Chapter 8

The next two weeks were busy, but tiring. They'd cleared the lot and driveway of brush and tall grass, got the backhoe, found the sewage line and laid a water line from the trailer site to the barn, poured concrete to make pads for the mobile home to sit on. The way the mobile home had to sit meant that it had to be backed up the driveway, and it was slow, careful process. It took Josh, Mark, Mike and Walt most of a long day to get it into place, get concrete blocks under it, level it up with house jacks, and chain the I-beams under the trailer to eyebolts in the thick concrete pads, to make it more stable in high winds. The sewer line had been hooked up the same day, and they'd gotten the electrical service hooked up earlier in the week. About all that was keeping Josh from moving in was the well; it had turned out that the pump was frozen up, after sitting for so long, and he was still waiting for Water Well Service to get out and change it, but they'd promised the first of the week, maybe even over the weekend.

That was fine with Josh. He'd busted his butt the past couple of weeks, and had hardly seen the dogs. Though he had a long list of things to work on over the weekend, starting with a pen for the female dogs in heat and cleaning out the barn a bit. As he drove out to the trailer from taking a shower at home on Friday evening after work, he'd decided he was going to throw a little time at the dogs, just to see if he remembered what a dog looked like.

But first, a stop at the Frostee Freeze for something to eat. He was looking forward to stopping that. He wasn't much of a cook, but could open a can, and figured he could take off from there. Rather than just gobble a hamburger in the truck, though, he decided to enjoy the nice evening, and took his burgers, fries, and a coke out to a picnic table under the awning.

He finished his burger and fries, and was sipping at his coke, thinking about nothing in particular, when he heard a voice: "How you doing, Josh?" He looked up to see Brian McMullen, another Spearfish Lake musher, one that had a Pound Puppies team, one that had done pretty well, too; he'd been maybe second, the previous winter.

"Oh, pretty good," Josh said. "Busy as hell."

McMullen sat down across the table from him. "I was talking with Dennis the other evening," he said. "He told me he gave his team to you."

"Yeah," Josh said. That was confirmed, now. He'd run into Bergen in the hardware store earlier in the week. Things with Amanda had settled down, he'd reported. Josh had asked if he'd like the team back, but he'd said he thought maybe he'd not light that particular fire again. As much as he'd liked Magic, he thought he'd better not even take him back, or it would be too tempting to want to do more. "If you ever feel like running a dog team," Josh said, "You're welcome to come on out and take some around the patch. Amanda doesn't have to know." Dennis had said probably not; it would just set the itch going again, but thanks for the offer.

"I thought with those extra dogs," McMullen said, "That you might have a Pound Puppy or two to sell."

"Might be," Josh said, shifting his mind into trading gear. "I'm not looking to sell any dogs right now, but I've got a couple pretty good Pound Puppies I might trade for the right dog. They've got pound papers, and all."

McMullen shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "I've got a pretty good team right now, but I've got one dog that's getting old, and probably won't race next year."

"Well, these two dogs have been to Warsaw twice," Josh said. "They're really more sprint dogs, they've been on the sprint team the past couple years. I dropped them at Warsaw the year before last; they were getting tired and slowing down, but we went up there like a whirlwind. They made it all the way all right last year, but I wasn't hurrying, either. They'll give you good speed for the Pound Puppies, and they've probably got three or four winters left. They're the only Pound Puppies worth anything I've got that I'm willing to let go of right now."

"You're getting out of sprinting, I take it?" McMullen asked.

"Backing off a little," Josh admitted. "Probably not going to get out of it all the way, since it's good race experience for the dogs. But, I'm trying to lean a little more toward long distance."

"Well, I've got one dog that might work pretty good for you," McMullen said. "Just can't keep up with the other dogs at sprints, but he'll go all day. He sort of carried the rest of the team on the way back from West Turtle Lake."

He was probably being oversold, Josh thought, but he was probably overselling Headlight and Stinker a little, too. They really weren't bad at sprints, and they'd do all right in the Pound Puppies. "I'll be honest," Josh said. "If you're thinking about the Warsaw Run, you don't want these dogs."

"Not thinking about it right now," McMullen said. "I was sort of kicking it around a while back, but I've only got five dogs, plus Stupid. With these new rules, it makes for more dogs than I want to have."

