Resolution by Andrew Joyce

Author:Andrew Joyce
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Andrew Joyce

Twenty

It was a crisp and dry day; the temperature still lingered at forty below, but at least it wasn’t getting any colder. The wind was blowing in from the north at a good rate as they glided along the ice north of McQuesten’s.

Huck noticed that the trail on the western bank of the Yukon had been beaten down enough to allow the dogs easy passage over the snow. Grabbing the gee-pole, he commanded. “Arrah!” Bright turned left, obeying the order. As the other dogs followed, Huck leaned on the sled’s left runner, lifting the right runner from the ice ever so slightly. He had to be careful not to apply too much pressure or the sled could capsize. It was team work between man and canine, as all mushing is. When they came upon the trail, Huck repeated the maneuver, but in reverse, “Oluk!” he shouted. Bright responded to this command by leading the dogs in a turn to the right.

Huck labored on. The frost from his breath formed a fine, white crystalline deposit on his beard and eyebrows.

The next leg of their journey would take them to Central City, three hundred miles away. According to Jass, it was not completely deserted as Forty Mile had been. However, of the one thousand residents that were calling it home when the news of Carmack’s strike reached that far north, fully ninety percent had stampeded south.

It started to snow before they made many miles. It was a Yukon snow, light and feathery. Molly stood on the runners, in front of Huck, as they sped through the swirling snowfall. Huck would jerk the sled this way and that when they came to a bend in the trail. The creak of the birch-wood runners was quite audible as the sled made the corners. Jass seemed warm and content wrapped in his furs. The dogs were straining in their harnesses; they were real “trail eaters.” On straight runs, Molly would sometimes run alongside the dogs, which would prod them to run even faster, as though they thought it a contest to determine the fleetest between the species.

The sled was the only thing moving. Except for the commands Huck issued to Bright, there was no sound. While mushing, the silence was not so evident, but when they stopped to let Jass get his blood flowing, the silence descended and enveloped them. The country became bigger; they became smaller—insignificant beings in an enormous universe.

The trail was good, the snow light. Every day for five days straight, they made their fifteen miles and then some. On the morning of the sixth day after leaving McQuesten’s, they came to a snow drift in the trail that they could not get around. Huck halted the dogs and climbed the hard-packed drift to see what lay ahead, then came down and conferred with Jass. “Reckon we’ll have to go back out onto the ice for a spell. It looks like the trail is blocked for miles.”

“Okay, but I’ve been noticing the ice.

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