Magic Tree House #54 Page 2

  NO SCHOOL. QUARANTINE.

  “Uh-oh,” said Jack.

  “Quarantine?” asked Annie.

  “It means you’re supposed to stay home so you won’t spread a bad disease that’s going around,” said Jack.

  “Maybe that’s why everything is closed,” said Annie. “I wonder what the disease is.”

  “I don’t know,” said Jack. “But if we go back to the hospital, we can ask someone there.”

  In the twilight, Jack and Annie hurried up the boardwalk to the entrance of the small hospital. When they stepped through the front door, they found a cold waiting room filled with people bundled in fur parkas and boots. Some seemed quite ill, slumped down in their chairs with their eyes closed. Others looked disappointed when they saw Jack and Annie, as if they were waiting for someone else.

  Only one person stepped forward to greet them. A boy about fourteen or fifteen years old stared at them with dark, questioning eyes. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Our names are Jack and Annie,” said Annie.

  “Are you sick with diphtheria?” the boy said.

  Annie shook her head. “No, we just arrived from the United States. Excuse me a second.” She turned away from the boy and whispered to Jack, “What’s diphtheria, exactly?”

  “It’s a dangerous disease from the past. That must be what the quarantine is for,” Jack whispered. “We can’t catch it. We had vaccines.”

  Annie turned back to the boy. “Do you have diphtheria?” she asked gently.

  “No. My sister and my mother do,” he said. “They are very sick in beds upstairs. I’m waiting for the special medicine to arrive. Dr. Welch says it will save their lives.”

  Before the boy could say more, Jack heard a man shouting in a room down the hall. “Hello! Hello! Can you hear me?”

  The boy left the waiting room and hurried to an open doorway. Jack and Annie followed, and the three of them peeked into a doctor’s office.

  Two people were anxiously watching a man talk on an old-fashioned black telephone. “Yes! This is Mayor Maynard in Nome!” the man shouted into the receiver. “Has the musher arrived with the medicine package yet?”

  As Mayor Maynard listened to the person on the other end of the line, Annie whispered to Jack, “A musher is a person who drives a sled pulled by a team of dogs.”

  “I know,” said Jack.

  “That’s a cool job,” Annie whispered.

  “No, listen to me!” Mayor Maynard yelled into the phone. “If Gunnar Kaasen arrives at the roadhouse in Solomon, keep him there! Do not let him and his team move on! We can’t risk losing the medicine! We’re expecting a huge blizzard tonight, sweeping down from the Arctic!”

  A huge blizzard sweeping down from the Arctic? That’s not good news, thought Jack.

  “We cannot lose that medicine!” said the mayor. “Five have died already. There are at least twenty more cases. Possibly fifty. The Board of Health believes it is better to delay it than to risk losing it altogether! Tell Kaasen to wait until further word!”

  “No! You can’t delay it!” the boy said, barging into the office. “Gunnar Kaasen must keep going! The medicine has to get here soon!”

  “I don’t have a choice, Oki,” said the mayor, hanging up the phone. “It’s what the Board of Health has ordered.”

  The boy turned to a large rosy-cheeked woman. “Nurse Morgan, please don’t let them delay!” he said. He sounded near tears.

  “It’s going to be all right, Oki,” Nurse Morgan said, patting him on his shoulder. “Please go back to the waiting room.”

  “Don’t worry,” said a gray-haired man in a white coat. “I promise you, everyone is working night and day to fight this epidemic.”

  “Dr. Welch, my sister and mother need the medicine now, or they will die!” said Oki. “Even in a blizzard, I know Gunnar Kaasen can keep running!”

  “You must leave us to do our work,” said Dr. Welch. He gently took the boy by the arm and led him back into the hall, where Jack and Annie were waiting. “Everything will be fine. Try to get some rest, son. We don’t want you to get sick, too.”

  Then Dr. Welch stepped into the room with Mayor Maynard and Nurse Morgan and closed the door.

  The Alaskan boy looked at Jack and Annie. “They can’t delay!” he whispered frantically.

  “It sounds like medicine is on the way,” Jack said, trying to calm him. “It will arrive once the storm passes.”

