Kate looked at Old Sam.

If it had been anyone else, any other Park rat, he might have looked conscious, ashamed, possibly even repentant, but this was Old Sam. I would have reported it. You used somebody‘s dead body for bear bait?

I would have reported it, he said again.

Yeah, sure, Uncle, Kate said, after you got your bear, and after you‘d skinned him out, and after you‘d packed out the bladder and the meat and the hide. Come on, girl.

She looked at him in amazement. It could not possibly be that Old Sam of all Park rats was going to try to justify his behavior, and to someone fifty years his junior at that.

And then he broke out the uncle grin, one part Gabriel to nine parts Beelzebub. You know I don‘t like bear meat.

Kate‘s search for words adequate to the purpose was futile and brief. Oh, the hell with it, she said. There was never any getting one up on the old man. Let‘s just get out of here.

Old Sam raised a critical eyebrow. You‘re crankier than usual, girl. What‘s going on?

Kate, exasperated, said, We‘re like two seconds away from vivisection and you want to have a conversation?

She turned and got one foot out before he grabbed her arm and spun her around like a top. I taught you better than that, girl, he said, Old Sam at his sternest. You speak respectful to your elders.

There isn‘t a bay handy you can toss me into today, Uncle, she said. Let‘s move. We‘ll move when I say we move and not before, girl. Again with the stare that seemed to see all the way through to her bones. That boy okay?

Johnny‘s fine, Kate said. Johnny‘s great. The truth of that statement made her voice soften, and they both relaxed some. Neither noticed when Mutt‘s head whipped around. Johnny‘s a gift. Jack left me the best part of him. There‘s no trouble there.

Old Sam grew more forbidding. Jim giving you a hard time?

No! No, Kate said. There‘s nothing wrong, Uncle, or there won‘t be, so long we get moving.

Mutt‘s eyes, fixed on the edge of the woods, narrowed, and the hair on her back began to rise. Again, nobody noticed.

It‘s the job then, Old Sam said.

It‘s not the damn job, Uncle, Kate said. I can handle the job, and even if I couldn‘t it‘s only another year.

He squinted down at her, steady dark eyes on either side of a hawk nose, that and his height handed down through four generations from a Norwegian whaler on his mother‘s side, brown skin already darker from a day in the spring sun inherited from a series of Native ancestors starting with Park rats—and if you went back far enough there was probably some Inupiat and Yupik in there somewhere, too. Old Sam was a mongrel, like Kate. And like Kate, he knew bullshit when he heard it. He wasn‘t hearing it now. He cocked his head and said with unaccustomed gentleness, What is it, girl?