He checked his watch: 11:30. A little over three hours to go, and he'd want to spend half an hour or 45 minutes getting ready to go, so he'd have to start getting ready around 2 AM. That meant about two and a half hours to kill. With that settled, he started thinking about what those numbers meant for the race.

Four minutes behind Tiffany wasn't all that bad a place to be, but now Josh was kicking himself for not pushing the team a little harder on the way up; he'd really rather be ahead of Tiffany on the way back. Figuring out pace on the way up to Warsaw was always a crapshoot, anyway, since you didn't have much idea of how fast your real competition was running. Push too hard, and you could find yourself in Warsaw very early, but with exhausted dogs; take it easy, and you could have half the field in front of you, and you'd have to scramble like hell to pass on the harder-to-pass trail. He could have run faster; Phil's time, twelve minutes more than his with a probably less efficient pit stop, with the backup dogs, proved that it could have been done.

Phil's 3:08 was actually the most interesting number on the board. Fourth out of Warsaw! With those dogs, he'd made a hell of a trip. Whether Switchstand could make it back with those kind of times was hard to predict, but he'd have to see. The interesting thing was that he was restarting just three minutes behind Mears, who had also had a hell of a time. Greg would have to run hard, or he'd have Phil right on his butt before they left town, and Phil would run hard, because there was always the tendancy to try to keep up with the team ahead. That meant he'd have to run hard, because it wouldn't take long to make up that nine-minute differential if he didn't. But, he'd have to run hard to keep in contact with Tiffany, and she'd have to run hard or she'd get flattened by the steamroller coming up behind her. Linder wasn't out of it by any means, either.

On the other hand, if Phil had worn the dogs down more than he thought, he might not be as fast, and Greg might not be as fast, with no one on his ass. Josh was sure he had plenty of reserve in the dogs, so taking it a little easy coming up meant that he ought to be able to hold his position, at least for a while.

There was no use worrying about it too much, since the answer was obvious: run very hard at the beginning, try to get more or less in contact with Tiffany, and keep checking six. Let her stay out in front, wearing her dogs down breaking trail -- it wouldn't be the job that had been done on the rail grade -- and then drag race when they got back to the rail grade, when her team might be a little more tired. Squeeze the pickle harder if someone came up behind. Assuming everything went smoothly for everybody, there wasn't much else he could do. At least, on the way back, you had some idea of what your position was, at least some of the time.

He checked farther down the restart board: a couple of people he'd expected to do well had poor times, and there were a couple people he'd been surprised to see doing so well. Dave Stitely, for example, was going to be eighth out of Warsaw -- that was pretty well settled, now -- so he'd done damn well.

When he felt he'd assmiliated about all he was going to out of the restart board, Josh decided he'd better sit down for a few minutes, then get some rest. He looked around; Tiffany and Phil were at a picnic table, along with Mark, Mike, Jackie and Kirsten. He didn't want to spend a lot of time talking with Tiffany, as under the circumstances it could easily lead to playing mind games, and Phil was smart enough to do it, too, especially with that good a run. One thing he and Tiffany had made clear to Phil: once the starting gun sounds, you're competition, whether you're a friend or not, and you get no special consideration; that was the way he and Tiffany played it with each other. He did want to talk to Phil for a minute, though, so wandered over to the table. "Hey, real good time, guy," he said, quite sincerely.

"It surprised me," Phil said. "I mean, I passed some teams, but I figured that a lot of people behind me had to be running faster. It wasn't until I got nearly here and I realized I hadn't been passed that I started to think I might have a good time."

This was quickly leading toward mind game country; he didn't mind bullshitting some of the other mushers, but Phil and Tiffany were another story. "Dogs do all right?" Josh asked.

"Solid all the way, no problems," Phil said. If he did have any serious dog problems, Josh expected that Phil would have been honest with him. "Did have a heck of a time getting Switchstand slowed down, but once we got a pace established, it went pretty good." That was verging on mind games, and Josh decided not to push the issue any further.

"Well, you know the drill," Josh said, draining his coffee. "Just bring `em back in good shape."

The empty coffeecup gave him all the reason he needed to get away from the table. He refilled the cup, grabbed a donut, and got a seat at a table with Greg Mears and Fred Linder. He wouldn't mind bullshitting them.

"Hey," Mears said. "You've done pretty well with those mutts of yours. All of them."

