The Seattle Post-Intelligencer had bought it, published it, and syndicated it. The digest magazine called Look Alive had used it in its Stranger Than Fiction department. All Alaska, Washington State, Oregon, British Columbia and the whole Northwest for that matter had read and fumed or chuckled, depending on the political and social standing of the reader.

“I guess maybe that will shut their mouths clap-clapping these fifty years past,” Bridie said, quite without rancor. “It’s been kind of exciting and all, being talked about and whispered about. But being they’re so nosy all these years, why, I figured they should have the straight of it. So they’d know what to put on my tombstone when the time came.”

With the money received from this lone literary effort she had achieved three almost lifelong wishes. She bought for herself a pair of smallish clear blue-white diamond earrings and it was said she wore them even to bed; she took a trip to Honolulu in midwinter and was, on her return, more chauvinistically Alaskan than ever, if possible.

“Hot,” she said, in a kind of running travel talk. “And a little pee of rain most days just when you’re out at a garden party. Liquid sunshine they call it. Summer all the time. My, I should think they’d get sick of it! Here in Baranof summer’s summer and winter’s winter, no mistake about it and keeps you on your toes. Hawaii they’ve got what they call a fruit, it’s papaya, my opinion no more flavor than a rubber boot. Alaska’s good enough for me, strawberries so big you have to cut them in quarters and watch not to dribble the juice.”

For the third part she virtuously donated a neat sum toward the Baranof College Scholarship Fund. “For an Eskimo student,” she stipulated. “One of those smart kids can take an engine or a watch or any mechanical thing apart and fix it and put it together again. Natural-born mechanics, I’ve seen ’em at it. Engine instinct. God knows where they came by the knack of it.”

Her costume this frigid morning had been planned for the airport arrival of a group of Distinguished Visitors, to be followed by the Baranof Chamber of Commerce luncheon at Nick’s Caribou Café. Now as she pranced along Gold Street she audibly sniffed the icy air as though she were drifting languorously through a balmy vale heavy with the scent of exotic bloom.

“My!” she said aloud to no one. “Smells elegant.” She often talked to herself thus as people do who live alone. Everyone she passed greeted her. Hi, Bridie!… Miz Ballantyne!… See you at the luncheon?

They wore fur parkas, the hoods pulled forward so that their faces were all but obscured, but Baranof spoke to Baranof, no matter how deeply hooded in wolf. They were accustomed to seeing Bridie dressed like a Vogue cover, miraculously unfrosted. Younger and hardier citizens would not have dreamed of venturing out in such garb. Her keen eye recognized everyone, marked everything. Hello, Nap! Well, good morning, Zella, I hear it’s a girl this time, like you hoped for. She passed Bowker’s Jewelry Store window. Gus Bowker had just finished his new display and was cautiously surveying the effect from inside, his head screwed round so that he seemed to be ogling the passer-by. Bridie, not pausing in her progress, glanced swiftly at the shining show window, threw up her hands and wagged her head in a gesture conveying dazzlement. A gratified and reassured Gus removed his head from public display.