Duane was about as well prepared for running the Iditarod as anyone could be when the race got under way six weeks later. He had a well-trained team used to the extreme weather conditions, and he was ready for them himself. He had spent as much time as he could, memorizing the route of the race and known problems that he would face. Phil and Josh had drilled him on everything that from their vastly greater experience they figured he would need to know.

In spite of everything, it was a rookie run, and he had his rookie mistakes to make. Although after three winters of training he was pretty experienced for a rookie, there were a lot of people out there on the trail who knew more about what it was like than he did. One of the points that he hadn’t quite taken to heart was that his own efficiency on the stops along the way was going to have a lot to do with where he finished. Not that he wasn’t efficient, because he was – Phil and Josh had drummed that into him – but little things added up to big things, and he just wasn’t as fast at the pit stops as people who had done the race before.

There were other things that slowed him down, rookie mistakes or just plain bad luck, like breaking a sled brake on a stump on the descent of the Happy River Steps early in the race. He was able to struggle along without it to the next checkpoint, but had to waste an hour fixing it before he went on – it would be badly needed farther up the trail, especially going down the Dalzell Gorge coming down from Rainy Pass. A couple times he was puzzled about where the trail went. It wouldn’t be fair to call him lost, but confused a little. That cost him time, too.

A few minutes here, a few minutes there, and in spite of some very good times between most checkpoints, by the time he reached the halfway mark of the race he was about fourteen hours behind the leaders with no hope of catching up. On Phil’s pre-race advice he took his mandatory twenty-four-hour rest break at McGrath; although he said afterward that, had he been thinking, he would have pressed on to Takotna, considering the conditions and all. But what was done was done, and there was no making up for the mistake, which cost him at least another couple hours and probably more.

Well before the beginning, when Michelle had ridden the trailer sled behind him across Anchorage in the ceremonial start the day before the real start from Willow, not all that far from their training camp in Talkeetna, he’d known that the chances of actually winning the race were approximately zero. The best he could hope for would be a top-half finish, and he hoped to just finish.

He was even further behind, although still in the top half, when he reached Unalakleet and the Bering Sea. Unalakleet had been important in a way; he and Michelle had agreed that if he reached there and was still going strong, she’d fly out to Nome to meet him.

By then, in good conditions it was only a couple more days to Nome, and he figured he had it made – but the conditions didn’t stay good. He caught some bad weather just after that and ended up losing much of another day to the leaders. Fortunately, most of those behind him lost as much time, or even more, so when he made the last checkpoint at Safety and began the last couple hours’ run into Nome he had a thirty-third place finish well in hand. That held when he drove the team up the street in Nome, under the burled log arch that marked the finish line, where Michelle was waiting for him. Thirty-third was not as good as he’d have liked by any means, but a little better than Candice had managed on her rookie run two years before. Along the way, he’d endured a little frostbite and a lot of lost sleep, but he still had a few days to recover before the Musher’s Banquet, after which he and Michelle would turn back into Colorado River boatmen.

With help from volunteers, he and Michelle picketed the dogs in a huge lot not far from the finish line, and together the two of them headed for a beat-up old hotel and a room that Run-8 had reserved for their mushers for years. It didn’t take long for Duane to be out like a light; he slept around the clock, got up long enough to drain his bladder, then slept some more. Somewhere in there he was somehow aware that Michelle had joined him, but the bed was empty again when he woke up. She was fully dressed, sitting in a chair in the room, and had obviously been reading a book. “Well, good morning,” she said cheerfully. “I take it the dead have arisen?”

“I think so,” he yawned and stretched. He felt stiff from having slept too long, but was otherwise refreshed.

“Good,” she smiled. “Phil told me to tell you, ‘Go take a shower. You smell like a goat.’”

“Huh?” Obviously he wasn’t all the way awake yet, he thought. “Taking a shower sounds awful damn good, but what does smelling like a goat have to do with anything?”

“It’s a Run-8 tradition,” she smirked. “One I never knew anything about until Phil told me last night. That’s what Tiffany told Josh in this very room when he woke up after their rookie runs almost ten years ago. It’s what Brandy told Phil in this same room after he woke up the morning after his rookie run, and it’s what John told Candice when she woke up here after her rookie run. I think smelling like a goat is pushing it a bit, but there have been times when you have smelled better.”

