Peter had put his snowshoes on. He slung the tent bag over one shoulder and hefted his sleeping bag onto the other.
“I’ll break trail,” he said, and started out. Hannah set Nook to following him, walking between the blaze marks and further packing down Peter’s wide tracks, leaving a trail that the sled would just fit on, with Hannah at the back on the runners, poling.
It was torturous, but it worked. They stuck mostly to the line of tamarack, but twice Nook had to make sharp turns that caught the sled so it wouldn’t be able to move without tipping over. Hannah called for a stop and wrestled the sled back into position before huphuping the team again.
Finally, there were no more blaze cuts, and the trail was visible ahead of them. Nook paused, lifting her head.
“What’s his name?” asked Peter, who was standing on the trail.
“It’s a her. Her name is Nook.”
“Nook?” Peter dropped his hands to his knees and awkwardly patted them.
“C’mon, Nook, c’mon girl, here, Nook.”
Completely ignoring Peter, Nook angled away from him and again leaned into her traces, this time with a strong heave that Hannah knew meant a short burst of speed was coming.
“Let’s go, guys, get up get up!” she called as loudly and enthusiastically as she could. They travelled the last thirty metres in a messy rush, with anything but team spirit. Sencha gained dry land first, as she hated having wet feet, then Nook, then Rudy, and finally Bogey, who lingered, panting, in the last bit of muddy, churned-up earth.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“We have to keep going,” Peter said. He still had the tent and his sleeping bag was sitting at his feet.
Hannah flicked her eyes over at the dogs. “It’s too late. The dogs are exhausted, and so am I.”
Peter shifted his feet, nudging the bags. “I could go.”
“Fine, but it’s my tent.”
They glared at each other. Hannah knew they were fighting in part because they were so tired; tiredness was as much an enemy as anything else. When you were tired, you made bad de
cisions. She had to focus on the next thing, and the next. Her body told her what was needed; she just had to listen.
“It’s late,” she said. “It’s snowing. I’m starving. So are you. What time do you think it is?”
He looked at her like she was crazy. “You have the watch.”
“It broke.” She showed him the cracked front. “Anyway, it takes forever to set up camp. Plus …”
“Plus what?”
If she could not be a hero, she could at least be a good leader. Hannah took a deep breath and stood up as squarely as her aching legs would allow.
“Plus, you’re better at making a fire than I am.”
She’d thought that he would crow at this and say he knew he was right and she was wrong — but he didn’t. Instead, he blushed suddenly, red creeping up his neck, and looked pleased.
“I don’t think this would be a good place, though,” she said. “It’s too low.” The air, though thick with falling snow, was dank and smelled like stillness and rot.
“No,” Peter agreed. “We need to get up a bit.” He looked at the sky, straight up into the falling snow, then back down, blinking away the flakes from his eyes.
“I figure late afternoon,” he said.
“Okay, then let’s get out of this swamp and set up.”
Peter nodded. They lashed the packs back onto the sled and set out, both of them trudging on their snowshoes, with Peter in front and Hannah near Nook’s shoulder. The dogs pulled without enthusiasm, but Hannah knew that pulling would warm them up and dry them off. It was tough, but it was the best thing to do.
Up out of the marsh the trail went. The snow got crisper as they moved out of the lowlands, and snowshoeing was no longer like walking in corn syrup. The dogs started to dry off — steam was rising from Bogey — and they had their heads low, looking at nothing, following Nook more from instinct than any outward sense. The old husky kept her head level with her shoulders, flicking an ear now and then toward Hannah. It seemed that Nook was listening to the woods, the trail, the team. Hannah tried to do the same.