"Yeah. They were up here, too." Dan shook his head. "I liked that kid, I really did. Lot of enthusiasm, lot of smarts, but he did wave his daddy like a flag. It could get tiring."

"Tiring enough for you to pull his plug?" Jack said hopefully.

Dan leaned back his head and laughed. "Sometimes, I admit, I'd liked to have strangled the sanctimonious little s.h.i.t," he said. "And sometimes I'd have had to stand in line to do it. But I didn't.

Neither did anybody else up here on the Step."

"You familiar with what he did the last day he was seen?"

"s.h.i.t, who isn't? Since Kate started sniffing around you can't work up a decent conversation on the CB without dragging Miller into it." He turned a bright, inquiring gaze on Kate.

"Danny boy," Kate said sadly, "we've got zilch. Every lead we've had has gone right down the toilet." She nodded at Jack. "When Miller disappeared Jack sent Ken Dahl in to look for him. Now he's missing, too."

Danny pursed his lips together in a silent whistle. "Blond, blue-eyed?"

"That's the guy. He come up here?"

Danny said blandly, "Yeah, he made it this far. I didn't know him from Adam, but I recognized him right away from the description Bernie gave me."

Caught off guard, Kate said, "How?"

"He had his mouth open." Kate reddened and Danny grinned. "What do you want to know, Kate? I told everything I knew to the feds when the FBI rode up on their white horse."

Kate was silent for a moment. "Tell me about him. Miller."

Dan looked at her, and drawled, "He was twenty three. Short. Skinny.

More energy than a nuclear power plant. More enthusiasm than a bull moose in rut. Talked all the time about My Father The Congressman."

"What did you have him doing?"

"Let's see, he got here early last spring, just after you nailed Sandy.

Nice work, that, by the way. Poaching's down by more than half in the Park this winter from last. Lot less drunks waving their rifles around." Kate hoped Dan wouldn't be climbing down into Lost Chance Creek anytime soon. "Anyway, Miller. Last spring Mac Devlin was politicking to start work on the Carmack, so I sent Miller down there to check on the operation. Gave him the go-ahead to shut it down if Devlin was stepping out of line, which I and everyone else knew he was.

Miller naturally found out, too, and he did shut him down."

Dan grinned. "So then Miller appointed himself guardian angel of every stream in the Park that had been frightened by the sight of a gold pan.

He spent most of his time after that poking around mining and sledging operations, checking permits and runoff and seeing if the summer miners were packing out what trash they packed in. h.e.l.l, it needed doing, so I let him do it."

"How did he get along with people in the Park? People who lived here, I mean. Other than Mac."

"He didn't. Like I said, he'd been poking around the mines. It turned out he'd taken a mineralogy course in college. He got his daddy to send him this little hammer, and he started taking samples out of every abandoned mine shaft he poked his head down." Dan shrugged. "You know how it is. Those old homesteaders aren't going to mine it themselves, but they're d.a.m.ned if they're going to let anyone else move in on them, either."

"Anybody in particular complain?"

"Nah, that's the funny thing. They'd stumble over him on their property and be breathing tar and feathers. Then he'd start talking to them about this vision he had of the mines opened up and operated by the government, which would use the profits to develop the Park for tourism. That boy was an Outsider from the word go and a king-size pain in the a.s.s, but he had an idea that he believed in." Dan grinned at them. "And my, could he talk. That tongue of his was pure silver and jointed at both ends. Put him and Billy Graham in the same room and lock the door on them and my money'd be on Billy Graham coming out a born-again greenie. Yeah," Dan said, stretching, "Miller turned the tide on more than a few homesteads that I know of, and he crossed up Mac again and again, the last time over the Nabesna. But like I said, it needed doing. Devlin's needed somebody sitting on him since the first day he slunk back into the Park."

"The perfect ranger," Kate suggested.

"Well now, I wouldn't go that far." Dan scratched his belly and confessed, "I do admit I was glad Miller was mostly out in the field, because when he came up to headquarters he always had a better idea how to run things."

"What things?"

"Anything," Dan said ruefully, and Kate and Jack laughed. "Yeah, it was funny at first, but when he started telling rangers who had been in the business twenty years how to clean out deadfall and counsel campers and ride herd on hunters, he was begging to get himself pushed off the Step." Dan shook his head, smiling at the memory. "He could wear you out."

"You liked Miller, too," Kate accused.

"What do you mean, 'too'?" Dan said, a little defensively.

"Bernie, Bobby, now you. All the people I'd expect to have hated the kid's guts. When you talk about him, you all get that same funny expression on your faces and that same funny tone in your voices, like you couldn't decide between sending him naked into a swamp full of mosquitoes or adopting him for a son and heir."

Dan shrugged uncomfortably. "Yeah. Well."

"What did you tell Ken Dahl when he showed up?"

Dan scratched his head. "Same thing I just told you."

"Anything else?"

"No. Wait a minute," Dan said. "We kept a copy of the transcript of the testimony in front of the House subcommittee. He wanted to see it, so I let him read it."

Kate exchanged a glance with Jack, who said, "Could we have a copy?"

"Sure." Dan rummaged around in an overflowing file cabinet for some twenty minutes, cursing beneath his breath all the while. Eventually, with an air of triumph Kate considered too mild in relation to the task accomplished, he produced a folder shedding sheets of paper like a fish shedding scales. "George!"

