Balto and the Great Race (3 page)

Kaasen unharnessed the team and rubbed ointment into the dogs’ feet. All experienced mushers know that one of their most important jobs is to take care of their animals’ feet. Ice crystals can be as sharp as glass. A neglected cut on a running dog’s paw can quickly become a very serious injury.

In Bluff’s central building, the telegraph buzzed with news. From Nome, it was reported that the diphtheria epidemic continued to grow worse by the hour. Five people had died, and possibly over 100 people were infected. As feared, among the sickest were many children, as well as a great number of native Alaskans, also known as Inuits.

For over 10,000 years, the Inuits had lived in Alaska, hunting and fishing to survive. When Europeans first arrived in the 1700s, they brought with them diseases that the native people had no resistance to. Diphtheria and influenza were two such diseases that often took deadly tolls on the native population.

From Nenana, word had come to Bluff that a musher named Wild Bill Shannon and his team of nine dogs had picked up the serum and completed the first run of sixty miles on the Tanana River. The temperature at Shannon’s departure was forty degrees below zero.

The latest news had come through on the morning of January 29, twenty hours after Shannon loaded the serum from the train onto his dogsled. Witnesses reported that the third relay team had received the
serum. Led by Bill Green, the team was heading for a place called Fish Lake. There, the fourth relay team would take over and continue toward the Yukon River.

There were many small settlements along the Yukon, some equipped with telegraph equipment. Updates would continue to be sent. All reports agreed that the teams were making extremely good time.

But it was far too early to celebrate.

An inexperienced person might think that leading a dog team along the ice on a frozen river would be simple work. After all, it was a natural road, so it would be hard to get lost, and there wouldn’t be trees and rocks to avoid. But mushers who had driven teams over the Yukon River knew all the problems they could run into.

For example, snow was piled high on the banks of the frozen river. A musher
had no choice but to keep to the open center of the ice. There, he and the dogs were a target for the powerful Alaskan winds that swept violently down the Yukon. These winds could easily knock a man off his sled. The icy gusts could also bring temperatures down as far as sixty degrees below zero. Once the sun set, a musher ran the risk of freezing to death.

A musher also had to worry about being attacked. Alaska is home to a great variety of wildlife. There are four kinds of bears alone: grizzlies, black bears, Alaskan brown bears, and polar bears. Coyotes, wolverines, lynx, and wolves are plentiful. But one of the greatest threats to sled dogs comes from an animal that might not seem to be very dangerous—the moose.

No one knows why, but it is not unusual for a team to be ferociously attacked by a moose. Perhaps moose are
unable to distinguish dogs from wolves, their natural enemies. Whatever the reason, the attacks are often deadly. A moose can come out of nowhere, leaping through the air to crush the dogs under 600 pounds of furious flesh.

Once the team has stopped, a moose uses its powerful legs and hooves to kick and slice at the animals. A musher trying to help his dogs can be injured or killed himself. Many mushers carry axes or guns with them in case of a moose attack. However, there is never a guarantee that they could get to the weapon in time.

While the men in Bluff considered these dangers, more news came—good news. Kaasen’s friend and Balto’s owner, the great Leonhard Seppala, was on the move with his famous racing dogs—Togo in the lead.

Seppala was headed to Nulato, a town
over 250 miles from Nome. There, he would wait for the last Yukon River team. Once the case of antitoxin reached him, he would immediately take it to Bluff, where Kaasen, Balto, and the rest of the dog team were waiting.

Curled in his bed of hay, Balto heard Seppala’s name being spoken. It had not
been that many years since he had been brought as a puppy to Seppala. He remembered the hours Seppala had spent training and coaching him to be a sled dog. With Gunnar Kaasen as musher, Balto had run alongside Seppala’s teams at the Hammon Consolidated gold fields.

Pacing back and forth over the wooden floor, Kaasen could not even think of sleeping. He constantly went outside to see how Balto and the team were. He checked and rechecked his equipment and ran his hands over the harnesses to test for weakness. He cleaned the sled’s runners until they were as slick as ice.

