Musher!

By Jonathan Thomas Stratman

It’s about a dogsled race. Not just any race, but 300 grueling miles of ice, snow and danger. For Will Rollins, his best friend Elias, and Will’s savvy lead dog, Blackie, this is the race of a lifetime. But with the $1000 entry fee, can they even get in? Can the locals compete against world-class international racers, some from as far away as Europe? And what about Becky Silas? She’s a tough competitor. Are the boys ready for trail life with a girl? And as if the race isn’t risky enough, there’s someone deliberately sabotaging sleds and gear, endangering all. When the temperature falls, the wind rises, and danger prowls the long trail, the friend who has your back had better be a good one!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan Thomas Stratman
• Release date: Nov 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370742448

Jonathan Thomas Stratman

Jonathan Thomas Stratman (1948 - ) grew up Alaskan and has since lived in the Pacific Northwest. Whether for adult or youth, his novels richly recreate the core, old time Alaskan adventure and experience. Stratman's five novels, three for middle grades and two adult mysteries, range from coming of age adventure, to quirky, richly nuanced adult characters with enough plot turns and twists to keep you up after your bedtime.His 'Father Hardy Alaska Mystery Series' highlights the pre-statehood Alaska, rough, untamed—unpredictable! And his "Cheechako" series, ca early '90s, predates computers and digital devices, highlighting active, dynamic teens—boys and girls—who live by their character and their wits. And don't forget the plucky husky!"I wrote "Cheechako" for every boy and girl who ever wanted to drive a dogsled or go adventuring in the wilds of Alaska. It was a great place to grow up. I wanted to share that. This is the kind of book I craved as an early reader."

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Rounding a tight turn, vision obscured by tall mounds of drifted snow, Will’s lead dog piled the entire seven-dog team onto one hungry, bad-tempered wolverine, no bigger than a dog but pound for pound more vicious than a grizzly bear. Writhing, yelping, snarling, bleeding dogs erupted—as if picked up and thrown—from the deep, narrow sled trail. They floundered and tangled in three and four foot snowdrifts, only wanting to escape the wild creature bent on tearing them to pieces.

Will’s Winchester 30-30 carbine hung close at hand, though tied tightly in its scabbard to the sled frame. But he already held his bullwhip, nine feet of braided leather with a weighted handle and whip-crack tassel at the business end. Will charged just as the creature reared, ready to lunge again. Flinging the whip end forward, he jerked and snapped the tassels, as loud as a rifle shot, scant inches from the wolverine’s nose. Crack! Crack! Crack! Startled, the creature pitched over backward in the snow. Again and again Will swung, not minding that the wolverine could turn and attack him. Will just kept pushing, driving the wolverine back and away from his dogs until the furry creature turned, jumped out of the dug-in trench of trail, and disappeared into a deep snowdrift.

Staggering back to his sled, bullwhip dragging, mind reeling from the sudden attack, Will faced the carnage. Shocking bright red blood spattered clean white snow as well as the ragged remains of his fine, seven-dog team. He’d been painstakingly preparing three pairs of pullers plus the lead dog, hoping for a chance at next month’s Nenana Youth Dogsled International. Those hopes now lay in whimpering, bleeding, tangled tatters. Three dogs were unharmed, shivering and fearful but okay. But he also had three dogs badly bitten and gashed, blood quickly freezing—at minus thirty-five degrees—one of them missing part of an ear.

Worst of all one dog, his lead dog, lay motionless in the snow, down and dead. Will dropped to his knees on the trail alongside the dead dog, stroking her thick coat. His body shook with sobs he couldn’t stop, tears falling, freezing, frosting his lower parka ruff with white droplets.

When he could, he unhooked his dead and his wounded dogs, loading them into the sled. With just three dogs pulling and him pushing—ever so slowly—they started the long trek home.

CHAPTER 2

Will’s mother read the trouble on his face as soon as he came through the door, before he could shrug himself out of his heavy parka, before he could even speak.

Will, what is it? What’s happened? She blew a strand of brown hair out of one eye as she dried her hands on her apron, the one with purple lilacs, flowers that will never grow this far north, she would say.

Wolverine, he replied. Talking made it hard to not start crying again. His throat got all tight, his eyes stung and he tried, without much luck, to conceal a sob in a cough. He hadn’t wanted to come home crying. Will felt far too old for that. But when his mother opened her arms, he walked right into them. There, he sobbed on her shoulder like his two-year-old baby sister. Amanda, hearing him upset, toddled over with her ‘blankie’ dragging the floor. Thumb in mouth she wrapped a tiny consoling arm around his leg and gave it a hug.

Three of ’em, Reddy, Big Joe, and Sparkle Plenty are pretty gashed up, he said. Daisy is … he started, then swallowed hard. Daisy’s dead, he sobbed. It all just happened so fast.

