SIX

Kate?"

She heard Jim's voice from downstairs. She didn't move.

His footsteps sounded on the stairs. "Kate?"

"Go away," she said, her voice muffled by the comforter she'd pulled over her head.

"Kate? Where are you?" The overhead light clicked on. "Oh. Hey, Mutt." The bed moved as Mutt lifted her head and whined, a single, plaintive note.

"Kate, what's wrong?" Jim said in a different tone. "Are you sick?"

"No. Go away."

The side of the bed sank beneath his weight and she felt the comforter pulling away. "Don't," she said, grabbing for it, but by then it was too late. She blinked up at Jim and Mutt, two pairs of eyes, one blue, one yellow, staring down at her with equal concern.

"What's going on?" Jim said. "You're never in bed during the day."

"None of your business. Leave me alone." She pulled the cover back over her head.

The weight of him on the bed didn't move. Neither did Mutt's.

"Oh. Has this got something to do with the board meeting this morning?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I take it it didn't go well."

"I don't want to talk about it!"

"Okay." The bed heaved and she heard footsteps go downstairs. The bed heaved again as Mutt jumped down and followed, the ticky-tack of her claws sounding on the floor.

"Traitor," Kate said, her voice muffled by the comforter. Given Jim's come-hither presence downstairs, and given Kate's present mood, it was doubtful that Mutt would have returned even if she had heard Kate call her name.

Kate was, in fact, sulking. Nobody loved her. Everyone thought she was stupid. In fact, she was stupid, didn't even know what a quorum was. She'd looked it up in Webster's when she came home and it was the minimum number of members of the group meeting required to take a vote. She'd had the vague idea that it had had something to do with books, and how they were put together, but no. Thank christ she hadn't said that during the meeting.

The aroma of frying bacon crept beneath the covers, a sinuous and seductive smell.

Although she'd said plenty else that Harvey Meganack would be happy to repeat over the bar at Bernie's for months to come. If not years. She still couldn't believe they got paid for sitting on the board. And what the hell was a point of order, anyway?

Johnny's truck drove up and a few minutes later she heard the sound of his feet on the stairs. The door slammed. He said something to Jim. Jim replied, and both of them laughed. Probably laughing at her.

She'd looked for the U-Haul box when she got home. It wasn't in the back of Johnny's truck. It wasn't in the garage. It wasn't even in the woodshed. She wondered if maybe she'd tossed it onto the slash pile from the beetle kill the three of them had cleared at intervals this summer. The slash pile was a mile from the house and she didn't have the energy to navigate the three-foot layer of snow between, especially not in the cold and the dark.

There was more banging around in the kitchen, and other interesting smells began to waft upstairs.

Kate's stomach growled. It was getting very hot and humid beneath the comforter. She swore a ripe oath, extricated herself from the tangle of bedclothes, and stamped down the stairs.

"Hey, Kate," Johnny said with a grin.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she said. Maybe she snarled.

Startled, he actually backed up a step. "I… I…"

Jim, pouring a bottle of red wine into a pot, said, "It means hello." He gave her a look from beneath lowered brows. "At least it does in most of the cultures I run in."

"What's with the wine?" she said.

"Relax, the alcohol will boil off."

She knew that, he'd cooked with wine before and on occasion she'd been known to pour a dollop or two into a soup or a stew, but it left her with nothing to argue about. She stamped over to the couch and flung herself down and glared out the window.

Johnny withdrew stealthily backward, sidled into his room, and closed the door very gently behind him. He'd meant to introduce the subject of Greenbaugh-Gallagher!-into the conversation at the first opportunity, let Kate and Jim know the Park had acquired a good guy, but it could wait.

