Balto, a half-wolf, half-Malamute sled dog, trotted head down in the darkness of a stinging blizzard. Behind him his ten teammates kept pace as he guided them into Nome, Alaska, and down a deserted street to the hospital.

"Halt!" Musher Gunnar Kasson croaked through ice-burned lips. Balto dropped into the deep snow at the door of the hospital. Kasson sank to his knees beside him. With tears welling from his near-blinded eyes, hands shaking from exhaustion, he pulled sharp chunks of ice from Balto's bleeding paws. "Balto," Kasson whispered into his neck fur. "Damn fine dog!"

It was 5:30 a.m. on February 2, 1925. Balto had saved lives.

The people of Nome were stricken with diphtheria, a deadly disease. They were in desperate need of the serum that would stop the "black death" that was killing a person a day in the sub-arctic town. When the railroad train carrying the serum had become snowbound in Nenana, 660 miles away, and the planes could not take off, the U.S. Signal Corps sent out a call for dog teams.

Mushers from miles around, including Gunnar Kasson, responded. (Mushers are the men who drive sled dog teams.) They knew the assignment was dangerous, but they brought their strongest and most intelligent dogs to the snowbound outposts along the route to Nome. At one post after another, a team would pull in, the serum would be passed on, and another team would pull out.

The relay ran day and night for four days. Then Charlie Olson and his team of seven pulled into Bluff, 67 1/2 miles from Nome, in a roaring blizzard. He handed Gunnar Kasson the serum and warned him about the winds and cold.

At first Kasson decided to wait out the storm. But at ten o'clock that night, the blizzard showed no sign of stopping or even letting up. Kasson knew lives were at stake. He and his dogs took off into the icy tempest.

The next relay point was 34 miles away. As Balto led his team across the Topok River, an 80-mile-an-hour wind struck like a railroad engine and lifted clouds of snow into the air. Neither the dogs nor Kasson could see.

But Balto never hesitated. He trotted on, following his own internal compass that guided him around drifts and out onto an ice-covered lagoon. Near the shore, Kasson sensed trouble. "Haw," he called. Obeying reluctantly, Balto ran to the left, off the trail, and splashed into an overflow of water. Wet feet meant crippled dogs. In desperation Kasson drove the team into soft snow to dry their pawsÑand was instantly lost in whiteness.

But Balto kept going. Picking his way, and making intelligent decisions, he trotted on at a steady pace. Twice the sled overturned and the dogs tangled. Twice Kasson righted the sled, straightened the traces, and let Balto lead the way. Fortunately, as they crossed Norton Sound, the wind got behind them. They covered the next 12 1/2 miles to Port Safety in eighty minutes.

At the relay station, the lights were out. The musher and his team were asleep. Time would be lost waking them. Twenty-one miles away people were dying. Kasson made a decision. His dogs were running well. "Hup! Hup!" he called, and Balto kept going.

Along the seacoast the snow stopped. Kasson could see again. Two of his dogs were stiffening up. The temperature was thirty-six degrees below zero Fahrenheit. He stopped to quickly make rabbitskin boots for the dogs, and went on.

At last they pulled into Nome, exhausted but undaunted. The dog relay teams had completed in five and a half days a trip that usually took the mail train more than twenty-five days. The next morning Balto's name appeared on the front page of every major newspaper in the United States. He was praised on the floor of Congress. Invitations for personal appearances poured in. Balto and Kasson toured from California to New York, stopping in big and little towns amid cheers and fanfare.

Balto has not been forgotten. His statue, made by R. G. Roth, stands in New York City's Central Park. Under Balto's name are these words:

Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed antitoxins 660 miles over rough ice, across treacherous waters, through Arctic blizzards from Nenana to the relief of stricken Nome in the Winter of 1925.

If you liked chapter one of Incredible Animal Adventures, find out more about the book.

Go back to the index of first chapters of new books for Fall 1999.