Black Star, Bright Dawn Read online

  Mr. Weiss said, "You should start training tomorrow."

  My father sat and stared.

  6

  Early the next morning a sled drove up in front of our house. A man with a gray beard got off the runners. He came to the door and spoke to my father.

  "My name is Peter Avakoff," he said. "Eve been hired to help you get ready for the Iditarod. Eve raced in two of them. Came in fifth and tenth. Raced in the last one, too, but my heart acted up and I had to drop out."

  My father was still recovering from the shock Mr. Weiss and Mr. Gibson had dealt him the night before.

  "Are you ready?" Peter Avakoff said.

  My father didn't answer. He was out the door, dragging me along. Together we harnessed up our dogs.

  "I need weight," he said. "What do you weigh, Bright Dawn?"

  "One hundred and twenty-nine pounds," I said.

  "Jump in," my father said.

  He sent the caribou whip snaking along the dogs' backs and we were off for the river, Peter Avakoff and his team running beside us.

  We ran twenty slow miles down the river, then stopped for Peter Avakoff to rest and talk about the Iditarod, how it was different from all the other dog sled races. When we got back, he came into the house and talked again.

  My father, who had never learned to write, asked me to put down everything, word for word, as Peter Avakoff talked. How to pass another team on the trail and keep your dogs from fighting the other team. How often to feed the dogs. How much—not all they could eat—and what food was best. Water was very important. How often they should drink and how much, surely not all they could.

  My father had seven dogs on his team.

  "You need twice that number," Peter Avakoff said. "You'll lose dogs along the way, virus and accidents. You have to finish the race with seven at least."

  It took only a day for Mr. Weiss to find more good dogs, trained dogs that had raced before.

  After that, the two men went out every day and four times a week at night, because a lot of the Iditarod was run at night. I went with them on Saturdays.

  I took down what Peter Avakoff said. By summer I had a small book of notes. Every week my father asked me to read them over to him from the beginning.

  When the ice on the big river broke up, he and Peter Avakoff took their teams into the hills north of the village, where deep snow still lay on the ground. They trained all summer, though most of the snow had melted by July, going out days and nights and traveling at least fifty miles each time.

  After most of the snow had melted, there were stretches of mudholes and quivering ground that shook and bounced the sled. It wasn't much fun, but Peter Avakoff told my father that he would encounter lots of mudholes in the Iditarod and it was a good idea to get used to them.

  In November, John Seward put the two dog sleds from the school together, borrowed another team from the Trading Post, and entered me and my friend Julia Englet in the three-hundred-mile Ikuma—Nome Express Race. We were out for four days and had fun but came in twenty-first and twenty-second.

  It was the next month, after a heavy snow had fallen, that my father and I had the terrible accident.

  Early one Sunday we were out on the trail. My father tried to pass Peter Avakoff's team. Our sled was bouncing, and I was holding on tight with both hands. We were halfway past the other team. Our dogs were barking at his dogs. Bartok snaked out the long caribou whip.

  Now we were past them. We were about to swing back onto the trail and Peter Avakoff shouted, "Good."

  The dogs were kicking snow in our faces. Suddenly our sled slipped to one side of the trail, then to the other, but it didn't straighten out. It rose in the air, came down, rose again, tipped, skated along on one runner, and crashed against a tree.

  My father was on his feet before I got to him. We were both dazed and covered with snow. Peter Avakoff untangled our dogs. We got the sled right side up and headed back home. Bartok made a joke about the accident, but he looked so pale that I knew he was injured.

  Ikuma did not have a doctor. We had a good veterinarian, though. Dr. Goshaw looked at Bartok and took X-rays and said that his left shoulder was cracked in two places. He wound it up with yards of tape, made a sling, and gave Bartok some medicine, which he didn't take.

  Mr. Weiss and Mr. Gibson came while we were eating supper. They had heard about the accident and talked to the veterinarian.

  My father jumped up from the table and made a show of being in fine shape. "Three weeks and I'll be back," he shouted.

