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Then she saw the dogs. They were as doing as badly as she was, if not worse. Sencha was the most pitiful; still tied to the gangline, she roamed the three feet available to her, trying to burrow in behind the other dogs and shivering violently. The three double-coated dogs were lying down, folded into themselves as tightly as Christmas presents wrapped at the store, but still Hannah saw the edge of the wind skimming across their bodies, lifting their coats so cleanly that she could see the pink skin beneath.
That was
not good. The sled dogs could combat almost any temperature and be fine, but they couldn’t fight the wind. The wind lifting their coats allowed the cold to get in, and if that happened, the huskies were no better off than the short-haired Dal was. They could all get hypothermia and die.
The wind whacked Hannah’s hood against the back of her head again. There was nothing on the shelf but the tent and the sled and them. The slats of the sled would not be an effective windbreak for the dogs, and they couldn’t get behind the tent because she’d put it right up against the rock wall. Besides, the wind was constantly shifting and knifing at them from different directions.
“Peter,” she called, “get out. I have to do something with the sled.”
Peter slowly hauled himself out. Wincing, he limped to the tent.
She crawled to the sled and released the snowhook, leaving it out on the snow for the moment. Then she tipped the sled over so that the runners pointed out toward the black nothingness of the pit and jammed the top of it up against the tent. It wasn’t a great windbreak, but it was better than nothing. Then she scrambled inside the tent.
Peter lay on his back. In one hand was the water bottle, in the other the flashlight.
“I feel like crap,” he said. She took the flashlight, got out more Tylenol and handed it to him, then handed back the flashlight.
“Thank you,” he said. He took the pills and drank some water and lay down again.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“You need to eat something.”
“I know. Gimme a minute. I had a heck of a time getting in here.”
The side of the tent bulged around the outline of the dog sled up against it as the wind tore at them.
“Peter, I have to bring the dogs into the tent with us,” she said. “It’s too windy.”
“Yeah.” His voice reminded Hannah of the insulin vials: cold, rigid, and thin.
“I’ll put up a barrier, okay? They won’t touch you.”
“I’m tired.”
“Me, too. I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.” He handed her the flashlight and she put it in her pocket.
She pulled her sleeping bag out of its stuff sack and lay it out lengthwise, very close to Peter, leaving a small space on the other side between it and the tent wall. Then she crawled to the vestibule and looked at the two packsacks she had wedged there. They took up almost the entire space. She went through the blue one, making sure there was nothing in it but clothing, and took out two pairs of socks and her last pair of mittens.
The snow was piling up against the sled and the side of the tent. Hannah dragged the bag to the end of the sled and wedged it as well as she could up against the tent where the least amount of snow had drifted. The wind plucked at the handles of the packsack, at her hair, at anything that was loose.
She crawled back over to the dogs. Sencha was whining continuously now, her eyes and nose crusted with wind-blown little icicles. Hannah unhooked her from the gangline and the Dal leapt into her arms, trying to crawl into her coat. She grabbed Sencha’s collar firmly and took her into the tent, lifting the side of the sleeping bag so she could crawl in.
She played her flashlight quickly over Peter to make sure the dog wasn’t going to bother him. His eyes were closed and he looked asleep, but she saw glistening tracks down the sides of his face.
She moved the flashlight away quickly, went back to unhook Bogey, and then she brought him into the tent. The big Lab trampled right to the only open spot available, the space between her sleeping bag and the tent wall, and lay down.
Next Hannah unhooked both the sled dogs, rolled up the gangline around her fist, and crawled back with her other hand on Nook’s collar. She had left the vestibule open, and it flapped in the fresh onslaught of the wind, making Rudy nervous. He swung his head from side to side, watching it. Hannah threw the gangline inside, then reached up and pulled the vestibule zipper halfway down. She kept hold of Nook’s collar and began to push the lead husky in.
Nook’s butt hit the ground and she began resisting. She twisted her head away from Hannah, bending her head down to sniff the snow.
Something tugged at Hannah: that kernel of thought she had found at Jonny Swede’s. This time, it wasn’t a placeholder between two things, but it had that same quiet, grounded feeling of waiting. Now, though, it was wrapped around something — a memory.
Nook had twisted her head away and bent it downward. Hannah had seen that move before, from Sencha. I don’t understand this, I am nervous. Nook wasn’t showing rebelliousness, but nervousness.
