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