  “But it needs to get here as soon as possible!” said Oki.

  “The doctor said—” started Annie.

  “The doctor can do nothing until the medicine arrives,” Oki said. “But there is something I can do.” He headed down the hall and hurried out the front door of the hospital into the dark. As he left, a gust of frigid air blew into the waiting room.

  “That’s it!” Annie said to Jack.

  “What?” he said.

  “Our mission! Help save the lives of these sick people!” Annie said. “That’s why Merlin sent us here!”

  “I think you’re right,” said Jack. “So let’s talk to the doctor and nurse and find out what we can do.”

  “No, we should go,” said Annie.

  “Go where?” asked Jack.

  “Go save Oki’s life first!” Annie said.

  “But he’s not one of the people in danger,” said Jack.

  “He will be! He’s going to do something crazy. I can feel it!” said Annie. “Come on!” She took off down the hallway and out the front door. Jack followed her into the icy cold. The moon was full and bright overhead.

  “There!” said Annie. Before Jack could stop her, she took off after the Alaskan boy. “Oki, wait!” she shouted.

  Jack hurried after Annie down the moonlit boardwalk. When they caught up with Oki, they were panting, their breath billowing into the air.

  “Stop!” said Annie. “We want to help you!”

  “How can you help me?” said the boy. He kept walking.

  Annie and Jack fell into step beside him. “We came to Nome to help people fight the epidemic,” said Annie.

  “Only the medicine can help,” said Oki. “They might all die soon if they do not get the medicine.”

  “Why can’t they bring the medicine here by boat?” asked Jack.

  “The sea is frozen!” said Oki. “Just look!”

  “Well, what about a plane?” said Annie.

  “No plane can fly at forty or fifty degrees below zero!” said Oki. “The pilot would freeze.”

  “Oh, yeah, you’re right,” said Jack. Planes in 1925 must still have open cockpits, he thought.

  “A car?” asked Annie.

  “No roads in winter,” said Oki. “The only way to Nome is by dogsled, over the mail trail.”

  “So what do you plan to do?” asked Jack.

  “I will take a team of dogs and find Gunnar Kaasen,” said Oki. “I will travel through the storm and bring the medicine back myself.”

  “But what about that blizzard?” asked Jack. “The one the mayor was talking about—the huge blizzard sweeping down from the Arctic?”

  “Any good musher with a good team of dogs can handle a blizzard,” said Oki.

  “Where’s your team?” asked Annie.

  “My uncle Joe is a mail carrier,” said Oki. “He has a team that runs to Port Safety and Solomon and beyond all the time.”

  “So your uncle Joe will go with you?” asked Annie.

  “No. He has a broken leg from a sled accident,” said Oki. “But I am not afraid to go alone.”

  Jack and Annie hurried alongside Oki, until they came to a shack on a spit of land near the frozen sea.

  In the bright moonlight, Jack could see that the shack was made of old driftwood and flattened tin cans. Smoke was rising out of a stovepipe on the roof.

  “This is my uncle’s house,” said Oki. “And those are his huskies.”

  Next to the small house was a dog pen surrounded by a wire fence. A dogsled was inside the pen. Eight huskies were
sleeping in the snow, their dark bodies curled up together to keep warm.

  “Oh, wow,” breathed Annie.

  The dogs woke up at the sound of voices. They leapt to their feet and began yipping and whining.

  “Hi, guys!” Annie said. She hurried to the fence to pet them.

  “Careful!” said Oki. “They are very strong. They can jump up.…”

  But Annie had an instant connection with the dogs. “You’re so beautiful!” she said, reaching over the fence and rubbing different furry heads. “Hey, what’s your name? What’s your name?”

  As Annie spoke, the dogs flattened their ears, and their lips curved into smiles.

  “They really like her,” Oki said to Jack. He sounded impressed.

  “Yeah, Annie has a special way with animals,” said Jack. “Especially dogs.”

  Oki smiled for the first time. “Do you and Annie want to come inside and get warm?” he said.

  “Sure, thanks,” said Jack.