"It only takes seven," Josh observed.

"Yeah, but for how long? You want to bet that there won't be ten-dog teams starting this year?"

"I may not run ten," Josh said. "I figure on taking the best dogs, not just fill out the team for the sake of it."

"I'll just stick with the Pound Puppies, and sprints," McMullen said. "That's just as much fun, and you don't have to have as many dogs. You like to come see this dog?"

"Might as well," Josh agreed, draining his coke.

Josh followed McMullen as they drove over to his house. It was hard to tell about the dog that McMullen had; it clearly had a husky look to him, but you could see that there was quite of bit of other mixed breed, too. He did have a lean, muscular look. "This is Bingo," McMullen said.

Josh checked the dog's paws. They looked fairly sound. "Get much paw ice with him?" he asked.

"Never had a problem," the older musher said. "But I put booties on `em all when I catch any of them getting it, and my leader, Rascal, gets it first."

"Good move," Josh said. "Well, I'm willing, if you like the looks of mine." He looked around the lot; the other four dogs were pretty good-looking, too, but one showed obvious signs of age. There was another dog, out on the edge of the lot. Josh looked, then looked again. That was the strangest-looking husky that he'd ever seen. Half again as tall as the rest of the dogs, he had a good coat and a husky face, but he looked like he was pulled taffy. He was long and lean, with long legs. "What's that dog?" he asked.

"That's Stupid," McMullen said. "My sister turned him up. A neighbor of her's has a greyhound, and they figure a Siberian or a Malemute got to her. There were only two pups, and they gave one away. My sister thought maybe I'd like him, but he ain't never worked well in the team."

"Jeez, he looks like a grayhound in husky clothes," Josh said. "You'd think he'd be a hell of a sprint dog."

"That's what I figured," McMullen said. "But, I'll tell you what. Every time I took that dog out, and I mean, every time, something got fucked up, and I mean right now. Dogs got tangled, wouldn't steer, went ass over teakettle. I ran him in team, in wheel, in swing, and things got fucked up every time, and no shit, every time. Take him out of the team, and things went fine. The damn dog is a jinx, just eating, shitting, and taking up space. Hell, if you want him, I'll give him to you."

As he'd known when he'd given Wolf to Fred Linder, sometimes a dog that is a major problem in one team is the spark plug in another, given different dogs, different leaders, different mushers, different styles in training. Signal had been a problem dog in another team, but had worked well for Josh, and was on the short list for leader training. Besides, the dog looked to be as fast as a thief. It was worth taking a look at. "Yeah, I'll give him a try," Josh said. "As many dogs as I've got, what's another, more or less?"

They took Bingo and Stupid, and fastened them on tielines in the opposite corners of the truck bed -- the dog box had long been unloaded, and Josh had a garage sale couch in it, too -- and together drove out to Mark's. For once, Tiffany wasn't there. Josh and McMullen walked out onto the dog lot, and he showed them Headlight and Stinker. After some jawing, McMullen allowed as how they would do, and the deal was done. They loaded Headlight and Stinker in the truck bed, and, as long as Josh had McMullen with him, drafted him to help unload the couch at the trailer before taking him back home.

On the way back out, Josh decided to drop by Mike's house to tell Tiffany about the trade. "I saw you go by with Headlight and Stinker in the back," she said. "Does that mean you've made another trade?"

"Yeah, they're back to being Pound Puppies," Josh said. "Look, I don't want to work on the trailer tonight. How's about we load up Bullet and a couple of pups, and haul them up to Fred's? I'm hoping to move the dogs later this week, and that'll be at least one we won't have to move."

"That's fine with me," she said. "Let me get some shoes on. I want to hear about this new dog, anyway."

"Actually, it's two new dogs," Josh said. "Bingo, well, Brian thinks he's got the makings of a distance dog, but he's no sprinter, he says. The other dog is, uh, interesting."

They went out and got in the truck. "Dad has pretty well agreed with the idea of trading Hemp for Beauty and Maybellene, so there's that," she said. "That leaves us with Gustav and Clyde."

"The summer meeting is next weekend," Josh said. "Maybe I'll just haul them down there and see what we can do."

He and Tiffany walked out to the dog lot to see the new dogs, before getting Bullet and the pups. They stopped to look at Bingo, first. "He looks pretty good," was Tiffany's verdict. "Can't tell, of course, until it gets cooler and we can run them a ways. Now, let's see this other dog."

