“He’s a grand gifted cook, that Gus,” Bridie said. “He can make anything you want to name, elegant. I bet he could take Eskimo food, a handful of willow-bush switches and bears’ feet, or an owl, and make it tasty as if a French chef had dreamed it up. But I don’t know, all the time he’s serving you it’s like he was breathing hate down your neck. I’d rather eat at the Caribou Café, and Nick smiling and visiting table to table, you feel like the guest of honor at a banquet. It’s in the Bible, says, better a meal of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred. Though I must say I wouldn’t care to sit down to a dinner of herbs, with or without love. Not that I’d care for a stalled ox, either.”

It was to Czar’s house that the three men fled—Dave Husack, Sid Kleet, and Czar himself, though the Chamber of Commerce luncheon hour gave them barely fifteen minutes of grace. They were like small boys crawling under the porch or into the woodshed to hatch their plots. The big crowded empty living room awaited them.

“What’ll it be?” Czar asked. “Bourbon, Dave? Sid?”

“Well, I don’t know. I had a little snort on the plane, there, before we landed down,” Dave said.

“You won’t get anything at the luncheon, that’s for sure,” Kleet warned him.

Gus was there to perform a grudging service. A bony evasive man with a curiously clay-colored skin in which were imbedded two utterly expressionless pale gray-white eyes like the eyes of a dead carp. No other house in all Alaska, perhaps, except the Governor’s mansion in Juneau, boasted a manservant. If a newcomer remarked this, Baranof, quick to come to Czar’s defense, said, “Somebody’s got to do for Czar. All the big shots come to see him when they visit Alaska, they even come specially. He tried native help. Well, you know the way they do, come one week, get their pay, and stay away till the money’s gone.”

A little water on the side, Gus. No. No ice. Husack and Kleet drank, tossing the amber stuff down their throats with one quick backward jerk of the head, the gulp of water, the handkerchief at the lips, the exhaled breath. The smell of the whiskey, the scent of Husack’s cologne, pricked the air. Silently the three men settled into the vast chairs. The dim midday Arctic twilight gave their faces, their motions, a strange dreamlike quality.

“We’ve barely got fifteen minutes,” Czar said. “Gus, you come in here at twelve-thirty sharp and remind us.” He had poured himself a bourbon, had carried it to his chair and placed it on the table beside him. He did not drink it. He picked up the glass now, and held it to the waning light, and put it down. “Just who’s this girl, anyway?” he said. “I know who she is. But who is she?”

Dave Husack shifted his big frame in the deep chair. “Now, Czar, I told you all that, she’s a smart girl, she knows the score, she knows why she’s here in Baranof and all, you wouldn’t think a girl looks like she does could be so smart. Her mother and Louise were school friends in Kansas City. You know. But what I want to talk about now, these few minutes, is what line do I take if they ask me for a few remarks at this luncheon?”