Ott Decker’s approach was more in the Chamber of Commerce tradition. Hailing originally from California he had miraculously transferred his fealty to the Far North. His enthusiasm for this wild and remote territory was as strong, in its way, as Chris Storm’s somewhat neurotic emotion or Bridie Ballantyne’s hearty trumpeting. There were even those who thought he overdid it. Ott, shrewd operator that he was in the devious world of public relations, knew that the summer tourist from Kansas or Ohio or Nebraska was not interested in Alaska frustrations, resentments or politics. Personal resentment was, indeed, more likely to figure in the visitor’s own comment. Standing in the midst of Gold Street he viewed its supermarket, its cafés, its dress shops, drugstores, banks, airplane travel bureaus, florist shops and bars bars bars. As he dodged its pale blue Buicks and rose-pink Fords his tone took on a peevish edge.

“It doesn’t look any different from Powell Street back home.”

Ott would quirk a derisive eyebrow, though his manner was hearty. “You figured Alaska would be saloons and dance halls and shooting and girls in spangled tights like in the movies?”

“Well, maybe not altogether, but when our plane stopped in Juneau, our first stop on the way up here, why, there was a place, we had a drink there, sawdust on the floor and a fella at the piano in shirt sleeves, and rough-looking characters at the bar, and you got your change in silver dollars.”

“Oh, that. Sure.” Ott was amiable and tolerant. “That’s the new Fish and Gold saloon. It’s rigged for hicks from Outside. Chicago and New York and Detroit and so on.”

“You mean nobody pans gold any more, or hunts bears or lives in igloos? Or shoots up saloons?”

“Course we do. There’s gold, lots of it. Like to pan some? That’s part of our tourist-entertainment program. I’ll drive you out to the dredge right outside of town at Moose Lake, it’s the biggest gold dredge in the world. Glad to show you. And polar bears, well, depends where you are. They don’t go walking down Gold Street, that’s for sure. And Alaska brown bear—well, you’d have to go down to Admiralty or to Kodiak and you better be quick on your feet because they sometimes weigh two thousand pounds and stand thirteen feet high. Let’s see now—shooting up saloons—well, most of ’em are cocktail bars now with that music piped in, all the hit numbers from the new Broadway musical shows. It’s got so you have to elbow your way past the bobby-soxers to get to the bar. Let’s see now, you said igloos. Some of the boys from Kinkaid Air Base built us a dandy snow-block igloo right there on the corner of Gold and Polaris in front of the USO Building for our annual Winter Festival. It was one of the attractions. Course it all melted down months ago.”

Disillusionment on the face of the Outsider roused Ott to fresh effort. With a spacious gesture he would point toward a structure that, somehow unbelievably, rose fourteen stories high against the background of mountain and water and sky.