Iditarod Nights Page 7

  The smooth run lasted a couple miles before the trail swung to the south side of the valley and made a sharp climb to a forested shelf. Dillon braced for the rollercoaster drop into Dalzell Gorge.

  "Hang on. Slow. Take it slow."

  For the next two miles, the trail descended hundreds of feet, jumping back and forth across Dalzell Creek on narrow snow and ice bridges that spanned open water. Trail marker ribbons tied to the trees snapped by. Mountain cliffs closed in on both sides, mocking Dillon's claustrophobia.

  Guy's hind legs flew out from under him, but the team's momentum helped him regain his footing in a couple quick strides. "Watch yourself, big man. That's my powerhouse."

  Thanks to the great work of the Iditarod trail-breaking crew and recent snowfall, the going was easier than Dillon had seen it in the past. He thought they might actually get through the gorge without any problems, when the middle of the team cut a turn too tight, tangling Guy and Annie in a clump of willow. "Whoa! Wait!" Setting the hook, he tramped to the front of the sled to free his wheel dogs and line-out the team. Tramping back to the sled, he pulled up the hook. "Okay, take it easy."

  A few yards later the team tangled again and he repeated the process. The two-mile stretch of trail felt like twenty before it leveled and broke out onto the Tatina River.

  "Good job, kids. We did it. Straight ahead."

  Glare ice caught the last of the day's light, making the surface of the frozen river shine like wet glass. The dogs kept a steady pace. Dillon spotted overflow – where water below pushed up and over the ice – along the bank, far enough away that it wasn't a threat.

  At 7:15, they reached Rohn checkpoint – a Bureau of Land Management cabin sheltered from the wind by tall spruce trees. Ideal for getting some rest. Other teams had arrived ahead of them and were in various stages of settling in.

  "I'm staying," Dillon told the checker.

  In the time it took to collect his drop bags, lay out straw for his dogs, inspect paws and dispense snacks, set up the cooker and shovel snow to melt for water, exhaustion set in hard. He'd slept maybe six hours in two days and 188 miles. Numb, he sat with his headlamp aimed inside the three-gallon pot and stared at the tiny bubbles forming and bursting on the bottom. What's that saying about a watched pot?

  Who cared. His eyelids drooped.

  A dog's sharp yip yanked him awake. Bands of green and blue shimmered across the night sky.

  I never get tired of seeing that.

  Claire. Her eyes made him think of Jack Daniels, the seduction of that first swallow and the warmth it generated in his belly. He hadn't taken a drink in six years, nine months and...long enough he'd lost track. But the sharp, not-quite-sweet taste lingered.

  Like the after-taste of Claire's mouth pressed to his. Thinking of her made him ache for tangled sheets, skin pressed to skin, things he hadn't allowed himself to need in a long time. Linked to a past he'd worked hard to bury, wanting her was complicated. He told her she could have whatever she wanted, but was he prepared to give it?

  What if she wanted the truth?

  ***

  Claire and her team made good time down the Happy River Steps – a narrow, tree-lined, wild ride of switchbacks that descended the canyon. She was confident the guy with the video camera at the bottom of the last step shot prime footage of her demonstration on how to navigate a heavy sled while being dragged behind it. She wished later she'd given him her contact information so he could send her a copy.

  Her dogs rested at Rainy Pass checkpoint and she dried clothes. The heat inside the lodge clogged her sinuses, the concentration of smells a harsh contrast to the cold, almost odorless outside air. Five hours later, they pushed on under the full moon's ivory light, traveling through miles of ethereal shadows. Dillon hadn't exaggerated when he said the Iditarod Trail had a raw beauty. Even the sharp, cold wind moaned a song uniquely its own as Claire and her dogs crossed over Rainy Pass summit.

  She spilled the sled twice on the stretch down Pass Fork, and the adrenaline-pumping drop into Dalzell Gorge tested her sled driving skills skirting rocks that didn't get out of the way. They reached Rohn checkpoint at 3:25 Tuesday morning, missing Dillon by four hours.