George, a thin young man with an enormous nose, a handlebar mustache and bare feet, stuck his head in the door and inquired in a serene voice, "You bellowed, your eminence?"

"Is that Xerox machine working today?"

"It's the only machine out here that is."

"Could you make a copy of this file for me?"

"Sure, but it's your fault if the paper jams."

"Live dangerously. Risk it." George left and Dan said, "Can I hitch a ride back to town with you? I got a girl in Niniltna I want to see."

"When don't you?" Kate said absently. She was frowning at her crossed ankles. Dan exchanged a quizzical glance with Jack, who shrugged. They waited.

Kate became aware of the silence that had fallen in the room and uncrossed her ankles. "No," she said, rising to her feet. "No, you can't hitch a ride with us. I'm sorry, Dan, but we're not going back to Niniltna just yet."

Jack shot her a quick look, but said nothing.

Dan shrugged and grinned. "I'll get on the CB and get her to come up here."

"Who is it this time?" Kate said.

"A gentleman never kisses and tells," Dan said virtuously, and pretended offense when Jack laughed at him.

Jack followed Kate outside to the airstrip, tucking the bulky file in his parka pocket. She stood next to the Cessna in silence without moving, her eyes troubled. At last Jack said, "Where are we going?"

She stood, irresolute, not replying. Jack nudged her and repeated the question.

Her chin lifted. He heard her take a deep breath and she turned and said, "Have you got enough gas to get us to Anchorage?"

"You want to go to town now?"

"Yes."

"From here?"

"Yes."

He looked at her. "We've got enough gas. Why do you want to go to town?"

"I want to bail Chick out of jail."

Her answer rocked him back a little. "Chick who?" he said cautiously.

"Chick Noyukpuk." Jack's expression remained blank and Kate said, "The Billiken Bullet." Still no response, and Kate said with asperity, "It is inconceivable to me that you have lived for twenty-two years in this state and you still don't know who the Billiken Bullet is."

"Who is he?" Jack said meekly.

Kate gave a martyred sigh. "He's Mandy's roomie." She looked at him and added, "Mandy? Next door to Abel? You know--"

"The lady with more dogs than James Thurber," he interrupted. "I remember now, the little guy with no front teeth. They mush dogs."

Kate closed her eyes for a moment. "Yes," she said, opening them.

"They mush dogs. And they live together."

"Oh." Jack thought it over, and added, "When he's not in jail, you mean."

"When Chick's not in jail," Kate agreed.

"And you want to bail him out?"

"Yes."

"What's he in for?"

Kate gestured vaguely. "The usual. Drunk and disorderly. Disturbing the peace. a.s.saulting a police officer. Resisting arrest."

Jack took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Oh. That usual.

Mind telling me why we're bailing him out?" Kate opened her mouth, and then closed it again. "No, huh?"

"It's just a hunch," she muttered, more to herself than to him.

"Okay," he said simply. "Let's go."

NINE.

"I didn't take the d.a.m.n thing," Chick said. "I told that d.a.m.n trooper in Anchorage, and I told that d.a.m.n judge-Did you hear what she said to me?"

"Who said?"

"That judge who sentenced me," Chick said, sitting up straight on Bobby's couch and looking indignant.

They had made the trip to Anchorage and back in record time, and all Kate saw of town was Fifth Avenue on the way to the Cook Inlet Pre-Trial Facility, Third Avenue on the way to the courthouse, and Sixth Avenue on the way back to Merrill Field, all of them glittering red and green with Christmas decorations. It was late in the afternoon when they took off for the return trip, and the sun had long since set.

Strobes from the tops of the Arco and BP towers and exhaust from the traffic made the streets look like something out of Faust. She was inexpressibly relieved when they were airborne and outbound. Sitting next to her, she knew Jack had felt the tension build on the way into town and ebb on the way out, and she was grateful that he knew enough to remain silent.

Chick Noyukpuk, oblivious to any emotional trauma experienced by anyone not himself, slept his way home curled up in a blanket in the backseat.

Now he was wide awake, drinking coffee laced with Wild Turkey and watching hungrily as Bobby barbecued moose steaks on the fireplace grill.

"What did the judge say?" Jack said, resigned to playing straight man.

"She said I was a convicted felon and couldn't vote no more."

"Oh," Jack said. He raised an eyebrow in Kate's direction.

"Have you ever voted?" she asked Chick.

"No," Chick said belligerently, "but that don't mean I don't want to.

You just wait till the next election, I'll vote, by G.o.d I will." He pushed his jaw out. There was a moment of silence. "When's the next election?" he said.

"It'll be a while," Jack said in a soothing voice.

"But I still didn't steal that G.o.ddam snow machine," Chick said, uncharacteristically reverting to his original complaint. He saw Kate's skepticism and raised his voice. "I didn't, Kate. On top of knowing I'd be back in the guest cabin when I got home if I did steal the d.a.m.n thing, have you ever known me to pa.s.s up a ride on a Snowcat?"

She said nothing, and he demanded, "Well?"

"No," Kate said slowly, "no, I haven't."

"Who says there was one?" Bobby muttered to Jack, but the big man was watching Kate and didn't respond.

A minute pa.s.sed, and another. A third went the same way and Bobby couldn't stand it. "Is this the little gray cells' part?" he begged.