"I like to think so," Josh said. "You know, you did pretty well, yourself. If you'd get away from those purebreds, the way you train, you'd blow everybody's doors off."

"Yeah, but showing them is as big a thing with me as racing them," the Camden musher said, "And you can't show mutts."

"Those two pups you gave me a couple years ago, jeez, they've turned into good dogs," Josh said. "You let some real good dogs go, there."

"Yeah, I know it, every time I see their assholes go past me," Mears smiled.

"Hey, sorry I didn't make it over to your camp earlier," Josh said. "When we decided that Phil was going to run the spare dogs, we had a lot of catching up to do to get him ready."

"You and Tiffany have got a lot of dogs, there," Mears said. "Keeping ten racing dogs is enough for me. If we could cut this race back down to seven, I'd probably cut back a little."

"Ten really is a little big for this course," Josh agreed. "But, I keep pushing to extend it out to 200 miles, and that's just about the right size team for that."

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it," Mears counseled. "This is short enough that it's about right for someone that wants to do a little long-distance mushing, but doesn't get into it the way you do. This race keeps growing every year, and it's just the right size for a lot of people to work towards."

"Yeah, you're probably right," Josh said. "It's just that I'm looking at longer races, and there aren't that many in traveling distance. It's sort of tough to build the kind of teams we're looking for on shorter races. When you're talking middle distance or long distance, you've got this, the Michigan 200, and the Beargrease, and this isn't really long enough to be a good test. This is getting a little automatic, a little programmed, if you know what I mean."

"I think I know what you mean," Fred agreed. "It's getting more like a long sprint. Something a little longer would get away from that."

Josh nodded his head, and went on, "A couple weeks after we ran the Michigan 200 last year, well, Tiffany and I had some ideas from that we wanted to work out, so we made a 200-miler that could work. We came up through Warsaw, like this, then on to Walsenberg, then down the tracks to Kremmling and Hugo, around south of Thurow Lake, then back up logging trails to here, then back home up the NCT."

"How'd it go?" Greg asked.

"Oh, pretty good," Josh went on. "We really weren't at racing speeds, since I didn't want to go through the schmozzle I went through with Alco and Switchstand in the 200, so I had Crosstie lead. But, it was kind of neat. We carried everything, even some foam pads for the dogs, and slept in the sled baskets. We left on a Friday night, and got back late Sunday afternoon. With a good leader, we could probably get it down to somewhere around 36 hours, with good stops."

"That would be kind of fun," Fred agreed. "A lot more like the Iditarod. We ought to do that some time."

"If the snow holds, we might just do it again a couple weeks after the Michigan 200, just for the practice," Josh said.

"You're saying, the second weekend in March, right?" Fred asked. "I could do that. You know, Mark and Mike started this race with a bet over a six-pack of beer. I'll even donate a six-pack."

"You've still got the time, you could spread the word a little," Greg suggested. "There might be half a dozen guys here that would be interested in a fun run like that. Hell, I don't think I've got anything that weekend, either. But, you don't have time to organize everything that needs to get organized."

"Aw, just keep it simple," Fred said. "That's the beauty of it. You don't need organized checkpoints, and restart times, and all the trail marking and stuff. You don't have to tie it into a winter festival, with all the hoopla and the kiddie rides. Take it as it comes, keep it just for the mushers. Carry everything, no pit crews. Maybe even do one of those LeMans type starts, you know what I mean, so you don't even have to fart around with a start gate and timing and all that stuff."

"You mean, a scramble start, like where the musher has to start the race in a sleeping bag, pack up, harness the dogs, and go?" Greg asked. "That always seemed a little goofy to me."

"Wouldn't have to do it that way," Josh said. "Just start with all the dogs and the sled and gear on the truck, and set everything up."

"That'd work," Fred agreed. "Maybe we could even do it at Mark's airstrip, so we wouldn't have to dink around in town."

"I'd have to talk to Mark, but he'd probably go for it," Josh said.

Greg shook his head. "It's too late this year to set it up as a sanctioned race," he said. "But we could call it a trial run, and work on sanctioning for next year."

"That'd have to be your end of it," Josh said. "You know what hoops have to be jumped through." As much as there was a state association of mushers, it was the Camden Dogsled Association, and Greg was the president, although it was pretty much a paper association, with zero dues and no other officers, in place only for racing sanctions and things like that. In the years before the Spearfish Lake crowd got involved in dogsled racing, the CDA had sponsored the "state championships", more to keep the sport alive than anything else. Sometimes, they'd been lucky to have more than four teams show up for the championships, but it had become a much bigger deal in the last five years.