“Oh, OK,” he said still not completely with it. He started to slip out of the long underwear he still had on – taking it off had seemed like too much work the day before or whenever it was, especially with the prospect of a warm, comfortable bed in front of him. “I’ve been thinking about how good a shower would feel since somewhere back around Rainy Pass. This isn’t like being in the Canyon where you can just go jump in the river, you know.”

“It won’t be long before we can do that,” she smiled. “Just think about how warm fifty-degree water would feel right now.” The Colorado River in the Grand Canyon was rarely much warmer than that, and they both knew it.

“You’re right,” he yawned. “Right now that seems pretty damn good. Don’t get me wrong, while this has been fun, I’m ready for warm weather again.”

“I am, too,” she sighed. “Just think, it’s not long until we’re going to be in triple digits down on the river, and this kind of weather is going to feel real good by comparison.”

“I know,” he said, comprehension starting to come over him. “Sometimes we ought to think about a little moderation in our lives.”

“Moderation? Us? What’s that?” she smirked again as he stripped off the last of his underwear, leaving him naked.

“Beats the hell out of me,” Duane shrugged as he headed for the shower. It was small, but the water was warm and it felt wonderful; it seemed to strip away days’ worth of sweat and exhaustion. He’d come by his grubbiness honestly and it felt like he’d accomplished something, in spite of a finish that he felt was mediocre. The big adventure was over with for all practical purposes, and it had been just about what he hoped it would be. Yes, it was almost midnight in this Cinderella adventure, but his dogsled was about to turn into a raft instead of a pumpkin, so he had little room to complain.

Finally feeling sated and clean, Duane shut off the water, stepped out of the shower and dried off. He headed back into the main room to get dressed to find a surprise: Michelle was lying on the bed, wearing a very tiny and very thin yellow bikini and a bandage on her wrist. It was not the first time he’d seen her wearing that particular bikini, but it seemed out of place in Nome, Alaska, of all places, especially this time of year. “What’s this?” he asked.

“It’s the other part of the Run-8 tradition in this room,” she smirked, “although Phil wasn’t quite as clear about that. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to wear this outfit much this winter. They do have a pretty nice beach here, or at least it would be if it was a hundred degrees warmer, but I thought I’d let you have the fun of taking it off me.”

“To tell you the truth, that was about the second thing on my priority list, right after having a shower,” he smiled, “and it was just barely in second.”

“Darn right,” she laughed as he flopped down on the bed beside her and took her in his arms. “We haven’t had time to do this anywhere as much as I like this winter, and, as always, we won’t be able to do it much out on the river either. Now we’ve got to do some making up while we can.”

It didn’t take very long for the bikini to become a couple of very small piles of fabric lying on the floor, and for quite a while there was little talk between them. Oh, there were random moans and squeals, and much very sensual communication. They’d had over two years of practice at making love with each other, and it hadn’t dimmed their ardor for each other in the slightest. Their sex could sometimes be athletic and energetic, sometimes slow and romantic, but it was always enjoyable. This was one of the best of them, literally a climax to all the work they’d put in over the last few months.

By the time it was over with, both of them were sweaty and exhausted on the bed. It was clear they would both need a shower, but the time for it hadn’t come quite yet – without discussing it, they knew a second round and maybe even a third was in order before that happened. But now, for at least a while, they snuggled together under the covers to just enjoy the closeness with each other.

“So how has it been for you while you’ve been waiting for me?” he asked softly, just to make conversation while they each pulled themselves back together.

“Sort of dull,” she replied. “I could barely wait for it to be over with.”

“I think you just proved that,” he smiled.

“Well, it was a little dull,” she said. “I mean, I fed the dogs and like that, and spent a lot of time down at the Iditarod headquarters waiting for the standings to come in. When you made Unalakleet, Josh’s friends came up from Anchorage to look after the other dogs for a few days, so I shagged my butt down to the airport to get on a plane for here. I had to hang around for a day or so before Phil made it in, and I was watching while Lance Mackey made his winning finish. That was a lot of fun; the place went nuts.”

“I imagine,” Duane nodded. “We didn’t hear much about it out on the trail, but I guess he pulled a real fast one on Jeff King to get in the lead and stay there.”

