Legend of the Ghost Dog (7 page)

“Help what dog?”

Jack was standing in the doorway, still in his pajamas. One tiny golden nugget of Cap'n Crunch was stuck to the bottom of his lip.

“We were just talking about a TV show,” I said quickly. Helping Shadow meant making a trip back to the old cabin, and the last thing we needed was to have Jack invite himself to that expedition.

“No you weren't,” Jack countered. “You found a dog, and I want to see it.”

“Well you can't,” Quin said. “It's a secret.”

“No it isn't,” Jack said.

I sighed with exasperation. “Yes it is, Jack. Quin and I were having a private conversation, and you aren't allowed to eavesdrop. It's against the rules.”

“If you don't tell me about the dog, then I'll tell Dad,” Jack said.

“You'll tell Dad I have a secret dog?” I asked with a laugh. “Fine, go right ahead.”

“Not that,” Jack said. He pressed his lips into a grim little line, and the morsel of cereal dropped off onto his shirt. “I'll tell him about this morning.”

“What about this morning?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

“About you and her going off exploring and leaving me alone,” Jack said. “That's against the rules too, and you know it. Mom told Dad he could count on you, but he can't now.”

My face flushed red. Jack sure knew how to get me.

It wasn't like my father would hand down some heavy-duty punishment if he found out I'd left Jack unattended. He wasn't like that. He'd just be … disappointed. That was worse than anything. I felt a wave of anger toward my little brother.

“Just try it,” I said in a low voice. “Find out what happens. Because I'm still going to be in charge of you while we're here. I'll have you doing math all day long, and you can kiss that Nintendo DS goodbye.”

Jack's lower lip quivered, and he balled his hands up into little fists.

“Hey, guys, cool off,” Quin said, getting up from the bed and walking over to Jack. “It's no big deal. Yeah, Jack — you're right. We went out this morning — my fault. I talked Tee into it. And yeah, we saw a dog out there. We don't know much more than that, right now. It's kind of a boring story.”

Jack beamed at Quin, and sat down on the edge of a small wooden trunk by the door. His lips had stopped quivering. Quin might not think she could read people, but she just had. All Jack ever really wanted was to be included.

“I want to hear it anyway,” he said. “The whole story.”

Quin sat down next to him.

“Okay, well, for starters, have you ever heard of a dog-ghost whisperer?”

Jack shook his head, his eyes huge.

“Well, neither had we, before we took a walk out in those woods, but we were kind of scared anyway. Some people say there's a witch living out there, you know. Other people say there's a strange, smoky shadow that creeps up on you and watches you while you walk. But what we found was an old, falling-down cabin.”

Jack was staring at Quin intently, his mouth slightly open, hanging on her every word.

Quin glanced in my direction, gave me a wink, then turned back toward Jack and began to explain how we'd found a dog in an old cabin in the woods. I curled up and closed my eyes, focusing on the sound of Quin's voice. She described everything so vividly that an image sprang into my mind's eye as clearly as if I were seeing it again — the face of a dog with pale, haunting blue eyes.

I don't know who invented the term
cabin fever
, but I definitely had it. After Quin went home with her father, I'd spent most of that evening helping Jack with his assignments while Dad worked. Today had been equally dull — Dad holed up in his office, and me juggling entertaining my little brother, doing my own school assignments, and taking Henry out for the occasional breather. So when Dad emerged to tell us that we were invited to Joe's house for dinner, I almost yelled with excitement. I'd get out of the house
and
be able to spend the evening with Quin — it was perfect.

But there was another whole hour to kill before it would be time to go. And I felt if I did not get out of the house that moment, I was going to go stark raving bonkers.

“Henry, walkies!” I called.

Henry trotted down the hall to where I was standing, wagging his tail but looking slightly suspicious. He'd
been on two walks already, and he didn't seem sure about a third.

“Come on, buddy,” I told him, kneeling down to rub his silky ears. Henry sighed, then plummeted onto his back, paws in the air, offering me his round white belly.

“Nope,” I told him sternly. “Get up. You and I both need to get out of here.”

“Me too,” I heard. I looked up at Jack, who looked small and forlorn, a smudge of orange highlighter on one cheek.

“You finished reviewing your vocabulary work sheet?” I asked him.

Jack nodded, looking so glum I knew he was telling the truth.

“I was just going to go up the trail as far as the rise,” I said. “It's cold, and there really isn't time to go farther.”

“Good,” Jack said, already tired of the walk we hadn't started yet. I guess he had cabin fever as bad as I did.

“Bundle up,” I told him, grabbing at the pile of warm things now lying in a heap by the door.

“I am,” he protested.

It was a good ten minutes before Jack was ready, layered up so he was as round as a snowman. The Nordic cap, price tag still dangling off the back, topped off the look.

Henry waited patiently while I clipped his leash on. He
definitely wasn't all that interested in more exercise. None of us were. We went outside and started slowly up the usual trail, taking our time. The only point, really, was to have something to do until it would finally be time to go to Quin's house.

