talked about leaving, and she didn’t even know how she was going to leave!

“Wait a minute,” he said hastily as Taya stared at him reproachfully. He thought about it for a second, and almost instantly it was as if someone had turned on the flame in the lantern of his head. He gestured with his head at the doggy door, indicating for Taya to follow, and jumped outside and limped as fast as he could go down the street, feeling the rough stones and cold snow pressing into his hard footpads and the knifing chill of the wind blowing into his face. His wounded leg hurt like crazy, but he just gritted his teeth and kept going. The soft crunch, crunch of snow behind him indicated Taya was right on his tail.

He stepped down a narrow side street and padded cautiously into the town square, where his sharp, bright eyes searched and found exactly what he was looking for.

The mail team was standing in front of the post office, just about ready to take off for another delivery to other Alaskan towns. Copper’s older brother Kodi was at the head of the team chatting over his shoulder to Dusty, the only girl dog on the mail team and who Copper had for some time suspected was Kodi’s crush. Copper started thinking away furiously to make sure his plan would work, and as he did so he felt Taya’s rough fur brush up against his side as she craned to see what he was looking at.

“The mail team? Copper, what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that this is the only way I can come up with right now to get you out of here,” he replied, grinning in spite of himself. “Now, listen…” He carefully outlined his plan to her. When he was finished, Taya stared at him with one eyebrow arched and a doubtful expression on her face.

“Wolf-dog, how many times have any of your ‘plans’ actually worked?”

“Never,” he said, scrutinizing the mail bags piled on top of the sled, “I’m not much into doing stuff like this. How many times do you think I’ve helped dogs become stowaways?”

“Great,” Taya muttered, blowing out an impatient breath, “Well, I’m ready if you are.”

“Okay,” Copper murmured, and Taya dropped away to mingle with the small crowd of people wandering around the town square. Copper watched as she sneaked closer and closer until she was pretty close to the sled, but hidden behind two men standing near the mail team arguing over nothing in particular. She sat at the heels of one of the men as if she was his dog, but kept behind his legs so the dogs in the mail team couldn’t see her. The men didn’t even notice and kept right on jabbering in clipped, angry tones.

‘Nice going, Taya,’ Copper thought, and proceeded to jog on over to Kodi. He waited till he was almost positive he was blocking any possible view Kodi could have of Taya, and yelled, “Hey, everybody! Hey, Kodi!”

“Hey, Copper!” Kodi cried, spinning around.

“Well, look who’s back,” Dusty said, grinning. “Where’ve you been, Copper? Training with that dog-sled team your owner set up?”

“Yeah, how’s that going?” Ralph said, poking his head closer so he could hear the conversation. The other dogs realized Kodi’s little brother was standing near them, and they all looked up and said their individual hellos, then went back to their conversations. Copper held most of the dogs’ attention, though. He was kind of proud of the fact that he had been a big hit with all the dogs when he had first met the team when he was just a pup. How he’d managed to make such a good impression, he’d never know.

“Well, you’re not going to believe this, but…” Copper told them all the story of how Johnson had split up the team and wasn’t doing it anymore, and Dusty and the rest were pretty sympathetic, but then other conversations built up around Copper, and eventually it was just Kodi and Copper left standing together.

“Hey, Kodi,” Copper said in a low voice, “Do you know about Dad and Kaila?”

Kodi’s expression became serious. “Are you kidding? Of course I know about it. As soon as I came home from making that last mail delivery I looked for Dad, and then Mom found me and told me all about it.” One of his ears flapped worriedly. “Kaila’s finally lost it.”

“What?” Copper exclaimed, “What do you mean, ‘Kaila’s lost it’? I thought she was led away by a psycho wolf, or dog, or something like that!”

Kodi was nodding over and over. “Yeah, I know, I know. I don’t know why I said that. I’m just hoping she makes it back. I’m worried about her, and I don’t even see her that much. Weird.”

Copper felt himself sink. Balto and Kaila still weren’t back. Would they ever return? Were they dead out there?

