Whenever Kate got a moment in the frenzied hours that followed, she looked up to find the fleet drifting, nets out, their crews moving up and down cork lines in skiffs, hauling the net up wherever they saw a cork bob and picking the salmon caught in the mesh of the net below the surface of the water. It was hard, backbreaking work, but Alaskan fishermen were the last of the independent businessmen, stubborn, self-reliant, always cantankerous, frequently adulterous and, in Kate's admittedly biased opinion, wholly admirable. The state had done its best to regulate where they fished, but the fishermen still delivered to whoever they damn well pleased, which was probably whoever paid them the most per pound, but could also be whoever had pissed them off the least, and the opportunities for pissing off an Alaskan fisherman were legion. They were sovereign unto themselves and fiercely beholden to none, so long as the Mother of Storms saw fit to let them be, and so long as they got their boat payments to the bank on time.

The Dawn, the Rose, the Darlene, the Deliah, the Tiana, the Danica, the Prisdlla, all came, delivered fish and went. An hour before the period ended, the Tanya pulled up to port, Jim beaming and Doug nearly giddy with relief. They delivered three thousand pounds and took their ticket away rejoicing, Jim this time outright proposing to Auntie Vi and taking his rejection in good spirit. A skiff came alongside so loaded down it was shipping water, a redheaded woman in yellow rain gear at the kicker, a setnetter delivering from the beach. She was followed by Mary Balashoff, another setnetter from the opposite end of the beach. Kate thought she saw a third and equally loaded skiff put off from the beach and tie up to a drifter, but she was too busy to pay much attention.

The Freyas trim line was a lot lower in the water than it had been that morning when the Esther returned for a second time, her young skipper's triumph having given way to weariness, but it was a happy fatigue, and when Kate told him he was high boat for the period his broad brown cheeks flushed like a boy's. "Am I really, Kate?"

She smiled, almost as tired as he was. "You really are."

He stood there, dazed and delighted; savoring it. He was nineteen years old, and it was only his second summer of fishing on his own. "Wait till I tell Dad." He grinned suddenly. "Wait till I tell Mom!"

Kate laughed. "Should keep her happy for a while."

"You don't know my mom. She'll say any boat with her name on it ought to be high boat every period."

"And she's right," Auntie Joy said sternly from behind them. They turned and saw the twinkle in her eye.

Tim tried to frown and failed. "Ah, you women all stick together."

"Make her come out and pick her own fish," Kate suggested.