My lead dog was a lesbian - Brian Patrick O'Donoghue [61]
In the middle of the dinner, Ruby’s checker pushed through the crowd carrying a fat beaver carcass. Seeing the beaver in Em-mitt Peters’s hand, Old Joe set aside the fancy silverware and jumped to his feet. Digging into his pocket, he pulled out a handful of crumpled bills. Redington had a dog that wasn’t eating right, and he figured that beaver, a flavorful high-energy meat, might be the cure. So Redington had asked the checker to find a trapper. Mission accomplished, the Athabaskan known as the Yukon Fox knew better than to wait on ceremony.
Leaving Ruby, Redington’s team met an incoming musher.
“Brother,” Old Joe shouted, raising one hand.
“Brother,” said Nayokpuk, returning the gesture. “Hurry,” he added. “Get out of here before they catch you.”
The trail to Nome was wide open. But Redington’s team balled up outside the village on the frozen Yukon. His leaders weren’t in the mood to hurry away from the cozy village. Redington trudged up front and switched leaders. The team ran a few feet and balled up. He again switched leaders, producing another few yards of progress, then another tangle. He switched leaders again, and again, and again. Dogs were never going to beat Old Joe—a musher for 40 years—in a test of sheer will.
Nearly 45 minutes elapsed before Redington’s team regained momentum. I got a picture as Smokin’ Joe’s team rounded a big rock wall, finally leaving Ruby behind. The Old Fox was still in front, but those young hounds were gaining. I had my first taste of the woes created by reluctant leaders.
None of the press realized at the time—and Redington was too protective of his race to point it out—but his amazing drive had already been sabotaged by a race organization screwup. Whereas Adkins complained because his trailbreakers sped too far ahead, allowing the trail to blow in, Smokin’ Joe had the opposite problem. Loping like the wind, Redington’s dogs actually overtook the snowmachines charged with clearing the front-runner’s path.
To the uninitiated, that wouldn’t appear to be such a bad thing; snowmachiners could surely repass dogs, even the fastest dogs, at their leisure. Perhaps. But such developments inevitably damaged the front-runner’s chances.
Nayokpuk had earned his nickname, Shishmaref Cannon-ball, in a telling incident. Leading the race in 1980, Herbie overtook the trailbreakers in Rohn. Unwilling to slow down, he barreled alone into the Burn, where he wasted half a day, lost in the charred forest, because of the lack of trail markers.
Redington’s problem was the snow. Where he caught the snowmachiners near Cripple, the halfway checkpoint on the Iditarod’s northern route, the snow was deep and powdery. Old Joe pulled into the checkpoint holding a six-hour lead on the young hounds. While others reveled in the hoopla surrounding his arrival, which earned him $3,000 in silver coins, Redington was appalled at the volunteers’ casual attitude. Nome remained his goal—to get there first, the Iditarod’s founder needed a good trail punched through.
An argument erupted, leading to a further delay. The trail-breakers finally left, but time had run out. It was a sunny day, and the trail was soft, too soft. When Redington tried to leave, still comfortably ahead of the pack after a five-hour rest, his dogs sunk to their armpits, awash in the mushy powder. Old Joe wisely retreated to the checkpoint, giving the trail more time to set. Butcher, Buser, and the other young hounds arrived during the delay, smelling blood for the first time.
“Good to see you so upbeat,” said race Judge Bill Bartlett.
“Why not,” I said. “This is fun, and it sure beats working.
“I’m not staying long,” I added, grinning through the ice clinging to my beard and mustache. “I’m picking up a headlamp, getting a beer at McGuire’s, and then I’m out of here.”
The time had arrived to execute the Coach’s strategy. McGrath, population 550, was a big noisy village. Iditarod teams seldom get much rest here. And the town has so many distractions that mushers inevitably waste a lot of time. So Mowry’s plan