Early in February 1953, Ice and her eleven teammates settled in the low-lying plains of Minnesota, reduced to the status of pets. They were in America now, the home front of the Korean War, in an age when the mood of the country was tense from red-baiting. Everyone was watching I Love Lucy on TV—such a riot. Everything went slow and easy here in the lazy, lukewarm heartland. Totally different from life up in Far North Alaska. Down here in the south.
It got stressful.
There were no ice floes. No vast expanses of snow. You couldn’t run. Not only couldn’t you run, you were ordered not to run. WHAT’S GOING ON HERE? Ice wondered. WHERE THE HELL ARE WE? One member of the team, overcome by the same feelings, fell sick, grew progressively weaker. The depression spread. Still the sled dogs remained obedient to the musher. Except he was no longer a musher. Their master had abandoned his sled, he was no musher. He was their owner, plain and simple. And he knew this, and he felt a little bad. The former musher thought he knew what had made his dogs so disconsolate—it was because he no longer had them pull the sled. But, hey, love wins out in the end! The new wife trumps the dogs. When four dogs finally died, the former musher actually found himself thinking dogs could be kind of a pain.
The sled dogs were no longer loved. But Ice and the other seven loved their master.
The cats were worst of all. Time and again, the twenty housecats attacked the chained-up dogs. There was a malamute with a shredded ear, a husky who had lost an eye. Retaliation was impossible. Because their master’s wife was cat crazy. She was the problem. Their master was still the leader of their pack, of course. Ice, as lead dog, was number two. But now their master made it clear he wanted them to obey his wife. So where did that leave Ice? Number three? And what about the cats, basking in the wife’s affection? Just you try and touch us, they seemed to be saying, leering at the dogs. You’ll catch it from the master’s wife.
So in this world, the dogs… were they all the way at the bottom?
Unwilling to accept this, two more dogs died. Fell sick and died.
A year passed. In winter, a sparkling white blanket of snow allowed the survivors to feel a modicum of their former happiness. But their master was even more overjoyed. He had gotten it on with a nineteen-year-old waitress in town, and he was up to his ears in love. “In the end, love is all that matters,” he told his still new wife, and scrammed, leaving her behind. Leaving the dogs behind too, of course. Ice and the other five.
The dogs no longer had a master.
They couldn’t stand being below the cats.
Finally, in February 1954, Ice directed them to make their escape. She barked and barked until the woman (now a twenty-nine-year-old divorcée) felt she had no choice but to take them for a walk, and when she testily unhooked their chains and led them outside, Ice suddenly leapt at her. RUN! she ordered the others. WE’RE ESCAPING! There was authority in Ice’s barking. The six dogs fell naturally into line and dashed gallantly off across the asphalt-paved road that wound through the housing development.
Hope!
At last, the dogs set out.
And so six “wild dogs” began their struggle to survive. Basically, they yearned to return to nature. The town was a little too hot. They had all been bred, these “wild dogs”—both as breeds and as individuals—to withstand the cold. So they aimed for the highlands. They didn’t make it anywhere as cold as Alaska, but they got used to it. Ice was clever. She led the pack, found food. She took advantage of the town. Sometimes they snuck quietly into residential neighborhoods, like American black bears in the hungry season. They lived along the edge of human territory, though of course they spent most of their time in the mountains. When their hormones stirred, Ice and the other five dogs obeyed their instincts. They mated with each other, yes, but they also pursued dogs in town. People’s dogs. Pets. Whenever Ice caught the scent of a dog she liked, she leapt the fence. She stood outside the doghouse, drawing him to her.
Naturally, she became pregnant.
One spring passed, another came. She had given birth twice. Ice, the second generation in Kita’s line, was spawning a third generation, more mongrelized than the second. Dogs, you dogs who care nothing for the purity of your blood, what turbulent lives you lead! You have become “wild dogs,” and over time the townspeople have come to despise you. They grow wary. Ice, just look at you, how gorgeous. Your foxlike face, your white mane—your appearance strikes fear into people’s hearts. Look at that ferocious animal! people cry, shuddering, at the sight of you. You are almost a wolf.
The mountain dogs had begun attacking the town.
And so it was decided. You were to be eliminated. You were dangerous “wild dogs,” rumored to have bred with wolves.
They came after you with rifles. You kept fighting.
Wolves. Of course, the dogs in Ice’s pack had no way of knowing, but in fact by 1952 the blood of a bona fide wolf had indeed entered Kita’s line. One of the dogs who inherited it had found his way into the northernmost regions of Far North Alaska, as if he were living out the fate suggested by his grandfather’s name. Here’s how it happened. Many of the new mushers, inspired to dreams of glory by Kita’s fame, bought dogs belonging to the second generation—Ice’s siblings, some by the same mother, others by different mothers—but not all had substantial financial resources to draw upon. One musher, having found a way to do a favor for Kita’s owner, managed to buy a dog with her noble blood at the bargain basement price of twenty dollars. Unfortunately the rest of the team he had put together was, in a word, worthless. So this new musher hit upon a method by which he might increase his stock of the noble blood without spending a penny—a breeding program that would instantly turn the game in his favor. First, after congratulating himself on the fact that the puppy he had acquired was a bitch, he waited until she was nine or ten months old. Then he hiked into the forest and set up camp, preparing to stay for as long as it took, intentionally leaving the young bitch tied up outside the tent. He was going to get her pregnant by a wolf. This rather primitive and violent mating technique had a venerable history in Alaska and Greenland as a means of boosting sled dogs’ speed and endurance, and this poor new musher had decided to give it a try. He had blown just about all he had buying just one of Kita’s children, but that wasn’t enough for him—the dreamer had bigger dreams. He could do it. One day he would be a top musher.
Dogs, you dogs in Kita’s line, look at you—mongrelized almost beyond belief, with wolf seed part of the mix. The story keeps unfolding: seven wolfdogs join the family tree.