Ch6-Port Safety

CHAPTER SIX Port Safety Annie banged on the wooden door. A moment later, it opened. "Gunnar?" a man said, peering into the snowstorm. "No!" Annie shouted. "The ice cracked and my brother fell through! His feet are soaking wet! Can you help us?" "Hurry! Get inside!" the man said. With Annie's help, Jack limped into the warm, firelit cabin. He took off his mittens and wiped snow and ice from his glasses.

"Sit near the stove!" the man commanded. "I'll heat some water!" Annie helped Jack out of his parka, and he sat on a wooden chair near a crackling woodstove. "Take off his boots!" the man said. Annie helped Jack pull off his fur boots and wool socks, then set them near the stove. The man grabbed a kettle from the top of the woodstove and poured water into a bucket. Jack looked at his wet feet. They were white and numb from the cold. He couldn't move his toes. "How are they?" the man said, lugging the bucket to Jack. "N-not bad," Jack said. He was still trembling from the cold. "Not good," said the man, looking at Jack's feet. He set the bucket down in front of Jack. "Soak them awhile." "Thanks," said Jack. As he put his feet into the warm water, he was overcome with pain. He started to pull them out, but the man stopped him.

"Keep 'em there, kid," he said. "Okay," said Jack, gritting his teeth. Listening to the howling wind and the snow pelting the cabin windows, he worried about the huskies. "Can—can we bring our dog team inside?" he asked. "Sure, I'll unhitch them from their harnesses. You stay here and soak your feet," the man said. Then he threw on a parka and hurried outside to get the dogs. "I'll help him," Annie said to Jack. "Don't move." And she followed the man back into the storm. As Jack sat alone in the one-room cabin and soaked his feet, he worried about the time. He looked around for a clock but didn't see one. How long would it take for his boots to dry? he wondered. Would his feet be okay? Did the dogs have frostbite, too? Jack was glad when the door opened. "Everyone in!" Annie shouted. Hauling the sack of dried fish with her, she led the huskies inside.

The man followed the team into the cabin and slammed the door against the storm. "Go! Sit," he ordered the dogs. He pointed to dry straw spread over the floor. The bedraggled huskies took slow steps across the room and settled down in the straw. "Feel any better?" the man asked Jack. "Yes," said Jack. His teeth had stopped chattering, and the pain in his feet had lessened. "I'm Jack. She's my sister, Annie." "I know, she told me," said the man. "I'm Ed." He grabbed the kettle and poured a little more steamy water into the bucket. "Ed's a musher, too," said Annie. "His team is in a shed behind the cabin. He's a mailman, like Oki's uncle. He recognized their dogs." "Cool," said Jack. "Yep," said Ed. "Keep soaking your feet while your sister and I take care of the dogs." Jack kept his feet in the bucket as Ed poured drinking water into a large pot and gave it to the team. Then Ed and Annie knelt in the straw and

massaged the dogs' feet, one paw at a time. The huskies panted and looked as if they were smiling. "Good dogs, good dogs," Annie kept saying. "That's right, good dogs," Ed chimed in. Jack saw that the musher was missing teeth and his beard was scraggly. Even so, his face had dignity and strength, Jack thought. Now that he understood the job of a professional musher, he admired Ed a lot.

"Ed lives here, at the Port Safety roadhouse," Annie said. "That's a good name for it, huh?" Jack nodded. As the wind howled outside, it did feel safe inside the cabin, but he worried that they couldn't stay. They had only twelve hours of magic. "Do you know what time it is?" he asked. "Hold on." Ed pulled out a pocket watch. "Almost midnight," he said. So almost eight and a half hours left to find Gunnar Kaasen and return to Nome, thought Jack. Suddenly he remembered something. "Ed, why did you call us Gunnar when you opened the door?" "Did you mean Gunnar Kaasen?" asked Annie. "Were you expecting him?" "I did mean Gunnar Kaasen," said Ed. "Earlier today I was told to wait for him. If he gets tired on his journey, I'm supposed to take his package on to Nome. But then I got word from Solomon that Gunnar would be staying there awhile. When I heard a knock, I thought he'd decided to push on." "No," said Annie. "The mayor of Nome told him to wait until the storm ends. At least that's