a snowmachine.”
I sighed. “Came too far to take that chance.”
Facing the exit trail, I snacked the dogs and petted them, trying to make a game of this latest pilot error. The crew responded as I hoped, wagging their tails, acting perky. But their spirits crumbled when I ordered Harley and Rainy to move out again. The lesbian didn’t want to go at all. Raven’s crotch was suddenly more interesting than anything waiting ahead. Harley froze, torn between my demands and the lure of Raven.
“Go ahead! Go ahead, Harley!” I insisted.
The big dog looked at me, a forlorn expression written on his face, then he lurched ahead, dragging Rainy to work. My dogs stumbled out of Golovin like POWs. Their ears were down. Pauses were frequent. All thirteen dogs had to relieve their bladders, or take smelly dumps, or both. I was the Bad Guy riding the heavy sled.
The accusatory looks didn’t impress me. We were only going eighteen miles. Not a damn one of them was really tired. Hungry, yes. They hadn’t had a hot meal since Elim. But my fine athletes couldn’t be tired, not after that extra break on Little McKinley. They were just disappointed. And I couldn’t blame them for that. I had broken the all-important Deal.
The dogs pulled and I fed them at each checkpoint: that was our unspoken compact, which had been reaffirmed at every stage of the last 1,000 miles. Every stage, that is, until Golovin, where I had broken that trust—twice in a single morning.
My assumption was vindicated as the dogs broke into a lope scenting White Mountain. The morning’s betrayal was forgotten. Happy days were here. Ears perked, shoulders pitched forward with effort, Deadline Dog Farm’s finest pulled with abandon. A checkpoint was ahead. Dinner was about to be served, thus reestablishing justice throughout dogdom as they knew it.
“HEP, HEP, HEP.” That simple phrase was all it took. Bogus kicked the team into overdrive, and Tom Daily easily beat everybody else into White Mountain.
Jacked by his team’s performance, Tom spent the next 45 minutes proudly greeting incoming teams. He wasn’t paying attention as the checker, who was late coming down from the lodge, made his rounds.
Daily was bummed when he saw the time sheet later. It had Lenthar arriving first at 11 A.M., March 23. Daily was listed as fourth, adding an unwarranted 36 minutes to his mandatory 6-hour stop.
“Jesus” he said, “you can’t win in this thing.”
I shared Tom’s disappointment in the White Mountain standings. Thanks to my parka snafu, I had arrived 70 minutes behind the closest musher ahead of me, and some two hours behind the Mormiles, Terhune, Daily, and Lenthar. Those were teams I expected to beat; 55 miles didn’t offer much opportunity for a rebound. But a lot could happen. Look at Swenson.
After serving the dogs a meal, I unhooked little Raven and escorted her to the picket line for dropped dogs. I hated myself. Wasn’t I the guy who had planned on mushing every dog to Nome?
Now I was abandoning a hard-working girl merely for being in heat, a situation I should have been able to deal with. But I couldn’t, and that was the truth. That mating on the ice was nearly disastrous. The fight and the subsequent delay leaving Koyuk offered further proof that Raven’s presence threatened the entire team.
The little black dog whimpered as I walked away. I hesitated, and Raven flopped on her back, legs spread, inviting me to stroke her. My princess deserved no less for hauling me 1,100 miles.
“You did a good job, little girl,” I said, rubbing her tight belly. “Too bad the boys won’t leave you alone.”
I was tired as I trudged up the hill to White Mountain Lodge. If there hadn’t been a free meal waiting, I would have gladly slept with the dogs on the frozen river below.
Inside the clean lodge I felt decidedly out of place. The thick steak,