The Alaskan Adventure Read online

  Stone walked up to them with a smile. “Hello, David,” he said. “And these must be your friends from New York.”

  “That’s right, Mr. Stone,” David said.

  The man shook his head. “Just call me Curt, David,” he said.

  David introduced Frank and Joe. “They’re here to visit and to help me get ready for the Iditarod,” he explained.

  “So I heard.” Curt gave Frank and Joe a friendly smile and said, “Welcome to Alaska. One thing you fellows will have to get used to—this may be a big country, but news travels faster here than anywhere I’ve ever been. I hope you have a good stay. You can count on David to take good care of you.” He walked away.

  “He seems like a nice guy,” Joe remarked as the three continued on their way. “This project must be pretty important for him to spend so much time in your town.”

  David nodded. “I guess so,” he said. “Or maybe he just likes it here. Why shouldn’t he? I do.”

  Frank saw the cabin where he and Joe would be staying up ahead. He didn’t yet have a good mental map of the area, but with the river along one side and the forest on the other three sides, getting oriented would be pretty easy.

  “Oh,” David said, sounding disappointed. “The curtains are still closed at Aunt Mona and Uncle Peter’s. I was sure they’d be back by now. I wanted you to meet them. Oh, well—later for that. Hey, are you guys tired? Do you need to take a rest or anything?”

  Frank glanced over at Joe, then said, “No, we’re fine. But if there’s something you’ve got to do . . . ”

  “It’s not that,” David said. “I was wondering if maybe you’d like to go for a ride.”

  “You mean, with the dogs?” Joe asked eagerly.

  David nodded.

  “Believe it!” Joe said. “When?”

  “How about right now?”

  “You’re on!” cried Joe. The walk back to the huskies seemed to take much less time. Once there, Frank and Joe helped David carry a sturdy oak sled from a storage shed. They set it on a flat piece of ground next to the trail.

  “It’s so long,” Joe said, sounding surprised.

  “That’s to hold supplies,” David explained, “and it’s long enough to sleep on, too, when you’re on the trail.”

  He started laying out a long series of connected harnesses. The huskies began barking eagerly and leaping up, then falling back as they reached the end of the ropes that kept them close to their houses.

  “You want to help hitch them up?” David asked. “Here, we’ll bring them to the sled one by one, in order. The ones closest to the sled are called the wheel dogs. We’ll take them over first.”

  David grabbed one of the huskies, untied him, and led him to the slot just in front of the sled. The dog stood quietly while David put the padded harness around his powerful chest.

  “You have to let them know you’re in charge,” David said. “Once they know you mean business, they’re fine. Joe, why don’t you bring Big Foot over? And Frank, you can fetch Gray Dawn.”

  Frank and Joe went over to the dogs David pointed out, took them by the collars, and led them to the sled, where David harnessed them. Soon it was the turn of Ironheart, the lead dog. Frank scanned the rig and estimated at least forty feet between Ironheart and the front of the sled. Dogsledding needed a lot of room.

  By now the team of huskies had turned into a powerhouse of energy and enthusiasm. Tails wagging, the eager dogs jumped up against the harnesses, ready to get moving. This was what they lived for. This was what they loved.

  “They need a good run,” David said. “You two will take the place of the weight of the supplies.”

  Joe sat in the seat, while Frank squeezed in front of Joe. David stood at the rear of the sled, next to the runners.

  “What, no steering wheel?” Joe called out. “No accelerator?”

  “No seat belt or airbag?” Frank added.

  They all laughed.

  Ironheart looked over his shoulder at his master and panted. It looked to Frank as if the husky, too, was enjoying the joke.

  “Here we go,” David said. “Hike! Hike!” he shouted at the dogs.

  The huskies dug their feet into the packed snow of the trail and lunged forward. The sled was soon bouncing along a rutted path toward the river. Frank and Joe were so startled at the sudden speed of the team that neither of them said a word.

  “Hike! Hike!” David called again.

  Frank glanced back at him. David had his left foot resting on the runner. With his right he kicked at the trail to help push the team along.