Tiffany agreed that Stupid was about the funniest-looking husky she'd ever seen. "He looks like he's doing forty miles an hour standing still," she said. "He's going to be a sprinter, not a distance dog."

"Yeah," Josh said. "He was a throw-in. Brian had a lot of trouble with him. He wouldn't run well in a team, he said. But, I figured that you and I and Mark and your dad had looked at dog's hind ends more than he had, so figured at the price it was worth taking a look. We're not going to get all the way out of sprinting, after all, and he looks like a hell of a sprinter if we can made him work at all."

"Whatever his problem is, it might be something we can train him out of," she agreed. "Let's give them the evening to get used to the new surroundings, and then tomorrow morning, while it's still cool, let's hook them both up, and run them up and down the runway a little, just to check them out."

"Sounds like my plan," Josh said. "I'm going to have to work on the place tomorrow, but if we get out early, I can put a couple hours into the dogs. But, if we're going up to Freds, we'd better get moving. Which pups should we give him?"

"It's still pick `em, as far as I can tell," she said. "Beacon and Breeze seem a little more attached to Bullet than the other two, so they'd be the favorites."

"Beacon and Breeze it is," he said. They loaded Bullet into the back of the truck, while the two puppies went up in front with Tiffany. It was going to be hard to get rid of these pups. They might make racers, or might not, but they were good little dogs, and they and Tiffany had been though a lot.

On the way to Warsaw, Tiffany caught Josh up on what had been happening with the training -- and, really, it wasn't a lot of news. In the heat, about all that could be done in terms of conditioning was to let the dogs exercise a little, be careful about overfeeding them, and just spend time with each one. Tiffany had been working Signal and Pipeline on basic command-type training -- stand, sit, roll over, shake hands, along with some leash work, working on team commands. All the dogs at least were exposed to the basic sled commands, but a leader had to react differently to them than a dog farther back in the team. In addition, leaders needed other traits, moving the team, keeping it organized; not every dog could get the confidence to do a reasonable job in front. There was only so much that could be done without running the dogs in a group, and Tiffany had spent a little time with three-dog teams behind Mark's ATV with the two in lead, singly, and paired with another leader. "Both of them will run with another leader pretty well," she reported. "But they dumb out when you put them in single lead."

"We've got plenty of time," Josh said. "Now that we've got the Dennis Dogs pinned down, we can look at them, too. Crystal looks a little leaderish to me. Not a lot, but a little. Maybe we can work her into the rotation."

Tiffany seemed dubious. "She doesn't act real leaderish to me," she said. "Besides, if we breed her, she's not going to be active for this racing season. She won't recover in time to keep up on conditioning. We've got to be thinking about that. She's got to be coming into heat in the next week or so."

"You've got to figure she's the best candidate," Josh agreed. "Even though we don't know that much about her. Let's leave Polly and Spirit out of it for now. If I can't get a good Minnesota dog, we might want to breed one of them later."

"If we wait that long, it'll be the '93 season before we get any help from those pups," Tiffany said. "Crystal's might be some help the winter after next."

"Got any better ideas?" Josh asked.

"No," Tiffany said.

They rode along in silence for a while before Tiffany spoke again. "I think we want to move David and Spirit, and Hemp, now, I guess, over to your place. It'll help with training if we have the dogs all together."

"Are your folks going to mind?"

"No, I don't think so," she said. "I mean, I've never told them that some of your dogs are actually my dogs, but if they haven't figured out that I've at least got dibs on some of your dogs, then they're totally clueless."

"Well, I don't mind," Josh said. "You know, with the trading that's been going on, we're starting to get a yours, mine and ours problem."

"We'll work it out," she said. "It really doesn't matter very much right now, but after we see how the new dogs work out this fall, we'll have to choose up sides a little."

Josh nodded his head. "Sounds fair to me. You know, we're on the verge of having a real racing kennel."

She smiled. "That's what we were working toward, wasn't it?"

Josh thought about it. He really hadn't had that goal in mind, but the pieces were falling into place that way. The decisions he'd made, especially the last few weeks, certianly pointed in that direction.

"Maybe so," he said after a while.

