"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.
SEVEN
The next day, five minutes after Jim sat down at his desk, the phone rang. It was Cindy Bingley. "Jim," she said without preamble, "you've got to do something about Willard."
Jim felt the hair prick up at the back of his neck. "What about Willard?" he said.
"He keeps stealing stuff out of the store. Yesterday he walked out with a gallon jug of white vinegar."
Jim couldn't help it. He laughed.
"It's not funny, Jim," Cindy said. She paused, hearing her voice rise. "Well, okay, maybe it is a little. When I caught him on the steps I asked him what in the world he was going to do with that much vinegar and he said he brushed his teeth a lot."
Jim closed his eyes in momentary supplication of some heavenly entity to intercede on behalf of all fools and children, of which Willard was both.
Willard Shugak, a cousin a couple of times removed from Kate, and Auntie Balasha's grandson, was in his early forties. It was a blessing that he was even still around, if a mixed one. Most people with fetal alcohol syndrome died young.
"And then," Cindy said in despair, "he started to cry. You know how he does."
"Yes," Jim said, sober now, "I know. Do you want to press charges, Cindy?"
"No! Of course I don't! Aside from the fact that Auntie Balasha would probably boycott the store, along with the other three aunties and shortly thereafter most of the rest of the Park, Willard's just a baby. A kleptomaniac baby. Sometimes I wish I could just turn him over my knee. Could you just, I don't know, put the fear of god into him or something? Lock him up overnight?"
Jim sighed. "I can probably do that." It wouldn't be the first time.
"He's in here every day right after we open," Cindy said promptly.
It was a gray day not expected to get out of the teens, with the winds sweeping down out of the Quilaks at fifteen miles an hour and bringing a fine, white snow with them that immediately frosted anything stationary, including Jim's windshield. The forecast called for three to six inches more. Combined with the layer of black ice beneath it made for hazardous movement, either by foot or by vehicle. Not that that would stop anyone from climbing into their Ford Explorer or their Subaru Forester and barreling up and down the roads, such as they were. Jim resigned himself to a day spent responding to ditch-diving daredevils. He just hoped none of them involved fatalities. The sooner the Park was snowed in and everyone switched to all snow machines all the time, the better.
He also hoped nothing happened anywhere else in the Park that required him to get in the air. The troopers gave first preference to any applicant with a private pilot's license, and Jim was licensed for both fixed wing and helicopters. The state of Alaska had kindly provided him with a Cessna 206, parked on the Niniltna airstrip in a rented space in George Perry's hangar.
The helicopter had been pulled when they opened the Niniltna post, the reasoning behind that decision being he was closer to the action and didn't need two methods of transportation, plus the Cessna could carry more weight. Jim had disapproved of the decision, as the Bell Jet Ranger could get into a lot more places than the Cessna could, but he understood the economics behind the decision and held his peace. Most outposts in the Park had their own airstrips, and those that didn't would simply go longer unserved by the law. That was life off the road in Alaska.
"The first response on the last frontier," so ran the state troopers' latest recruiting slogan, but the state was 586,412 square miles large, and those miles contained some of the most challenging terrain the planet had on offer, with some of the worst weather the atmosphere could manufacture. The Alaska State Troopers, a mere 240 officers strong, hadn't a hope in hell of responding to every outrage perpetrated by or against Alaskan citizens, or even most of them, no matter how many airplanes they spotted their officers.