Hearing Will’s voice, his regular lead dog Blackie, best friend and full-time constant companion—until she got laid up with a temporary bout of sore feet—came limping out to greet him with her lips pulled back in a husky-dog smile, her bushy tail in full wag. Will reached down to pat the top of her head, realizing with a fresh stab of pain that if it hadn’t been for Blackie’s sore feet, she might be dead instead of poor Daisy.

The whole thing made him feel like a cheechako (chee-chock-oh) all over again, an Alaskan greenhorn, something Will hadn’t liked being from the start and had done his best to put behind him.

Nearly three years ago, Will and his mom moved all the way out from Boston to Alaska’s wild interior. They settled with his new step-dad in Nenana (Nee-nan-uh,) a small village south of Fairbanks. At Nenana the railroad met the river, and freight of all kinds got loaded to flat-bottomed riverboats for delivery all along the Tanana and Yukon rivers, some heading as far west as the Bering Sea.

Now, Will couldn’t imagine any life but this one, but his first year in Nenana had been a rough one. He arrived dreaming of a life in the wild: hunting, fishing, driving a dogsled, and learning to survive in the outdoors. But he couldn’t figure out on his own how to get started doing any of those things. He didn’t like the new school, couldn’t seem to make a friend, and wasn’t able—or allowed—to go out hunting, fishing or dogsledding by himself.

Then in one crazy, desperate moment, Will went charging out on melting river ice to rescue a stranded dog—Blackie—with the whole town watching, just as the ice began breaking up, starting to sweep away downriver. According to people in Nenana, Will going out on the ice to rescue a dog was just about the stupidest thing in the world to do, and by rights Will and the dog should both be dead. But somehow they weren’t. Will came back off the ice to find out he’d rescued a trained lead dog and that now people thought him ‘gutsy.’ That’s when he met Elias Charlie, a native Athabascan from a dog-sled-racing family. Elias taught him to not be a cheechako. His new friends, Blackie and Elias, helped change his life.

That night at dinner, Jim—Will’s step-dad—tried to make him feel better about the wolverine attack.

That’s why they call ’em accidents, he said. "You can’t be prepared for everything in the wilderness, but if you’re prepared for most things, like you were with the bullwhip, then you have a pretty good chance of making it home alive."

More thoughtfully Jim added, In a way we’re lucky Daisy died so quickly. If she’d been badly injured, we might have had to put her down anyway. It’s hard—well, it’s impossible—for us to afford a thousand dollar vet bill for a dog we could replace for fifty bucks. Around here, most dogs aren’t pets. They’re workin’ dogs. I’m sorry, I know that sounds harsh.

No, said Will, his face downcast. I get it.

By the way, Jim said, brightening, , "I hear the town’s going to back one racer this year in the Nenana Youth Dogsled International. You should enter."

Really? asked Will, stunned. No kidding?

No kidding, Jim said, grinning.

But I’m down three pullers and my spare lead dog is dead! Tell me how that makes me a contender?

Here’s what I’ll tell you, said Jim. Get the nod to compete in this race and we’ll find the team. I know Elias and his family will help with dogs or sleds, just like we’d help them.

Help them with what? said Will. They’re a dogsled-racing family. They have sheds filled with dogsled stuff. What could we possibly have that they’d need?

You never know, said Jim, but any one of them would give you the shirt off his back, especially since you saved Elias, so you need to be just as ready to pitch in and help out.

Sure, said Will. I’ve never had a better friend than Elias.

It was great having a best friend to adventure with. The previous summer, Will, Elias, and Blackie had even left Nenana for jobs at an island logging camp in Southeast Alaska near Sitka. They had the chance to spend most of the summer as dock workers, called—float monkeys—for Spruce Cove Air, a floatplane service belonging to Jim’s younger brother, Jerry.

The job at Spruce Cove Air turned out to be rigorous but fun. And except for rogue tidal waves from a calving glacier—waves that nearly killed them and their new friends—by summer’s end, Spruce Cove turned out to be a hard place to leave. It was especially hard for Will who got his first taste of sitting at the controls of a de Havilland Beaver airplane and making it go. Really flying! Even six months later, it was still the stuff of almost nightly dreams.

To be honest, it had been just a bit hard to come home. They got back at first frost and woke in the morning to skim ice topping the puddles, and the possibility—in just a month or two—of head-high snowdrifts and temperatures as low as minus fifty degrees. Meanwhile back at Spruce Cove, winter might bring little or no snow at all, because temperatures were so much warmer in Southeast Alaska. But down there they’d have rain most of the winter, almost a hundred inches of the stuff, and neither Will nor Elias minded missing that.

They did miss their new friends, though. Rickie—fellow float monkey—a tough, scrappy kid turned out to be something they never suspected: a girl! And Jeanie—small, cute, and near-sighted with a long reddish-brown ponytail—became an honorary float monkey. And then there was Wild Wyatt, pilot of Beaver Three. Wyatt taught Will, who was eager to learn, basic stuff about the plane, which in the end saved the pilot’s life.