  On the seventy-five-mile stretch to Nikolai, beleaguering winds swept the sandbars and gravel of Kuskokwim River's South Fork clear of snow. Claire muscled the sled around driftwood tangles and glare ice. She and her team confronted the Buffalo Tunnels – narrow tracts of exposed dirt, rock and tussocks wallowed out by roaming buffalo in the area – and managed to avoid any wrong turns. She stopped trailside to snack the dogs, check their feet, and repair the sled's cracked brushbow with duct tape and wire.

  Crossing the Farewell Burn – once a wicked path of snags and stumps through the remains of a massive forest fire that consumed over a million acres in the late '70s, now a groomed stretch of intermittent dirt and new growth – she stopped trailside to snack, check feet, and replace sled runners. She met one challenge after another with increased confidence in herself and her team. Muscles she didn't know she had complained from pumping and ski-poling to help her dogs power up hillsides and through soft snow. Fogged by lack of sleep, everything took longer than expected, from dog care to reaching the next checkpoint.

  She'd never felt so alive.

  Behind them, the Alaska Range stretched northeast, more a respected friend than imposing foe now. Low clouds concealed the highest of its stunning, rugged peaks. Claire dug out her camera, remembered telling Dillon about the man who gave it to her, and smiled. Yep. One hell of a vacation. She recorded several images before moving on.

  The trail over the windblown flats heading into Nikolai ran west-northwest, a level straightaway of punchy snow and sparse brush that seemed to go on forever. Claire talked to her athletes often. "Good dogs!" "How's my Handsome doing up there?" "Straight on, Ranger." "Looking good, Ginny girl." The constant chatter kept them alert and prevented her from nodding off.

  When she checked into the quaint Athabascan village of Nikolai at 5:28 p.m., they'd been on the trail almost nine hours and were 263 miles from Anchorage.

  Chapter 14

  The onset of evening cast long, dark fingers across the landscape as Dillon and his team reached Big River, the halfway point between Nikolai and McGrath. The trail took an abrupt drop and turned west, headed toward the Kuskokwim River. For the past three hours, they'd been cutting cross-country along a series of frozen lakes and swamps interspersed with wooded stretches in a blur of sameness. Travel on the river was hard and fast, the temperature dropping. Dillon decided to give his dogs a few more miles to shed the day's heat before stopping to put coats on them. He couldn't be more pleased with their performance so far: healthy appetites, good skin elasticity, positive attitudes. Their five-hour stay in Nikolai did them good. And the mound of spaghetti the locals served him at the school cafeteria had been worthy of seconds. Sure beat reconstituted stroganoff with mystery meat from a foil packet. He wondered how far back Claire was and hoped she didn't miss out on the feast.

  The trail climbed the bank and headed into the woods again. "Easy," he said. "Let's not get wrapped around a tree."

  Half a second before Bonnie and Maverick ran out of sight around a bend, he saw their ears shoot forward and felt a burst of speed from the team. "Easy. What is it?"

  The sled cleared the corner and he saw a thousand pounds of moose in the middle of the trail, head down and swinging side to side, ready to charge.

  Dillon stood on the brake. "Whoa!"

  But there wasn't time. The team's momentum tangled Bonnie and Maverick under the moose's belly before churning to a stop. Dillon stomped the hook as Maverick bit at the moose's leg and it kicked out. Bonnie caught the blow. Her high yelp cut the air and she went down. The rest of the dogs barked and howled to get a piece of the action. Dillon threw his gloves aside, bellowed "Get out of here!" hoping to scare the beast off, knowing there wasn't a chance in hell it would listen to him. He dug in the handlebar bag for the .45 and cont
inued to yell at the moose as it continued to kick his dogs. Time slowed, each pulse throb in his ears a heart-tearing scream.

  He aimed and fired.

  The pistol bucked, no louder than a cap gun. The smell of cordite mixed with the stench of stale pizza. The bullet impacted. The suspect took a step back, then recoiled and dropped to his knees, grabbed at the glistening wet spot spreading across the front of his dark sweatshirt. Surprised eyes, too young, pleaded for help. Bloody fingers reached out –

  A dog cried. Dillon blinked. He saw the moose lumber down the trail and into the woods. The snow at the front of his team bled.

