“Almost there, Bri,” Marcie grunted as she flashed past.

Leaving the river behind, I followed a line of markers to a circular driveway fronting an old cabin. The Skwentna checker inspected my gear, then handed me the clipboard to sign in.

“Looking pretty good, Brian.”

“Beginner’s luck,” I said, though I didn’t really believe that.

Bedding my team in a stand of tall birch, I began preparing the dogs a well-deserved bite to eat. Without even trying, my team had leaped ahead of ten others. Not too shabby. I wasn’t going to win this race. But some of those teams ahead of mine were bound to falter.

I studied the dogs. Raven sprawled luxuriously, her tummy thrust outward inviting a quick scratch. Who’d have guessed that the frail, fine-boned little girl possessed the stamina to run all the way to the Bering Sea coast, as she had done for Mowry his first time out? But the princess was a proven Iditarod dog.

We didn’t know as much about the racing history of Raven’s companions, however. Few seemed tired tonight. Most were still keyed up, licking their paws. Harley and Pig were watching my every move, drooling in anticipation of the feast on its way.

Harley’s appetite was the only quality Mowry found impressive.

“He’s too big,” the Coach had said the day I brought him home. “His build is all wrong. A dog like that will never make it to the finish line.”

I put more faith in the assessment of LeRoy Shank. He’d seen Harley racing for Andy Jimmy, an Athabaskan villager from Minto. Jimmy had done well that day, very well. Shank, a former trapper and founder of the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest, knew that sled dogs weren’t kept through the winter in Minto unless they were well worth feeding. After the race, he had bought the beefy village husky on the spot.