  Jack and Annie followed the Alaskan boy into the shack. Inside, a lantern lit a drafty room that smelled of fish and kerosene. Scratchy band music came from a wooden radio with big knobs.

  “I must speak to my uncle. He is in bed,” said Oki. He opened a door and slipped into another room.

  Jack and Annie looked around. Strips of dried dark pink fish hung from a rack near the stove, which was made from an old metal barrel. Wooden barrels were set as chairs around a wooden table.

  Voices came from the other room. Jack recognized Oki’s. “But I can go alone!”

  “No, you cannot!” said a deep, rasping voice.

  Jack wondered if he and Annie should leave. It seemed wrong to overhear a family argument. “Let’s go outside,” he said to Annie.

  “But we have to help fight the epidemic,” she said.

  “I know,” said Jack. “Maybe it would be better to go back to the hospital and—”

  “Listen!” Annie interrupted. She pointed to the radio.

  The music had stopped. A news bulletin had come on: “A desperate drama is unfolding in Alaska! In the town of Nome!” the broadcaster said.

  “Nome!” said Annie. She turned up the volume on the radio.

  “All eyes are on this small icebound town in the northern territory, where an outbreak of diphtheria has already claimed five lives. Twenty of the best mushers and more than a hundred and sixty dogs have been heroically running a relay across the frozen tundra. They must travel a total of six hundred miles to get medicine from Nenana, Alaska, to the town of Nome.…”

  “That’s us!” said Oki, hurrying back into the room.

  “But now a blizzard threatens to curtail the efforts to save the residents of Nome,” the announcer said. “The storm is expected to sweep down from the Arctic, with forty-mile-per-hour winds and temperatures as low as thirty degrees below zero.”

  “Oh, man,” said Jack.

  “It is unclear whether the mushers and their teams of heroic dogs will be able to continue,” the announcer said. “The medicine is now in the hands of champion musher Gunnar Kaasen. Will he and his lead dog, Balto, be forced to stop their lifesaving journey?”

  “Balto!” said Annie. “Didn’t we see a statue of him in Central Park in New York?”

  “Yeah, but I can’t remember why he’s so famous,” said Jack.

  “Me neither,” said Annie.

  “Will the blizzard keep the medicine from getting to the sick and dying in Nome?” the announcer said. “It’s a race against time! A race against death!” Then the man’s voice turned cheerful: “And now we return to the music of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band!”

  The lively music came back on, and Oki turned the radio off. “I’m going. I’m taking the dogs,” he said. He grabbed a burlap sack hanging near the door and started filling it with dried fish. “I’ll take this to feed them along the way. I’ll find Kaasen. I know—”

  “Do not go. Please.”

  Jack and Annie turned to see a native Alaskan man hobbling into the room on a crutch. He had long jet-black hair and wore a fur pullover with a hood. He had a weathered face and dark eyes. He barely glanced at Jack and Annie as he fixed his gaze on Oki. “If Gunnar Kaasen and Balto cannot travel in this weather, neither can you,” he said.

  “I can at least try, Uncle Joe,” said Oki. “I have to.” He kept throwing fish into the sack.

  “Do not go out there alone, Oki,” rasped his uncle. “You are not a champion like Seppala or Kaasen. And none of my dogs are as strong as Togo or Balto.”

  “It doesn’t matter how great Kaasen is,” said Oki, “if he is sitting at the roadhouse in Solomon.”

  “If he waits, he waits for good reason,” said Oki’s uncle. “Any team can be lost in a blizzard.”

  “Let me go, please,” Oki said, facing his uncle.

  “No!” shouted the man.

  Jack held his breath as he looked back and forth from Oki to his uncle. Annie started to interrupt, but Jack shook his head at her. This isn’t our business, he thought.

  “I have run the trail many times,” said Oki. “I can do it with my eyes closed.”

  “But I have always been with you,” his uncle said. “You have never gone out alone.”

  “I have to try!” said Oki.

  “Who will help you in a whiteout?” his uncle asked. “Who will help you if the ice breaks and moves out to sea? You will be gone forever.”

  “Maybe. But what about my mother?” Oki cried. “And my sister? They can’t breathe! They can’t swallow! They are on fire with fever! I promised them the medicine would arrive tonight. If it doesn’t come soon, they will be gone forever. I have to hurry! You heard the radio! It’s a race against death!”