  Chapter 15

  Claire reached McGrath a few minutes before nine on the morning of day four. Her dogs looked good enough to keep going a couple more hours, and that's what she planned to do once she picked up her bags and swapped her broken sled for the one she'd had dropped at the checkpoint. Though McGrath was a popular spot for mushers to take their mandatory twenty-four-hour layover, Matt suggested she avoid the hectic hub and take her twenty-four at the next checkpoint, Takotna, twenty-three miles away.

  But when she signed the log, she noticed Dillon had checked in nine hours earlier. "Bib eighteen's still here?" she asked the volunteer.

  "He tangled with a moose and needed time to get his dogs taken care of."

  "Anything serious?"

  "One of his leaders had to be dropped."

  Claire's stomach clinched. "I've changed my mind. I'm staying."

  ***

  McGrath checkpoint's water cooker outside the Laundromat made dog food prep easier and quicker. Claire intended to take advantage of the coin-operated shower later too. And sleep. Hours of it, if possible. Her boots felt weighted in mud as she went through the motions of feeding, checking feet, laying out straw and putting coats on her marathon runners to keep them comfortable during their much-deserved snooze.

  On her way to the community center, she passed by Dillon's dogs curled in slumber. Bonnie wasn't among them. His other lead dog – Maverick? – wore a heat wrap on one front leg. An injured or sick dog was her greatest fear. She could only imagine what Dillon must be going through.

  The smells of fried potatoes, bacon, sausage and fresh-brewed coffee lured her into the community center. A clatter of kitchen noise competed with scattered conversations, punctuated by the occasional belch or gaping yawn or burst of laughter from mushers in varying stages of exhaustion and hunger. Cold weather gear hung from slumped shoulders or littered the backs of chairs in a riot of colors. The concentration of body odors pressured Claire's sinuses.

  She spotted Dillon sitting at a table in the corner, his hands anchored around a mug. When she pulled out the empty chair next to him, he started and glanced up. The haunted look in his eyes scared her.

  "Hey," she said and sat down.

  "Hey yourself," he answered, his voice raw.

  "Is Bonnie okay?"

  "She has a concussion. Needs stitches. Nothing she won't recover from, thank God."

  "That's a relief. How are you doing?"

  He stared at the mug in his hands. "I can't stop shaking."

  "I'm sorry, Dillon." She ached to hold him, tell him he'd be alright when she really didn't know if he would. She didn't want to presume she knew what he felt. And she sure as hell didn't want to cry. But tears pressed behind her eyes. She fell back on the one thing people always relied on in moments of hardship or crisis. "Have you eaten yet?"

  He frowned as though he couldn't remember, then shook his head. "No."

  "How about I buy you breakfast?"

  "Sure. Thanks."

  She'd been joking about buying. McGrath's volunteer-staffed kitchen rivaled any five-star restaurant and the food was free to mushers. Claire did her best not to drool as she balanced two paper plates piled with pancakes, link sausage, bacon and scrambled eggs to the table. Setting the plates down, she snagged a bacon strip with one hand and extracted the cold mug from Dillon's grasp with the other. "Refill?"

  "Please."

  When she returned, the half-eaten bacon dangling from her mouth and a brimming mug of black coffee in each hand, she caught Dillon attempting to cut into his pancakes. His hand shook so bad Claire feared he'd break his plastic fork. But she stopped short of grabbing it from him to help. It didn't take a mind reader to know he'd object to having his food cut up for him like a child. And he was pissed. She saw it in the tightness around his mouth and eyes.

  She sat and dug into her food. "Wanna talk about it?" she asked around a mouthful of eggs loaded with cheese and ham. Divine.

  "No." He gave up on the fork, grabbed a pancake from the top of the stack, rolled a sausage link in it and shoved it into his mouth.

  Claire slathered butter and syrup on her own pancakes and consumed them so fast she almost tasted them. "It feels like I haven't eaten in months," she groaned.

  Dillon mumbled something that sounded like agreement and wrapped another sausage in a pancake. "I'll trade you my bacon for your sausage," he said before stuffing his face.

  Claire made the trade. She preferred bacon anyway. By the fourth pancake-wrapped link, she noticed his trembling had eased. He attempted the fork again, this time with better luck, to eat his eggs. She went back to the kitchen for an enormous, gooey cinnamon roll and more coffee.

