Brides of Alaska (48 page)

The dogs were holding up well, and each checkpoint had shown them to be in excellent shape despite the way Rita pushed them. It was Rita who suffered. At times she thought she imagined teams just ahead of her, but when she rubbed her eyes with the back of her mittens, the images faded. It wasn't until Rita thought the dogsled was floating up into the air that she decided to rest. Rohn was only a few hours ahead of her and both Mark and her father had suggested she spend her twenty-four-hour layover there. All she had to do was hold on until Rohn.

While Rohn and a good night's sleep waited just down the trail, Rita knew she would still have to face the challenge of Dalzell Gorge. Her father had described this stretch of the Iditarod as a nightmare.

First, there was the climb from Puntilla Lake to 3,200-foot Rainy Pass. The dogs had managed this with relative ease, and Rita was beginning to think they were living a charmed life. Maybe her father had just been overly tired by the time he'd come this far, she surmised. Maybe it was just that he was so much older when he'd run the race.

As the team crossed over the divide, Rita had to turn her full attention to the trail at hand. The path ahead plunged into a steep, winding trail that moved rapidly downhill at a rate of about one thousand feet in little more than five miles.

Rita clung to the bar and rode the brake constantly to counter the dogs' continued slipping. At one point she saw Dandy go down and slide several feet. Over and over the dogs recovered their falls while Rita found herself near to prayer for the safety of the team.

Things went better for several minutes and Rita breathed a sigh of relief. She tried to get her bearings on the situation, feeling her pulse racing wildly. Ahead of her, the narrow canyon was lined with boulders and crossed several ice bridges that spanned partially frozen creeks. If the dogs lost their footing while traveling over the bridges, they could send the entire team, sled and all, into the water below. Rita couldn't afford to lose the time, nor would she endanger the dogs.

“Dandy, whoa!” she called and held the brake tight to bring the dogs to a near stop. Easing them forward, Rita held her breath with each crossing and didn't let it out until they'd safely reached the opposite side.

“Just get us to Rohn,” Rita murmured, uncertain to whom she was speaking. “We'll be fine if we can just get to Rohn.”

The shelter cabin at Rohn waited as official Iditarod Checkpoint Number Eight. Rita dragged into the clearing running behind the sled on nothing but sheer determination. She was now two hundred seventy-five miles from Anchorage and, while the halfway mark was still to be reached, Rita was simply grateful for having made it this far.

Coming to a halt, Rita was quickly surrounded by people. One by one she answered questions and even signed an autograph book, before the crowd dispersed and left her to work.

“I see you're still in one piece.” It was Mark.

Rita cast a weary glance upward from where she had bent down to check over her dogs. “You, too,” was all that squeaked out.

“You gonna lay over here?” Mark asked sympathetically.

“Yes.” Rita straightened out and nearly fell over.

“Easy,” Mark said, reaching out to steady her.

“I'm fine, really,” Rita answered and tried to push away. “I have to log in and let them know I'm staying.” She started to walk away but turned back around. “What about you?”

“I'll be leaving in a few hours,” Mark replied. The concern he held for Rita was evident in his expression.

“You're that far ahead of me?”

“Is that all that concerns you?” Mark asked a bit sarcastically.

Rita rolled her neck to relieve the strain. “It isn't everything, but it's important.”

Mark shook his head as Rita moved off to speak to the officials. He knew it was difficult to truly enjoy the race while you were running it, but in Rita's case it was even worse. She was all driving competition and no pleasure. The fire of that drive was clear in her eyes, in spite of her exhaustion.

Rita tried to ignore the way Mark stared after her. She met her race responsibilities, picked up supplies, and moved away from the shelter area to bed down with the dogs.

“The wind's due to pick up tonight,” Mark said from somewhere behind her.

Rita turned wearily to find him toting a bale of straw. “What are you doing?”

“Just bringing the dogs some bedding.” His casual reply left Rita no room to protest.

“What's the temperature?” she asked instead and reached into her pocket for a knife to cut the bailing wire.

“Thirty below and dropping. When that wind comes down the pass, it's going to feel like a hundred below. I'd climb in that sled and in my sleeping bag if I were you,” Mark answered.

“Just put the bale here,” she motioned. “I'm going to stake out the dogs and then I'll distribute the straw.” Mark dropped the bale and stood back wishing he could do more to ease Rita's exhaustion. He knew she needed to do everything for herself, but he also knew her pride wouldn't allow her to think rationally.

“May I keep you company while you get the dogs fed and watered?” he questioned.

“I guess so,” Rita said and moved painfully slowly to position her dogs.

No other conversation passed between them until after Rita had a hearty fire roaring. She thawed rich mixtures of commercial dog food, liver, chicken, and salmon to feed the dogs, then melted snow and poured water for each one until she was certain they'd had their fill. Mark made conversation that was solely responsible for keeping Rita on her feet, but she never would have admitted his help.

“You gonna eat?” Mark asked when he saw that Rita was finished with the dogs.

“No,” she sighed. A gust of wind blew through the trees just then. “It's getting colder and I'm going to sleep. Will I see you when I wake up?”

“I doubt it. You won't surface dreamland for ten or twelve hours if my guess is right. I'll be gone in two.”