Meanwhile, back on the couch, Kate glowered at the view. It was clear and cold that evening, a dark sky glittering with stars and a waxing moon on the rise, a luminous, reflected glory in the snow-covered landscape beneath. The Quilaks bulked up on the eastern horizon, igneous bullies flexing their sedimentary and metamorphic muscles to intimidate the lesser beings cowering in their shadow. Angqaq towered above them all, the jagged, homicidal peak a reckless gauntlet flung down to every mountaineer worthy of the name. From the heights, the mountains and glaciers fell precipitously, interrupted only by an irregular shelf of land called locally the Step, before rolling out into a vast plateau seamed with rivers and carpeted with spruce and cedar and willow and hemlock and birch and cottonwood. Bordered on the south by the Gulf of Alaska, on the west by the Alaska Railroad and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, on the north by the Glenn Highway, and on the east by the Quilaks and the border of the Yukon Territory, the Park was twenty million acres in size, several steps out of the mainstream of Alaska life and a light-year away from the rest of the world. They got their news from satellite television, the state was bringing at least one Internet connection into every village with a school, and every adult and not a few children had a Costco card, but that didn't necessarily make them members of the global community. It frequently wasn't enough to make them Americans.

Alaskans had attitude, no doubt about that. They loved their land with a fierceness that bordered on mania, while freely admitting insanity was a prerequisite for living there. This might have been a partial explanation as to why, as a community, they voted Republican with an enthusiasm that continually overwhelmed Democrats at elections, disavowing anything that smacked of big government subsidies. At the same time they paid no state income taxes, instead accepting a check every year from the state in per capita payment of the gross annual taxes on oil produced in Prudhoe Bay.

And that, Kate thought, was why Global Harvest Resources Inc. was going to get the red carpet treatment from everyone involved, governor's office on down to the lowliest Park rat. Alaskans had grown accustomed to handouts. A whole generation of kids had been raised to believe it was the natural order of things, the permanent fund dividend, earmarks to congressional budget bills for big budget construction projects like schools in villages and bridges to nowhere, government subsidies at federal, state, and local levels to actually run the government. The federal government was Alaska 's biggest employer.

The Niniltna Native Association wasn't blameless in this, either. It handed out a quarterly dividend, one to every shareholder, representing half the Association's annual profits, the rest of the profits going back into the Association's operating capital account. The payments were legitimate, earnings from leases sold to companies like Global Harvest, though heretofore much smaller in scale, to exploit natural resources on Native land.

But it bothered Kate. It had been a bone of contention between Emaa and herself. "All this money coming at us, Emaa," she had said, "and we don't do anything to earn it. The state grades the road into the Park. Who pays for that? Not us. The village has running water and electricity. Who pays for that? Not us."

"You want to send money to the state, Katya," her grandmother had said dryly, "you go right ahead," and that was the end of that conversation.

"Supper's on," Jim said, and Kate looked up to see the table set and a pot of stew steaming on a trivet in the middle of the table.

She seated herself and Jim ladled out stew all around.

"Smells great," Johnny said. "What is it?"

"Coq au vin."

"Huh?"

"Chicken stew with bacon and mushrooms, you little cretin."

"Yum," Johnny said after the first taste, and for a while was heard from no more.

Kate took a bite. Johnny was right. The bread was store bought, but she knew what Jim would have said if she'd remarked on it. She'd been in no shape to bake any when she'd gotten home, so she didn't. She ate, silent while the men exchanged news. Jim had responded to an accident out at the Sheldons', a bad one. "They were digging a hole for a new septic tank."

"Now? In October?"

"They did leave it a little late, which might have something to do with why the Cat broke a tread on a slope and rolled over. Maybe, I don't know. The Cat used to belong to Mac Devlin-I could see where the Nabesna Mine logo had been on the side before it got painted over-and it didn't look real well cared for. At any rate, it killed the driver. Messy. The driver? The son. Yeah, just the one kid. Bad news all the way around."

Most of the news featured Talia Macleod's arrival in the Park, the community's reaction to her, and what the mine was going to mean in the long run.

"More work for me," Jim said, "is all I see."

"Why?" Johnny said.

Jim helped himself to more stew. "They'll mostly be hiring young men, and when you put young men together with a lot of money, trouble comes."

"You mean like drugs?"