“It's cold,” Jack complained.

Usually Jack's griping really irritated me. But today, I was right there with him.

“I know, right? It's spring! Can you imagine what January is like around here?”

“And there's nowhere to skateboard,” he added.

“Nope,” I agreed. “But you don't skateboard, Jackster.”

“If I wanted to learn, though, I couldn't,” Jack said. “It's not fair.”

“When you put it that way, I guess it's not,” I told him.

We trudged quietly for a moment.

“Tee? Is there really a dog ghost, or did Quin make it up?”

“She didn't make it up,” I said. “She believes there's a dog ghost, and so do I. I guess we could be wrong, though.”

“Do dogs go the same place as people when they die?” he asked.

“I don't know.”

“Is everyone a ghost, or can they decide not to be?” he pressed.

“I don't know,” I said again.

Another few moments passed, then Jack asked, “If there are ghosts, can they watch us all the time?”

“I figure even ghosts must have better things to do than that,” I told him, forcing a cheerful note into my voice. Really, his questions were kind of giving me the creeps.

“What if a ghost gets mad at you? What if it decides to follow you everywhere you go and never leave you alone?”

“Jack, that's ridiculous,” I said, more sharply than I meant to.

“Is there really a witch living out there?” he asked.

“I don't think so,” I said. “Anyway, there's no such thing as witches.”

I believed that. About ghosts, I was definitely not so sure.

My little brother finally fell silent for a few moments. And then he changed the subject, thankfully.

“Do you think Quin might have a popcorn maker at her house?” he asked. “And if she does, do you think she'd let us make it, and melt real butter in a saucepan like Mom does and pour it on top?”

My stomach rumbled and my feet were like blocks of ice and I felt a sudden, gnawing craving for hot buttered popcorn.

“That would hit the spot,” I said. “Here's hoping.”

We had reached the top of the rise, where we paused. I looked around at the landscape, hilly with increasing undergrowth ahead to the north, back in the direction of home. Though it was late afternoon, the sun was high in the sky. Spring sunset in Nome was not until ten o'clock. It was another thing that was hard to get used to — it just threw everything off.

In the distance, I heard a low, long, quavering howl. Jack froze, his eyes huge and his mouth open in a small frightened O. The howl came again. Henry stood up, ears pricked, his tail quivering as he listened.

“Is that him, Tee? Is that the dog ghost?” Jack asked, his face tight with fear.

“I think it is,” I told him truthfully.

“Can we go home right now?” he pressed anxiously.

I put my arm around my little brother.

“Yeah,” I told him. “We can.”

 

I stared out the window at the center of Nome as we drove down Front Street. The buildings were low and close together, most only one or two stories high. Telephone wires crisscrossed overhead, strung from tall, T-shaped telephone poles. The street was wide, and the whole town had a sort of
frontier feeling to it, like we'd wandered onto the set of a Wild West movie.

“This is it,” my dad said, pulling over and parking in front of a house.

“Cool!” yelled Jack. “Look how close the other houses are — you could pass secret messages through the windows!”

I got out of the car and looked at the house curiously. Quin's home was a simple one-story wooden structure with a peaked roof. The wood siding was unpainted and looked fairly old, giving the house the weather-beaten-but-cozy look of so many of the little beach houses I'd seen when we lived on Cape Cod. An oversized mailbox by the front walk-way read,
The Hendersons
.

“Let's go,” Dad said.

Jack shot up the walk ahead of us, my father and I taking a more dignified pace behind him.

“Long, boring day, huh?” he asked, ruffling my hair.

“No, not at all,” I said. “It was fine. Maybe a little slow, yeah. I don't mind, though.”

“I don't mean to keep throwing you together with Quin,” he said. “I know you like your alone time, and Joe said Quin isn't always the most sociable person, either.”

“Actually, Dad, she's great!” I said, as we reached the front door. “I really like her.”

My father gave me a look of genuine surprise.

“Wow. She must really be something special,” he said.

“She is,” I said.

There was no doorbell, so I knocked on the door loudly. Seconds later, Joe opened it.

“Beckett!” he said. “Tee, Jack — you made it! Come on in before you freeze to death.”

We walked into the main room of the house — a cozy living room and kitchen all in one. Every available space on the wall was filled with crammed bookshelves. An oversized couch and mismatched armchair occupied the corner farthest from the kitchen. Between them was a massive wood-burning stove. Quin was lying on the floor beside it, an open book on the rug in front of her. She turned when I came in, and her serious expression was instantly replaced by a smile.

“Finally!” she said. She patted the spot next to her and I flopped down, loving the feel of the heat and the scent of burning wood.

“Wow, check it out!” Jack yelled, making a beeline for the stove and almost stepping on my head in the process. “This is so cool! It's like the thing the witch tried to push Hansel and Gretel into. How come it's so much bigger than ours? Do these ever explode? If they did, would we all die?”