  Mr. Weiss gave him a sharp look. "That's not what we hear. The vet says you'll be laid up for six weeks, maybe longer."

  Mr. Gibson said, "That's too bad."

  "Terrible," Mr. Weiss said.

  Both men were sympathetic, but I felt that already they had made up their minds that Bartok would not get well in time for the race.

  "Three weeks and I'll be back," my father said, still shouting, swinging an arm to show them how strong he was.

  "Say you are back in three weeks," Mr. Gibson said. "That will be the middle of January. The race starts early in March. Your team needs to run fifty miles a day to get in shape. That's more than a thousand miles gone, lost, down the drain."

  "Bright Dawn will train the dogs for me," my father said. "She's a good trainer."

  "But what if your shoulder doesn't heal in three weeks?" Mr. Weiss asked. "What if it takes six weeks? Two months, the vet says. What happens then?"

  My father didn't answer.

  "Well, I will tell you what happens," Mr. Weiss went on. "We've spent more than twenty thousand dollars on fees, food for you, food for the dogs, food drops here in Ikuma and other checkpoints. On the best sled money can buy. On seven trained malamutes that alone cost us forty-two hundred dollars. We've spent all that money, and there we would be on the day the race starts with no one to race. Do you get the point?"

  My father sat down at the table. Then he got up and strode across the room and looked out the window at the falling snow. Then he came back and sat down again. He did not answer Mr. Weiss.

  In the lamplight his cheeks had a rosy glow, but his hands, clenched in a knot, were white. He glanced at me, started to say something, and stopped.

  For a long while there were no sounds in the room except the crackling of wood in the big stove.

  Then Mr. Weiss said, "These are the facts, Bartok. What do you think we should do? Wait and see what happens? Gamble that you'll get well in a month or six weeks? What?"

  It seemed terribly hard for my father to answer. Words came out of his mouth slowly. "My daughter will run the race," he said.

  Mr. Weiss and Mr. Gibson were startled. They looked at each other, then at me.

  Mr. Weiss said, "But your daughter's too young. She's still in school."

  "A schoolgirl," Mr. Gibson said.

  I could say nothing. I was overwhelmed by the thought of racing in the Iditarod. Then I got all of my wits together in a hurry.

  "I am not a schoolgirl," I said. "I graduated from school the tenth of this month. I have a diploma. There it is on the wall."

  I pointed. The men turned and glanced at the diploma.

  "And I am not a girl. I'm eighteen years old. I'm a woman."

  "Women have won the Iditarod. Two of them," my father said. "They weren't much older than my daughter."

  "I know, I know," Mr. Weiss said.

  Mr. Gibson said nothing.

  They put on their parkas. As they left, Mr. Weiss said, "You will hear from us. Soon."

  It was not soon. A day went by. Almost two days went by. I gave up hope on the second day, but my father told me that he had had a vision.

  "They will come tonight," he said. "They have decided. You will run in the big race."

  "Will I win? Will I win?"

  He thought. "The vision is not clear about the winning part."

  Mr. Weiss and Mr. Gibson came while we were eating supper. They took off their parkas. They stood by the stove and warmed t
heir hands and said nothing. I poured two mugs of coffee for them. They didn't thank me, they just stood there getting warm.

  "What news do you bring?" my father said to the men, impatient with them.

  My mother stood silently by the stove. Her hands were clasped together. From the first she hadn't liked the idea of my running in the dangerous Iditarod, though she had said nothing. She never went against my father.

  "What?" he asked, raising his voice.

  "Good news," Mr. Gibson said.

  "Very good news," Mr. Weiss said. "I've talked to the people in Anchorage. I've given them the facts about the races your daughter has run, her age, and so forth. She is entered in the Iditarod."

  "And tomorrow you start training," Mr. Gibson added.

  "Tonight," I said.

  Before they left, I got out the notes I had taken down from Peter Avakoff and read them over. The next morning as the moon set I was on the river with Peter Avakoff and the fourteen dogs. He sat in the sled and I drove. I had never driven more than seven dogs. The fourteen dogs seemed to stretch out in front of me for miles.