"Drugs, booze, women, bigger and better and more dangerous toys, and people who will be selling all of the above." Jim gave his head a gloomy shake. "Not to mention all the hucksters hanging around the fringe offering the newly rich wonderful investment opportunities, most of them scams. I've heard about some of the stuff the Slopers have been sucked into, apple and pistachio farms in Arizona, oil wells in Colorado, real estate deals in Seattle. All of them fail, everybody takes a bath, and the losers start looking for somebody to blame, which always ends well. It won't be pretty."

"But there'll be jobs," Johnny said tentatively. "Macleod says there will be as many as two thousand jobs during construction, and a thousand after, when the mine is operating. A thousand steady jobs, Jim, where there were zero before. That's gotta be good. Doesn't it?"

"Sure," Jim said, reaching for more bread. "But there's a price for everything, Johnny."

"I was thinking…" Johnny looked at Kate and hesitated, but she wasn't listening. "Macleod said there were certain professions that would be especially attractive to Global Harvest, like engineers and geologists."

"And?"

"I graduate in two years. I figured I might check out the degree programs at UA, see if any of them fit."

"I thought you were interested in biology, in wildlife management."

Johnny grimaced. "I've been talking to Dan O'Brien, and he says those kinds of jobs are almost always government. He says they're hard to come by, and that they don't pay very well, and you don't get to pick where you work."

"Do you have to make a lot of money?" Jim said.

Johnny looked uncertain. "I thought that was what everybody wanted."

"Do what you love," Jim said. "The money will come."

Johnny was unconvinced, but he let the subject slide for now.

He looked over at Kate. She'd finished and now sat frowning at her empty bowl.

"Something wrong with the stew?" Jim said.

"What?" She came to herself with a start. "No. No, it was great." She saw his eyebrow go up and said with forced warmth, "It was terrific. You can make that again any old time."

"What, then?"

Kate's spoon clattered into her bowl. "She didn't say hi to Annie."

Jim exchanged a glance with Johnny. "Who didn't?"

"Talia Macleod. When Harvey brought her into the board meeting. She glad-handed everyone on the board, called us all by name, knew something personal about each and every one of us. But she didn't even say hi to Annie."

"She's hired a caretaker for the mine site," Johnny said.

"Who?" Jim said.

Johnny looked at Kate with some caution. "Howie Katelnikof." Jim paused in the act of running his finger around the edge of his bowl. "You're kidding," he and Kate said at the same time. "That's what I said," Johnny said.

"Who the hell told her that putting Howie on the payroll was a good idea?" Jim said. "Didn't she ask around first, get some names?"

Kate got up and headed for her coat and boots. "Where you going?" Jim said.

"To see Mandy," Kate said.


Mandy Baker's place was down the road toward Niniltna, at the end of a rutted track a little narrower than a pickup. It was a rambling, ramshackle collection of buildings that had once housed a wilderness lodge whose original owner had bankrupted himself in a failed attempt to attract big game hunters, most of whom were already clients of Demetri Totemoff's. The lodge was threatened on all sides by a dense forest of willow, black and white spruce, black cottonwood, and white paper birch, which had been allowed to grow unhindered save for half a dozen trails the width of a dogsled. The trees on the south side closest to the house had been trimmed to stumps and were used as posts to restrain Mandy's dogs from heading to Nome on their own. When Kate pulled up in the clearing, they set up a collective howl that could have been heard from the moon.

Kate winced and put her fingers in her ears. Mutt trotted out into the middle of the pack, sat down, raised her nose, and gave one loud, minatory bark, showing a little teeth while she was at it. There was an instantaneous silence, and Mutt stared around her with narrowed yellow eyes, just to make sure the point had been taken. It had.

"Man, I wish they'd do that for me," said a voice from the door, and Kate looked up to see Mandy standing in it.

"Why do you mush dogs if their howling drives you crazy?" Kate said, threading her way through the pack.

"Why do you think I took up mushing?" Mandy said. "They don't howl when they're hitched up and running."

"There's a problem with that reasoning but I'm just going to let it go," Kate said. She paused on the doorstep. "You doing some late culling? Doesn't seem to be quite the teeming mass of caninity that it usually is."

"Caninity?" Mandy said.