  Frank fastened the neck tab on his parka and pulled the hood tighter around his ears. The icy wind had already numbed his nose and cheeks. The path plunged down the riverbank and onto the ice. For a moment the sled felt as if it had become airborne. Frank grabbed the sides of the sled.

  Behind him Joe shouted, “Waa-hoo!”

  As the dogs felt the sled move onto the slicker surface of the river ice, they picked up the pace. “Hold on!” David shouted.

  The white expanses of snow and ice glittered blindingly in the winter sunlight. Frank narrowed his eyes to slits and looked around. The wild silence of unending Alaska surrounded them. Nothing broke the stillness but the steady high-pitched hissing of the sled runners on the ice.

  Just ahead the trail branched. “Gee!” David called out to Ironheart. “Gee!”

  Ironheart led the team to the right.

  Frank turned halfway around and asked, “What do you say for left?”

  “Haw,” David replied. “That’s one of the first things a sled dog has to learn.”

  “This is so cool!” Joe exclaimed.

  “Yeah,” David answered. “About twenty degrees below zero.”

  They laughed as the team continued angling diagonally across the Yukon. The trail looked well worn. Frank wondered if this was where David did most of his training for the Iditarod. But there must be other mushers in town, too, who used the same dogsled trails to collect firewood from across the river or to do other errands. The Yukon really was a highway, winter and summer alike.

  “We’ve got company,” David said.

  Frank and Joe looked around.

  “Off to the left,” David added. “It’s Gregg.”

  Frank craned his neck and saw another dog team moving along the river, on a trail closer to the bank. “Is he trying to race you?” he asked.

  “No, just out giving his team a run,” David told him.

  “Funny coincidence that he’s doing it right now,” Joe said. “He’s moving pretty fast, isn’t he?”

  David looked over again, then said, “I don’t think he’s carrying a load. That’s not the way I train-a team, but I guess he has his own ideas.”

  Frank twisted to get a better look at Gregg and his dogs. As he did, something else caught his eye. “David?” he called. “What’s that smoke in the town?”

  David looked over his shoulder. “Whoa!” he shouted. “Whoa!” The sled lurched as he jammed his foot on the blade brake, which dug into the snow-packed trail.

  Ironheart and the rest of the team stopped.

  “Something’s wrong,” David said as he studied the column of black smoke rising from the edge of town.

  “What is it?” Joe said.

  “We’d better get back fast,” David said. “That looks to me like Uncle Peter’s cabin.”

  3 Throwing Snow on Fire

  * * *

  David ran toward the head of the dog team. As he passed the sled, he yelled, “Come on! Lift the sled. I’m going to turn the team around.”

  Frank and Joe climbed out on either side of the sled and followed David as he ran.

  David grabbed Ironheart’s harness and led him around in a wide circle over the rough ice. The team followed, then stopped. Frank and Joe hoisted the sled into the air and carefully maneuvered it in a half turn that left it facing back toward Glitter.

  As the Hardys were clambering back into their places on the sled, David gra
bbed the handhold and started to push. “Ironheart!” he shouted. “Hike! Hike!”

  Ironheart leaned into the straps around his muscular chest and dug his paws into the trail. The rest of the team did the same. They surged forward.

  Downriver the smoke from the Windman cabin smeared the sky with an ugly black blotch.

  David pushed the team to full speed. “Pull, Ironheart! Pull! Pull!”

  Ironheart strained against the harness. He and the other dogs seemed as aware of the emergency as David and the Hardys.

  “What do you think happened?” Frank asked.

  “I don’t know,” David replied. “It could be anything. But fire is about the worst thing that can happen. The whole town is made of wood.”

  Frank noticed Gregg across the ice, still mushing his team away from town. “We should tell him about the fire,” he said, pointing.

  “He won’t hear us,” David said. “Wait until we get closer.”

  They raced along the slick ice trail, skimming over the frozen river. When they had shortened the distance, David shouted, “Gregg!”

  His rival didn’t even turn his head.