  I would need to learn how to control that many dogs. It was done only by voice commands, not by reins. "Go!" "Whoa!" "Gee!" for a right turn. "Haw!" for a left turn. "Come gee! Come haw!" for a complete turn, depending on whether the turn was left or right. And shouted so the leader heard.

  "Today we go five hours," Peter Avakoff said. "We go slow. We come back slow. Tomorrow the same. In a week we will choose and see who goes where in the line."

  I knew half the dogs already. They were friends.

  The two wheel dogs, the dogs that ran side by side directly in front of the sled, were named Thunder and Lightning. Thunder was a male malamute, gray with a black overcoat. Lightning, a female, looked much like him. They were brother and sister and ran well together.

  The next four dogs in the line were from a different litter, but all had been bred by the Malamute Eskimo tribe, who live near the mouth of the Yukon River.

  They were named Sun, Moon, Sky, and Blizzard. The first three were brown-eyed, tawny-colored dogs. Sun and Moon, gray Alaskan huskies, were tireless. Sky, who had some malamute and husky blood in her, was dependable. Silver-coated with an amber mask, Blizzard was different from the other six dogs. He never ran faster than he had to, but in a pinch he could fly. He was my father's favorite. He had used him as a leader and liked him better than Black Star.

  Black Star, as I have said before, was my favorite. This morning I put him in the lead. With his tail furled and ears aslant, he seemed to enjoy being out in front of thirteen dogs, seven of them strangers he would soon lord it over.

  Peter Avakoff and I raced ten hours a day for a week, and on the twenty-fifth of February I boarded the bush plane Mr. Weiss had hired to take me and the team to Anchorage. It was a holiday in Ikuma. The town came to the landing strip, the school band played, and Mr. Weiss gave a short speech.

  "Bright Dawn, you will bring great honor to Ikuma. We send you away with hearts bursting with pride. We await the day when you will return to us, on your way to victory."

  Victory? I was glad that he had nothing more to say about victory or about Bright Dawn, who was trembling in her mukluks.

  7

  I took a quick glance below me as the plane struggled into the air, at the world suddenly upside down. Then I closed my eyes and did not open them again until we were safe in Anchorage.

  Mr. Weiss had a truck waiting for us, a huge red one with boxes for each of the dogs and a place on top for the sled. The driver took us down a street where lumps of gray snow lay melting in sunny places. The thermometer had read zero when I left Ikuma. Here it was twenty degrees above zero. I sweltered in my wolverine hat and caribou parka. The truck kicked up dust. I wondered how we could ever get out of the city on our sleds.

  "You're quiet," the young man said. "You're worrying about snow. Don't worry. We'll truck snow in if we have to, all the way down Main Street from the starting line to the outskirts and beyond. You never can tell, of course. It can let loose and snow three feet by morning. I hope so. We have sixty-nine racers. If it doesn't snow, we've got a lot of snow to haul."

  He took us to a field where the drivers and their teams were camped. There were more dogs than I had ever seen in my life. There must have been a thousand camped in the field.

  We unloaded the sleds and took the dogs out of their boxes and chained them to the truck. They set up a howl for supper. All the dogs in the field were howling for supper. They made a dreadful din.

  I had a cooker that used charcoal and made a hot fire. I put charcoal in the bottom and sprinkled it with Blazo. A square pot fitted on top of the cooker and held five gallons. I put some snow in the bottom of the pot, then the frozen meat. Peter Avakoff cooked meat for exactly thirty-five minutes. I did this also. It made a fine stew. The dogs liked it, wolfed it down, and begged for more.

  Now it was dark. The camp sparkled with fires. Smoke rolled through the night. Everywhere the dogs were quiet. I got into my sleeping bag and curled up on the sled. I was too excited to sleep.

  There were four days more before the race began. I spent part of the time going over all the things the rules said I must carry—an ax, snowshoes, a hunting knife, a flashlight, and a sleeping bag. I had six extra batteries for my headlamp. Mr. Weiss had bought me a watch with a dial that glowed in the dark.