"I'll call Monday and see if I can get a provisional sanction," Greg said. "The big thing is, they're going to want vet supervision."

"Well, Doc Kunkle is here," Fred said. "We could ask him right now. We can use Warsaw as a checkpoint, both ways, and he wouldn't even have to leave town."

"Go see," Greg suggested. Fred got up, and headed over toward the coffeepot, where Kunkle was standing, talking with a couple mushers. He was an old country vet, going back to the time when Jim Horton used to come to him with dog problems, and he'd served as race veternatian since the second Warsaw Run.

"It'd be nice to have a little more riding on it than a six-pack," Greg suggested. "I'll kick in a trophy, but some money would be nice."

Josh furrowed his brow. That was going to be right about the time Jenny would be wanting to shoot her second "Wonderful Winter World" special, and there might be some sort of tie-in. "I've got an idea of someone I can ask," he said finally. "It's kind of a long shot, but we might get something for a purse."

"How's it going to go over if it's in competiton with the Spearfish Lake winter festival?"

"Shouldn't matter," Josh said. "But, I don't want to say any more until I think about it a little. We ought to be able to round up a few bucks, somewhere. Push comes to shove, we can set up an entry fee, then split it among ourselves."

"It'd be nice if we could round up a few more teams," Greg said.

"Well, yeah," Josh agreed. "There's you, and me, and Fred, and all I'll have to say to Tiffany is `race' and she'll be there. That's four. Phil, probably not; the odds are that he'll be out of the country, and we're sure to have some dogs that won't be up to another distance race for a while by then. Dave Stitely and a couple of the others might be interested. I can hand out some flyers at the Michigan 200, and maybe the Beargrease, if I can get them made in time."

Fred returned to the table. "Doc says he doesn't mind. We can use the fire station for the checkpoint both times, too." That was the advantage of being the fire chief.

"We'll need a rule sheet, if we're going to apply for a provisional sanction," Greg said. "I figure, just take the Warsaw Run rules, and adapt them for the longer race. I can knock something out Monday, and run it past you guys."

"Run it past Fred, and I'll go along with it," Josh said. "I've got the Beargrease next weekend, and I'm going to be busy as hell this week."

"Doesn't leave you a lot of time to get around, does it?" Fred said. "Give me a call if I can help."

"Probably not much you can do," Josh said. "The tough part is going to be selecting 12 dogs and two or three spares. I figured this race would help with making up my mind, but everybody's running so well, it's going to be tough."

"Too bad you have to be on so tight a schedule," Greg commented.

"I about have to do it," Josh said. "I want to get some experience at the longer distances, and right now the Beargrease is the only way."

"I've never tried it," Greg said. "Too long, too cold, too much up and down, and farther away than I care to go."

"That's the point," Josh said. "Tiffany would run it this year, too, if she was a year older. Right now, she's planning on running it next year. I might, or maybe not. But this year will tell us if we're heading in the right direction with what we're trying to do."

"What direction is that?" Greg asked. "The big `I'?"

"Yeah," Josh said. It really wasn't a big secret, that he wanted to run the Iditarod; half the mushers in the room would have liked to have done it, given the chance. But somehow, it still didn't seem real. "Tiffany made up her mind years ago that she wants to run it the year after next. Me, I haven't made my mind up all the way yet, but we agreed, oh, two or three years ago, that that we were going to work in that direction. That's why we haven't been giving the attention to sprinting that we used to."

"You did pretty good at the MacMush, back before Christmas," Greg commented.

"Yeah, but that was just Switchstand and some of the younger dogs, just trying to give them a little real race experience," Josh explained. "We still run hard, but we don't give the attention to beating everybody we did in the beginning."

"You could have fooled me."

"Well, Greg, we don't go to a race to sit on our asses, you know," Josh smiled. "The Iditarod, well, sure, Tiffany wants to do it real bad, and so far, nothing's come up to stop her. The money is going to be the big thing; it takes a lot of bucks. I'm not as committed to having to do it in two years, although I'd like to do it sometime, but I figure if we're going to do it, we might as well both of us do it if we can. We can save a little and train a little better that way. That's why we've got so many dogs, right now, and why we'll probably tack on a few more. Once we've done the Iditarod, if we don't want to do it again, we'll probably trim the kennel back quite a bit."

