"Humph," Auntie Joy said again.

"Lamar's not that bad, auntie," Kate said gently. "He's nowhere near as bad as some of the other fish hawks have been over the years."

The old woman's face relaxed, and she sighed. "I know, Katya. But his rules are not our rules."

Auntie Vi was not so generous. "Who is he, this park ranger, tell us what to do like he own everything? He don't own the creek. He don't own the fish. Nobody own them, so everybody own them." She sat back on her stump, dismissing the matter.

"Vi is right," Auntie Joy said, and added reasonably, "And besides, how our children and grandchildren living, if we don't teach them the old ways?" She waved a hand at the shack full of drying racks standing behind the cabin, a quarter of them hung with the limp red carcasses of red salmon. Split, boned, soaked in brine, they would be left hanging until the oil ran, when the dried alder would be lit and the shack filled with smoke to dry, flavor and texture the meat. "Who knows how to smoke fish when we're gone, if we don't come to the river and teach the children?"

"We always looking for children to come to fish camp." Auntie Balasha sighed. "But children don't come much no more."

A memory of the deer hunt with her father flashed through Kate's mind. As small as she had been, as young as she had been, as unskilled as she had been, still Stephan had been determined that his child would learn the traditional ways, at the very least be able to feed and clothe and house herself without being dependent on anyone else. He had died the following year, but by then the pattern of self-reliance was set, forming the fabric of her life.

She looked around the circle at the four old women, and saw her father staring back at her from every face.

Edna surprised them again. "No, the children don't come, but the white men do. They come with their planes and their powerboats and their four-wheelers, all the time making noise, leaving garbage all over." She leaned forward. "You know what I hear about those ones? They don't even eat the fish! They put them on the wall of their house, to look at! Why? Why is that?" she demanded. "Fish is food, for hungry in winter, not pretty for wall of house." She sat back and stared accusingly at the two white men in their midst.

Jack looked undeniably guilty.

"Gee, Dad," Johnny said, "maybe we should"

"We eat everything we catch," Jack said hastily. "Don't we?" he appealed to Kate.

"I don't know," Kate drawled. "What about all those trophies you've got lining the walls of your den back in Anchorage?"

There were gasps of horror from all four old women.

"Den?" Johnny said. "We got a den?"

"Kate," Jack said ominously.

"Let me see, now, there's a moose, and a Dall sheep, and a goat, and two bearskins, and three king salmon, and I think there's even a wolverine." Kate added, "And he flies and shoots caribou the same day, too, and not for meat, for the racks, can you imagine?"