Sweetwater's Run: In the Spirit of Nome's Great Race of Mercy
Introduction
Kay Packer, like all mushers that live in Alaskan territories in proximity of Nome, uses her sled dogs for transportation. She relies heavily upon her sled dogs to deliver insulin to diabetics who depend on her and the dogs.
The Iditarod, the dogsled race from Anchorage to Nome, a 1,149 mile grueling journey, had its beginning when dogsled teams were involved in a life-saving effort when a deadly diphtheria epidemic raged in Nome. There was no way to get serum from Anchorage to Nome. The mushers carried the serum to Nome in a remarkable six days.
Nowadays, it’s the epidemic of diabetes. Kay grew up with sled dogs. She takes that knowledge on the trail with her when riding her one-of-a-kind dog sled with an awesome rudder, an airfoil. Kay is savvy enough to straddle two worlds, that of nurse and that of musher. She’s a young lesbian woman in her twenties who’s found her place in the world.
Nome’s other name
The origin of the city’s name “Nome” is still under debate. The city’s name may come from an error, when a British mapmaker copied a map annotation made by a British officer on a voyage up the Bering Strait. The officer had written “? Name” next to the unnamed cape. The mapmaker misread the annotation as “C. Nome”, or Cape Nome, and used that name on his map.
Other sources have said that “Nome” is a place name in one or more Scandinavian countries, which long pre-dates the use on the map in question and it is possible that the town was named after Nome, Norway by a navigator or cartographer familiar with that place.
In February 1899, some local miners and merchants voted to change the name from Nome to Anvil City, because of the confusion with Cape Nome, 12 miles south, and the Nome River, the mouth of which is four miles (6 km) south of Nome. The United States Post Office in Nome refused to accept the change. Fearing a move of the post office to Nome City, a mining camp on the Nome River, the merchants unhappily agreed to change the name of Anvil City back to Nome. Anvil City refers to modern day Nome, located on the south coast of Seward Peninsula on Norton Sound of the Bering Sea.
Kay Packer lesbian nurse/musher – in her twenties, delivers insulin via dogsled to diabetics.
Molly McCabe lesbian owner Den & Dimes Saloon – Bounty Hunter in her thirties.
Tanner Scopes – Wanted Outlaw, fur trapper, poacher.
“Dinliltla.” Kay Packer picked the little snowballs that were clinging to Husky fur. “Dinliltla,” she said to the Huskies again, Inuit, meaning little snowballs that cling to Husky fur. Kay had picked up Eskimo pretty well from traveling by dog sled to the remote Eskimo villages around Nome. A white woman from the states was always welcome in the Eskimo villages.
The Huskies’ eyes shined like the runes, revealing the mystical alphabet. The towline harness had the power of nine Husky-wolf mix dogs and a basket sled attached with drag and claw break built in. Leader dogs, point dogs, swing dogs, and wheel dogs paying reverence to Fritz, sled dog of Leonhard Seppala, preserved and on display at the Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum in Anvil City.
Kay was waiting with the dogs out front of the museum for the insulin delivery. She cocked her head back and tipped the bota six inches high above her face, opened her mouth and out streamed the arctic chilled wine. Wine on her breath and fire in her loins! Molly McCabe, the last time, fucked some snowy owl magic and fierceness into Kay’s refrigerated labia—Molly unwrapped those pretty pink folds with her mouth and fed her inner chick. Molly McCabe was like a snowy owl, a power owl, the biggest owl lesbian in Anvil City, and the toughest bird in the Arctic. Molly, like the snowy owl, depended on her camouflage and lesbian stealth to survive. She could drive away vulture humans, feral dogs, and even rutting caribou who wandered too close to Kay; not out of jealousy or control, but protection to knock a grown man or woman to the ground. Molly wasn’t dubbed the snowy owl for nothing. And she’d had to face some of the toughest birds of the Arctic. Many a time, Molly dived from behind the bar back of her Den & Dimes Saloon in Anvil City, with her talons outstretched to protect her territory. And Molly held another title, but that would soon be revealed.
…The Advent of the Con Man
Jefferson Randolph (Soapy) Smith began his notorious career as a confidence man in 1876 in Fort Worth, Texas. He attached himself to the ”dirty dog” towline harness as the lead man—evil teams of the close-knit gangs of scoundrels, rogues, shills, and thieves. Soapy became a well-known crime boss in Denver, Colorado, leader of one of the most infamous gangs of swindlers ever assembled. He later moved his operations to Skagway, Alaska to Soapy’s saloon named Jeff Smith’s Parlor.
Molly McCabe saddled up. A snowy owl lesbian with watchful bounty hunter eyes, a horse-riding woman with a bullwhip; and a stuffed mascot snowy owl in a glass showcase with a re-melted “Old Anvil City Gold “ plaque engraved Den & Dimes Saloon pockmarked with modern day bullet holes. Molly enlisted in the war of extinction on vigilantes.
