Broken Trails

They wove along the trail, first on the river, then climbing into forest, dropping along a swamp, and back to the river. Three more mushers passed before the trail got too narrow to allow for it. When they broke through the trees, she saw the upcoming checkpoint and grinned. Her dogs increased their pace as they neared, and she slid into Yentna, laughing.

“Four fifty-eight PM,” the checker said as he handed her the clipboard.

Lainey signed in, noting she had fallen to eleventh place. “Any news on Scotch Fuller?” she asked.

“Not on me. You’ll have to check up at the tent. How long you staying?”

“About six hours.” She leaned over her handlebars to open the sled bag for the gear check.

“Everything’s good.” He initialed next to her signature. “Head on over there. The vet’s need to do their check.”

Lainey urged her dogs toward the tent. A woman waved her toward a pair of veterinarians waiting for her.

“How’re they doing?” one asked, looking over the team as they came to a halt.

“Very good. I haven’t noticed any limps or problems. They’ve mostly been wearing booties through the new snow.” She handed him her vet book, a small notebook with all the paperwork on each of her dogs.

“Great.” The two proceeded to give each of her dogs an exam, prodding wrists and shoulders, removing booties to check paws.

“Everything checks out,” the other said. He wrote something in her notebook and handed it back. “If you’re staying, park over there. We’ve got straw, but you’ll have to get water from a hole in the river.”

“Thanks.”

Lainey spent the next half hour doing a full inspection of her dogs herself, bedding them down in straw, and covering a couple of with blankets. As soon as they were resting, she retrieved a rolled up child’s sled from her bag and went to the river to get water.

The hole was jagged with chucks of ice floating in the water. Lainey carefully used the bucket dangling from a tripod over the hole to fill her pots. There was no concern for falling through as the sides indicated a good two feet of ice beneath the foot of snow on the river. She did not want to splash herself, however, and took extra care to keep dry.

Lainey lugged her water back to her dogs, her sled receiving an envious look from a fellow rookie from Minnesota who carried his pots by hand. She gave a silent thanks to Scotch and her detailed notebook, a carbon copy of it nestled in Lainey’s bib overall pocket. Lainey had the benefit of experienced coaching to rely upon.

Back at the sled, she set up her two cookers and began boiling water. Some mushers only carried one, not wanting the extra weight. But Scotch was of the opinion that weight ultimately counted for nothing if you were not able to take care of your dogs. By using two cookers, Lainey cut her cooking time in half, would be able to eat with her dogs, and get through her checkpoint chores faster, thereby allowing her more time to rest. The dogs were the athletes, the ones who were well cared for through the race. The mushers, on the other hand, rarely slept more than a couple of hours in a day as they worked to keep their teams happy and healthy.

She dumped a measure of meat and fat into one pot, and tossed a boil bag of meatloaf and fried potatoes in the other. While she waited for the food, she dug out her notebook and skimmed through the information.

According to Scotch’s notes, Lainey was a bit slower than Scotch’s previous runs to Yentna. That was to be expected, really, since Lainey’s team was officially second string. A lot of her dogs had been on the Iditarod trail with her, but as Scotch was attempting to maintain a professional racing team, she had gotten the better dogs in the kennel.

Lainey noted the travel times between Yentna and Finger Lake, her next scheduled downtime, committing it to memory before turning pages. A shiver crawled up her spine as she saw the words ‘Heavy moose population’ in capital letters. She did not want a repeat of what had happened in November. Her eyes flicked past the warning and she read up on what to expect on the trail.

When dinner was finished, she added dry chow to the mixture and went up the line, dropping plastic food dishes and filling them. Her team roused from their nap to eagerly lap up the offering. Lainey returned to the cookers, plucked her dinner from the second pot, and added the boiling water to the leftovers in the dog pot. Again she went up the line, giving the dogs a meaty watering, talking to them, and treating them to rough affection as she went.

With a sigh, she found clean snow nearby, not wanting to trek all the way back to the hole in the river. She piled it onto her small sled and started another pot of water for the dogs. Only then did she sit in the bed of her sled and eat her meatloaf, washing it down with the last of her Gatorade. Lainey checked her watch, seeing it had been an hour since her arrival. Scotch would no doubt be there soon. As much as she wanted to enjoy a nap like her team, she still had a couple of things to do. She forced herself to her feet, pleasantly full and warm from her meal, and retrieved the now empty dog bowls. Another bag of meat and quarter pound of fat went into dog cooker, and she started another pot of water on hers. When both were ready, she took the finished products and poured them into two coolers on the sled. To one she added the dry chow and vitamin supplements, a meal ready for a pit stop on the road. In the other, she deposited five of her juice packets, now frozen from the cold. When she got out on the trail, they’d be thawed enough for her to hydrate herself.

Chores finally finished, she debated where to sleep. Her dogs were curled up together, still on their tug lines, though she had released the neck lines from their harnesses to make them comfortable. Taking a cue from them, she settled into her sled bag once more. Scotch would arrive soon. Lainey would just wait here for her to arrive.

She never knew exactly when she fell asleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“HEY, ROOKIE.”

Lainey grumbled as someone nudged her sled. She dragged herself to consciousness, peering into the dark.

Scotch grinned down at her.

Still groggy, Lainey returned the smile and forced herself to sit up. After a wide yawn, she looked around the cordoned off musher area. “What time is it? When did you get in?”

“I got here about six fifteen. It’s almost ten o’clock now.” Scotch squatted in the snow beside her. “I saw your time in when I got here. You’re due to leave in an hour or so, aren’t you?”

Lainey rubbed the sleep from her eyes, amazed she had been out of it for so long considering the cold weather. “Yes, coach,” she said, throwing her legs over the edge of the sled. “I’ve got to get more water.”

“So do I.” Scotch stood and took Lainey’s hand, helping her rise. “I’ll go with you.”

Upending the child’s sled to knock the snow from it, Lainey grabbed her pots and walked with Scotch. They stopped further on at Scotch’s team so she could grab the same gear. They trudged through the snow toward the river.

Now fully awake, Lainey looked around the checkpoint. A lot of the mushers had decided to take a rest break here. Not everyone, however. She speculated on who had left early. Were they driving their dogs harder than she? Or was it just the forerunners, those who had arrived before her, that had left?

“So how’d it go?” Scotch asked as they approached the watering hole.

“Not bad. I still can’t keep Heldig in booties. I don’t know what she does, but they fly off as soon as we’re on the trail.” She grinned at Scotch’s laughter.

“That’s nothing new. Just make certain to keep ointment on her paws.”