“Well, now, it’s grand to see you, you didn’t show up the last luncheon, I guess it takes a general and a couple of millionaires from Outside to haul you away from the furniture business.… Howdy, General, glad you made it, you’re at the head table of course, all the guests of honor … Dave, you and Czar look like the you-know-what just swallowed the canary, look out the feathers don’t stick in your throat.… Sid, you’re up at the Speakers’ Table there next to Dave of course, little helping hands … Oh, Miss Drake dear, don’t take off your mink till you’re seated, the girls would miss a treat.… Meet Nick, he’s the one in the white apron and shirt sleeves, Nick come here a minute, this is Nick, it’s his Caribou Café, where you’ll be eating, times you’re not asked out, though that’s not likely to happen here in Baranof, but don’t think it’s beans and moose meat at the café, let me tell you you can get champagne and steak and king crab if you’ve got the price.”

In the stir and hubbub there was a curious lightheartedness. Alaska loved a gathering—any gathering. A stranger, however insensitive, must have detected a buoyancy, an atmosphere of youth, in this group of smartly dressed young women and sloppily dressed young men. The big room seemed to shimmer and shift with a sort of electric vibrance. Only the Big Boys at the Speakers’ Table had the tired joyless faces of the terribly successful.

There was the General, resigned to the knowledge that National Fish now was his drab present and future, no matter how glittering and martial his past. There sat David Husack, his color too high for basic health, and looking the more sanguinary in contrast to the imposing silvery head and the El Greco pallor of Czar Kennedy beside him. At his left Sid Kleet, as always, gave the effect of lurking. His lethal gaze searched the crowd, passionless and coldly menacing as the eye of a Colt .38. Occasionally the slit that was his mouth parted ever so slightly, he uttered a cryptic syllable in a mutter so low that, lean though he might, Dave Husack was obliged to cup his ear in order to catch it. Wilbur Distelhorst, disgruntled and peevish, fussing, between sips of water, with a sheaf of penciled notes. Oscar Bogard, over-friendly and unwelcome as a stray puppy, moved from one to another of the seated guests of honor, his arm resting on an unreciprocal shoulder, his palm pressing an unresponsive hand.

Only Bayard Husack and Dina Drake, he with Sid Kleet at his right, she with Oscar Bogard at her left, had the look of vitality that comes of youth and beauty and curiosity. Just before entering the room she had said, “I don’t care what arrangements they’ve made, I want you to sit next to me.”

“You going to be difficult?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you come to Alaska at all, if you feel that way?”