"I've thought about giving it a crack," Fred said. "I'm too damn old to go up there and expect to get in the top ten, but it'd be fun to go up there and run towards the back of the pack, just trying to finish at all, just for the hell of having done it. I figure on trying it sometime in the next few years."

"That's the point," Josh said. "I'd like to do it once, but I figure if I go up there, I just don't want to run in the back of the pack. I know it's unlikely that a rookie is going to get in the top ten, maybe even the top twenty, what with all the Alaskans there, but anywhere in the top half would be great. With that under my belt, I'd have a better idea about what it would take to be serious about winning. Same thing with the Beargrease. I just want to finish solid and learn what I can."

"I gotta admit," Greg said. "It'd be a big boost for the sport around here if some local musher could do respectably in the Iditarod. We've had a couple people from around here move to Alaska, take up racing, and run it, but nobody that lived around here."

"Ah, well, it's probably all gas, anyway," Josh said. "It's so goddamn expensive, it's not funny. I really don't have that kind of money, and I'm going to have to raise some somewhere if I'm going to do it, and probably have to start doing it pretty soon. Tiffany, too, if we expect to bring it off at all. Good finishes around here this year, and next year, ought to help a little."

"I haven't exactly got a lot of money, myself," Greg said. "But I'll help you shake the can some, and drop in a little, myself."

"Same thing," Fred promised. "Maybe next winter, I can get the Fire Flies to do a bake sale or something. It won't be a lot, but every little bit helps."

"Sure does," Josh agreed. "Not even counting raising and training dogs, I figure $20,000 minimum for the both of us to be able to run the race one year, and that's just a guess."

"Probably low, at that," Greg said.

"If I had to, I can probably come up with some of it, but most of my spare change goes into training and raising the dogs," Josh said. "I suppose I could come up with a few grand, and maybe Tiffany can hit up her folks, but we're a long way from being able to actually put together a race."

"Seriously," Greg said. "Let me think about it a few days. I might have an idea or two. Let's talk about it when we get back up here for the whatever-the-hell-it-is-200 we just organized."

"Spring Fling," Fred suggested. It'll be getting close, by then."

"Don't name it just yet," Josh said. "If we can get a sponsor, they might like to hang their name on it, yet. We've already got a Warsaw Run, so let's call it the `Spearfish Lake 200' until we can come up with a better name."

"One thing," Fred said. "Let's just try and keep it simple, rather than letting it get out of hand like this race has."

"Sounds good," Greg said. "But, it'll be tough to do. "Next year, we'll say we ought to do this and that and the other thing, if we had the money, and the next thing you know, it's a big deal."

"That's exactly what I mean," Fred said. "That's what I want to try and avoid."

Josh looked at his coffee cup. It was long empty, and he didn't want to have another cup, but he wanted to try and get an hour or so of quiet rest, if not sleep, before heading back. More coffee would kill the possibility of sleep, if it hadn't been killed already. On the other hand, this had been an interesting and productive discussion, and it was hard to give up. A glance at his watch settled the issue. "Tell you guys what," he said. "I want to try for a little shut-eye before we head back, but I'll buy the breakfast, back at Spearfish Lake."

"Yeah," Greg agreed. "I need a little downtime, too. I'm not as young as some of the kids in this race."

"Me either," said Fred, who was older than Greg. "See you in Spearfish Lake."

"Well, catch you guys later," Josh said, standing up and crumpling his styrofoam coffee cup. "I'll go let the Dog Town Road gang know we've got another race on the schedule, then bag it for a few."

Over at the table with the Gravengoods, McMahons, and Phil, Josh stopped off for a minute. Tiffany was busy relating the story of her great run in the Michigan 200 the year before. It had been a good run, if a painful memory for Josh. In the depths of his leader problem at the time, he'd basically run the race with Alco as a leader, but stopping every time he needed gee-haw commands to take Switchstand out of the sled bag and put him in the lead for a mile or two. Although he got pretty good at it, nobody -- not he, not Alco, not Switchstand, not the rest of the dogs -- had been very happy about it, and they finally finished way the hell and gone back in the field, in like nineteenth or something; he hadn't paid much attention. He'd spent the summer working with some other dogs, and had even bought a trained leader, but turned around and sold the dog when it was clear that it wasn't any faster than Crosstie. He had gotten Alco to the point where he had been willing to take a risk on her, but now, in the last few days, the leader issue had cleared up a lot.

