My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [112]
My nap was interrupted. Mowry was on the line. The Coach berated me for not dropping Raven sooner. But that was just in passing. The Mowth wasn’t calling to criticize. He sought to motivate me with a new shining goal.
Though I had already been defeated by the Poodle Man, the Russians, Madman, and over 40 others, Mowry said, a means yet remained to salvage Deadline Dog Farm’s reputation. His old dogs—the team Old Joe had repossessed last spring—were pulling Don Mormile’s sled. Catherine was also mushing a Redington team. The way Mowth saw it, if I beat those two teams to Nome, the feat would command respect throughout Knik. That wasn’t just his own opinion, Mowry stressed. No less an authority than Marcie had agreed.
“Bri,” he said. “Beat the Mormiles at all costs. Got that? BEAT THE MORMILES AT ALL COSTS!”
“Hey, those dogs look sort of skinny,” said Plettner, offhandedly. She was picking up the pans from her team’s second full meal at White Mountain.
My dogs did look kind of bony. I cooked them a second meal. Plettner watched approvingly as my dogs sucked up the steaming pans of food. She was putting the last touches on packing, her own six-hour layover nearly complete. Shortly before six in the evening, Sunday, March 23, Plettner mushed out on the frozen river below White Mountain. Don Mormile followed close behind.
Watching the teams quietly slip away, I knew I’d never catch Plettner. The Mormiles? That game was still afoot. We’d find out soon enough.
I looked the team over. Even with bellies full the dogs’ ribs—rising and falling with each breath—looked more defined, all right. Bo, Digger, and Harley, in particular, appeared strikingly gaunt. It was their attitudes, however, that showed the most change. Three weeks ago Cyrus would have been pacing and whining. Like soldiers or laborers everywhere, he and the others had learned to snatch a meal or rest whenever it was offered.
Even our maniacs now exhibited workmanlike calm. In leaving Raven behind, I was losing the one dog left in the team who barked at the first hints of departure. The changes were subtle, but profound. Pig no longer squirmed. Spook even welcomed my touch as I placed on booties.
In terms of pulling, the dogs had become a fine-tuned engine. When I let off the brake, tug lines snapped taut, and the team pulled in unison. Whisper “Whoa,” and the dogs halted on a dime. The had become a single unit, possessing ability beyond the sum of the individual members. Though I didn’t know it, I hadn’t entered the race with a dog team. But I had one now.
Mushing from White Mountain, I was an hour behind the nearest sled. The trail and sky merged in a seamless gray landscape. I switched on my headlamp although it wasn’t yet dark. There was comfort in the line of reflectors glowing in my beam. With Raven gone, I had 12 dogs left. Rainy and Harley were in lead. The odd couple had brought us most of the way. No reason to change now.
I had, incredibly, forgotten to get a weather report. The failure nagged at me as light snow began falling an hour out of White Mountain. “Here it comes,” I whispered. “Three feet of snow in two hours. The biggest blizzard Nome’s ever seen.”
Daily had reentered the void. Judging from the slope, the team was probably climbing Topkok Hill. But it was just a guess. Tom couldn’t see anything except the dogs and his sled. The world beyond was utterly white. This whole Iditarod was like wandering through heaven, the musher thought, a white misty place, with no beginning or end and nothing but dogs for company.
Topkok’s bare crown was serene. The fog lifted as Daily and several other mushers descended toward the valley below. The Nome Kennel Club’s shelter cabin waited at the bottom. Plettner, the veteran, knew better than to dally in this stretch. Wind seldom rested in the so-called “Solomon Blowhole.” When it did blow, a layover in that cabin could mean the difference between life and death.