A fine and bitter snow by Dana Stabenow Read Free Book Online

"Why not?"
     
    "Too pretty," Dina said. "Might cut in on our action." She cackled again.
     
    One of Dan's rangers had apprehended an FBI agent and a police lieutenant from the Anchorage police department. They'd been shooting at moose out of season and without a license, and while on the outside of the better part of a half gallon of Calvert's, which had not improved their aim, as they had nearly taken out the ranger along with the moose. Since Anchorageites were the butt of most Park jokes, this incident had given rise to much merriment. The Kanuyaq caribou herd had topped 23,000 in population and was in danger of eating itself out of house and home. Since the herd migrated from its state land grazing area to its calving ground near the headwaters of the Kanuyaq in the Park, the Park Service had consulted with the state Fish and Game people and had come up with a plan to allow flying and shooting the same day, with a maximum take of five caribou per hunter, and they were even allowing each hunter to take one cow. "Beginning when?" Dina said with a gleam in her eye. She'd always been one of the best shots in the Park, and she was fond of saying that if she hadn't been, she and Ruthe would have starved to death those first years on their mountain.
     
    "The first week of January," Kate said. "They want to wait until the males shed their racks, so we don't get a bunch of trophy hunters looking for something to put over the fireplace."
     
    Ruthe groaned. "Forget about it. I'm not up to hunting this year." She fluttered her eyelashes. "Let's find some nice young hunk to bring home the bacon for us." They all laughed, but Kate was aware that Ruthe's recent disinclination to hunt had more to do with the sudden onset of Dina's old age than it did with lack of interest. Over the past year, Dina had gone from being a vital woman in glowing health to an old woman with shaking hands and a shakier step. She walked only with the aid of her cane, and had to be helped from her chair, as if her back had lost all its strength. Her hands, once so strong and so capable, hands that had hauled Kate over the edge of a cliff by the scruff of her neck on more than one occasion, had deteriorated into shrunken claws. It hurt Kate to look at them, and so she didn't.
     
    Billy and Annie Mike had adopted a Korean baby and named him Alexei, for Annie's grandfather. "My god," Dina said in disgust, "the woman had seven children of her own. Wasn't that enough?"
     
    "Evidently not," Ruthe said.
     
    Dina had the grace to look slightly ashamed. "Sorry," she said gruffly. "Never been a kid person."
     
    "Yeah, you never could stand having me around," Kate said, and Ruthe laughed out loud.
     
    Mandy and Chick were in training for the Yukon Quest. "Every day at noon, like clockwork," Kate said, "I hear dog howls coming down the trail. I open the door and to what to my wondering eyes should appear but Chick, stopping by for cocoa and fry bread."
     
    Ruthe and Dina laughed. "Thinks with his stomach," Dina said. "What I call a proper man."
     
    Ruthe refilled their mugs. "I saw John Letourneau putting the moves on Auntie Edna," Kate said, stirring in evaporated milk. The quality of the silence that followed her remark made her raise her head.
     
    At her curious look, Dina said, "Yeah, I saw that, too," and added with a sneer, "He's probably after her for that property she owns on Alaguaq Creek."
     
    "Oh, I don't know about that," Ruthe said immediately. "I think Auntie Edna has more than enough charm to explain John's interest."
     
    "Charm, schmarm," Dina said. "That man never does anything without an ulterior motive."
     
    "That's not true, Dina, and you know it," Ruthe said, this time with an edge to her voice.
     
    Kate stepped in to defuse the tension a little, although she was intensely curious as to why it had sprouted up in the first place. "He got a little tangled up in your cane, Dina, there on the dance floor."
     
    "He sure did, didn't he? Can't