**********

There was still dew on the grass the next morning when Josh stopped off to pick up Tiffany. Still yawning, she and George hopped into the truck cab with him. Josh was sipping on coffee he'd gotten from the convenience store as they drove up to Mark's.

Feeding the dogs went quickly, much better with two sets of hands, rather than one. Tiffany had mostly been doing the feeding this summer, and even fed Mark's dogs for him, as she'd been doing all summer as a way of repaying him for letting them use his back yard.

It was a fairly quick process to roll Mark's ATV out onto the airstrip, and harness up a three dog team, with Crosstie in the lead, and Signal and Bingo, the new dog, running side by side in swing, or wheel; with only three dogs, both names applied.

Josh hopped on the ATV, and got the team moving. It had actually been a couple of weeks since he'd been behind dogs, and it felt good, even for a short distance. They didn't go far, just partway down the airstrip to see how Bingo ran with the other dogs. Without going farther, it was hard to tell much more than he was a competent runner, and Josh already knew that, but it was already too warm, and the dogs were too far out of condition, to push them much farther than that. After a ways, he turned them around, and ran them back up to where Tiffany waited. "Looks good, as far as I can tell," he reported.

"Let me see," she said. They changed places on the ATV, and she took the three dogs down the runway, not at any great speed, but giving commands, to see how the three dogs handled together.

While she was doing that, Josh decided he'd better see about Stupid, the other dog. With his reported problems, he wanted to see how the dog ran before putting it into a team. He went inside the shop and got a frisbee, and went to get the dog. He led by the collar him a ways away from the dog lot, so he'd be away from the other dogs a little. As he did, Mark came out, cup of coffee in his hand, and leaned on the fence.

Josh waved the frisbee in front of his nose a couple of times, then tossed it out a few feet. The dog ran over and grabbed it, and brought it back to him.

"Boy, isn't he the goofiest looking thing you ever saw?" Mark said.

"Yeah," Josh said, throwing the frisbee a few feet away again. Once again, the dog brought it back. "Well, here goes nothing." He rared back, and gave the frisbee a mighty heave.

With the authority of a cannon shot, the dog was out from under his feet, out chasing after the frisbee. He raced down the runway, far outdistancing the frisbee. Josh and Mark stood in wonder as the dog picked out a place, and sat down to wait for the frisbee to get to him. Not stand, sit down, like he had all day. As it got just about right, he exploded in a spray of dirt, grabbed the oncoming frisbee on the fly, and raced back toward them with a furious, ground-eating lope. "Holy shit, he's fast," Mark commented.

"No shit," Josh agreed, shaking his head. He took the frisbee from the dog, who sat waiting in front of him, wagging his tail, waiting to play some more. Josh took the frisbee, and gave it another heave. This time, not so surprised at the dog's speed, Josh got a better look at the way he ran, with a ground-eating lope that looked so smooth that it was hard to believe how fast he was going. He made it look easy.

Josh kept throwing the frisbee, while Tiffany parked the ATV, and set the brakes so she could watch. "He sure runs pretty," she said.

"Yeah," Mark agreed. "When he runs, he doesn't look goofy at all."

A sneaking suspicion began to overcome Josh. The dog might be as fast as a sports car, but that might be the problem that McMullen had with him, too. "Tiffany, put those dogs away," he told her. "Put George in lead. Go get David, and put him in swing."

"David?" she said. "He and George are the fastest dogs we've got, except for this one."

"Yeah," Josh said. "And they may not be fast enough, but they're the best we've got to see with."

It took a few minutes to get the dogs worked around, and the new team hooked to the ATV. A little dubious, Josh got onto the machine, and hiked the team into motion. Everything went pretty good for a short distance, but then the new dog, with his long legs, got a paw into George's tugline, and in an instant, Josh had a mess in front of him. Hands hard on the brakes, he brought the dogs to a stop.

Tiffany and Mark came running up, from perhaps a hundred yards off. It wasn't hard to untangle the dogs. "I think I see what the problem is," Josh said. "He's just so damn fast, and has such damn long legs. Tiffany, run up and get another section of gangline. Let's get George out in front a ways."

"That's not going to work very well," she said.

"It ought to work long enough to find out if I'm right," Josh said.