  “Gregg! Gregg!” David called again.

  Gregg ignored him and continued driving his team away from town.

  “I guess he didn’t hear us,” David said.

  Frank wasn’t so sure about that. On the frozen flat river nothing stopped sound from traveling a long way. Frank thought Gregg was pretending not to notice, as a way of showing his resentment toward David. He didn’t realize that David was trying to alert him to an emergency.

  Ironheart led the team up the riverbank. When they reached a flat spot near the cabin, David stopped the team and Frank and Joe jumped out of the sled.

  By now the townspeople had formed a bucket brigade between the cabin and another one nearby that had a cistern full of water inside. Three men came running up with a long hose connected to a hand pump.

  “No fire trucks?” Joe asked, looking around.

  “Nothing,” David said.

  The men and women handed sloshing buckets along the line. A broad-shouldered man at the end of the line took each bucket in turn, threw the water onto the flames, then tossed the empty bucket to someone in the second line to be handed back and refilled.

  “Here, take these,” David said. He grabbed two snow shovels and tossed them to Frank and Joe and took a third one for himself. “Throw snow on the fire. My aunt and uncle are over there”—he pointed with the shovel—“we’ll talk to them later.”

  Frank threw one shovelful of snow after another through the gaping window of the cabin. It was heavy work. His panting breaths formed a dense white cloud that left a rim of ice particles on his eyelashes. Next to him Joe grunted as he tossed each new load of snow. Others had joined in by now, and the burning cabin was surrounded by a wall of firefighters.

  At last Frank realized he was no longer looking at flames, only billowing white smoke. The Arctic cold, which had been kept away by the heat of the fire, rushed back in. Frank felt a shiver that started in the small of his back and traveled right up his backbone.

  As the townspeople realized they had won the battle against the fire, a cheer went up. Frank, Joe, and David exchanged wide grins and pounded one another on the back.

  Then David took the Hardys over to meet his aunt Mona, uncle Peter, and cousin Justine. They looked stricken. Everything they had in the world now lay in charred ruins.

  “I’m sorry about the fire, Mrs. Windman,” Frank said.

  David’s aunt managed a weak smile. “Thank you. Please call us Mona and Peter. We’re not formal up here,” she said. “I’m sorry, too. I’m afraid we can’t do much to welcome you to Glitter,” she went on. “We don’t even know where we’ll sleep tonight.”

  David gave her a quick hug. “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “You can use Mom and Dad’s cabin until you rebuild yours.”

  David’s uncle went over to the doorway, peered inside the cabin, and then returned.

  “How’s it look, Dad?” Justine asked. She looked as if she was about thirteen.

  “The worst of it is in the back,” Peter reported. “I think we can save most of the clothes and furniture and stuff.”

  “It’ll need a lot of airing out,” Justine said. “It really stinks.”

  “I’ll get the stove going at our place,” David said. “Then I have to take care of my team.”

  “Can we help?” Joe asked.

  David shook his head. “No, thanks, I’m fine,” he said. He went down the path to a cabin just beyond the one where Frank and Joe were staying.

  Frank turned his attention back to Peter. “How did the fire start?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Peter replied, shaking his head. “We were out gathering firewood, and when we got back, I saw the glow through the windows. It wasn’t a chimney fire, that’s one thing I know.”

  “How?” Joe asked.

  Before Peter could answer, Justine whispered, “Daddy, watch out. Here comes Willy Ekus.”

  Peter’s face tightened. “Let him come,” he said.

  Frank glanced around. The man who was coming toward them had an odd, lopsided smile on his face. That, and his slow, almost aimless walk, made him look, as Frank’s father would say, “a few bricks shy of a load.” But there was a shrewd glint in his eye that made Frank wonder if it might be an act.

  “Too bad about your cabin, Peter,” Willy said in a singsong voice. “I guess you’ll have to build a new one now. But you’re good at building cabins, aren’t you? You’re better at that than at trapping, aren’t you? Maybe you should give up trapping and just build cabins, Peter. Too bad if they burn down, but then you can build another one, can’t you, Peter?”

