As Scarlett waited for her clearance to continue, another sled pulled up to the checkpoint.
“Well, well, Billionaire Bucket List,” she greeted Henry with an energetic laugh, feeling well-rested from the night before. “Looks like money really can’t buy everything.”
“We’re biding our time, reserving energy,” Henry said as he went down the line, checking each of his dogs. “We’re only just getting started. What was that you liked to call me? Fire to your ice? Well, prepare to eat smoke.”
“We’ll see about that,” Scarlett said as the checkpoint motioned for her to continue. “Hike!” she shouted to the dogs and they were off.
Biding his time, sure. A part of her wondered what would happen to Henry and his family when he lost the race and thus his grandfather’s estate, but that wasn’t her problem. He could have kept things civil. He’s the one who made them personal, she reminded herself.
More snow had fallen in the last eight hours, so the trail was harder to make out now. Still, they made it to Galena only a bit slower than average. And best of all, Fred showed no signs of being done with the race.
A miracle! It had to be. God was on her side.
Once the dogs were taken care of at the Galena checkpoint, Scarlett hurried back out to the trail. Now she knew Henry trailed her closely and could easily catch up to her during one of her layovers. She needed a big lead on him by then.
She stepped back onto the rack and popped a new warming pack into each mitten. “What do you say, pups? Shall we score a victory for the bookworms?”
Fred howled in response, bringing a smile to her face as she called, “Hike!”
After the required twenty-four-hour layover in Huslia, Scarlett had officially finished half the Iditarod. As the race wore on, a strange mix of muscle memory and fatigue kicked in. Checkpoints came and went as she wound her way to Nome. While her body knew just what to do, her energy was lagging. It became harder and harder to focus her thoughts on the movements of the sled, and she found her mind drifting.
To Mrs. Caputo. To Vanessa Price. To Henry.
Shane had told her to put her anger aside, but she preferred to harness it. Use it as a driving force forward as she flew through the Alaskan wilderness toward a dream that was so close to being realized at last.
The miles passed. The warmers lost their heat, and the cold set in again.
A yelp of pain sent shivers down her spine.
No, no, no! She was terrified to look, but she knew she owed it to the dogs to make sure they were well taken care of. Sure enough, Fred’s limp had returned as he struggled to put minimal weight on his injured paw.
Muttering a few choice words under her breath, Scarlett commanded the sled to a stop and took Fred off the line.
“I’m sorry, buddy. You tried your best, and I’m proud of you.” She wrapped Fred in a special bag that would keep him secure in the sled’s basket.
The contraption left only Fred’s head exposed, and she gave him a few extra pets to ease the worry in his sky blue eyes. “It’s okay, my little husky burrito. You did your best, and you almost made it to the end. But your race is over for now. I’m going to strap you in so you can’t try to pull the sled anyway, because I can tell if I left it to you, you’d run yourself into the ground.”
Just like me, she thought with a grimace.
As they started to run again, Fred whined and struggled, wanting so desperately to be back on his feet. Her heart went out to him. She understood that dog, related to him, and she’d hate to be in his position now.
“There’s no shame in scratching,” Lauren had said. But no, she was down a dog. The rest of them would work harder to overcome the loss. They had to do this now more than ever. For Fred.
“Usually, I tell this story to Fantine, but today I’m going to tell it to you,” she told the dog before launching into the epic story of Jean Valjean and Javert. To his credit, Fred looked up at her from his vantage point on the sled and appeared to listen intently.
Scarlett laughed. She would miss him once she dropped him off at the next checkpoint, and now she missed Fantine and the others who had been left back at the cabin, too. “Don’t look at me, Fred, look at the view,” she scolded. “It’s got to be better than looking at Lenny’s butt all day.”
As she tried to recall the story of Les Miserables well enough to share it with her furry friend, she thought about everything the story had set out to say about the human condition. Sometimes right is wrong, and wrong is right. Sometimes we can’t escape who we are, but sometimes we can band together and win the day. Like her and the dogs now. Was she Javert in this analogy… or Jean Valjean? Always in the habit of choosing the character she most identified with in any book, movie, or play, Scarlett was at a loss now. A part of her identified with each of the characters, yet another part couldn’t understand either.
Maybe she wasn’t a character in a book after all.
Maybe she was just Scarlett Cole, heroine of her own life.
Not many people would ever read it, but maybe that didn’t matter just so long as those who got the chance appreciated having done so.