"You have a good discussion with Greg and Fred?" Tiffany asked when she saw him standing there.

"Pretty good," Josh said. "We worked out how to deal with you two."

"You did?" Tiffany smiled, knowing a leg pull when she saw one.

"Yeah," Josh said. "We decided to tell you we extended the race to two hundred miles, and have you turn the wrong direction. We decided that wouldn't work, so we decided to run a two hundred miler in March, anyway."

"You're kidding."

"No, I'm not," Josh explained, and gave a brief discription of the plans they'd worked out. "It's not going to be a big thing, just a beer run like the first Pound Puppies," he summarized. "Mark, we talked about starting out at the airstrip, and the thought just crossed my mind that you and Mike might like to be the race marshals."

"Fine with the airstrip," Mark said. "But if you or Mike will loan me some dogs, I might even run it."

"Can't promise anything until the Michigan 200 is over with," Josh said. "I gotta run," he continued. "I'll catch you later." He turned and headed toward the bathroom; he really did need to get rid of some coffee. But, rather than heading back to the table, he headed back out to Mark's truck.

It was nice to be back outside. Although the fire department didn't keep the fire hall very warm, knowing there were going to be people with lots of heavy clothing sitting around, he was still overheated, and the subzero air felt good and comfortable. He briefly checked the dogs -- everybody was asleep, and everything seemed fine. His sleeping bag was still in the sled, but under the circumstances, it wasn't needed. He pulled his parka back on -- and the bib; might as well now, as later, and run the risk of forgetting -- then pulled a windup alarm clock out of his small gear bag, and got into the truck, setting the clock for ten to two. That would give him better than an hour. He slumped down in the seat, and tried to rid his mind of dogs and decisions, but to no avail.

He'd reflected, more than once, that dog sled racing wasn't about racing dogs at all. At least, that was the easiest part. What it really was mostly about was decisions -- which dogs to breed, which pups to keep, which dogs to train, how hard, what for, which dogs to run, when to run, how fast, when to stop, how long, and so on -- big and little decisions, coming almost constantly, some requiring lots of thinking about, some made on the fly, sometimes big ones made on the fly, at that. And, to be successful, you had to be right a good chunk of the time. Though he tried to rest, and at least physically his body was quiet, the flow of thought, of considering some of those decision, was much harder to bring to a rest.

Even though he wasn't yet quite halfway through the Warsaw Run -- the trip going back was a good bit longer -- he was thinking about dogs for the Beargrease. Even a week ago, he was thinking to take the freshest dogs. Now, he wasn't so sure. If he took pretty much the dogs he had now, then they'd have 600 miles on them in ten or eleven days or so -- not quite the Iditarod, but long enough to get a feel for how they went longer distances. They wouldn't be exactly the same team, because he'd start with 12 dogs, insted of ten. But, he wouldn't have to run Pumper, with her ice-collecting paws, if he had Tiffany's Mongo and Pipeline for wheel dogs. He'd leave behind any females about to come into heat -- there was no sense in saddling himself with that worry, with all the good dogs available. And, George in the lead -- or, maybe not, he found himself thinking. They'd agreed on using him for the Beargrease long before, but maybe it would be better to take Alco and Geep in the lead, rather than in swing. They were proving out well, and George would be an unfamiliar leader, this year, anyway. The team was getting used to their style; dropping him into the lead could upset what had become a pretty good balance, and Alco and Geep could use the experience as much as he could. If he surprised Tiffany by not taking George, what dog to take in his place, running in team, somewhere? Maybe one of the younger dogs, like Snoopy; he'd have to get Tiffany's opinion. Maybe even the dog that impressed Phil the most.

Maybe he'd even run pretty much the same dogs for the Michigan 200, less the dogs that Tiffany would want back for her team, and less any dogs that were obviously too pooped to participate, replaced with dogs that Phil was running now. Again, it would give him a better feel for how the dogs would do at a distance. The new race, the one they'd just cooked up, he'd try to load up with dogs that hadn't run one of the longer races. Maybe lead with Switchstand, if he got back to Spearfish Lake in good shape. If he could handle a 200-miler . . . well, it was the perfect place to find out. Hell, he might even be able to go to Nome -- wouldn't that be a kick for a dog that he'd written off as nothing but a sprinter?