  "Get your own," she said when she saw him eyeing her plate.

  The corner of his mouth lifted. "Spoilsport."

  She watched him walk away, saw the fatigue pull at his body, and wished he'd talk to her. But in her present state, she probably wouldn't remember anything he said anyway. Lack of sleep fuzzed her brain and slowed her movements as she buttered her cinnamon roll and took a huge bite. Then another. And another.

  "Claire?"

  Her head snapped up. She realized she'd been about to nod off into what was left of her cinnamon roll.

  Dillon slanted her a smile. "You've got butter on your nose."

  "Oh." She swiped at her face with her napkin and noticed the almost finished hunk of chocolate cake in front of him. "How long have I been sitting here comatose?"

  "Not long."

  "Liar. Guess I'd better find someplace to sleep."

  "There's space in the back," he said and pointed. "Follow the snoring."

  Claire tried to laugh but it took too much energy just to stand. All the coffee and sugary treats in the state of Alaska couldn't keep her awake right now. "Are you staying your twenty-four here?"

  "Yes."

  "Then I'll catch up with you later."

  He nodded. "Thanks for breakfast."

  ***

  Claire found a space on the thick carpet as far away as possible from the unidentifiable lump snoring in the corner and spread out her sleeping bag. She set her alarm for four hours and tucked it against her belly so it wouldn't disturb anybody else when it went off. Using her parka for a pillow, she pulled the sleeping bag over her head and gave in to exhaustion.

  ***

  Bloody fingers reached for him, clawed at his face. He tried to fight off the ghost-white figure drained of life. His leaden arms refused to move. Desperate to escape, he ran. His heavy boots slid on empty pizza boxes. Room after room, a maze of emptiness and hallways went on until his legs trembled. He couldn't find the way out. Door after door led him deeper in. His heart hammered. He struggled for air. Breathe. He tried to yell but could only force a choked, guttural sound past his raw throat. The toe of his boot jammed into a soft lump on the floor and he fell hard to his knees, biting his tongue. He crawled over the lump, his hands sinking in fur. A dog. A white dog covered in blood.

  No! God, no!

  Dillon jolted. Claire leaned over him, her hair tangled. What's she doing here? She needs to get out...

  "Are you awake?" she asked.

  Not trapped. Not crawling in blood. "Where am I?"

  "In the mushers' sleeping area. Sounded like you were having a nightmare."

  Yes. A nightmare. "Shit." He sat up and rubbed at his face. An iron taste i
n his mouth told him he hadn't imagined biting his tongue. "Did I say anything?"

  A woman laying a few feet away mumbled, "Loud enough to wake the dead."

  Someone else grunted confirmation.

  "Sorry," Dillon muttered. "I'm leaving."

  Two sleeping bags over, an alarm clock went off and Claire cringed. "Looks like I am too. See you for dinner?"

  "I'll buy."

  She gave a tired smile. "And I'll try not to fall asleep in my dessert."

  Chapter 16

  Located on the Kuskokwim River, the village of McGrath, population around 400, functioned as a communication, transportation and supply center for Interior Alaska. Roughly equal distance from Anchorage to the south and Fairbanks to the north, no roads connected it to either, but river access and a full-service airport, along with restaurants and lodges, made it a popular destination. An almost constant drone of air traffic and snowmachines assaulted the senses, yet Handsome's head lifted at Claire's approach.

  "Did you have a nice nap?" she asked, giving his ears a rub. He closed his eyes and soaked up the attention. Ranger yawned and whined for his turn. Claire went down the line, greeting each one and administering rubdowns. Their unplanned stop in McGrath turned out to be advantageous. The midday temperature had climbed to twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit, too warm for the dogs to maintain long distances without frequent stops to take in water. Tomorrow's forecast promised colder conditions.

  "How about a tasty frozen lamb strip to snack on while I cook up some chow?" Singer tossed his head back and howled. Groucho, who had been doing his best to ignore her, sat up and licked his chops.

  Once Claire had her dogs checked, fed and comfortable, she dug out her personal bag and headed for the shower. She lathered her hair twice, while the hot water loosened tight muscles and made her feel human again.