  Oki slung the sack of dried fish over his shoulder, picked up the kerosene lantern from the table, and hurried outside.

  “Stay with me, boy!” Uncle Joe called after Oki. But the man’s voice was lost in the excited barking of the huskies in the yard.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Annie said. “What if we go with him?”

  “Annie—” said Jack, shaking his head.

  The man turned and looked at Annie and Jack as if noticing them for the first time. “Who are you?” he said.

  “Jack and Annie,” said Annie. “We’re friends of Oki’s, and—and—we’re champion mushers.”

  What? thought Jack.

  Oki’s uncle scowled. “Champion mushers? How can that be? You are very young.”

  “We are young,” said Annie. “But we have great skills. Right, Jack?” She quickly added in a whisper, “Gold dust.”

  Oh, right, thought Jack. He nodded.

  “We heard that lives were in danger here,” said Annie. “So we came from the United States to help.”

  “Help how?” said Oki’s uncle.

  “Take a team of sled dogs and help get the medicine here,” said Annie. “Right, Jack?”

  Jack took a deep breath. He was a little nervous about losing their way and freezing to death, but he nodded again.

  “We really want to help you,” Annie said to Oki’s uncle.

  The man stared at them for a moment, his face lined with grief. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I lost my wife and my two children seven years ago in the flu epidemic. Nome lost more than a thousand people then. I fear it is about to happen again.” Tears started down the man’s craggy face.

  Jack was stunned. More than a thousand people died?

  “That won’t happen again,” Jack vowed. “We’ll do everything we can.”

  “Thank you. But please leave my nephew here,” said the man. “Do not let him go. Oki and his mother and sister are all I have.”

  “Don’t worry. We won’t let him go,” said Jack.

  “Take my team. They are good dogs,” said Oki’s uncle. “They have traveled the trail hundreds of times, delivering mail with me.”

  “We promise we’ll take good care of them,” said Annie.

  “Thank you.” The man bowed his head. “Thank
you.” Then he turned and hobbled with his crutch back into his room.

  Annie took a deep breath. “This is a good plan,” she said to Jack. “Right?”

  “Right,” he said. He hoped it was a good plan. He felt terrible for Oki and his uncle.

  “Gold dust?” said Annie.

  Jack took off his mitten, reached into his pocket, and pulled out the tiny gold box. He pried open the lid and stared at the glittering dust inside.

  “It’s so beautiful,” breathed Annie.

  Jack poured a bit of the gold dust into the palm of his bare hand. “We wish to be champion dog mushers to save lives,” he whispered. Then he tossed the dust into the air. The room filled with a sparkling gold light. The light gathered around Jack and Annie, then quickly faded away.

  Jack felt a rush of energy.

  “Wow!” said Annie, grinning. “I’m ready to hit the trail. Are you?”

  “Yep!” said Jack. “Sure am.” He laughed.

  “Quick, before Oki leaves with the dogs,” said Annie. She started for the door.

  “Wait,” said Jack. “The magic works for twelve hours.” He looked at a clock on the wall. It was eight-thirty. “We have to be back by eight-thirty tomorrow morning. No later.”

  “Got it!” said Annie. Then the two of them hurried out of the shack into the freezing night.

  The huskies were whining and leaping around the moonlit pen as Oki tried to buckle them into their harnesses. “Be still!” he commanded. “Be still!”

  “Wait, Oki!” said Jack.

  Wrestling with a dog, Oki looked up at Jack.

  “Annie and I will look for Gunnar Kaasen!” said Jack. “Your uncle wants us to take the team by ourselves.”

  “By yourselves?” said Oki.

  “Yes!” said Annie. “You have to stay here. He can’t risk losing you.”

  “But how will you do this?” said Oki. “You don’t know the dogs or the trail.”

  “We have great skills,” said Jack. “And we trust the dogs. Your uncle told us they’ve traveled the trail hundreds of times.”

  “Yes…but—” said Oki.

  “Good! Then our job is just to help them do their job,” said Annie.