Thor stood up now, the towering frame seemed to take on even greater dimensions, the blue eyes turned strangely dark, but the rosy face was mild, the tone reasoning.

“I’m as much Christine’s guardian as you are. You know that. Until she comes of age. After that she’ll be on her own. She’s adult even now, in her thinking. She mustn’t be bullied or tricked to do anything without her consent.”

“She’s going to Seattle and civilization.”

“Only if she wants to. And I think Alaska is civilized.”

“She’s going around with a lot of mongrels here. And people too old for her. Radicals, to put it in flattering terms. That Guildenstern, I hear he’s been taking some kind of GI course at Baranof, and flying a bush crate.”

“That young man,” Thor said, “could make a plane singlehanded if he had to, out of oil drums and a Model T Ford.”

“They’re all natural-born mechanics, those monkeys, I’ll say that for them, I don’t know where they get it and I don’t want to know. But that’s not saying I’m going to allow my granddaughter to run around with one of them.”

Cheerfully Thor chided him. “Now now, Czar, are you pretending you’ve forgotten Christine is part Eskimo herself?”

Always ivory pale, Czar’s skin now took on a curious clay color like the waxen skin of the dead. His voice was low, monotonous, too controlled, as though it might have risen to a scream if he were to unleash it for only a moment. “I know that my daughter married your son. I suppose he was your son. I wish she had died first.”

Bridie had often been witness to scenes between these two high-powered men, but early in this encounter she had sensed a feeling stronger, more passionate, than ever before. She once had seen a crude local painting of two moose bulls horn-locked in battle. She thought of this now.

Bridie flung out her arm then, as though she had been physically struck. “You can’t say that in front of me, Czar Kennedy, and go free of it. You’re wishing Chris herself dead when you say that, or never born at all. Shame to you!”

Czar ignored her. He was looking at Thor as one would stare, remotely, at a stranger. “I don’t know who you are. And I’m going to find out. Fifty years, and I don’t know anything about you. Nobody in Alaska does.”

“There’s nothing to know, Czar. Nothing of any importance to you or to me or to Christine.”

“Uh-huh. That’s why you’ve kept your life a secret? With your books and your wanderings and always yelling about freedom, and living in a log cabin like a pauper. I’ll tell you what I think. You’re a criminal. I’ve thought so ever since I first saw you. You’ll have no rights to Christine, I’m damn sure of that. You’ll be on your way out of Alaska—let alone Baranof. I’ll spend all the money it takes. I’ll make it my business to find out.”