In a few minutes, they had the modified rig completed. Once again, Josh hiked the team into motion. It did work better; even with the heavy ATV in back, and it was awful fast. So fast, that George, in front, couldn't keep the gangline tight with the faster dogs running behind. Some slack started to come into the gangline, and Josh came down hard on the brakes, to try and get it out, so the new dog wouldn't step in the loop. A tangle, at that speed, would be dangerous all the way around.

Heavy on the brakes, Josh brought the team to a slow enough speed to try a turn. George, far in front, had trouble turning the team, but things were going slow enough that when the new dog stepped over the gangline again, but the tangle wasn't too bad. Josh set the brakes, untangled things once again, then turned the team and the ATV by hand, pointing it back up toward the shop before he got it going again. It didn't take long to get back up there, but Josh was ready to jam on the brakes at any second.

"Damn," Mark said. "If we had dog drag races, and a few dogs like that, you'd have something."

"Yeah," Josh said. "But things are just so damn unbalanced with him in the team." He set the brakes on the ATV.

"Oh, well, I suppose he's worth what you paid for him," Tiffany said.

"I don't know," Josh said. "There's something about him that bothers me. Something I'm not seeing. He's a racer, he wants to go. He's not a team dog."

He sat and thought for a moment. There was something flickering around there that didn't quite make sense. "You don't suppose?" he said to himself.

He frowned at the three dogs. Well, there was one way to find out. "Tiffany, take David over, and switch him for Magic."

"Magic isn't as fast as David," she said.

"Won't matter," he said. "I think he's a little faster than Crosstie or Jack. I'll get George back into swing."

"You're going to lead with this dog?"

"Gonna try it. He wants to be out front, and there won't be anything for him to trip over. Whether he'll lead . . . well, we're going to see."

In a couple minutes, they had the dogs rerigged again. George and Magic could be counted on to give some control, but Josh wasn't at all sure how this would work. "OK," he said from the ATV. "Here goes nothing. Hike!"

The dog barely understood `hike', but got the idea quickly, from the dogs coming up from behind him. As soon as he got the idea, he instantly had a tight gangline. The ATV shot up to speed quite quickly. Josh glanced down at the speedometer; this was the fastest they'd ever gone with three dogs in front. More important, it was going smooth. With the new dog out in front, where he couldn't get tangled, it was going like it was supposed do.

"Easy!" he called. George and Magic let up, but it took the brakes to slow the new dog down. Here went nothing . . . "GEE!"

It was a wide, sloppy turn, with George and Magic doing a lot of steering from behind, but soon he had the dogs pointed back up the runway. Satisfied under the circumstances, Josh tried a gentle haw turn. Again, it was more the dogs in back doing the steering, but the dog in front had the general idea. He tried a couple more gentle turns, then brought the dogs to a stop back up at the shop, where Mark and Tiffany were waiting. "That's it," he said. "He doesn't know his commands for jack shit, but he probably never got to learn them, anyway. But that dog was born to run up front."

"Going to take a lot of work," Mark said.

"Yeah," Josh agreed. "We're going to have to teach him to lead from behind, like you had to do with Cumulus, back then. But, good swing dogs will help a little, and you didn't have those. But man . . . a good easy trail pace for him is wide open for the other dogs."

"That won't do for long-distance," Tiffany said. "He'd wear everyone else out in a few miles."

"Might wear himself out, too," Josh said. "No doubt, he's a sprinter. Well, we're not getting all the way out of sprinting, and if we can get him to lead fairly decently, he'll be a hell of a sprint leader. Once he learns his commands, he won't have any problem controlling a team. He'll have them all running so hard to keep up that nobody will have any time to wonder about who's the alpha dog."

"It's going to be a lot of work to train him up as a command leader, if he'll train at all," Tiffany objected.

Josh shook his head. "Tiffany, were you here the night that Jim Horton discovered Ringo? I never understood what he saw that night, until now. He's a command leader, waiting to be trained. I've never had that feeling better. You didn't see him running things the way I did."

She shrugged. "It's worth working on, I suppose."

"One thing," Josh said firmly. "Brian told me this dog's name was s-t-u-p-i-d," he said, spelling it out. "I refuse to dishonor a dog like this with a name like that, and I don't want us saying, or even thinking that word around him. He is not that word."

"You used kind of a lousy word with Stinker," she objected.

