My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [33]
Cotter’s fears were realized as Roger Roberts, the cocky Loafer from Ophir, barreled into him from behind. Curses flew through the woods as Roberts tried to pass Cotter, creating another tangle.
“Sorry Bill,” I said as Cotter finally passed me after a 10-minute delay.
The Loafer cursed as he followed Cotter on by. Couldn’t blame him. I was a lousy rookie. He was a three-time veteran with hopes of winning real money. Then he turned and kicked Rainy as he passed her. He deliberately kicked my lead dog!
“You son of a bitch!”
He was lucky Cyndi’s .357 was stowed in the sled. In my state of mind, I might have shot him.
Young Daphne couldn’t handle the freedom of traveling in a long Iditarod string. Each dip or bump caused a break in the tension of the gang line, the center cable that connected the pairs of dogs from the leaders back to the sled. Daphne kept taking advantage of the slack in the gang line to leap to her partner’s side to catch a paw in one of the lines. An experienced sled dog might hop for a few steps, but usually cleared such easy tangles with a swift kick. Not Daphne. The little black-haired dog merely looked back at me, stumbling forward as she begged for another rescue.
On, perhaps, Daphne’s hundredth tangle in the first 15 miles out of Knik, Gnat crumbled. He lay whimpering in the snow, squealing horribly as I tried to raise him to his feet. When I backed off, he just stared at me in abject surrender. Why did I ever agree to bring this quitter?
But Gnat had smacked that tree. Something could be seriously wrong. Unhitching him from the team, I loaded Gnat in the sled bag. Seventy miles from Skwentna and over a 1,000 miles shy of Nome—I had my first passenger.
The sun was setting on the first day of Iditarod XIX. I heard a dog team behind me, closing fast. The musher was wearing a bright red parka. As the lead dogs nipped at my heels, I recognized the driver. It was the Butch.
“You want to pass?”
“Not here.”
By waiting for the point where the trail branched into several interweaving paths, she eliminated the risk of contact with a rookie’s potentially ill-mannered team. Butcher urged her dogs ahead, leaving me to admire her form. Hell, it was thrilling. We shared the trail with the Iditarod’s defending champion, if only for an instant.
Coal black darkness filled the thick forest. Cricket and Daphne had taken advantage of my ineptitude to suddenly backtrack, twist, and turn, knotting the team in what my headlamp revealed was another unbelievable tangle. I was shifting bodies to sort out the mess when Gunnar Johnson drove his dogs past us, then abruptly stopped.
“Do you think you could get it?” shouted Gunnar, shining his headlamp at a spot roughly 20 feet behind me. His snow hook, completely unattached, rested in the center of the trail.
It was a tense moment. The hook lay in the direction no musher wants to walk: backward from the sled, where even a lunge can’t prevent the team from escaping.
“I’ll stop your team if they get loose,” he said, pleading.
I gently let go of my sled and tiptoed back. The dogs remained quiet as I picked up the hook and carried it to him.
“You owe me one.”
Mike Madden caught me at the bottom of a hill, where I was providing Daphne with yet another assist.
“Hey, Madman, I led the race for twenty-five minutes.”
“So what are you still doing here?” Madden had made up some two and a half hours already. “Let’s get out of here O’D. Let’s go to Skwentna.”
Though my dogs exuberantly chased his, Madden’s headlamp floated steadily away. Fair enough, I thought. I’ll catch you in Skwentna.
The strains of the last few weeks were catching up. I caught myself dozing before the team even reached Flat Horn Lake, a mere 3 5 miles from Knik. A crackling bonfire cast dancing shadows on the bordering bank. A half-dozen teams were camping, including one of the Russians and Don and Catherine Mormile. Pulling my team off the trail, I stomped the hook into the crusty snow.
I threw the dogs frozen chunks of liver and beef. Leaving them contentedly chewing, I walked over to