After spending all of every summer day with friends at work, with no parents in sight, coming home to on-going parental supervision had been a shock. Almost daily Will would look at Elias, or Elias at him, and ask, Isn’t it time to head back south? or Don’t we have an airplane to catch? But it wasn’t time to go and they didn’t have a plane to catch. Truthfully, they loved Nenana, even the ice, snow, cold—and parents. Soon enough they settled back into their northern lives.

The organizational meeting of the Nenana Youth Dogsled International took place at the Nenana Civic Center, located on the tiny town’s wide main street. About fifty people showed up for free hot dogs and Cokes, plus a slide show on previous races and activities. They could also get a ten dollar discount off an NYDI membership—although almost everybody who showed up already had a membership. Maybe ten of the fifty were hopeful racers, with only one of them a girl—Becky Silas.

She’s tough, whispered Elias, sliding into the metal folding chair Will saved for him. Hardly ever rides, almost always runs. She’s a fast runner! Says if the dogs are gonna run it, she’s gonna run it. They watched as Becky made her way through the hot dog line. She was pretty, slightly taller than Elias. Slim and wiry, she always stood very straight with her shoulders back and wore her long, black hair pulled loosely into a ponytail.

Think they’d give it to a girl? asked Will.

Well, they should, said Elias, if she’s the best.

She better than you?

Elias hesitated. I don’t think so, he said after considering. Would be fun to find out, though.

Elias shifted uncomfortably on the hard, cold chair. Got back last night, he said. Dad had me sledding stuff in from the summer camp. Heard about the wolverine and about your dogs.

Yeah. Will looked away, eyes stinging, and for a long minute he couldn’t say anything.

Sorry, Elias said, giving Will a shoulder slug—the soft one. Bad luck.

He’d learned that shoulder slug from Rickie, though hers usually left the recipient rubbing an aching arm. Elias stood, not looking at Will, intently studying the small but determined lineup for seconds on hot dogs. When Will could finally look up, Elias pointed at the line. Think I need another one of those, he said. You? Although a skinny guy, Elias could always go back for seconds.

Nah, said Will, I’m trying to quit.

Quit hot dogs? Elias laughed. Sure you are. I’ve seen you eat! Save my chair. And off he went.

Will hadn’t wanted to move into town from the homestead. But with Jim flying back and forth every month or so to the University of Washington in Seattle, it didn’t make sense to live another twenty miles farther out in the wilderness. Jim, a wildlife biologist who sometimes worked for the State of Alaska, now got to go back to school on their nickel, as he said.

Will missed the way he felt at the homestead, exactly balanced. Even in winter, at thirty-five or forty degrees below zero, he felt solid and strong there. He had only to close his eyes to see the clear vision of himself, standing in the lee of the solid little cabin he’d helped build. He could easily imagine the wind shifting and shaping dry flakes and tiny hard pellets into a vast curving snow sculpture, dwarfing Will and soon reaching the cabin eaves.

But here in town, Will had the chance to get reacquainted with the world—the Nenana world, anyway. He hadn’t made any friends his first year here, until Elias. But now he found friendly people easily and didn’t really care if someone turned out to be not friendly, which in spite of his earlier fears, rarely happened.

Will particularly liked the tiny hamburger joint, new since he’d lived here before, now open in what had been a boarded-up space near the general store. He liked that he could just drift in, buy a Coke and sit in a booth, with a good chance of someone else sliding onto the other bench to sit and talk. That was certainly never going to happen out at the homestead.

He emerged from a tangle of odd thoughts as Elias slid back into his seat, a hot dog clutched in each hand. With one already half eaten, he handed the other to Will just as the microphone let out a feedback shriek and the meeting got underway.

Been gone awhile, he said. Figured you worked up an appetite by now.

Yep, I have, said Will, accepting the hot dog oozing mustard, and taking a big bite. The two turned their attention to the speaker as the hot dog line ended and, still sipping and chewing, the crowd drifted to chairs and looked up, expectant.

Most of you in this room, said the speaker, ‘Tall Tom’ Rutledge, one-time North American Grand Champion dogsled racer, are the best of the best here in the valley. The room being a gymnasium, his voice through the P.A. echoed badly. Some of you have already been nominated to be on the short list for this year’s NYDI-sponsored racer."

Elias elbowed Will. Did you see the list? he whispered.

No, where?

Bulletin board, front hall by the door. Elias let the next minute pass and pretended to pay attention to the speaker. He did it just to let Will’s curiosity build, and Will knew it.

Finally Elias looked over as if surprised to see Will still staring at him. We’re on it, he said.

Took you long enough.

Elias grinned innocently.

