"They don't have the manpower," Ruthe said softly.

Dina glared. "They don't have the manpower because the government won't allocate funds for proper oversight of the lands in their care. That doesn't stop the ruts the ATVs leave behind from diverting entire streams. Taiga and tundra both all torn to hell, habitat irreparably damaged." She pointed her cigarette at Kate. "I went with a Cat train up to Rampart in 1959, where that moron—what was his name? Oh, Teller, yeah. Well, Teller thought he was going to blast out a dam with a nuclear explosion. Five years ago, I flew to Fairbanks, and guess what? You can still see the track we left. From ten thousand feet up, Kate, you can still see it. Forty years ago, and it's still there. And don't even get me started on the snow machines."

Kate remembered the two drunks on snow machines who had invaded her front yard two springs ago. "I know."

"A lot of people need them for basic transport," Ruthe said. "And for hunting trips, and supply runs."

"A lot of people ride them straight up mountains to see if they can get avalanches to fall on them, too," Dina snapped. "Which I call a self-correcting problem when they succeed, not to mention a triumph for the gene pool."

"Dina," Ruthe said. She didn't say, You don't mean that, but Kate could hear it all the same.

"And what does our absentee landlord do?" Dina said. "Nothing, that's what. And they're going to continue doing nothing, because if they started cracking down on every charter member of the NRA, it would send up a scream you could hear on Mars."

Kate didn't quite know how they'd made it from snow machines to gun control, but from long experience Ruthe had an answer. "I'm a member of the NRA," she said mildly. At Dina's glare, she added, "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."

Kate laughed, and then at Dina's glare turned the laugh into a cough.

"They want to drill for oil in ANWR," Dina said. "They want to punch some exploratory holes in Iqaluk. Of course they want to get rid of the rangers like Dan O'Brian, the ones who've been here for a while, the ones who don't just talk the talk. Never mind that Alaska is the last place in the nation, maybe even the last place on the planet, that still looks like it did in the beginning. Oh, yeah." She snorted smoke. "You bet. It's the rangers with practical experience on the ground who might actually have a clue as to how that would affect the wildlife who will be the first to go."

Kate turned to Ruthe, who looked ever so faintly apologetic. "Well," Ruthe said, her soft voice sounding the antithesis of Dina's harsh tones, "I'm not sure we shouldn't let them drill."

Dina sat straight up in her chair. "What!"

"With conditions." Ruthe's gaze was limpid. "They can drill in ANWR, if they keep their mitts off parks and refuges in the rest of the state."