2. The Musher & His Sled Dogs
The Musher & His Sled Dogs
Kai
Maskwa knows we’re home before the kennel lights appear through the trees.
His ears lift, his stride changes, and the other five dogs respond almost immediately, tightening formation as the sled cuts across the packed trail toward home. Snow kicks from beneath their paws, catching in the beam of my headlamp while the runners whisper over hard-packed ice.
“?stam, Maskwa.”
He glances back.
I shift my weight and give him the next command in Cree. He takes us cleanly around a bend between the spruce without breaking pace.
I bred every dog in front of me.
Raised them, trained them and learned the differences between each of them long before I trusted them together in harness.
They can pull a loaded sled across one hundred and twenty kilometers of forest, sleep outside when the temperature drops low enough to kill an unprepared man, then wake ready to run again.
But pulling is only half of what I breed for.
These dogs track. Human scent, specifically.
It took years to develop the lines and longer to prove they could do both jobs without sacrificing the stamina a working sled team needs.
Maskwa was the breakthrough. Big, powerful and smarter than some Mounties I served with.
He can run lead for hours, then put his nose to a piece of clothing and follow one person through country where most search teams would struggle to operate.
He’s also an arrogant mutt when he wins. Maybe that part comes from me.
The kennel buildings emerge ahead, surrounded by spruce and pine, smoke curling from the chimney of my cabin beyond them. I ease the team down as we approach the yard.
“Whoa.”
Maskwa stops.
The others settle behind him, breathing hard, snow crusted along their legs and bellies after the run. I step off the sled and work my way along the line, checking paws and harnesses before releasing anyone.
Maskwa waits until I reach him.
“You know the drill.”
His dark eyes stay on mine.
I crouch and check his paws, running my hands over each leg before unclipping his harness.
Only then does his tail move.
“Yeah, yeah. You’re magnificent.”
He knows that too.
The others get the same treatment before I feed them and settle them into the kennel.
I race these dogs competitively, and we’ve collected enough trophies and prize money over the years to prove what they can do.
Racing pays bills, keeps the breeding program going and tests every decision I make about the next generation.
Searching is why I started breeding them this way.
Five years ago, I had a badge, an RCMP vehicle and an institution behind me.
My sister disappeared anyway. Nobody found her.
I learned what official resources mean when the people controlling them decide someone isn’t worth the effort.
I left the RCMP not long after.
Now when someone disappears into this country and their family comes looking for help, I don’t need permission to search.
Maskwa follows me toward the cabin while the others settle for the night. I should send him back, but he ignores the first command and sits beside the steps instead.
“Stubborn bugger.”
His ears twitch.
The satellite phone rings inside. Almost nobody has that number.
I enter the cabin, strip off my gloves and pick it up.
“Kai Morand.”
A man answers in an American accent.
“Mr. Morand, my name is Victor. I’m calling on behalf of HAVEN.”
I frown. “HAVEN?”
“Hidden Ally Vigilante Extraction Network.”
That gets my attention.
“Never heard of you.”
“We like to keep it that way.”
“Then why are you calling me?”
“Because we find people the system failed to protect.”
I look through the window toward Maskwa waiting outside.
Now I’m listening.
“Who?”
“Honor St. John.”
Everything else can wait.
Northern Manitoba, Canada. 1845 hours.
Victor doesn’t waste time.
“Honor disappeared nearly two weeks ago. Her vehicle was found near a Lockhart Mining access road.”
I look through the cabin window toward the dark line of trees beyond the kennel.
“Which road?”
He gives me the location. I know it. Everybody up here knows it.
Lockhart trucks use it year-round to move equipment between the main operation and the northern sites. Wide enough for haul traffic, isolated enough that nobody sees much once you get beyond the public road.
“She wasn’t taken from the community,” I say.
“No.”
“Then she was already following something.”
“That’s our assessment.”
I sit at the table and pull a folded regional map from the drawer beside me.
“What do you know about the disappearances?”
Victor pauses just long enough to tell me he’s deciding how much to share.
“Enough to know Honor was looking at more than one missing woman. Enough to know some of the cases stretch back decades.”
I flatten the map.
“Then you’re already behind.”
“Explain.”