At the front of the room, Tall Tom continued. If you haven’t been nominated, but feel you should be considered, it’s okay to nominate yourself. That way we don’t miss out on someone who’s qualified but maybe not well-known.

There’s no good musher left off that list, said Elias, known or not.

Ahead of them on the left a hand went up. Must be someone, muttered Will. Tall Tom saw the raised hand.

Yes, son, he said. What is it?

I wanna nominate myself, said a familiar voice.

Is that who I think it is? asked Will.

Yeah, said Elias, exactly who you think it is. Edwin.

He any good? asked Will, trying to imagine Edwin doing anything but making him miserable his whole first year in Nenana. Every day on his way to school or from school—sometimes both—Edwin and a couple of his buddies would waylay Will, threaten him and push him around. But then after a year of adventuring in Alaska, plus being six inches taller and in pretty darn good shape, he didn’t get pushed around anymore.

Told you, said Elias, nobody good left off that list. He paused. To be fair, never seen him race. Just know he can’t do any of the other things he says he’s really good at. Remember when he claimed to be a really fast runner and we beat him last Fourth of July? Even you, he added.

Thanks for that, said Will.

With the meeting on hold while race officials signed up Edwin and one or two other hopefuls, Will and Elias sat silent, each imagining a possible future. Will—in spite of damage to his dog team—allowed himself to consider the possibility of being the one chosen. Am I ready? he asked himself. Really ready? And the answer was Heck yes! Especially if he could count on Elias backing him up. Elias had the gear, the know-how—and because of his father and uncle being racers—the pick of almost sixty dogs. The list of advantages went on in Will’s mind.

He decided to throw caution to the winds and tell Elias his plan. But when he opened his mouth Elias started to speak at exactly the same instant.

I think I’m the one they’re going to choose, Will intended to say. But instead said, You first.

Think they’re gonna choose me, said Elias. And I think I can win it. But I want to know, will you back me up? Be on my team? And … well … there’s one more favor I need to ask.

Sure, said Will, so stunned that a quick sip of Coke went down the wrong way, throwing him into a fit of hard coughing with Elias pounding on his back. Name it, he said when he could talk again.

If I could run Blackie for my lead dog, said Elias earnestly, I’m pretty sure she’d cinch it for me. What do you say?

CHAPTER 3

Dear Jeanie,

How are you? I am fine. Sorry I haven’t written back to you as well as you’ve written to me. Me and my dog team had a run-in with a wolverine. My spare lead dog, Daisy, got killed and three more were hurt, but they’re starting to run again.

Elias and I have the chance to be chosen as the Nenana Youth Dogsled International racer, which means sponsored. Which means the NYDI pays dog costs, like vets and food, and takes care of placing supplies at checkpoints along the trail, and stuff like that. It’s almost impossible to compete without a sponsor, because of the costs.

Elias thinks he’s going to be the one. I think maybe I am and hope it doesn’t hurt his feelings if I get chosen. He asked to use Blackie for his lead dog and I didn’t know what to say. Now we have two weeks to impress The Committee.

Your friend,

Will

CHAPTER 4

With Blackie back in the lead-dog position, Will unsnubbed his sled’s rope tie calling, "Hie, you huskies, mush!" He felt a quick rush of joy as his five-dog team hauled him smoothly down the snow-packed street toward the river trail. Will alternately ran and pushed the sled or, with one foot on a runner, pushed hard with the other to keep up speed. Knowing a member of The Committee could be watching made a good moment even better.

I’m gonna get this thing, he vowed.

But others were in this to win, too. He’d already seen Elias head out a few minutes earlier, passing with a jaunty wave. The two hadn’t seen each other since the meeting, but it hadn’t been a good time to stop and chat. The dogs, all harnessed up, were frantic to run. Barking and snapping at each other, they were lunging, yanking the sled against its rope tie, doing everything they could to wriggle themselves into a total tangle in their intense desire to just go.

Becky Silas, the lone girl, also made a good start running seven dogs. Will figured she’d be running extra dogs, just to show that she could. Show off, he muttered, but didn’t really mean it. As a girl, trying to get into the race, doing more than anybody else would be Becky’s only slim chance. Will waved at her and she waved back, flashing past. Although he’d never said more than hello to her, having this race in common, made it easier to have something to talk about.

"Blackie, haw!" Will shouted, approaching a left turn to the short stub of trail that led up and over the railroad tracks. From there the trail headed down the long riverbank and out onto the four-foot-thick river ice to meet the main trail. Old-timers still called parts of this the Mail Trail. It had been decades since dog teams hauled letters and Sears Roebuck parcels out to distant villages before airplanes took over.

Will slowed the team as they headed down the grade, stepping on the steel-claw brake mounted between the runners at the back of the sled. Braking on slopes assured the sled wouldn’t get going faster than the team and slide into the back pair, called wheel dogs.