It was also the job most beginners got stuck with their first summer. Kate sternly repressed a grin.

He followed her down the creek bank. "Are we going to be able to get any real fishing in if we stay here?"

"Depends on what you call real fishing," she said. "1 think Auntie Vi's definition is a little different than yours."

"You're telling me," he muttered.

She relented. "Of course you'll get some fishing in. Maybe not only the kind of fishing you came for, but you will fish." She laughed at his expression, and turned him to face upstream. "About half a mile up the left bank, there's a great hole for reds."

He brightened. "Really?"

"Really. Although you might be sharing it."

"You mean with other sport fishermen?"

She nodded. "George Perry will probably be landing a few on sandbars while you're here. There's even an airstrip about a mile inland."

"Why?"

"Why the fishermen?"

"Why the airstrip?" He waved a hand. "Why build one out here? Was there a herring cannery or a gold mine out here one time, or what?"

"No." Kate's smile faded. "RPetCo built it a couple years back. When they were sinking exploratory wells hereabouts."

"Oh." A touchy subject, and lack knew enough not to pursue it. "So we're in Iqaluk."

"Pretty much everything you can see from here is Iqaluk," Kate agreed. She didn't want to talk about it, either.

Iqaluk was a fifty-thousand-acre parcel of land that included the eastern shore of the Kanuyaq River and part of the Prince William Sound coast. It was home to some of the richest salmon spawning grounds in the Gulf of Alaska, hence the name iqaluk, the Aleut word for salmon. It was also one of the last old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. Title to it had been clouded by competing claims, from the Niniltna Native Association, the Raven Corporation, the state of Alaska and the federal government. The federal government did not present a united front, either; the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior had been squabbling over Iqaluk since before statehood in 1959.

Everybody had a different idea about what should be done with Iqaluk. The Niniltna Native Association wanted the land deeded to them as part of the tribal entity's compensation under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Raven, the parent corporation for Niniltna's region, wanted the land so they could lease it out for logging and subsurface mineral explorations and development. Either idea was enough to send the state into orbit, because if the land was handed over to Raven or Niniltna the state wouldn't see a dime in taxes. The timber companies wanted the federal government in the form of the Forest Service to gain title, because the Forest Service had the charitable habit of building roads into old-growth forests at public expense for private profit. They went faint at the thought of the Department of the Interior gaining jurisdiction, because Interior would turn it over to the National Park Service, who would incorporate it into the national park system, which excluded exploitation of any kind, unless directed to do otherwise by Act of Congress. Which brought everything full circle, because if Iqaluk was turned into a park, limits would be imposed on hunting and fishing, and Auntie Joy and Auntie Vi would be in the front row of the rebellion.