Dogteam

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  First Page

  Text copyright © 1993 by Gary Paulsen

  Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 1993 by Ruth Wright Paulsen

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  Originally published in hardcover by Delacorte Press, New York, in 1993.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.

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  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this work as follows:

  Paulsen, Gary.

  Dogteam / Gary Paulsen ; illustrated by Ruth Wright Paulsen.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Portrays the excitement, the danger, and the beauty of a night run.

  ISBN 978-0-385-30550-1 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-440-41130-7 (pbk.)

  1. Dogsledding—Fiction. [1. Sled dogs—Fiction.] I. Paulsen, Gary. II. Title.

  PZ7.P2843 Dob 1993

  [E]—20

  91028355

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-385-38606-7

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  Sometimes we run at night.

  In the full moon when it is blue and white on the snow at the same time, so bright and clean and open you could read in the dark, we harness the dogs and run at night.

  They tremble.

  Some small songs of excitement when the harnesses are put on because they want to run, breathe to run, eat to run, live to run . . .

  But silent. Straining to run, to go, to join the snow and the moon and the night, pulling against the tugs and the gangline tied to the sled, heaving until, finally, the hook is freed from the snow and they are gone.

  The dance.

  Through the trees, in and out, the sled whipping after them through the trees with no sound but the song of the runners, the high-soft-shusshh-whine of the runners and the soft jingle of their collars.

  Into the night.

  Away from camp, away from people, away from houses and light and noise and into only the one thing,

  into only winternight they fly away and away and away.

  A lake.

  Frozen and flat and white in the moonlight we slip out of the woods onto the ice and time for one breath, two, and across, the ice gone,

  creaking and moaning beneath us and into the trees again, left, right, and we are not alone.

  Wolves.

  They come alongside in the moonlight, moonwolves, snowwolves, nightwolves, they run with us, pace the dogs, pace our hearts and our lives and then turn, turn away in the blue dark.

  And so we run.

  Part of the night and dark and cold

  and moonlight and steam from our breaths,

  into the soft beauty of the woods and the quiet

  we run mile on mile until we see lights,

  see lights and find that we have circled in the night, circled in the snow and the winter and our lives and all the world

  and have come home.

  There.

  Gleaming yellow kitchen light, warm in the cold, deep cold, cold so ice-breath freezes on eyelids, freezes eyes shut; cold so the light from the moon is frozen on the snow;

  cold so all the dogs are coated with ice and the snaps on their collars and harnesses won’t open and their laughing-panting breath freezes on their cheeks and makes them all smiles, dogsmiles, doglaughs.

  There.

  Home.

  And we stop. Close now, so close we see people in the cabin, see the faces at the window.

  The dogs look back.

  Why are they still in harness?

  Why are they standing?

  The dance is over, is it not—

  is not the dogdance

  in the dogmoon

  and dogcold

  and dognight over?

  Did you . . . they sing, little jets of steam from their mouths.

  Did you did you did you did you . . .

  Did you want it to last forever?

  About the Author and Illustrator

  “Nothing in running dogs is quite so beautiful as a night run—the cold is crisper, the dogs run for the pure joy of running, and the moon seems to dance on the snow. In all of our running and training and raising puppies the night runs stand out the most,” says Gary Paulsen.

  Gary Paulsen is the author of many acclaimed books for young people, including three Newbery Honor Books. He has twice run the Iditarod dogsled race across Alaska.

  Ruth Wright Paulsen has been a working artist for twenty years and has illustrated many books, including Gary Paulsen’s The Haymeadow. She also manages a seventy-dog kennel and helps train Iditarod dogs with her husband, Gary.

 

 

  Gary Paulsen, Dogteam

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