Snowhook by Jo Storm

“Me, too.”

“We’ll wait, then,” she said. She wanted to get going while the sun was out and it wasn’t snowing for once.

“I can do the tent while you do the dogs,” said Peter.

“Make sure it’s all packed up

tight. It’s tough to get it all into the bag.”

“It won’t matter, anyway,” he responded. “We only have to get past the lake now, and it’s really close. Timmins is right after that.”

She pointed up to the top of the quarry. “And we almost fell over that yesterday because we got trapped in a blizzard. Who knows what could happen.”

“Fine,” he snapped, then nodded more firmly. “Yeah. Okay, I got it.”

He handed her the rolled-up gangline, then tossed the rest of the gear out of the tent and began to take it down, limping heavily and coughing every now and then.

Hannah attached the gangline to the sled bridle and hooked up the dogs before setting the snowhook to keep them secure. All the dogs had slept in their harnesses, and she went over them carefully, checking Rudy’s paw and reapplying salve to Sencha’s belly. Nook’s harness sore had healed, but as Hannah ran her palms over the husky’s flanks, she could again feel the old girl trembling. Hannah knelt in front of the husky, pulling her ruff around until they were eye to eye. Nook kept trying to look down or around, anywhere but at Hannah, and each time she looked up the white slope of the quarry trail to where it disappeared over the lip, her trembling increased. But her nose was cold, her feet were fine, and when Hannah parted her thick fur to check her skin, it was a nice healthy pink, not wet or splotchy. Nook is probably just happy to get out of the confines of the tent, thought Hannah.

She patted the lead dog’s sides and stood up. Peter had the tent down and was stuffing the poles into the bag, being careful not to ram them in, in case they ripped the still-wet tent walls.

“You’ll have to dry this tent when you can,” he said.

Hannah barely heard him; she was looking at the empty space where the tent had been. At one end was the imprint of the sled where she had dug it out, then a small, empty space, then the quarry wall.

“Where’s the bag?” she asked.

“Which bag?”

“The blue packsack with all the clothing in it. Gloves. Batteries. The flashlight. The radio. The ground sheet for the tent.” She stumbled, not wearing snowshoes, over the open ground to the place where she had wedged it, scurrying her hands through the small mounds of snow to see if it had been buried. But it was gone, blown away by the nighttime winds.

There was a bitter taste in her mouth of bile. She felt sick. What if it had been the supply bag she’d left outside? Then they would have lost everything, the first-aid kit and the food and the stove and the fuel and the matches — everything. Still, as it was, they’d lost the ability to find out what kind of weather was coming, their alternative light source, and their clean clothes. She was lucky she had taken out the new socks when she had. They had only the clothes they were now wearing left.

She peered over the edge of the shelf down to the next one, but saw nothing, just row after snowed-in row. Kneeling in the snow, she pounded at her legs in frustration.

“Hey, stop that,” said Peter from over by the sled.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid! I should have known better than to leave it outside!”

“What else could you do, leave the dogs outside?”

“I should have stuck it under the sled. I should have known.”

Peter continued putting their gear into the sled. “It was a blizzard. I should have known to keep my snowshoes secure instead of having them loose, and look what happened. The crampons could have cut the dogs, and then where would we be?”

But it didn’t matter what he said, because the only thing she could control was her own actions, and she couldn’t bear to think that every single action she’d taken since leaving Kelli and her mom had been wrong. She took a shaky breath, moving away in her head from the idea that they had almost lost everything as she stood up and drew away from the edge.

“We still have the important bag.” She looked up. “And for once, it’s not snowing.”

“And we’re close,” added Peter. “We can get there. We can get there today.”

She nodded. “Nook, line out! Rudy, Bogey, line out!”

The dogs stood, lining out. Peter limped over and hauled himself into the sled. Hannah took her place, calling to the dogs to start. The sled rose slowly and jaggedly, taking them up and out of the quarry and then onto the trail that led to Timmins.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The sled tilted from side to side. Hannah had her head down, pushing and poling hard to get them up the side of the quarry, over the lip, and back into the bush, when she felt the sled pull more on the right than on the left. She looked up. Something was wrong; Nook’s head was raised, and so was her tail. The other three dogs were still pulling, but Nook’s lines were slack. The big dog looked from side to side as though she were taking in the scenery instead of leading a dogsled team.