One thing that could be said in favor of the Suulutaq Mine, this summer the kid wasn‘t around to cramp his style.

Twenty

LABOR DAY

The day was clear, the air cool, and the leaves on the alders and the aspens had turned a brilliant yellow-gold. Old Sam had been waiting for most of the morning, and he was going to keep on waiting until that big, fat bull moose he had scouted in the area came ambling out of the woods and wandered in front of his sights. There was some delicacy about this particular operation, as moose season in this section of Park didn‘t open for another two weeks, but Old Sam wasn‘t trophy hunting, he was hunting for meat. This of course made all the difference, and only tightasses like Chief Ranger Dan O‘Brian would say otherwise.

The location was near the clearing where the bones of the lost guy, whoever the hell he had turned out to be, had been found last spring. He had stumbled across plenty of moose sign when he‘d been tracking that griz, most likely the result of the comehither effect of the Park‘s biggest stands of diamond willow, a good five acres of prime moose browse. It hadn‘t been an area that easy to get to, until the Smiths bladed in their trail, which meant that the area hadn‘t been hunted much, which meant the moose were that much more plentiful, less wary than moose in other areas of the Park, and fat.

It also meant less bushwhacking on the way in and a shorter distance to pack the meat out. Old Sam wouldn‘t have admitted it at gunpoint but his stamina was wearing a mite thin. A passable trail a convenient mile from ground zero was something that was growing more attractive every year.

His purpose was twofold. He was hunting for the cache as well as for his annual end-of-season barbecue, where tradition entailed roasting a whole moose quarter on a rotating spit of his own design over an open pit. Old Sam liked his meat crisp on the outside and bloody close to the bone, and this took time and care. Near the end of the process the word went forth, to Kate and Jim and Johnny, Bobby and Dinah and Katya, Ruthe Bauman, the four aunties if they hadn‘t pissed him off too much lately, some of the less annoying of his fellow board members, Bernie and his kids, and other select Park rats. Although Old Sam wouldn‘t have thought of it that way, it was one of the Park‘s premier social events of the year, to which an invitation was a coveted prize.

And woe betide the Park rat who showed up without one. The Kanuyaq River was an easy toss from the cabin.

Old Sam hated party crashers.

Now, maybe he could have waited until the season opened, but if he wanted to have the barbecue before the temperature dropped below freezing in the daytime he had to build in some time to let the meat hang. Hence the highly satisfactory illegality of the situation. Old Sam grinned to himself. There wasn‘t much he loved more than putting one over on the goddamn Parks Service. Unless it was running a scam on the Fish and Game. That this hunt would be a twofer only added to his enjoyment of the day.