“Women have been disappearing around Lockhart country longer than Honor’s been alive.”
The line goes quiet. I trace the haul road with one finger, then the old mining roads branching from it.
“Some vanish after taking work at camps. Some after complaints. Some after protesting land use or asking questions Lockhart doesn’t want asked. Reports get filed, searches happen late or barely happen at all, then everybody moves on.”
“HAVEN isn’t moving on.”
“Everybody says that at the start.”
Victor doesn’t react.
Can’t blame him.
I continue.
“Honor’s been building her own record for months. Names, dates, employment links, old reports. She’s been speaking to families nobody listened to the first time.”
“You know her?”
“Know of her. Everyone involved in this work does.”
I stop at one junction on the map.
“She was taken near the haul road because she got close enough to something worth hiding.”
“That’s what Steve thinks.”
“Who’s Steve?”
“One of ours. He’s there now with his wife and two operators.”
I sit back.
“Then tell him not to start walking into the bush because he’s impatient.”
Victor almost sounds amused. “Jax already covered that.”
That name I do know.
“Reeves?”
“You know him?”
“By reputation.”
That tracks.
Victor shifts back to Honor. “You sound certain about the road.”
“I’ve searched that corridor before.”
“For someone else?”
I look toward the photograph on the shelf beside the stove. My sister smiling into bright summer sun. Five years doesn’t change the picture.
“Yeah.”
Victor waits. I don’t give him more until I’m ready.
“My sister vanished five years ago. Same pattern. Vehicle abandoned near Lockhart country. Personal belongings missing. Search started late. Then stopped.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
Sympathy doesn’t find anyone.
“Did you ever get a lead?”
“Plenty. None anyone wanted followed.”
I fold the map once, then again.
“That’s why I left the RCMP.”
Victor says nothing.
“I’m telling you this so we’re clear. If I come in, I don’t stop because a police inspector tells me the file is closed. I don’t stop because Lockhart lawyers start threatening people. I don’t stop because somebody decides the search is inconvenient.”
I’m like a dog with a bone once I’ve got hold of something. I don’t let go.
“That works for us.”
I look out at Maskwa, still sitting near the steps despite having a perfectly warm kennel twenty meters away.
“Where are your people?”
“White Pine Lodge. About fifteen minutes from Honor’s community.”
“I know it.”
“How soon can you get there?”
I glance at the clock, then toward the dogs.
“Tonight.”
Northern Manitoba, Canada. 1930 hours.
I don’t head straight to White Pine Lodge.
Honor’s vehicle is probably already in RCMP storage, but Victor sent me the location where it was found, and I’m not waiting until morning to see it.
I turn the sled back toward the trail.
“Hike!”
The team surges forward.
It takes us forty minutes to reach the haul road. By then, the temperature’s dropped hard enough that the snow squeaks beneath the runners.
Eleven days is a long time for a search site to remain untouched.
Snowfall, wind, plows and traffic erase things.
Sometimes people help.
I bring the team to a stop well short of the location Victor sent me and take Maskwa and Niska forward with me.
The place where Honor’s vehicle stood is easy enough to identify from the photographs. I work outward from there instead of walking through the center of it, studying the snowbanks and tree line while the dogs search.
Heavy trucks have been through here since she disappeared. Pickups too.
The road has been plowed more than once.
Maskwa stops near the ditch.
His head lowers.
“Nitawi.”
Search.
He moves along the snowbank, Niska beside him, then turns sharply toward a stand of spruce.
I follow.
Maskwa paws once at the snow.
“Leave.”
He steps back.
I crouch and brush away loose powder. Blue wool. A glove.
Small enough to belong to a woman.
I photograph it where it lies and mark the location without touching it again.
Less than thirty meters from where Honor’s vehicle was found. The RCMP missed it.
Typical.
The dogs keep working.
Farther north, near a junction, I find the remains of tire impressions beneath the harder crust. Most have been destroyed, but enough survives to show a vehicle pulled off the haul road and turned toward an old mine route.
I know the road. Lockhart shut that mine years ago. Officially, there’s nothing out there anymore.
Maskwa stands at the entrance, nose working.
“Not tonight.”
He looks back at me.
“We need her scent first.”
I photograph the tracks and the road, then turn the team toward White Pine Lodge.