“That was the story we were hearing, too,” she replied. “I was still back at Talkeetna then, and it was the talk around headquarters as to whether he would be able to make it stick or not. It wasn’t until I got here that it was pretty clear that he had. After that, it was mostly a case of waiting around for Phil to make it in.”

“How’d that go?”

“Well, it obviously wasn’t as big a deal as the winning finish. But they touch off a siren when a musher comes into town, so there’s time for people to get out of bars and the like to greet them. I saw a lot of finishers come into town, both before and after Phil came in. He wasn’t in any hurry, just came down Front Street at a good trail pace. It was after his finish that things got goofy.”

“What happened?”

“I was helping him get the team over to the dog lot to picket them, and I slipped on a patch of ice. Somehow I got tangled up in the gang line and got my wrist torn up a little.”

“Is that what that bandage is all about? I wondered about that, but you haven’t given me a chance to ask.”

“Yeah,” she said. “There was a doctor right there. I told him it was no big deal, I heal quickly naturally, but he was very insistent about taking a look at it. I suppose he wanted to feel useful, or something. When we got into the clinic it was a little more ripped up than I’d thought, but it didn’t need any stitches or anything. He was still worried about it getting infected or something, and I told him I don’t catch infections easily, in fact bugs that bite me usually die horribly, but he talked me into a shot of some antibiotic or other just to be on the safe side.”

“Probably not a bad idea,” Duane commented. “Cold like this can screw up your immune system, and we didn’t grow up in it.”

“That’s what I thought,” she shrugged. “Like I said, it made him feel useful. Anyway, by the time he was done with me the dogs were all picketed, fed, and bedded down. Phil, Josh, and I went and had something to eat and we talked about the race. Fifteenth was not the finish he’d been hoping for, but he says the run of the race didn’t go his way, and he had some dogs get sick early. I don’t want to say he was disappointed, but he could have been happier.”

“I wouldn’t have minded finishing better,” he said. “But the important part is that I finished at all. That’s the big victory for me.”

“You’re planning on wearing that Iditarod Finisher belt buckle out on the river, aren’t you?” she teased.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “There’s too much chance of it getting lost or screwed up.”

“You’re probably right, but you know where you ought wear it?”

“Where’s that?”

“With your formal kilt, some time when you’re around your dad.”

“Yeah,” he snickered. “It would look pretty good with that, wouldn’t it?” Duane’s father and stepmother, Jason and Vicky, were big on Scottish cultural activities, his father so much so that he usually wore a kilt around town if the weather wasn’t so cold his knees would turn blue. The two of them ran a custom knife shop in southern Michigan and turned out very expensive knives that were basically functional art objects. Duane wasn’t into the cultural stuff quite the way that his father and stepmother were, but he had a fully fitted out kilt with all the trimmings that he occasionally wore on formal occasions.

One of the most memorable of those times – and the one where Michelle later admitted that he’d really caught her eye – was when Crystal and Preach and then Scooter and Jim had gotten married down at Lee’s Ferry, the put-in for the Colorado River trips. There may have been a few snickers over it, but not many, since the outfit included a MacRae saber along with more than enough other pieces of his father’s cutlery to gut and dress a steer, as Michelle had once put it. That event, more than any other, had shown her that Duane was a little more than met the eye.

The funny part about it was that Duane hadn’t actually intended to wear the kilt to what turned out to be the double wedding – Scooter and Jim getting married had come as a surprise to almost everyone, especially to Crystal and Preach. Duane had asked his father to send him his formal outfit for a wedding, by which he meant his black suit, but Jason had misunderstood him, probably intentionally, although nobody had ever been able to get him to admit it. If so, it was a practical joke that had paid off profoundly for Duane in the long run.

Since then he’d occasionally worn a kilt on the river, along with affecting a fake Scottish brogue to go with it. It had fit in well with a female trip leader – Scooter – who had a habit of smoking a cigar while greeting the people coming off the customer bus at Lee’s Ferry. There was a good reason why Canyon Tours had the reputation of their people being a little unusual.

“You know,” she said, “maybe we ought to think about taking a swing by your dad’s place on the way back to Flag. We haven’t seen him and Vicky since a year ago Christmas.”

“Sounds good,” he agreed. “But we’re not going to have the time. We’ve got all that rigging to do. It’s less than a month before our first launch of the season.”