Joe's response was to hand Jack a steaming mug. He placed another next to me. Hot chocolate. It tasted like heaven. Even better than hot buttered popcorn.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Hope you're hungry, 'cause this is just about ready,” Joe said, stirring something in a large pot on the stove.

Now, there was one difference between Quin and me. In my family, Dad never did the cooking.

“Starving,” my father said. “I think I forgot to eat today. I'm missing something, Joe, and if I could just find it I could really get this book going. I've gone through the papers, the letters, the newspaper articles, everything the archives have, but the idea of humans and dogs working and living together in reality — firsthand accounts — it still needs that. I need to talk to somebody myself.”

“Clay might have an idea or two,” Joe said, replacing the lid on the pot. “He ought to be here any minute now.”

“I hate clay,” Jack said. “They made us make stuff with it in art last year, and everything I made looked all squished on one side.”

“Clay's a person,” Quin told Jack. I lifted an eyebrow at her. A person?

“He's really cool,” Quin whispered to me. “The best. He was, like, my savior when I lost Gatsby. You'll love him.”

I hadn't realized anyone else was coming to dinner, let alone a cool guy. I was dressed super casually in fleece-lined jeans and an enormous wool fisherman's sweater. Not that I cared about boys, or anything. But still. The sound of knocking put an end to any possibility of switching my sweater for something better fitting of Quin's. The really cool boy had arrived.

“Clay, this is Beckett and his children, Tee and Jack.”

I blinked in surprise as I sat up. Clay was no boy. His hair was snow white, with a matching walrus moustache. His face was deeply lined, but his bright blue eyes were young and glittering. For no reason I could explain, I immediately liked him.

“Are you Quin's grandpa?” Jack asked.

“Jack, don't be rude,” I hissed. Although I wasn't exactly sure how rude it was. Clay certainly looked old enough to be somebody's grandpa, and surely he was aware of that.

Clay laughed, a deep growly sound that made me want to laugh too.

“When they start lettin' me pick my grandkids, I expect Quin'll be the first on my list,” he said to Jack.

“I better be the
only
one on your list,” Quin said, getting up. She gave Clay a kiss on the cheek, and beamed when he ruffled her hair.

“Okay, troops, let's dig in,” Joe said.

A round wooden table near the kitchen had been set for six. Within moments we were all seated and Joe was ladling hot fish stew into each of our bowls as Quin passed around a basket heaped with fat slices of bread.

“Well, Clay, Joe says you know a great deal about dog teams and mushers — I'd really love it if you'd let me interview you,” my father said, covering a piece of bread with what looked like about an inch of butter.

I looked from Clay to Quin, then back to Clay.

“I'm glad to, though I don't know how much help I'll be. I know a little. But the one person that knows more about dogs, and dogs with people, that's Dorothy Shaktoolik. But I guess she don't talk to nobody, not these days anyway.”

“Clay knows dogs as well as anyone in Alaska. He finished the Iditarod seven times,” Quin said, with obvious pride. “And he placed in the top three twice.”

“Whoa,” Jack said, dropping his spoon with a clatter as his eyes grew huge. “You were in the Iditarod? The huge dog-racing thing?”

Clay gave Jack a shy smile.

“Well, I guess I was, Jack,” he said. “A long time ago. And that's a good way to describe it. It sure was a huge dog-racing thing.”

“When were you in it? How fast do the dogs go? Do wolves eat any of the mushers? How come they call it the Iditarod?”

Clay laughed his growly laugh.

“Might as well start with the last question first. Iditarod's the name of an old mining town. The dog trail went through it, so they started calling it the Iditarod trail. Name stuck.”

“But how come the mushers race it?” Jack pressed.

“Because of Balto,” Quin said. Jack gave her a blank look. “What? Everybody knows who Balto is.”

“No, they don't,” Jack argued. Which meant that he didn't.

“Balto was a sled dog,” Dad said. “He was … see, there was a terrible epidemic of diphtheria in Nome. Kind of like the flu, but much, much worse. This was around, what, 1924?”

“1925,” Joe said.

“Right,” Dad agreed. “And there were no roads into Nome in those days. In the winter, you couldn't get there by boat because of the ice. Most planes couldn't fly in those conditions back then. There was a train that went up to Nenana, but that was more than six hundred miles away. Whole families were falling sick — people were dying — and there was no way to get medicine to them. The whole town was frozen in.”

“Then somebody came up with the idea of using the dog teams that did the mail runs,” Clay said. “Back in those days a sled and a good dog team was the only reliable way to get around. That's how they delivered the mail. So each town along the line got in touch with the others on the telegraph machine, and they arranged for mushers and dogs to be waiting at every town along the mail route. The first team picked up crates of medicine in Nenana, and it went from one team to the next.”

“Like a relay race?” Jack asked.

Clay pointed at Jack like he'd said something brilliant. “That's exactly what it was. Those mushers and teams worked day and night to get that medicine through, and they did it. Got it into Nome just six days after loading it up in Nenana. Saved a lot of lives. And the Iditarod follows most of the trail those teams took, to keep their memory alive.”