“Why, it’s Hopalong Asakluk!” Chris said, falling into the spirit of the thing.

“Stick ’em up!” yelled the boy, a gun in either hand. Obligingly feigning terror they raised their hands high over their heads, the boy clicked the weapons ferociously and stuttered an uh-uh-uh-uh-uh far back in his throat in what he hoped was the sound of a rapid-fire gun.

“I don’t think he ought to play with guns, Angie,” Ross said, though he still held his hands over his head. “I hate to see kids play with guns.”

Then he stooped, picked up the boy and held him high, but the small booted feet beat a tattoo in remonstrance against this infantile treatment and Ross set him hastily down.

“Sorry, old boy,” Ross said. He laid a hand gently on the child’s shoulder. His eyes were on Christine. “Chris, this is my son Rolf. He was named after my father.”

22

BRIDIE AND THOR, handsome old landmarks, impressive old lifemarks, were soaring again over the almost mythical Alaskan territory which had so indelibly stamped them in its image. Deep in a discussion of the subject that ran neck-and-neck with Alaska in their thoughts and emotions, they sat together in one of the sagging seats of the old DC-3 churning its way to Barrow on the shores of the Arctic. Christine was not, for the moment, an occupant of the gelid cabin. She was not only occupying the cockpit with Ross Guildenstern; she was competently at the controls.

Bridie’s customary sartorial perfection was slightly marred by the temporary victory of the flesh over the spirit. An airline red wool blanket covered her knees and ankles, another was wrapped snugly around her modish sealskin shoulders, and over her draped blue silk turban she had tied a wool scarf (borrowed from Thor) that covered her ears and was knotted under her chin. From this cocoon her carefully made-up face, with the lively blue eyes, emerged like a modern mummy by Picasso. In spite of obvious difficulties she had managed to work one hand loose and she now was polishing off her second roast-beef sandwich under the quite sound conviction that there would be nothing fit to eat in Barrow.

“You going to let her see this boy like this, all the time?”

“She’s nineteen, Bridie.”

“I wish you could of seen her face when he said, ‘This is my son Rolf.’ She just stood there like a statue. But I’ll say this for her, good stock will tell. One of those queens you claim you’re related to couldn’t have come to quicker or more dignified. How wonderful, she says, how can you bear to leave him up here when you get back to Oogruk so seldom. You’d think she was a Visiting Nurse talking, or something. He says Angeline and Frank—that’s his aunt and uncle the boy lives with—are crazy about him, the boy needs family affection, his age, and he says when he’s ten he’s going to bring the boy to Baranof and put him in school there and live with him, so he’ll have a real home of his own. Well, just figure that one out, would you kindly? And then give me a ring some time.”