“I’ve found a house.”

“What house?” She described it. He said, “You’re crazy.”

“It could be wonderful. You know what they’ve done to old wrecks in Boston. I’ve got two thousand dollars saved. I’m going to buy a lathe. You were going to buy a car. What do we want with a car! Nobody can drive more than twelve miles out of Baranof in any direction, and you know it. Car! We can have a house. Three bedrooms!”

She was crying. Her eyes were wide open, the tears were streaming unheeded down her cheeks.

“Butterfly Megrue won’t sell any property. She won’t repair anything and she won’t sell anything.”

“I can try. Will you let me have one thousand dollars?”

“You know you can have anything I’ve got.” Then, at something in her face, “No monkeyshines. No murders.”

“Just money and strategy, Barnett dear.”

She wrote it, saw it set up, read proof on it, smuggled it in when he was busy elsewhere.

SORE EYES AND EYESORES

An object of beauty is sometimes called a sight for sore eyes. An eyesore has quite a different meaning. In Baranof, the ramshackle wrecks of what once were houses or buildings, now fallen into decay, are eyesores. They not only offend the gaze of the passer-by and give the visitor the impression of an impoverished and neglected town, but they are a potential hazard to lives in case of fire or collapse. There is said to be a movement on foot to petition the City Council with a plan to order the destruction of these buildings. It is rumored that the buildings designated are the one midway in the block on Glacier Drive between Fox and Fifth; another on Otter between Snow and Tillicum, and others at …

Butterfly had visited the Federal Building, the Mayor’s office and the Northern Light before the week’s grist of papers was fully off the press. It was said her screeches made the noise of a jet plane just then passing overhead seem, in comparison, like the cooing of a dove. Addie was waiting. “Come on in here,” she said, maneuvering the distraught creature into the back room. “Now just sit down, Butterfly, and tell me all about it.” For a few minutes she listened quietly to the flood of invective. “Look, Butterfly, I have a plan. You can fool them. If Barnett and I promise to clean up the place, and paint it and sort of mend it, so that it might be lived in for, perhaps, ten years, would you agree to rent it at …”

The thing was done. Papers were signed, a payment made. It was not until two weeks later that Thor Storm heard the story, and then it was too late to do more than lecture Addie Barnett on the Alaska code of ethics. Addie had attacked the rehabilitation of the house with a fury of efficiency. Rags, mouse nests, unspeakable mattresses, broken bits of wood, cobwebs, sawdust, paper—all the refuse of a house abandoned for years—had to be not only removed but hauled away. Back-yard bonfires were considered madness in that region of dry air and wooden housing.