Balto waited patiently as Kaasen examined each of his paws, rubbing dose after dose of protective ointment into the leathery pads. Balto’s patient example reminded Kaasen that he needed to eat. Once the
relay team arrived, it might be many hours or even days before he would be able to rest and eat.

Amid the clicking of the telegraph and the murmur of men’s voices, the lights in Bluff’s wooden buildings stayed on all through the night. Each small structure acted as a beacon, lighting the way for the relay team, which might be rushing toward them under the cover of darkness.

CHAPTER FIVE
Bluff: Bad News

As the latest news came in from Nome, Balto could see the concerned looks on the men’s faces. He could sense their anxiety.

Early reports of Seppala’s progress turned out to be false. No one even knew where he was. Some people thought that Seppala had tried to cross the ice of Norton Sound on his way to meet the relay team, despite the fact that he had been warned that the conditions were bad.

Norton Sound pokes into the coast of
Alaska, making a wide, U-shaped inlet. The freezing waters of the Bering Sea rush in to fill the U with pack ice. Many mushers were tempted to drive across the ice instead of skirting the coast. The shortcut could take 100 miles off a journey.

But the condition of the ice was unpredictable. The wide plateau of ice was unprotected by hills or trees and gave no shelter from the wind or the blinding sun. The water beneath the ice, nudged by the currents of the Bering Sea, rose and fell.

Often, the ice moved, too. A slab of ice, with dogs and men on top, could break off from the pack and float out to sea.

Slabs could also pull apart from each other, leaving only a thin layer of newly formed ice between them. To a musher and a team of dogs, the ice would look firm until they were on top of it. Then it
would be too late. Many a musher and team had plunged through thin ice and into the freezing ocean.

Most were never seen again.

CHAPTER SIX
Nome: More Bad News

As Kaasen and his dogs waited impatiently, the situation in Nome got worse.

Reports said that Dr. Welch was working around the clock and was close to collapsing from exhaustion and stress. The Nome Red Cross had organized volunteers to help the doctor, but there was only so much they could do.

There was one ray of light in all this darkness. Her name was Emily Morgan.

Nurse Emily Morgan had come from
her home in Wichita, Kansas, to do missionary work in Alaska. As luck would have it, she happened to be visiting Nome when the epidemic struck. She was a member of the Red Cross and was also a former war nurse.

During World War I, Nurse Morgan had answered the call of her country for
medical volunteers. She had served three long years overseas working with sick and wounded soldiers. No one was more qualified to handle the difficult situation in Nome. Nurse Morgan kindly agreed to stay until all of the patients were treated.

Until the antitoxin arrived, there was little the nurse and doctor could do to treat the infected patients. However, they could help to stop any further spreading of the disease.

Sleep was out of the question. The families and neighbors of the sick children had to be watched and advised carefully. Because the disease was so easy to catch, Nurse Morgan had to help families care for the sick without getting too close to them. Anyone already exposed to the disease was told to keep away from healthy people.

Despite receiving updates about the
relay teams; Nurse Morgan and Dr. Welch had no way of knowing when the serum would get to Nome. It could come in the middle of the day or in the blackness of night. But they did know it was very important to have a detailed and well-rehearsed plan of action for when it arrived.

When the antitoxin came, Dr. Welch would need help giving the shots. He and Nurse Morgan drew up a list with the names of the sickest people at the top. Most of the infected people had remained at home instead of moving to Nome’s tiny hospital.

Nurse Morgan knew the address of every patient, along with his or her exact condition. She made sure she and the other volunteers would be able to get the antitoxin without delay to those who
needed it most. Dr. Welch and Nurse Morgan’s work keeping sick and healthy people apart seemed to be working. The infected patients were still very sick, but no new cases of diphtheria had been diagnosed for an entire day

CHAPTER SEVEN
Norton Sound: Seppala and Togo

While Kaasen’s team waited restlessly in Bluff and Nurse Morgan and Doctor Welch worked frantically in Nome, Seppala and his dog team were doing exactly what people had feared they might.