Rita nodded. She wanted to ask him about his time, but her mind begged for sleep. “I'll see you when you cross the finish line in Nome, then.” Her reply amused Mark.

“Not likely, Eriksson. Not likely.”

Rita watched Mark walk away. She hadn't realized how comforting his presence was until he stood in the lighted doorway of the Bureau of Land Management cabin and turned to offer her a wave before going inside.

Stripping off her parka and wet coveralls, Rita quickly pulled the sleeping bag around her and nuzzled down into the sled basket. She wiggled around to work the sled cover up over her before burying her head inside the sleeping bag. The warmth eased her aching muscles and sleep was immediate. For the first time in days, Rita gave in to the demands of her body. When Rita awoke nine hours later, she could hear the wind howling from outside her sled bag. She pulled her wristwatch to her face and hit the light button to reveal the date and time. Seeing that she was still early into her twenty-four hours, Rita allowed herself to linger in the warmth.

Licking her lips slowly, Rita realized for the first time how cracked and dried they were. Water sounded even better than food, and her stomach was protesting quite loudly for that substance. It was a difficult choice. Food and water or restful warmth?

Finally choosing the food, Rita pushed back the basket cover and peered out. During the night, the winds had brought snow and buried the dogs and the basket in an insulation of white. Rita pulled her frozen coveralls on and secured her parka, while Dandy lazily peeked blue eyes out from where his bushy tail covered his muzzle.

“Well, boy,” Rita called out. “What do you think? Are we going to win this race?” Dandy whimpered, then yipped. “I'll take that as a yes,” Rita answered and went to work melting snow.

By the time Rita's layover was completed, the wind had picked up to forty miles an hour and the temperature registered at forty-five below. Thick, heavy snow clouds hung in a gray lifeless form over the entire area. There would be little, if any, light today, Rita surmised.

She quickly harnessed the dogs and stood ready to leave when her official twenty-four hours was up. It was almost like starting the race again. The dogs were refreshed, well fed and watered, and eager for the trail. They lived to do this work and they loved it. Rita smiled as she stroked Dandy one last time, remembering a woman in Anchorage who thought it cruel that Rita raced her dogs. The woman couldn't understand. She saw the harnesses of confinement and the weight of the load. What she didn't see was the animation in the dogs, their yips of enthusiasm, their jumps of excitement. Nor did this woman know of the dogs left behind to howl and mourn their misfortune. It was all a matter of how one looked at the situation.

Something in Rita's heart took notice at that thought. Her mother's indifference came to mind. Rita frowned at the memory and quickly brushed it aside. A matter of perspective or not, Rita had a race to run and now wasn't the time for soul-searching. Or was it?

The trail was firm beneath her feet as Rita ran behind her sled. The dogs, ever faithful to their job, kept a steady lope as they moved out of the Rohn area and past the Kuskokwim River's south fork. Rita had been thoroughly warned about the trail to come. She would soon be passing into the Farewell Burn. This 360,000-acre area of tundra and spruce forests had been destroyed many years prior in a forest fire. It left behind an obstacle course of fallen trees and re-growth of sedge-tussock tundra. The tussock, clumps of grass that mushroomed out two feet high or more, froze solid in the winter and presented rock-solid opposition to the racers of the Iditarod. Many a driver had been injured, some even seriously, when their sleds and teams had run up against the tussock.

Rita calculated the checkpoints to come. There would be Nikolai first, then McGrath, Takotna, and finally Ophir. Ophir was where the trail would separate and take the southerly route and pass through Iditarod and it was Iditarod, that represented the halfway mark. It seemed like a whole world away. The hours rushed by and the distance passed, too. Rita had found the “Burn” painfully tedious and slow. Snow made visibility difficult, but, one by one, Rita located the trail markers and pressed on. The checkpoints passed quickly, and with them came the cultural change from areas that had been heavily influenced by the whites to lands primarily settled with native Athapaskan Indians.

She was greeted enthusiastically at Nikolai, finding herself in fifth position, but still behind Mark. The villagers had greeted each arriving team with shouts of praise and welcome. A huge bonfire had been built for the purpose of heating water for the dogs, and the school had been dismissed to allow the children to run from team to team seeking autographs.

Rita was given a hot meat sandwich that she quickly wolfed down before pushing on. Leaving a single sled team behind while the driver changed runners, Rita pushed ahead for McGrath.

By nightfall she'd made Takotna. This river town had served as a landing and supply center during the gold rush days in Alaska. Now only numbering around fifty in population, Rita was welcomed every bit as heartily as she had been in Nikolai. She'd never seen so much food in all her life and graciously ate her fill after seeing to it that her team ate first.

The snow fell heavier still as she mushed out to reach Ophir. More than one native encouraged her to stay on in Takotna until the storm abated, but Rita was feverish with the thought of passing Mark.

It was the endless miles of darkness that gave Rita too much time to think. “If I can only make it to Iditarod first,” she whispered to the night skies, “I could win the silver ingots and give them to Dad.”
There are only five teams in front of me and one of them is Mark
, she thought to herself and disregarded the beliefs that being the first one to reach the halfway point jinxed you from winning the race. She knew that only once had the midway winner gone on to win the Iditarod, but she simply didn't care. She wished there were some way to slow down the other teams.