  I saw that my clothes were all in shape. I had two parkas, a long one for the cold, a short one for when I was on foot, running with the team, and two light parka covers. I took inner and outer deerskin pants, two sealskin blouses, a pair of mukluks and a pair of softer boots to wear under them, a pair of gloves and a pair of mittens. My hood was trimmed inside with wolverine, a fur that does not freeze.

  For the dogs I had more than a thousand boots to keep the snow and ice from cutting their feet. Often I had to change their boots every forty or fifty miles. The boots were tough, made of canvas and sewn with fishing line.

  I had enough food to last me to the second checkpoint at Rabbit Lake, where the planes would drop more food. For the dogs, a mixture of frozen caribou and salmon in small packages that were handy to put in the cooker. For myself, corned beef hash and canned fruit. Also some Eskimo ice cream, which you make by taking reindeer tallow and a little seal oil and heating them hard, adding water and oil until everything is fluffy. Then you put in some cranberries or strawberries, any kind of berries. It is a wonderful treat. Hunters take it with them when they go out on the ice.

  I noticed that some of the drivers had a mat made from automobile tread hooked to the back of their sleds. To slow the team down, you simply stood on the mat. It was better, they told me, than a brake or a hook. I found a piece of tread, made a mat out of it, and fastened it to the back.

  I polished the runners and went over the gang line and all of its fastenings. The steel hooks on the brake were a little worn. I borrowed a file from a driver who was camped near me and sharpened them.

  The driver was an Eskimo from Fox Island, far north of Nome. He was short and broad and when he walked he looked like a bear.

  "Oteg," he said, giving his chest a thump, speaking Eskimo. "That is my name."

  His eyebrows were white and his skin was the color of caribou hide. He had small black eyes that were set far back in his head. He squinted at me and I saw nothing but two black slits.

  "You look like my youngest daughter," he said. "Her name was Panee. What is your name?"

  "Bright Dawn," I said.

  "Panee died one day long ago. Too bad. She was a pretty girl. Now I have only nine."

  He counted the girls on his fingers and said their names, but I caught the name of only one of them, Nuna.

  "I am an old man," Oteg said. "I give my daughters good advice. They do not listen to me. Do you listen?"

  "Sometimes."

  "Have you raced this race before?"

  I shook my head.

  "Oteg knows much about this race. I have run it three tim
es. One time I came number twelve. One time I came ten. One time I did not finish the race. There was a moose on the trail one night near Ophir. The moose came out of the trees. It walked into my team and killed three dogs. Sad. Look for moose, they are a big danger on the trail. Moose and the times you cannot see the trail and get yourself lost."

  He glanced at me out of his small black eyes to see if I was listening.

  "This time I run better," he said. "Who knows? Maybe I come first." His eyes glittered. "Where will you be?"

  "I don't know, but I think about it every moment."

  "Think more! The race is won by thinking. Think about what you will do the first day. Will you go fast? Will you go slow?"

  "My team is fast."

  "Then I will give you advice. You like advice? Good. Slow the first day. Let the dogs lope. Let them walk. We draw numbers for the start. If I start first, catch up. If I start later, then I'll catch you."

  It snowed hard in the night, a foot of powdery crystals.

  8

  The drawing was held three nights later. All the sled drivers were there. Drivers from the lower States, from Spain and Switzerland, from Italy and France and Canada. There were four women drivers and two girls my age.

  I got number 23 to wear around my neck. Oteg got number 39. The dogs got a spot of blue paint on their backs. This was to make sure that the dogs that reached Nome would be the same ones that left Anchorage. No dogs could be added along the way.

  Race day dawned bright and warm. The temperature was nearly five degrees above freezing. After their long rest, my dogs were wild to be on the trail—so wild that the handler tied his sled to mine to hold them back. Even then we crossed the starting line before we were supposed to and had to come back.

  Black Star acted the worst of my dogs. He stood on his hind legs and pawed the air. He bucked like a bronco. He yelped and barked.