Ice Dogs by Terry Lynn Johnson

Author:Terry Lynn Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

15

THE DOGS SEEM HAPPIER. I FEEL their enthusiasm behind me as I plod along. I’m very careful not to work up a sweat and get damp, so I stop often.

There has been little wind since the storm. The trees are still. It’s so peaceful out here when it’s quiet like this. I could almost forget we’re lost and starving. With the sun out, I imagine how wonderful it will be in a few weeks. Dad always played a game every year waiting for spring. “You can hear it breaking the back of winter,” he’d say.

When I was young, I took this literally, and tried listening for some kind of spine-snapping noises. Once, we heard the creek ice let go with a loud crack that echoed across the valley, and I was convinced that was winter’s back.

The dogs pant behind me, and the snow makes little shushes as I shuffle in my snowshoes. Around us, the arched limbs of alder and birch take turns losing their snow loads with a soft whoomp. They spring upward, free of their burdens.

“So do all mushers run six dogs in a team?” Chris asks behind me.

“No, no. That’s just how many I brought along for this trip. I have sixteen. It all depends on what you’re doing, how much weight you have in the sled, how far you’re going, what the trail conditions are like.”

I keep moving in front of the team, but turn my head so Chris can hear me. “The main thing is not to have too many and be overpowered. That’s dangerous for everyone.”

“Huh. I guess you don’t need many dogs to pull you.”

I glance back with a mock offended expression.

He doesn’t know how true his words are. Two years ago, I had too many dogs on a run. Of course, I had waited till Dad wasn’t around, then hooked up a ten-dog team. That was a wild ride. I thought I was so cool running that long string of dogs all by myself. Fun—until we got to the road where I couldn’t sink the snow hook. Instead of going straight across the road and onto the trail, Beetle, the little tramp, had veered into a ditch to get to the village dog that was walking loose near the trees.

We crashed, or, more to the point, I crashed, and watched my whole team take off down the road without me, dragging the broken sled. I had limped up the driveway of the nearest house, which turned out to be Noel Chambers’s place, and he proceeded to tell the whole school what a complete noob I was, and worse, that I was a bad musher. And his dad had to take me on his snowmobile about a mile to the next homestead just in time to watch Beetle tie with the male dog and a fight erupt in the team. Mr. Chambers helped me break up the fight while I pretended not to notice the two dogs caught in a canine version of wanton lust, which was pretty hard since Beetle was squealing like a vixen.

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