There was a thoughtful silence between the two brothers, and out of the corner of his eye Copper could see Taya slowly inching her way toward the sled. She was over halfway there. He had to keep Kodi’s attention.

“So…do you have any idea where you’re delivering next?”

Kodi shrugged. “White Mountain, some other small towns…Copper, what happened to your LEG?!”

Copper looked down at the crusty red and broken bone. Oops. He hadn’t thought of what to say to cover that up. The other dogs must have just looked at his face, not down at the mess of a limb he had; that’s why they hadn’t noticed. Leave it to Big Brother to point that one thing out. “Uh…it was just a stupid thing…” he started lamely, but he was spared when the musher came out of the post office, jumped onto the sled, and tossed a last bag full of mail onto the others. Copper saw a blur of red-gold slip under the bags just before the last bag landed. He thought he heard a faint “Oof!” from Taya when the bag hit, but she went quiet when Kodi perked up his ears and narrowed his eyes. “Did you hear something?”

Copper shook his head and grinned slyly. “It must be you’re just nervous about the mail run.”

Kodi pretended to be mad and shoved Copper away. “C’mon! I’ve done this a million times! I’m not nervous and you know it!”

“Are you sure?” Copper said teasingly, and dodged a swipe from his brother.

“Where’s Kaltag when you need him?” Kodi muttered, but he grinned anyhow and messed up Copper’s tuft of red fur on top of his head. Copper stepped back and shook his head vigorously.

“Oh, quit it! You’re acting just like Mom!”

Kodi laughed and opened his mouth to shoot something back, but the musher placed two fingers in his mouth and whistled. “Alright, team! Get ready!”

“See ya, Copper,” Kodi said with a grin.

“See ya,” Copper replied, stepping backwards. “Good luck!”

Kodi turned away, and Copper poked his nose into the mailbags trying to find Taya. Suddenly something cold pressed against his snout, and he found himself nose to nose with Taya as her head popped up out of the pile. “Ah!” he cried out as the same time Taya gasped, “Oh!” and he ducked his head, embarrassed beyond belief.

When he got the courage to look up, he could see that she was as embarrassed as he was, but angry too. He coughed dryly to get rid of some of his embarrassment, and softly said, “Uh…you alright?”

“Well, considering my present situation-squashed under a bunch of mail and itchy bags, and having more stuff thrown on top of me-I’m okay.”

“Trust me, you’re fine,” Copper said, just stopping himself from rolling his eyes. Suddenly he remembered Storm’s message. “Taya!”

“WHAT?!!”

“If you get out at White Mountain, could you pass on this message for me? It’s from one of the fighters at the Northern Fights, Storm, to his mate.”

Taya’s eyes smoldered with blue fire. “Storm…oh, yeah, I remember him…Good fighter. A respected dog.”

“My FRIEND,” Copper added with emphasis.

“Okay,” Taya said wearily. He told her the message as quickly as he could, and she muttered it over and over to herself so she wouldn’t forget it. Copper smiled at her gratefully.

“Thanks, Taya. This means a lot to me.”

“Don’t mention it,” she replied, ducking back in among the bags, and then came a muffled, “Ever.”

Copper stepped back as the musher finally noticed him and told him, “Go away, Copper, we gotta get outta here.” Copper backed up only as far as he needed to to be considered ‘safe’, and with a ringing “Mush!” the team jolted forward and pounded ahead, gradually picking up speed until they were out of Nome and only a moving streak on the pale horizon. Copper watched them go, and pictured Taya in his mind so he would never forget her: ice blue eyes, stubby red-gold fur, white and red and brown scars stretching out like veins under her fur, her defiant stance against the world…and her hatred of him at first. Was it really only last night he had freed her? Well, she was gone now.

Copper scuffed his right front paw around in the snow and took one last look at the horizon. The team had disappeared, but the warm golden color of the sun over the snow shone with the same color as Taya’s fur. Copper stood in silence and looked on for what seemed like forever, pressing the image into his memory so he would never forget that, either. He couldn’t examine all the feelings zooming around inside him; he still