"Caninity," Kate said. "If Shakespeare can make up words so can I."

"Coffee?" Mandy said, standing back and holding the door wide.

"Sure." Kate shed parka and boots and went inside.

The door opened into a large room that served Mandy as kitchen, dining room, living room, and harness shed. There was an enormous old-fashioned woodstove in one corner with a fireplace in the corner opposite, and a higgledy-piggledy jumble of tables, chairs, couches, refrigerator-freezers, sinks, counters, and cupboards in between. On this dark, cold October night the room glowed with the muted light of half a dozen Coleman lanterns, hissing gently from hooks screwed into overhead beams. Mandy preferred them to electric light and had never installed a generator. Pots and pans, traps and ganglines hung from more hooks, making the entire area a hazard to navigation.

Mandy was a tall, rangy woman with a face full of good, strong bones, hair cut a la Prince Valiant, and a latent twinkle in her gray eyes. The scion of a wealthy Bostonian family, she had abandoned crinoline petticoats and charity balls for down parkas and dog mushing as soon as she was of legal age. This had distressed her proper, conservative family no end, although her parents had come around after an eventful visit to the Park three years before. Since then, relations had been cordial, punctuated frequently by care packages featuring L.L.Bean, a telling switch from the usual Neiman Marcus.

"Chick around?" Kate said, accepting a steaming mug and adding a generous helping of canned milk.

She looked up in time to see the twinkle vanish. "Not lately."

Kate groaned. "Not again."

Mandy sat opposite and added three spoonfuls of sugar to her own mug. "To tell the truth, I don't know. I suppose it's possible he's not on a bender. All I know is he went to Anchorage last week to visit his mom, and I haven't heard from him since."

Chick was Chick Noyukpuk, Mandy's lover and mushing mentor. He was also a chronic alcoholic. A short, rotund little man with a cheerful disposition when sober, when drunk he turned maudlin and suicidal. Mandy had bought her first dogs from him. Then he had had his own kennel. Then he had been a world champion distance musher in his own right, earning the nickname the Billiken Bullet, much beloved of sports reporters for his evenhanded way with a bar tab. Now, he worked for Mandy, overseeing the breeding and training of the teams and as a tactical advisor on the trail, with the result that Mandy had been finishing in the money since her third Iditarod.

"His mom okay?" Kate said.

"She's in assisted living. She's pretty much all there mentally, she just needs help with the physical stuff. He's a good son, he goes in a lot. He just doesn't usually stay this long without calling. Unless he's on a bender."

"Um." Kate, knowing sympathy would be unwelcome, didn't offer any. "I met a friend of yours today."

"Oh, yeah? Who?"

"Woman by the name of Talia Macleod."

Mandy's face lit with pleasure. "Talia? No kidding? What's she doing in the Park?"

Kate told her.

"Not a bad gig," Mandy said. "An outfit like Global Harvest would pay for a face like that to put on a project this size. Lay a lot of Alaskan hackles, too, her being a local hero and all. And she is very smart and very personable."

Kate, about to refute this, recognized the justice of it in time. "Yes, she is," she said ruefully.

"How'd you meet her?"

Kate described that morning's board meeting, and when Mandy stopped laughing, she said, wiping tears away, "I would have paid real money for a ticket to that show."

Kate could smile about it, too. Now. "I'd have been all right if they hadn't sandbagged me with being chairman. Probably. Anyway. Is this Macleod the real deal, Mandy? Or is she just bought and paid for?"

"A little of both, probably," Mandy said thoughtfully. She looked at Kate. "The thing you have to understand, Kate, is that no one in her position makes any money to speak of. She's not Brett Favre or Kevin Garnett."

Kate recognized neither name but she understood what Mandy was saying. "That's hard to believe. She's got all kinds of endorsements, doesn't she?"

"Sure, in Alaska. But Outside, or internationally?" Mandy shook her head. "As attractive and as personable as she is, she is a biathloner. She skis and shoots and skis. It doesn't make for riveting television, so it's not gonna be what sells Nikes. My guess is she took this job for the paycheck."

"That's what she said. But she talks like a true believer."

