free hit counters
Chapter 63
A quarter mile from Mark and Jackie's house, Josh and the others could look out in the field to their left, and see four dogs dragging a four-wheel ATV up a path cut through the grass. It was still light enough to see that it was Mike McMahon riding the ATV, and
through the open window, they could hear him yell, "Haw, Cumulus, Haw!"
Josh parked the car, and they got out. They could see people sitting around a picnic table in back of the house, so they walked out there, to find Mark and Jackie, along with Kirsten, who had her blouse open to feed Susan. Farther away, Tiffany and Henry were
throwing a Frisbee around. "Hi, stranger," Jackie said. "Been wondering when you'd find your way out here again."
"We've been busy," Josh admitted, and went on, "We came out to see if we could get a look through the 14-inch."
"Got to get through with the dogs, first," Mark said. "It's going to take a little while. Mike just got started, and he hasn't had a chance to work with them for a while."
"Yeah," Kirsten said. "Between the sewer thing and little bottomless pit here, we've been keeping him busy."
"So this is Susan, huh?" Amy said. "We've been hearing about her. I missed her the other night." She didn't say so, but she'd been in the back of the room with a very nervous Josh, watching Jenny's show.
The girls made cooing noises and clustered around Kirsten and the baby, while Josh found a seat at the picnic table, and Danny sprawled on the ground.
They watched Mike ride around the field behind the dog team. "They seem to be coming along pretty well," Josh commented.
"I could stand for better," Mark said. "Cumulus makes a pretty good leader, but none of the other dogs work real well in double lead. Red's the best, but he's bigger than Cumulus, and when he makes a wrong move, Cumulus can't overpower him. With four dogs, we
have to just about run a double lead, or the team gets unbalanced."
"Goddamn it, Red, I said Gee!" came floating across the field to underscore Mark's comment.
"King seems to be fitting in pretty good, but he's dumber than a post," Mark said. "He's big enough to run wheel, and he seems to be working out pretty well. I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt that he's ever going to make a command leader," Mark said.
Jackie looked up from the cooing over Susan. "So much for `On, King! On, you huskies!'" she smirked.
"What are you going to do with them?" Danny asked. "Race them?"
"Oh, we might try a race, some time, but these aren't speed dogs," Mark replied. "Mostly, just run around in the woods, up and down the trail. Maybe try some winter camping. Somehow, it seems more satisfying than bar hopping with a snow machine."
"Not that you've ever gone bar hopping with a snow machine," Jackie commented.
"I know it doesn't make a lot of sense," Mark said to Jackie, as much as to anybody, "But it's been a lot of fun, so far."
"It does look sort of like fun," Marsha commented. "Of course, it looks like you'd spend a lot of time at looking at the south ends of a bunch of northbound dogs. What's the chances of getting a ride?"
"They're not good enough on the trails to take someone for a ride," Mark told her. "That's why I cut the trails into the field, to give them the idea they're supposed to run along trails. Maybe later, I can run Cumulus in single lead, and I can take you down the runway.
Cumulus and Red and Midnight run under pretty good control, now."
"Could I learn how to do that?" Josh asked. "I mean, run a dog team?"
"It's not that hard," Mark told him. "In fact, I'd be happy to have someone else to run the dogs. We need to work them a little every day, and now with Susan here, Mike's not available a lot of the time."
"Watch it, Josh," Jackie warned. "He's trying to hook himself another dog musher to get thrown off the ATV out on the trails."
"That only happened once," Mark protested. "I didn't see that pothole."
Just then, Mike turned the team off the trail and up to the group, shouting, "Whoa, Cumulus! Whoa, Red!" The team came to a stop, not far from the picnic table.
"Hey, that's great," Kirsten said, looking up from Susan. "They're actually stopping when you tell them to stop."
"They're tired enough to listen to commands," Mike said. "That first ten minutes, though . . ."
"Hey, that's interesting," Amy said. "I thought you used reins to steer the dogs."
"No," Mark told her. "It's all done by commands to the leader. The only problem is that you have to teach the leader to take commands, and that's harder than it sounds."
"You want to take them out for a while?" Mike asked.
"The kids here would like a ride," Mark said. "Let's take King out, and move Red back to wheel, and I'll give `em a run down the runway, like we did with Tiffany and Henry last week."
It only took Mike and Mark a couple of minutes to move the dogs around. "All right, who's first?" Mark called.
"I'll go," Marsha volunteered.
"All right," Mark said. "We're going to have to do this like we're riding double on a motorcycle. Mike could have the kids riding in front of him, but you kids are too big for that. Hang on tight. This is going to be wilder than you think."
One by one, the Marsha and Amy and Danny and Josh got short rides up the runway. When it came time for Josh's turn to climb on behind Mark, he was amazed at how fast the acceleration was when Mark called, "Hike!" The dogs took off at a fast pace.
"I thought you said these were slow dogs," he said, hanging on to Mark's back.
"They're pretty fast for a short distance," Mark said. "A racing team would be faster, and for a longer ways," Mark said, then yelled to the dogs, "Easy! Easy! Now, Gee! Gee! Gee, Cumulus!"
The lead dog led the team in a wide right turn; in but a few seconds more, Mark was commanding them to come to a stop. With the help of the brakes on the ATV, they managed to stop close to the picnic table again.
"You like that?" Mark asked as Josh clambered off the back of the ATV.
"That was fun," Josh said. "I think I'd like to learn more about that."
"What do you think, Mark?" Mike asked. "You think we should run them around the trail one more time?"
"Yeah, guess so," Mark said. "Try to take it easy, but don't keep them out long. Let's get King back onto the gangline, though. He needs more work. Maybe leave Red here."
"Sounds good." In seconds, they traded Red for King, and Mike was off onto the trails through the field again.
"Nice to watch someone else bouncing around for once," Mark said as he sat back down at the picnic table. "I'm really looking forward to snow. It'll be fun to use the sleds."
"That sounds like fun," Josh admitted.
"Still think you're interested in this?" Mark asked.
Josh was unable to say why, but the thought of working with the dogs seemed fascinating. Somewhere in his mind, there was the image of plowing down a snowy trail on a crisp winter's day, with a long team of dogs snaking down the trail in front of him. "I'd love to,"
he said.
"Look, Josh, I'll tell you what," Mark offered. I'll give you a couple books on dog mushing, and you read them over and tell me what you think. If you still want to do it, we'll try it some evening."
"Sounds good to me," Josh said.
"Well, all right," Mark smiled. "Let's go open the dome, then we can help Mike put the dogs away. It's still going to be a while before it's dark enough to see much, though."
