Mary grinned. "That's my boy."

Kate wondered when in the last hundred years anyone had called Old Sam Dementieff a boy. Probably only Mary Balashoff could get away with it. She nudged Old Sam with her foot.

He'd been dozing, his head resting on the back of his chair, his mouth open and a gentle, inoffensive little snore rippling out at regular intervals. "Ggggsnort?" he said, his chair falling forward on its two front legs. "What?" He knuckled his eyes and yawned, his bones popping audibly. "Guess I must have dozed off there. Sorry."

"We're not," Mary said maliciously. "Gave us a chance to practice our girl talk."

Immediately suspicious, Old Sam demanded, "Girl talk? What? What did I miss?"

"We'll never tell," Kate said, and got to her feet. "Want to take a ride up the creek?"

"What, up to the fish camp?" Kate nodded and Old Sam said, "Been a while since I got a chance to visit with the old girls."

For "visit" read "aggravate," Kate thought, but was wise enough not to say so out loud. One dunking a day was enough.

By some trick of the slanting rays of the setting sun the water assumed the color and viscosity of molten gold, seeming to slow their forward motion while at the same time lending a touch of splendor to the journey. Kate dipped a finger over the side and watched tiny eddies appear, looking like the gilt tracings she'd seen in a book once, something elaborate and baroque and ItalianBernini?

She shook her head, glad she didn't have to justify her smile to Old Sam. Impossible to explain that a trick of light on water made her think of a sculptor born on the other side of the world four hundred years before. Although if he was going to start quoting Shakespeare at her she might suspect him of taking telecourses from the University of Alaska.

She passed half a dozen bears fishing and eating and roughhousing on a sandbank, three eagles playing tag in the treetops and a couple of white-tail deer drinking out of the creek, which in her opinion paid for the gas before she even got to fish camp. To put the icing on the cake, Mutt was waiting for her when the skiff nudged ashore, and greeted Kate with a joyous bark and a generous swipe of the tongue. Kate wiped her face on the sleeve of her shirt and gave Mutt an affectionate cuff up alongside the head. "Where were you when I needed you?" she said.

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

She looked up and saw Jack at the top of the bank. "I was attacked by Jedi this afternoon."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Never mind. It's better you should not know." She gave Mutt a final pat. "But you're coming with me when I have to go back there." Mutt appeared willing.