Mandy raised an eyebrow. "That's what they're paying her for. She's got a good heart, Kate."

"Then how come the first person she hired was Howie Katelnikof?"

Mandy stared. "You're kidding."

"I wish I was."

"Oh, crap." Mandy closed her eyes. "She didn't run names by you?" Mandy glared at Kate.

"Of course she didn't," Kate said. "Sorry." She started to say something else, and stopped. "What?"

Kate shrugged. "She didn't say hi to Annie. When Harvey brought her into the board room, she greeted every board member by name and had something to say to each of us to show us how well she'd done her homework. But she ignored Annie. Like the secretary-treasurer was beneath her notice. It pissed me off."

Mandy frowned. "Doesn't sound like her. Still, Annie doesn't have a vote on the board, and Talia didn't have much time."

"Doesn't mean she can get away with rudeness. Not on my watch."

Mandy rolled her eyes. "Look at you, de chair o' de board. Wasn't even a job you wanted and now you're the Emily Post of the Niniltna Native Association. My mother, the queen of Beacon Hill, would be so proud."

Kate had the grace to flush, and held up a hand. "Okay, ya got me. But," she said stubbornly, "she should have said hi." She hesitated, turning the mug around in her hands. "Mandy, what do you think of this mine?"

Mandy shrugged. "I think at nine hundred dollars an ounce and climbing every day, Global Harvest is gonna build it no matter what anyone in the Park says. Might as well close our eyes and think of England. What do you think?"

Kate sighed and drained her mug. "The same. At least it's far enough away that it won't impact you."

"Don't you believe it," Mandy said. "Don't you believe it, Kate, it's going to seriously impact both of us." She pointed. "It'll start with that road, traffic, heavy equipment, pretty soon it'll start falling apart even worse than it already is and the state will come in and repair it and probably pave it, and then we'll get every retired insurance salesman who drives up the Alcan in an RV stopping by to have their picture taken with one of the famous Park rats."

Kate stared at Mandy, the memory of an incident in Russell Gillespie's yard in Chistona a couple of years before floating up out of the ether that occupied the back of her brain. They'd caught a tourist who had been rooting around for artifacts in back of the abandoned store in the ghost town. The only problem was, Chistona wasn't a ghost town and Russell's store wasn't abandoned. Apprised of this fact, the tourist had then insisted on taking a photograph of Kate and Russell so she'd have a picture of real Alaskan Natives in her vacation album. She said, a little weakly, "But we're not famous."

"We will be," Mandy said grimly. "Our privacy will be the first thing to go, Kate, I promise you."

"So you hate the very thought of the mine," Kate said, a little startled by Mandy's vehemence.

"Don't hate it. Don't love it, either. I'm just counting the cost." Mandy shrugged. "And way before we have to pay. Best to wait and see. Only thing we can do, really."

They brooded together in silence. "How are the dogs looking?" Kate said, changing the subject.

"Healthy, ready to go." Mandy spoke with little enthusiasm.

"Problem?" Kate said.

"I don't know if global warming could be defined as a problem," Mandy said with a twisted smile. "Snow gets later every year, Kate, and thinner on the ground when it does finally come down. Last couple of years we've been running the dogs on frozen grass after Rainy Pass. Beats the hell out of sled, musher, and dogs." She shook her head and sighed. "I don't know how much longer I can keep it up."

Kate sustained another shock. "You thinking of quitting?"

"I barely finished in the money last year, Kate. The mushing has to pay for itself, or I can't afford to keep doing it."

"What about your trust fund?"

"It never paid for everything," Mandy said. "It'll be enough for me to retire on here."

Now that Kate was looking for it, she could see the fatigue in the lines of Mandy's face and the hollows beneath her eyes. "What will you do with your dogs?"

"Sell them. Won't be a problem."

Mandy's current team of dogs were the result of going on two decades of careful breeding and training. "Mandy-"

Mandy stood up. "Let me refill your mug, Kate, and you can tell me how you and Jim are getting on with the whole cohabitation thing."

Kate bowed to defeat and held out her mug.

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