on the training, I guess, and my work schedule.” She straightened up and zipped her parka. “You’d better get headed for Dawson. It’ll be pitch-dark soon, and I’ve still got chores to do.”
“Need any help? I could give you a ride out to your truck,” he offered.
“No, thanks. I can manage and I like the walk.” She started to turn away and then paused. “Be careful of that soft spot in the drive just before you get to the main road. Keep to the left of the deep ruts and you should be okay.”
Rebecca watched him turn and walk back toward his truck. Her eyes narrowed speculatively. “Early thirties,” she said to Tuffy, who had remained at her side. “See the way he walks? Definitely military. I should have guessed he was Brian’s big brother when he told me his name.” She laughed softly, the first time she’d laughed in forever. “Win the Percy DeWolf? He’s awfully arrogant, wouldn’t you say, Tuffy, for a cheechako who probably doesn’t know a dog harness from a doghouse!” Tuffy, as always, cheerfully agreed.
MacKenzie’s truck started hard, with much grinding and groaning. It took several tries for him to turn around in Rebecca’s yard, backing up into the irregular gaps between the spruce trees and the dog barn, and the dog yard fence and the cabin porch. At length, with a burst of black exhaust, he was gone, and the sound of the old truck’s engine faded into silence.
Rebecca gazed beyond her late husband’s dog yard, at the wall of rugged mountains that made up the Dawson Range. Bruce Reed, she thought, I miss you like crazy and I hate you for leaving me here with a pack of forty sled dogs to look after and a business that’s still in the red….
Her eyes stung with tears, and a sudden chill made her wrap her arms around herself as she stood on the cabin porch. Tuffy leaned her small but solid weight against Rebecca’s leg. Rebecca sniffed and let one hand drop to stroke the dog’s head. “I don’t hate him, Tuffy,” she said softly. “I’m just mad at him, that’s all. I want him back and he won’t come, but that’s not really his fault, is it?”
She might have stood there feeling sorry for herself indefinitely, but there were chores to do. There were dogs to feed, a wood box to fill, water to haul and, finally, her own supper to cook. Tomorrow she had sled dogs to train, more chores to do, more wood and water to haul, and the guest cabin needed a good cleaning in preparation for the steady stream of clients that would inhabit it once the snow came, some flying in from as faraway as Japan to spend a week in the Yukon behind a team of dogs. Bruce’s outfitting business, now in its fifth year, had gotten off to a slow start, but if Rebecca’s figures were correct, this year it would actually turn a profit. Nearly all of the available dates were filled with clients seeking a northern adventure. More than half of them were repeats. Between the food sales, the guided trips, and the small sums she earned writing a weekly column for a Whitehorse newspaper, Rebecca, without her husband, was managing to scrape by.
As she mixed the dog food in the big galvanized washtubs, three of them set side to shoulder inside the cabin door, she caught herself thinking about Bill MacKenzie. “He’ll never make it,” she said to Tuffy as she mixed the ground meat into the kibble and added copious quantities of warm water from the huge kettles steaming atop the woodstove. “He’ll never last out the winter in Brian’s shack up on the Flat. He may think he’s Jeremiah Johnson, but he doesn’t have a clue. This country will eat him up.” She shook her head and laughed for the second time that day. “Ex-military. He probably has a hard time tying his bootlaces without a drill sergeant instructing him.” She scooped the warm, soupy mix of meat, kibble, fat, vitamins and water into five-gallon buckets, hoisted two of them with hands that were callused and arms that were necessarily strong. She pushed the door open with a practiced kick of her booted toe, did likewise to the door from the arctic entry and emerged from the cabin to the wolflike chorus of forty huskies howling for their dinner.
Halfway through her chores she paused for a moment, pushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead with the back of her wrist and shook her head. “Boy, I feel kind of sorry for his dogs.”
“WE’LL NEED TO TAKE X rays to see what’s going on,” the veterinarian said, removing his stethoscope and laying it on the side table. “From what you’re telling me and from what I’m hearing inside her, it sounds like some sort of intestinal obstruction. Does she eat rocks?”
“Rocks?” Mac stared down at the small sled dog that he steadied in his arms. “Why would she do that?”
The veterinarian laughed. “You’d be amazed at the things we find in a sled dog’s intestines. Rocks are the most common. They start out playing with them and then for some unfathomable reason they swallow them.”
“Rocks,” Mac said. He shook his head. “I guess there’s a lot I need to learn about these dogs. Okay, so what happens now?”
“We’ll knock her out, take some pictures and if there’s an obstruction, we’ll go ahead and surgically remove it. She’ll have to stay overnight for observation, and I’d like to get some IV hydration into her.”
“And if you don’t find anything?”
“I’ll do some blood work and we’ll take it from there. The other option is to keep dosing her with mineral oil the way you’ve been doing and hope the obstruction works its way through. But she’s pretty dehydrated right now and she’s lost a lot of condition. There’s also the possibility of a rupture of the intestine, which would cause massive infection. It’s up to you. If you want to wait a little longer…”
Mac shook his head. “Go ahead and do whatever needs to be done. I don’t want to take any chances with her. Can I call here tonight and find out how she’s doing?”
“We should know how we’re going to proceed as soon as we see what the problem is. If you leave a number where you can be reached, I’ll give you a call.”
“I’m staying at the Eldorado,” Mac said. He stroked the dog’s head one final time before leaving her to the vet. “You’re a good girl, Callie,” he said. “You’ll feel better soon.” Sick as she was, Callie wagged her tail at his words and tried to follow him out of the examination room, which made him feel worse than ever. If someone had told him three months ago that he would be so attached to a pack of sled dogs, he would have laughed in disbelief, but abandoning Callie at the veterinarian’s launched him into a state of high anxiety.
He paced the lobby at the Eldorado for nearly an hour before the phone call came. The X rays showed a large obstruction, probably a rock. They were commencing surgery and would phone again to let him know how things went. Another ninety anxious minutes later, he got word that the operation had been successful and that Callie was fine. “That rock was as big as a hen’s egg,” the vet said. “I saved it for you.”
Mac’s relief was followed by intense hunger. He ate a huge and satisfying meal, then had a couple of cold beers while watching some of the locals shoot pool in the barroom. His thoughts kept returning to Rebecca Reed. Try as he might, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Fred Turner was a taciturn old cuss, but he’d divulged a good deal about her when he’d stopped at Mac’s cabin for a visit two weeks back. “Terrible sad story,” Fred had said, shaking his head and blinking the sting of a large swallow of Jack Daniel’s from his eyes. “She came here with her husband, oh, must be five, six years ago. Quiet little thing. Shy. Hard worker, though. Worked right alongside her man, never shirked. Good with the dogs, too. She helped Bruce train, ran some races herself and did real well.
“Bruce, he ran the long races. The Iditarod and the Yukon Quest. Those are thousand-mile races. Tough races. Rebecca ran some of the shorter ones. Two, three hundred milers like the Fireplug, the Copper Basin, the Percy DeWolf. They started up a business giving tours by dog team and selling dog food. Best prices in the Territory on dog food. And then Bruce went and got himself killed. Hit a moose with his truck coming back from a supply trip to Whitehorse. We all thought she’d pack up and leave, but by God she’s stuck it out, all by herself. Folks say she hasn’t smiled once since Bruce died, and she’s got no family to turn to, just a mother back East who thinks she’s crazy livin’ way out here