And, going to Nome. They'd made plans with that in mind for a couple of years, but somehow, tonight, it seemed a more real possibility than it had before. The money was the gut-kicker, of course, and he and Tiffany had agreed that they'd drop a few lines in the water this winter, then get serious about looking for money after the racing season was over. One thing was clear: they could go to Jenny for the money, and she'd probably give it to them, but they didn't want to be dependent on her friendship, and turn it into a money thing. They'd long ago agreed to exhaust every other avenue first. Josh knew a couple of people that would probably contribute fairly substantially, but Greg knew people, too, people outside Spearfish Lake. He had said he thought he had some ideas, and he probably did, but would want to explore some things first. That was good news, oblique though it was. It wasn't impossible that an approach to Jerusalem Paper through Fred Linder might produce some sponsorship, too. And, Phil; Josh realized now the subconscious reason why he'd wanted to let Phil run the Warsaw Run. There were other people he could have asked; Mark or Mike would have jumped at the chance. But Phil made God knew how much money -- a hell of a lot -- and rarely spent much of it.

Josh knew he was going to have to find some time, soon, a quiet place and a pencil and paper and come up with a real budget. Twenty thousand for the two of them was a figure that was gas, an educated wild-ass guess; as Greg had said, probably too low. There were bound to be some recent Iditarod veterans at the Beargrease; maybe he could come up with some real figures.

There were plenty of other problems that someone like that could give him some ideas on. It was clear, for example, that he needed to have the dogs in Alaska well ahead of time, to train and acclimatize to the more rugged, cold conditions. How long? Where? What would it cost?

And so on, and so on. Serious questions though they were, they weren't helping solve the immediate problem, which was to get to Spearfish Lake with an elapsed time four minutes and a few seconds less than Tiffany's. Letting Tiffany break trail and then drag race her to the finish line was the proper solution, the automatic solution -- but, the one she'd expect. And, he shied away from it, if for no more reason than he'd lost the first Warsaw Run to Tiffany by half a dog's nose in a drag race to the finish, although the circumstances were as different as they could be. Never the less, it made him a little gunshy.

He knew that Tiffany planned to stop somewhere around Riverbend Campground, then again near Turtle Hill, for rest stops; a one-stop return to Spearfish Lake, almost sixty miles over tougher terrain than outbound, just was about unheard of. Not that it was undoable, but habit had sort of set in, too. A one-rest-stop return was a bit chancy, though. What if, rather than running right on Tiffany's ass, he got close enough to just be barely in contact, with no headlamp, so it would be harder to detect him? One of her weak points was not checking-six too well; she might not notice him until after she'd committed herself to a stop. He could slip by her then, break contact and run hard, distancing himself. If he made a single stop, oh, somewhere east of Turtle Hill, she'd still be committed to a second stop. He could make his first stop real quick, too; bootie all the dogs before leaving Warsaw, and cut the paw checks to a minimum, only inspecting paws with missing booties, and replacing the missing ones, or dealing with obvious problems. Even if she caught up with him when he made his pit stop, she'd still have to stop again, and maybe he could sneak in a quick snacking, himself. Of course, that left him in the position of having to break trail, then be the subject of a drag race, but maybe he could break contact while she was stopping and keep it broken.

That left Greg and Phil and Fred of the mushers close to his starting time. He just had to believe that he could outrun Phil in the long run, Switchstand or no Switchstand, or he'd made a poor choice of dogs to begin with. He had avoided looking over Phil's dogs, because there was nothing he could have done, anyway, unless there was something obviously wrong, and Phil would have told him if there had been. Greg had a damn good team of Siberians, but they were Siberians -- once the ideal for long-distance dogsled racing dogs, but in recent years, the Alaskan village dogs, which was sort of what Josh was running, had proved to be just enough faster that a lot of places had seperate classes for the Siberians. He had to believe that Greg's Siberians were good, but not that good. Linder was really the unknown factor, but he had sixteen minutes on Linder, and that was worth something.

But, all that was assuming that everything went normally for everybody, and Murphy's Law suggested that something would go wrong. Murphy had smiled on him big time last year, but the odds were he might not be so kind this year. Well, fortunately, he wouldn't have to commit himself to a strategy for a while. If he could get pretty close to Tiffany, and stay there, he wouldn't have to commit himself much before Riverbend . . .