“Hold it, Joan.” Smiling down at her, Ross raised an arresting palm. “These ladies are Alaskans. They know the score. Mrs. Ballantyne used to be a nurse. Tell her what you’re studying for.”

The girl’s serious young face became suddenly brilliant as she smiled up at Bridie. “I’m in training at the hospital here.”

“Look at that, now! Bless you, child.”

One of the small boys who had been peering into the open mouth of the seal now touched the jagged brown teeth with one plump forefinger. Then he wagged the finger chidingly at the creature as a Native Service Nurse must once have wagged a disapproving finger at the boy himself. “Too much candy,” the child said, sternly. “Eat too much candy.”

Christine’s laugh rang out, and Ross’s, and Bridie’s high hoot.

“You darling!” Christine said, and stooped to kiss the top of the child’s head. The tense situation of a few minutes ago had vanished.

“Come on, come on, girls.” Ross waved them up the beach.

Joan called to them as they left. “I hear Lowell brought in the first belugas.”

“Everybody,” Bridie observed, “knows everything anybody’s doing around here.”

“You know everything everybody’s doing in Baranof, don’t you, Bridie?” Chris said.

“Well, yes, I guess I do. But I wouldn’t think just a big fish would make such a ruckus in this town.”

“It means summer up here,” Ross explained. “The first beluga catch of the season. Anyway, a beluga isn’t just a fish. It isn’t even just a whale. Did you ever see a beluga?”

“What’s it like, then?”

“You’ll see.”

The town seemed to be streaming toward the beach. Men, women, children, dogs. The electricity of excitement was in the air. Ross began to run, then he remembered and dropped back with the two women. Wordlessly he and Chris each thrust an arm through Bridie’s left and right, they whisked her, laughing, protesting, along the rutted stony path toward the crowd gathered around the objects in the water below the sloping beach.

“Grampa Thor’s not there,” Chris said. She knew he would have towered head and shoulders above any crowd.

“There’s the show folks,” Bridie panted as she was whisked along. “The Polars. Her hat.”

It was a strangely quiet crowd. Even the dogs had ceased their keening. As Ross approached with the two women the crowd parted to make a path for them. The children gazed up at him with shy mute admiration. The muscular stocky men, the women in their bright calico slips over their fur parkas turned their bronze benign faces toward him in friendship.

“Hello there!” the Roller Polars called to them. “Say, this is worth the trip.” Irma Polar’s earrings swayed and flashed and the flowers in her hat bobbed. Alwin Polar’s ludicrously urban face beneath the Basque beret was a trifle pinched with the chill morning air, but the myopic eyes behind the glasses were wide as a child’s with excitement. “Say, where’s your Grandpa, he sure don’t want to miss this.”