Dana Stabenow - Whisper to the Blood

"You can take Mutt," Kate said.

"I really can't," Johnny said. "Van's riding with me. I'd have to unload the sled to make room for Mutt. Then we'd have Mutt and nothing to eat. Oh, wait, we could eat Mutt."

"Very funny. Ruthe could take her."

"Then Ruthe'd have to unload her own sled. We'll be fine, Kate."

"I know you will be," Kate said, not believing a word of it. "Just, you know, just be careful, okay?"

"I always am."

"Ruthe's no spring chicken. Look out for her."

It was Johnny's considered opinion that Ruthe Bauman could outthink, outshoot, and outsurvive better than any other sentient being in the Park, with the possible exception of the woman standing in front of him, but he wasn't suicidal enough to say so. "I will," he said instead, and climbed on the snow machine.

"You're back Sunday evening before eight, or I call out the National Guard!" she said, raising her voice to be heard over the engine.

"You got it!" He put the machine in gear and slid smoothly out of the clearing, keeping the speed down to just short of flight. He received a Mutt escort for a quarter of a mile, all the way to where the track to the homestead met the road to Niniltna.

"See you in a couple a days, girl!" he yelled, and opened up the throttle.

She barked until he was out of sight, and then trotted back down the trail to find Kate shivering in the clearing. She butted Kate's thigh with her head, more purposeful than affectionate, and with the full force of a hundred and forty pounds of half wolf, half husky behind it it did not fail of effect. Kate stumbled in the direction of the house, Mutt shepherding her with repeated bumps and nudges and the occasional nip at the hem of her jeans, all the way up the deck and inside.

"I hate being a mom," Kate told her.

Mutt went to curl up on her quilt in front of the fireplace. Kate went to the kitchen to clean up after yesterday's turkey dinner. After that, she made bread, measuring out flour and yeast and salt and water with a ferocious attention to detail. Yesterday she'd made rolls, but there had to be bread for turkey sandwiches.

Bobby, Dinah, Katya, Ethan Int-Hout (Margaret had walked out on him, again), Dan O'Brien, and Ruthe had all been invited to Thanksgiving dinner at Kate's house. Ethan had pled a prior invitation to Christie Calhoun's, whose spouse had just walked out on her, and who was home alone with three daughters who would do as well as any to stand in for Ethan's own. Jim, who didn't like Ethan living even as close as the next homestead over, heaved a private sigh of relief. Kate didn't notice, or pretended she didn't.

Ruthe had also declined, on the excuse of having to get ready for the expedition. Johnny was carrying a tinfoil package of turkey and dressing with him to Ruthe's.

Jim had been called out to a domestic disturbance, endemic over the holidays and in the Park frequently fatal if some calming, uniformed presence was not applied. This had turned out to make for a more enjoyable dinner, because Dan had been wound up tighter than a bedspring when he walked in. The moment Jim walked out the door he relaxed, leaning back suddenly against his chair as if the wires holding him up had been cut.

Later, after everyone had gone and Jim had returned, Kate said, "What's with you and Dan?"

Something stirred at the back of his eyes, but he said, "What do you mean?"

She shook her head and got up from the couch. "Don't tell me if you can't or if you just don't want to, but don't tell me nothing's going on." She went upstairs, brushed her teeth, stripped, and got into bed.

He followed, climbing in next to her without speaking. They went to sleep on their sides facing away from each other, but she woke up in the middle of the night to find him parting her legs with his knee and sliding inside her in one bold stroke. Something got off the chain then, and she rolled, forcing him to his back. She nipped at his ear, his belly, the sensitive curve of his thigh, and when she rose again he was red-faced and straining, his body one long pleading arch. She mounted him this time, pinning his hands to the mattress, and rode him furiously to an explosive culmination that left them both sweat-soaked and gasping for breath.

There was more rutting than making love about it but it made for a solid and dreamless sleep, and she woke the next morning if not with a song in her heart then at least with a sense of well-being and renewal, which had lasted until Johnny began packing to leave on his camping trip.

"If you find out that the herd has decreased," Kate had asked Ruthe when informed of the trip, "and if you find out that wolf predation is the cause, you're going to tell Dan about it, right?"

Ruthe didn't answer, but then Kate hadn't expected her to. Ruthe was perfectly capable of effecting some predator control all by herself, thank you. With twenty-ten vision and an upper body strength honed by decades of backwoods life, she was one of the best shots in the Park. Certainly she was better than Kate.

Kate kneaded the dough until it was smooth and elastic, covered the bowl with Saran Wrap, and set it to one side to rise. She washed her hands and got out her USGS map of the Park. Three of the four corners were missing and it was coming apart at every crease. She really must order a new one.

She unfolded it on the dining table and located Niniltna and the approximate location of Ruthe's cabin, about halfway between Niniltna and the Roadhouse. Ruthe had told her that they were planning on following the Kanuyaq for ten or twelve miles and then cutting overland on a heading east-southeast.

After some searching, Kate found the Gruening River, its source in the Quilaks south of the Big Bump, running by tortuous twists and turns south by southwest to drain into the Kanuyaq River just above the delta where the Kanuyaq itself drained into Prince William Sound. She traced an imaginary line from Ruthe's cabin to the Gruening River basin, and sat back with an air of having all her worst suspicions confirmed.

What no one had said but what was perfectly obvious to anyone with even rudimentary map reading skills was that Ruthe's suggested route was going to take them right over Global Harvest's Suulutaq Mine leases.

Jim had to fly to Cordova that morning to put Margaret Kvasnikof and Hallelujah Smith on a plane to Anchorage. They would be taking up residency in the Hiland Mountain Correctional Facility, there to begin serving a four-year sentence for defrauding the Alaska Permanent Fund of almost a quarter of a million dollars, by way of false dividend applications in the names of forty-three imaginary children over a period of five years. It was the biggest single PFD bust in state history and Kate's biggest paying case to date, and every Alaskan loved to hate people who ripped off the PFD. There had been significant airtime devoted to the conviction, which hadn't done Kate's business any harm.

He handed the two felons over to their escort at Mudhole Smith Airport and waited till the Alaska Airlines 737 was wheels up before hitching a ride into town with a local fisherman just back from a visit to the dentist in Anchorage. He could drive his truck but he couldn't talk, so it was a quiet ride, which suited Jim. He had a lot on his mind.

He knew why he'd been pissy lately. He was keeping secrets from Kate. Only one secret, actually, but it was a whopper. He couldn't prove it in court, and Willard didn't even remember it, but Jim was certain that Louis Deem had loaded Willard like a gun and shot him off in the direction of the Koslowskis' house that night with the intention of burgling the gold in the display case in the living room.

He knew that the longer he went without telling Kate, the worse it would be when he did tell her. Worse still would be if she found out on her own, but since he was equally certain that he was the only one who knew, he wasn't afraid of that. Much.