"I didn't name Stinker either, but he earned his name, and not because he was a bad dog," Josh said. "In his case, it was good natured. I don't want us to think of this dog as, uh, dumb."

"What are you going to name him?" Mark said. "It's just going to make the training more difficult."

"I don't care if it does," Josh said, in a tone that said his mind was set.

"I suppose it ought to have an `S' sound," Tiffany said. "That might make things a little easier."

"Long, lanky dog like that," Mark mused. "You know what he sorta reminds me of?"

"What?"

"You know those things you have flags on at a railroad switch?" Mark said. "Flagstand, or some damn thing."

"Switchstand," Josh said, thinking it over for a moment. "Yeah. That sounds good. Good railroad name, too; I kind of like those. Tiffany, it's going to be hard, but I'll try to work with him as much as I can. We're going to have to go right down to the basics, but Switchstand has already got some idea of what's going on."

Tiffany fell immediately into training mode. She went around to the front of the team, to pet the leader. "Switchstand, you're going to be a great dog," she said.

"Let's get `em broken down," Josh said. "I'm half tempted to run them some more, but it's getting warm already. Besides, I've got some work to do."

They got the dogs tied back out, with some water; Josh and Mark put the ATV away. "It's not going to be the solution to the leader depth problem," Tiffany said as they finished up. "But, it'll help some."

"Yeah, but it puts a different twist on it," Josh said. "This is going to be interesting."

"What the hell is this?" Mark said, noticing a van from an express company turning into the driveway. "They usually don't deliver on Saturday. Probably some sign stuff for Jackie."

The van pulled to a stop. The driver got out, and said, "I got a delivery for Josh Archer, care of Spearfish Signs."

"That's me," Josh said. "What's this?"

"Good," the driver said. "There's an `Urgent Express' on this one." He held out a clipboard with a form for Josh to sign. "You want to help me unload `em?"

"What?" Josh said, following the driver around to the back of the van. He opened the door; there were two dog shipping crates, a dog in each one. "What in hell?" he said.

"These are for you," the driver said, pulling a crate out. Josh helped him set it out to the side of the truck.

"Here's a note to us, taped to one of the crates." Tiffany said. She pulled the note off, opened it and began to read, while Josh and the driver set the other crate off. As the van pulled away, Tiffany said, "My God!"

"What's this?" Josh asked, once again.

Tiffany handed him the note:

Anchorage, Alaska

Josh and Tiffany:

This note is going to have to be quick, as my plane leaves in half an hour. I had planned to bring these dogs back myself, but a system crapped out in Osaka, and it looks like Adelaide after that, so I'm shipping them to you air express, instead.

The dog that's black, with some brown and white is Nimbus. She's been to Nome four times, once with Libby Riddles -- in '85, no less -- and three times with Joe Garnie. She's getting old, but Joe Reddington thinks that she's still good for a couple of litters if they're fairly soon. She's got bloodlines from Jerry Riley dogs, among others.

The white and gray dog with the limp is Shack. She's been to Nome three times with Jerry Austin, and probably would have gone again, but she got loose and got involved with a steel trap, and the leg will never be good enough to race again. She's got even better bloodlines, including Joe's Feets. Jerry doesn't have a large kennel, and already has enough of her bloodline, but Joe tells me that Jerry's damn glad she's going out of state so he won't have to race against her offspring.

I've got more information on the bloodlines and like that, and will write them out for you while I'm on the plane. I'll get them to you as soon as I can. But, these are damn good dogs, with some of the best bloodlines in Alaska. They're beyond racing, but ought to give you some great pups. They're my gift to you for making things a little less lonely when Brandy's not around. Good luck with them.

-- Phil

"My God," Josh echoed, handing the note to Mark. He bent over to look in the cages. After a day or more in transit, they didn't look all that impressive, and, really, didn't look that special. But between them, these dogs had been over the 1,049 miles to Nome seven times, and once in the first team to finish, and it was awesome to just look at them and think about it.

Josh looked beyond the haggardness, and could see greatness in these dogs, the latent power in them. Though they might never be in harness again, their genes would be like sharks when dumped into the placid fishpond of the local racing scene.

Tiffany was the first to speak in less than pure awe. "Josh, Mark, let's not tell anybody about this," she said. "They won't be much help the winter after next, but the year after that . . . "


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