  “You listen here, Willy,” Peter began. He took a step toward the other man. Frank tensed up, ready to help break up a fight if one started.

  “Too bad about your cabin,” Willy said again, with the same steady, lopsided smile. “You’ll have to spend all your time building a new one. Not much time for trapping. Not much time at all.”

  Peter scowled at him. “Willy?” he said tautly. “Did you have anything to do with the fire?”

  “Yes, I did,” Willy said. “I helped put it out. I passed the buckets. I wanted to help, even if you are working a trapline that belongs to me. I guess you won’t be working it for a while, will you?” he added with a giggle.

  Frank looked over at Joe, who rolled his eyes.

  “Do you know how the fire got started?” Peter continued. “If you do, you’d better tell me.”

  “Maybe a match, maybe a torch, maybe a lamp that fell over,” Willy replied. “Too bad about your cabin, Peter. But that’s the way things go. Now you’ll have to build another one, instead of poaching on another man’s trapline.”

  He turned and walked away. Peter started after him, but Mona grabbed his arm and held him back.

  “No,” she said. “Leave him be. Let’s get inside, out of the cold. I’ll make a pot of tea, then we can think about dinner.”

  As they walked up the path toward the cabin, Justine said to Frank and Joe, “Willy and Dad have been arguing about that trapline for years. I wish they’d quit it. And now they’ve got that ThemeLife plan to argue about, too. Did David tell you about that?”

  “Uh-huh,” Joe replied. “What does your dad think about it?”

  “He’s against it,” Justine told him. “He says if it goes through, we’ll be like animals in the circus, showing off for visitors instead of being free to live our lives the way we always have.”

  Frank asked, “What about Willy? Why is he for it?”

  “Who knows why Willy does anything? He’s weird,” Justine said. “He always has been. Maybe he’s for the plan because my dad is against it.”

  “Do you think Willy’s weird enough to set fire to your cabin?” Joe asked her.

  She looked at him with wide eyes. “Nobody’s that crazy!” she exclaimed. “Look around—the whole town�
��s made of wood. If there’d been any wind, all of Glitter could have burnt down. And then none of us would make it through the winter.”

  David’s parents’ cabin was still a little chilly, but Frank could feel the warmth radiating from the cast-iron woodstove. Mona took off her parka and hung it on a peg behind the door, then poured water from a five-gallon can into a kettle and put it on top of the stove to heat.

  “I’ll bring more water from the spring,” Justine said, picking up two empty cans.

  “Let us help,” Joe said, reaching for one of the cans.

  Justine smiled. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll use the sledge. It’s no trouble at all. I do it all the time.”

  As she went out the door, David came in. “Well, guys,” he said to Frank and Joe, “you’re getting a pretty rough introduction to our way of life up here.”

  “Rougher than you know,” Mona remarked. “While you were gone, Willy came by and tried to pick a fight with your uncle.”

  “What about?” David asked. “The ThemeLife plan?”

  “Not this time,” Mona replied. “I’ll say this, though. I’ll be glad when the voting is over with. It’s been going on too long, and it’s dividing the town. Everybody’s getting mad at everybody else. That’s no way to live.”

  “Which side seems to be winning?” Frank asked.

  Peter shrugged. “We won’t know until the vote on Friday,” he said. “A lot of people don’t want to say what they think.”

  “Jake Ferguson won’t say which way he plans to vote,” Mona said. “He’s so money hungry, I guess he’s afraid he’ll lose customers if he takes sides.”

  “People around here have to buy at the store and pay Jake’s prices, whether they like what he thinks or not,” Peter pointed out.

  “What about Gregg?” Joe asked.

  David smiled. “The only thing Gregg thinks about these days is coming in ahead of me in the Iditarod,” he said. “But his dad, Reeve, is pretty tight with Willy, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re for the plan, too.”

  “I’ve tried talking to Reeve,” Peter said. “He won’t say much, but I didn’t feel I was getting through to him. Too bad. People think nothing will change except that they’ll start making a lot of money.”