"What happened?"
"Smith dug up a section of Beaver Creek." Kate thought for a moment. "Demetri has a trapline on a Beaver Creek."
"This would be the same creek. Demetri was seriously pissed off, big surprise, but instead of getting me, or maybe Dan O'Brien, chief ranger of this here Park, to call Smith to account, Demetri tracks him down on his own and proceeds to beat the living crap out of him."
The Smiths were a large family of cheechakos who had bought a homestead from Vinnie Huckabee the year before and had come close to federal indictment for the liberties they had taken with the Park land across their borders, principally with a Caterpillar tractor they had rented from the aforesaid Mac Devlin. "Really," Kate said. "What a shame."
"Yeah, I know, that's why I didn't toss the both of them in the clink. Anyway, I only meant the story as kind of an example of what's been going on."
"A lot of people been messing around on Park lands?"
"No, a lot of people taking the law into their own hands. Demetri alone wouldn't make me think, but when Arliss Kalifonsky shoots Mickey the next time he raises a hand to her, when Bonnie Jeppsen tracks down the kid who put the rotting salmon in the mailbox and keys his truck, and when the aforementioned Dan O'Brien kicks a poacher's ass all over downtown Niniltna when said poacher tries to sell Dan a bear bladder, then I think we can say we might maybe got something of a trend going on."
"Sounds like breakup, only the wrong time of year."
"God, I hope not. One breakup per year is my limit."
He brought cake and coffee to the table and just as he was sitting down she said, "While you're up…," and pushed her mug in his direction. He heaved a martyred sigh and brought her back a full cup well doctored with cream and sugar.
"They're really moving," Kate said. "Global Harvest. Buying out Mac this quick. When did they buy those Suulutaq leases?"
Jim thought back. "When was the final disposition made on the distribution of lands in Iqaluk?"
Iqaluk was fifty thousand acres of prime Alaskan real estate tucked between the Kanuyaq River and Prince William Sound, in the southeast corner of the Park. It boasted one of the last unexploited old-growth forests left in the state, although the spruce had been pretty well decimated by the spruce bark beetle. There were substantial salmon runs in the dozens of creeks draining into the Kanuyaq, and there wasn't a village on the river that didn't run a subsistence fish wheel. With several small caribou herds that migrated between feeding grounds in Canada and breeding grounds on the delta, Iqaluk had been aboriginal hunting grounds for local Alaska Natives for ten thousand years.
It was equally rich in natural resources. Seventy-five years ago oil had been discovered on the coast near Katalla and had been produced until it ran dry. A hundred years ago, the world's largest copper mine had been discovered in Kanuyaq. All that was left of the mine was a group of deserted, dilapidated buildings. Niniltna, the surviving village four miles down the road, had as its origins the Kanuyaq miners' go-to place for a good time. It was a productive mine for thirty-six years, until World War II came along and gave the owners an excuse to close down the then depleted mine and rip up the railroad tracks behind them as they skedaddled Outside with their profits.
With a history like that, it was no wonder that ownership of Iqaluk had been fiercely contested for nearly a century before title was settled, which settlement had satisfied no one. Dan O'Brien, chief ranger, had wanted Iqaluk's total acreage incorporated into the existing Park. The state of Alaska wanted Iqaluk deeded over wholly either to Alaska's Department of Natural Resources or, failing that, to the U.S. Forest Service, famed for its aid and comfort to timber and minerals management companies. The Niniltna Native Association wanted it as a resource for hunting and fishing, if possible solely for its own shareholders and if not, at least for Alaska residents only, managed by a strict permitting process that gave preference to local residents.
Land ownership in Alaska was, in fact, a mess, and had been since Aleksandr Baranov stepped ashore in Kodiak in 1791. Until then Alaska Natives had been under the impression that land couldn't be owned, of which notion Baranov speedily disillusioned them. After the Russians came the Americans, with their gold rushes, Outside fish processors, and world wars, which brought a whole bunch more new people into the territory, including Kate's Aleut relatives, resettled in the Park after the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands.
Statehood came, due mostly to political machinations involving Hawaii becoming a state at the same time and Eisenhower wanting to field three Republicans to Congress to balance out the expected three Democrats from the Aloha State. After statehood came the discovery of oil, first in Cook Inlet and then a super-giant oil field at Prudhoe Bay. The new rush was on, to build the Trans-Alaska
Pipeline to bring the crude to market, which project came to a screeching halt when Alaska Natives cleared their collective throats and said, "Excuse me? A forty-eight-inch pipeline across eight hundred miles of aboriginal hunting grounds? That's going to cost you," and made it stick. Passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, and later, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, pulled a bunch more acreage off the table, which left less than ten percent of Alaska in private hands. Wildlife refuges, national parks, state parks, yes. Farms, ranches, corporate preserves, no.
Of course, a lot of people had made their way to Alaska long before the wherefores and whyases of said acts were a twinkle in Congress's eye, many under the auspices of the Homestead Act, others who came north with the gold rush and stayed, who came north with the army and the air force and returned after mustering out, who came north as crew on fishing boats or canneries, married locally, and settled in for the duration. Their holdings were grandfathered in and the parks and refuges created around them. Which was why Dan O'Brien's map of the Park, on the wall of his office in Park HQ on the Step, had all those minuscule yellow dots on it, each one signifying private ownership.
Land in Alaska, who owned it, and who could do what on it where was in fact a subject that preoccupied an embarrassing amount of everyone's time and attention-public official, corporate officer, and private citizen. Any discussion of the subject was generally preceded by all combatants producing driver's licenses and comparing numbers. The lower the number, the longer they'd been in the state, and the longer they'd been in the state, the louder and longer they got to talk.
"Land ownership in Alaska is like time travel in science fiction," Kate said out loud. "How so?"
"Just thinking about it makes me dizzy. Where's Martin now?"
"Sleeping it off in the lockup. I'll let him out in the morning." He thought for a moment, and added, "If the aunties have calmed down by then. The quilt was for Auntie Edna's granddaughter."
"Yeah, I know. Elly. She's ready to pop any time."
"Who's the dad?"
"She won't say."
Jim took a long look at Kate's closed expression. There had been some muttering about a priest at the private school Elly had attended in Ahtna. No doubt he'd hear all about it in time from Ahtna police chief Kenny Hazen, whether he wanted to or not. He just hoped that if the rumor was true, Auntie Edna wouldn't follow the current trend and settle accounts with the man herself. He shuddered to think of the damage the four aunties could inflict if they put their minds to it. "Any luck on a vehicle for the kid?"
Johnny Morgan, son of Kate's dead lover Jack Morgan and Kate's foster son, had achieved the ripe old age of sixteen, and was now in the market for a vehicle of his very own.
Kate's face cleared. "Bobby's putting it out on Park Air this afternoon. I imagine somebody's got a junker they want to unload."
"You care if it runs?"
She made a face. "I'd rather it didn't."