White Pine Lodge, Northern Manitoba, Canada. 2115 hours.
The lodge lights appear through the trees almost two hours later.
Maskwa leads us in.
By the time I bring the team to a stop beside the porch, four people are outside waiting.
Jax Reeves steps forward first.
“Kai Morand?”
“Jax Reeves.”
We shake hands.
His gaze moves over the dogs and sled.
“Could’ve driven, mate.”
“I could’ve.”
I pull out my phone.
“But then I wouldn’t have found this.”
The others gather closer as I bring up the photograph of the glove.
The man beside Jax steps closer.
“G’day. Steve Hollands.”
Australian. The accent gives him away before anything else does.
“Kai.”
We shake hands.
“Could it be Honor’s?”
“That’s what I need Rose to tell me.”
I swipe to the next photograph. The old mine road.
“I found tire marks heading this way too.”
Steve studies the image.
“And if the glove is hers?”
I glance at Maskwa.
“Tomorrow we give him Honor’s scent.”
Steve looks toward the dogs.
“And then?”
“We follow her.”
White Pine Lodge, Northern Manitoba, Canada. 2145 hours.
By the time the dogs are watered, checked and settled for the night, someone has put coffee in front of me and spread enough maps across the dining table to cover most of northern Manitoba.
Steve and Janice sit opposite me. Angus takes the end of the table while Jax stands beside a large regional map, marking the place where Honor’s vehicle was found and the old mine road I photographed tonight.
Steve taps the image of the glove on my phone.
“You left it there?”
“Until Rose confirms it’s Honor’s. If it is, I’ll recover it properly.”
Jan studies the photograph. “Could the dogs use it for scent?”
“Maybe, but I’d rather have something uncontaminated. Clothing she wore recently, preferably something that hasn’t been washed. I’ll see Rose in the morning.”
“And then you take Maskwa back to the haul road?” Angus asks.
“All six dogs. Maskwa leads, but they work as a team.”
Jax looks at the old mine road. “You think that’s where she went?”
“I think a vehicle went that way around the time she disappeared. Until we establish the glove is hers and the dogs confirm her scent, that’s all I’m claiming.”
Steve nods. I like that he doesn’t push for certainty I can’t give him.
“What about Lockhart?” he asks.
I lean back. “How much time have you got?”
“As much as it takes.”
So I tell them.
Not everything I’ve heard whispered across communities over the years.
Rumors aren’t evidence. I give them what I know.
Missing women. Searches delayed or abandoned.
Reports that went nowhere. Lockhart employees and contractors appearing around enough cases that somebody should’ve started asking why.
I did.
Five years ago, the woman I was looking for was my sister.
Jan’s expression changes, but she doesn’t interrupt.
“She disappeared near Lockhart country,” I continue. “Her vehicle was found abandoned. Search started late and ended early. I was RCMP and still couldn’t make them keep looking.”
“Was that why you left?” Steve asks.
“Part of it.”
The rest came later. Arguments with superiors. Reports returned for revision. Leads dismissed because somebody higher up decided they weren’t worth pursuing.
“My badge didn’t help her. Didn’t help any of the others either.”
Angus folds his arms. “You think Lockhart took your sister?”
“I think there were questions nobody wanted answered.”
“And you’ve been looking ever since,” Jan says.
“Yes.”
I don’t tell them because I want sympathy. Five years has burned that need out of me.
I tell them because if we’re working together, they need to understand what happens when this gets difficult.
“If Honor’s trail leads onto Lockhart land, I follow it. If the RCMP tells us to stop, I keep going. If Lockhart sends lawyers, security or anyone else to turn us around, I keep going.”
Steve’s mouth shifts slightly.
“You’ll fit right in.”
Jax laughs.
Jan looks between them. “Unfortunately, he’s right.”
I look down at the map again.
Steve offers me a spare room. With a dawn start and the dogs already settled outside, going home just to turn around again would be stupid.
I stay.
Tomorrow morning I’ll go to Rose and ask for something carrying Honor’s scent. Then Maskwa and the others go back to where I found the glove.
Five years ago, my sister’s trail went cold.
Honor’s won’t.
Not while I’ve got dogs capable of following it and people around this table willing to follow me.