“Goddamn him, wanting to play God with the resources of the sea!” Molly shouted as she rode down the streets of Anvil City on her horse. She was talking about an outlaw poacher of seal beater pelts. Whitecoat pups were illegally being killed for seal oil and the pelt marketed as fur. She had a lead to the fresh, warm bloodstained ice. Bounty hunter and saloon proprietor, Molly McCabe kept company with the Inuit who revered the seal as the Lamb of God. It had been this way for two centuries, after Moravian missionaries in Labrador chose the harp seal pup to explain the Lamb of God to the Inuit. The Inuit had never seen a sheep.
“Kay Packer, you’ll need some body heat tonight,” Molly yelled, as she rode by.
“Yea, and sometimes I think about that tool you keep under your pillow, Molly.”
“Isn’t exactly an ice pick, is it dog woman?” Molly winked and made a kissing gesture with her red lipstick lips.
“No, it isn’t snowy owl. Where are you going?” Kay asked.
“Got a lead on Tanner Scopes. I’ll be back before astronomical twilight. Soup’s on the stove, whiskey behind the bar. Help yourself, Kay. Say, isn’t your insulin courier running late?” Molly pointed up to the sky.
“Twenty minutes late, snowy owl. Don’t know what the holdup is. I’ll wait a few more minutes. These dogs need fed. Kay walked over to Molly astride her horse, and put the wine bota rawhide strap around Molly’s neck. “Take this with you. I just filled it from the five gallon wine keg on the sled.”
“Thanks dog woman. See you on the eider down after dark. Gotta go.”
“Bring your handcuffs back, Molly.” Kay smiled and reached around her neck and fondled the spare handcuff key on the shot bead chain.
The hormone insulin is the latest weapon for cheat athletes to keep one step ahead of required doping tests.
Athletes at world championships in Edmonton have been using it. Insulin can help build muscles. Insulin use and abuse among athletes is undetectable. Bodybuilders began using insulin several years ago to build muscle tissue, and it is being widely used in other sports too.
Bodybuilders use insulin alongside anabolic steroids to build muscle. The steroids help create new muscle and the insulin stops it from being broken down. Insulin helps the athletes’ stamina by providing them with “fuel”—glycogen which stores carbohydrate energy, by taking insulin and glucose.
Most young athlete’s competitive drive to win can be very intense. Besides the satisfaction of personal gain, young athletes often pursue dreams of making it to the Olympics, a college scholarship or a place on a professional team. This competitive environment, created by our culture, has led to a more common use of steroids and other performance-enhancing agents in sports.
The use of enhancement substances for sporting events dates back to the ancient Greeks and ancient Maya. Performance potions where utilized by the Greeks to increase their abilities, and cocoa leaves where thought to be used by the ancient Maya to increase their abilities. Today, athletes will go to many lengths to increase athletic ability, including: steroids, HGH, amphetamines, and even animal or human organs just as the Greeks did in their time.
Insulin is being sold on the black market. Some diabetics are even tempted to sell their own insulin. What happened to Kay Packer’s insulin delivery? The courier delivering the insulin to Kay was hijacked, beaten, and the thieves made off with the life-saving insulin.
A streamer of black and gray mist hovered in the rock ledges garlanded with frozen waterfalls. The miles and miles of snow and poor visibility reminded Molly of a scene at Elfin Cove years ago when she saw an apparition in the clouds. She would have to wait for the weather to clear to push on. And then, there it was—again, a brightness that hurt the eye when she saw the object of the Arctic’s wrath—a reckoning. This was an atmospheric apparition—a visual imprint that got left behind in the environment from a past event.
Molly caught the whiff of caribou dung so stinking strong, hoping it wouldn’t embe d in her nostrils permanently. It was a time-slip, a moment where the past and present collide. A snowy owl swooped down, clicking its beak, leading Molly to the spot where the ice was bloodied. What Molly expected to find, she didn’t. Entrapped furbearer, but not the seal, and there was no sign of Tanner Scopes.
He was setting illegal trap lines from Anvil City to Barrow, and as crooked as Soapy Smith. Tanner Scopes laid his traps at night, reaping a rich harvest of contraband pelts. “Damn you, Scopes! Damn you!” Molly shouted. Her breath instantly froze. The wind chill was minus fourteen Celsius—and the wolf didn’t howl. Depending on her strong back and her resolute will, Molly took the wolf’s foot out of the trap. She wrapped the badly injured white wolf in her bedroll and let it ride on the front of the saddle up towards the saddle horn where she cradled it. “Dog woman will help you, so hold on ‘til we get there,” she said to the wolf. She set back towards Anvil City. The astronomical twilight would be at 8:08 PM, a waxing gibbous moon with 85% illuminated. Aurora Borealis activity is below moderate. Weather was not permitting good northern lights to be visible. Molly needed a good active aurora to bring in Tanner Scopes … or, the spirit of Wyatt Earp. Wyatt took part in the Alaska Gold Rush, spending time in Nome and the Yukon.
In September of 1899, Wyatt and his friend C.E. Hoxsie built the Dexter Saloon in Anvil City. The Iditarod Race ends right in the middle of the road where it stood. It was the first wood building in Anvil City.
...Eskimo scouts, keg mushers, bush pilots, and lesbians with the victory stein, heralded by bone whistles, Sweetwater makes another script come to life!
Registered®, Copyright© Ms. Sage Sweetwater, Celebrity firebrand lesbian novelist
