“Oh, that. That’s part of a legend in which an Eskimo sees the back of his wife as she bends over the cooking pot, he dreams he must find his way through the two hills to the valley.”

“What! Sh! The men will hear you. What’s this one?”

The white fox parka, with its hood of white wolf, was a fitting frame for the girl’s brilliant face. Slim white fur mukluks and gloves completed the dazzling effect—too dazzling, her enemies said. In the rather rueful way she sometimes had when speaking of herself Chris agreed with them. “In this outfit I look like that girl in the beer ads. But it’s good Alaska publicity.”

Then, in summer, hot or cold from June to September, Chris’s costume as Greeter and Guide was the most feminine of cottons or silks, her golden arms bare, the bodice fashionably low cut, as proof that Alaska was a summer resort.

Visitors often mistook her for something purely ornamental, like the scenery. They were completely wrong. They were wrong about the scenery too. Hidden in those fabulous peaks and creeks and torrents were copper and gold and uranium and platinum and cobalt and tin and tungsten and nickel and lead; in the tundra and flatlands coal and oil; in the vast streams and inlets and seas millions of finned and furred creatures from salmon to seals to whales. But they were not for the casual passer-by. Beneath Chris Storm’s shining surface, too, there were hidden treasures and wonders of mind and heart and spirit.

The three Baranof Professional Public Relations stars used three quite different weapons with which to do battle with the world known as Outside. Christine, deceptively blithe and débonnaire, tickled you with a poniard of gaiety, but you never felt sure that she might not drive it suddenly into your ribs. Bridie Ballantyne used a verbal shillelagh wrapped in cotton velvet. Ott Decker, good Chamber of Commerce Secretary that he was, just laid on with a shovel.

For example, though her laugh was merry, her way lighthearted, Chris’s statements were sometimes dramatic. Listeners were likely to recall them, thoughtfully, following the more spectacular moments of their trip.

“Yes,” she would agree, apparently in charming deference to the stranger’s comment. “Yes, this is a gigantic wilderness. With neon lights, of course; and hydrogen bombs and dog sleds and radar and Eskimos and crab meat au gratin and skin boats and juke boxes and art exhibits and symphony concerts; and moose sometimes ambling down Gold Street in a real tough winter.”

The Visitor from Outside, puzzled and vaguely resentful, would wave an arm with a gesture that embraced the incredible landscape.

“Some country you got here, that’s for sure. I thought it would be different. Of course, it’s different, all right, but other ways it’s more like back home than I thought. Not like it, exactly, but—–”

“We’re people—all kinds of people—just like you in the States. We’re white and black and brown and young and old and smart and dumb. But we’re absolutely different in one way.”