“It turns out we’re not going to be as far behind as we thought,” she told him. “One day while you were out on the trail I called Crystal, just to see what had been happening in Flag and shoot the shit a little. It turns out that she and Preach had a slow period a while back. Al and Karin were at a couple shows and then went scuba diving out in the Pacific someplace. That meant Crystal and Preach had to hang around Flag without anything in particular to do for almost a month. Since they knew we were going to be getting back late, they got the college kids together one Saturday and had them strip all five of our rafts. Over the next couple weeks they painted all of them and then put them back together. The frames and gearboxes and stuff are all in. Our gear has been set aside, and we’ll have to go over some of it, but most of the real work has been done.”

“Wow!” he said, genuinely surprised. Spring rigging was a huge job, and one that he had not been looking forward to rushing back to deal with. “That puts a different spin on things. We’re going to owe the two of them big time.”

“No shit,” she agreed. “Nothing is worked out yet, but she and Preach are kicking around the idea of taking a big trip somewhere next winter. That may mean that they’re not going to get back for rigging until late. So it means that if their trip comes off and I don’t do the Iditarod next year, we might wind up doing the raft rigging for them next winter.”

“That’s if you don’t do the race,” he pointed out.

“Well, yeah,” she agreed. “But like we’ve been talking about, I’m not all that sure how bad I want to do it anyway. You know about my reservations, we’ve talked about them before. For something like the race, I still feel I do best as part of a team with someone else leading. That really doesn’t apply here, and I think it’s even more clear in my mind now than it was before.”

Duane decided to keep his mouth shut on that one. He knew of that particular reservation, but he thought it was mostly garbage. Michelle was one of the most self-confident and self-directed people he knew, but if she felt she had reservations, then she had the right to feel that way.

“Well, if it comes down that way, we still might get a chance for a week or two in Costa Rica,” he said by way of keeping away from the direction the conversation seemed to be leading. “But if you don’t do the race, who will?”

“Good question,” she replied. “I was talking about it with Phil and Josh yesterday while you were still out on the trail. Candice may be up for it again, and Josh is getting the hankering to run it again. It’s been five years since he did it last, and at this distance it looks like he may be able to free up enough time to take another swing at it. If not, there’s some other guy they know, I’m not sure who, who thinks he’d like to take a shot at it. So it’s not like you or I have to do it. Are you going to want to try it again next year?”

“I could,” Duane admitted. “But I thought about it out on the trail a lot. I wanted to do it once. Now, I’ve done it, and gained just about everything I could reasonably expect to accomplish. I’m not opposed to helping train again next winter if it works out we can, but I wouldn’t mind doing something else for a while, either, and that includes Costa Rica, or a sailing trip like you and Crystal and Scooter used to do, or a big surfing expedition to somewhere else exotic.”

“It could fit in pretty well, if everything works out,” she agreed. “Josh and Phil were talking about doing more winter training up here than they’ve done the last few years before this. Say, shoot to get up here in late January, no later than the first of February. That means there’s a possibility we could have a few weeks to do something different, even if we have to rig for Crystal and Preach. Anyway, Josh and Phil are going to kick around that idea while they drive the dogs back to Spearfish Lake next week, and maybe a few other ideas, too. We’ll just have to see how it works out.”

“Too soon to tell,” he agreed. “We’ll see what they decide and go from there. It could be next fall before anything gets settled enough to make a decision. But if we’ve got a little slack in when we have to get back, there’s no reason we can’t take a couple extra days and go see Dad and Vicky. It’s only an extra day’s driving, or about that.”

“I think it would be a good idea,” she smiled. “But that’s still a few days up the road. We’ve still got some time until the Musher’s Banquet, and you have to attend to get your Iditarod Finisher belt buckle. We’ve got a lot to do while we’re waiting.”

“What’s that?”

“Making up for lost time,” she smirked. “I’ve got you in bed where I want you, and I intend to take full advantage of it by having you in me as much as I can manage. The way you’ve been working on my boob tells me that you want to be there, too.”

“You know,” he laughed as he rolled her onto her back. “As much as I like being in the Grand Canyon, being in you is my favorite place to be.”

“That’s my favorite place to have you,” she smiled. “What do you say we can the talk and get to it? Then we can go have breakfast, and then come back here and do it again.”

To be continued . . .

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