Chapter 1
East of Point Hope Alaska
The Far North
19 March
It had been a long, unusually bitter winter which had relegated the postal and provision delivery services, who made regular quarterly deliveries to remote Inuit villages, to treacherous emergency overland routes. The unrelenting extreme winds, extreme sub-zero temperatures and blinding snows had kept even hardened brush pilots firmly grounded for safety concerns. As the long weeks passed, a decision was made to revert to the old fashioned way to get critical supplies and medicines like insulin to ‘the People’, as the Inuit preferred to be identified. Emergency overland Snow Cats and dog sled teams were enlisted. Lives were at stake.
Rich McKnight was brought in as close as mechanically possible to his first two villages by Snow CATS, which could only come in so far. His yapping dog team was unloaded along with a double tandem rigged sled that would be pulled by his ten dog team of mixed hound huskies. Two more dogs would follow with him behind the pulling team to provide relief from any injuries acquired on the hazardous icy trek. Rich had figured a three day inbound trip depending on their final route and trail conditions and then two more days to the second village as he looped back to his pick up point. A hardy third generation Alaskan commercial fisherman and trapper, McKnight sported a heavy brush beard peppered with red, black and gray that framed his ruddy wind blown complexion. He was tall, six three, a forty two year old father of six children. The considerable fee he commanded to take on this risky job seemed a no- brainer; he could feed all those hungry mouths till ice out in May, then he would sell his winter fur catch into a depressed market. This year, he figured, every penny would have to be pinched.
He rested and refreshed the dogs every two to three miles during the short daylight hours, starting early in the predawn moonlight and ending as evening twilight gave away to the star studded black of night. Not much time to travel but that was winter in the far north. With temperatures dipping multiple ten’s of degrees below zero each evening, the dogs buried themselves in the snow, content to be covered in the warmer than air blanket of frozen water. Rich set up a small one man heat reflective pop up tent and wormed himself into an Everest rated sleeping sack. He ate dried Ptarmigan and apricots, peanuts and hard biscuits, forcing it down with hot chocolate prepared from snow melted into a steaming pot of liquid heat, using a small propane hot plate. Spartan, but soon he figured he would feast on seal, walrus and possibly polar bear after he reached the small village.
Only one more day, Rich thought as he drifted asleep on that second evening.
The next morning seemed to begin brighter as the team broke trail for the last leg of the journey. By noon McKnight should have been able to spot the tale tell smoke from the cook stoves, but as he double checked his gps navigator, he sensed something was amiss. He was within one mile under clear crisp conditions and the typical visual signs of village life were not yet apparent on the low horizon.
Something was wrong.
“Mush -move on!!” he commanded firmly and the dogs sensing the urgency in his voice pulled hard, generating ice grinding momentum. Soon the tiny village was clearly visible, compact buildings of plywood and tin, layered in drifted snow. Rich pulled up the team, brushed the ice off on his frozen beard and dropped his polarized snow goggles down to his chest to look through a compact spotting scope.
No smoke, no dogs carrying on. This was not good.
He took the team forward, the sleds fish tailing on the thick crust of ice covering the compacted snow. No one had traveled this major trail for many weeks, not man or beast.
Suddenly his lead dog, Hank Williams Jr., pulled up, the hair on his neck bristling. His instinctive alert put the rest of the team instantly on defense, frozen in position, staring intently toward the village, sniffing the air. They sensed something and despite his urging and firm commands, they were not moving forward, something they had never refused to do before.
McKnight’s heart was pounding as he hand checked his holstered .45 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver—something he carried as an emergency survival weapon under his seal skin parka. It was a heavy gun that could handle most any problem on these dangerous trails, his extra insurance.
Rich then grabbed the 35 Remington sled rifle from it’s moose hide scabbard and checked it’s action.
He put out the sled anchors, pulled up his goggles and moved on snow-shoes for that last quarter mile. The village was only about a dozen small residences plus a multipurpose community center that served as a church, post office and gathering place. That multipurpose building was well built but was small, less than one thousand square feet, just enough room for the village’s thirty one residents.
Horror waited just around the corner as McKnight entered from the South into the Eskimo village.
