Though Not Dead (6 page)

“Hey,” Kate said, “must be Pete Heiman’s dad.”

“Or his grandfather, more like. ‘We, Peter Everard Heiman and Chester Arthur Wheeler, do solemnly swear that we have known Samuel Leviticus Dementieff for over five years last past; that he is the head of a family…’ ” Dan looked at Kate. “I never heard Old Sam was married.”

“Me, either,” Kate said.

“ ‘… that he is the head of a family’—okay, wife and number of children left blank—‘and is a citizen of the United States, and that is an inhabitant of,’ yeah, yeah, we know the numbers, ‘and that no other person resided on the said land entitled to the right of Homestead or Pre-Emption.’ ”

“I love the idea that anyone could pre-empt the federal government’s ownership of land.”

“You would. ‘That the said Samuel Leviticus Dementieff entered upon and made settlement on said land March 31, 1938, and has built a house thereon.’ ”

A description of the house followed. Kate stared at it, trying to reconcile “part log, part frame, two doors, two windows, shingle roof” with the near ruins she remembered from the previous winter, when she and Mutt had apprehended three Kanuyaq River highwaymen at Canyon Hot Springs. “I never knew Canyon Hot Springs belonged to Old Sam. And nobody said, not the aunties, Emaa, Old Sam himself—no one. Why the hell not?”

Dan kept reading. “ ‘… and has lived in said house and made it his exclusive home from March 30, 1938, to the present day.’ ” He looked up. “No way, Kate, did these guys go all that way, with no road—hell, no trail—through all that brush and muck to check that Old Sam had built his house.”

But the witnesses had signed the document of proof, with flourishes, as did Frederick Cyril McQueen, Register. “Present day” for the second document was October 3, 1945.

“When he got home from the war,” Kate said.

“Which war? World War Two?”

Kate nodded. “He was in the Aleutians. One of Castner’s Cutthroats.”

“Wow.” In spite of himself, Dan was impressed. “I bet he could tell some stories.”

“I bet he could have, but he never did. What’s next?”

The third document was Old Sam’s certificate and patent, signed the same day as his Proof of Improvements. This, too, was a printed form. “ ‘Now, therefore, let it be known, that on presentation of this Certificate to the Commissioner of the General Land Office, the said Samuel Leviticus Dementieff shall be entitled to a Patent for the Tract of Land above described.’ ”

It was signed, again, by Frederick Cyril McQueen, Register.

Kate and Dan stood staring down at the three documents until a low “Woof” made them both look up. Mutt was standing in the doorway, head cocked, a quizzical eyebrow raised.

Kate looked at Dan. “May I have copies of these?”

Dan hesitated a little before answering, an unreadable expression on his face. “He should have had the originals,” he said at last.

“I haven’t found them,” Kate said. “At least not yet.” Her brows drew together. “That is odd. You’d think he would have kept them in the file box with his will and the rest of his papers.” She shook her head. “They’re probably tucked into a book on one of his shelves. So, may I have copies for the meantime, until I find them?”

He hesitated a little longer before he said, “Sure.” As if making up his mind, he scooped the documents back into the file. “Sure you can have copies. But they won’t be official documents, you understand. There could be problems if they were all you had to establish title.”

She looked at him, a little puzzled. “Let’s hope I find the originals, then. What’s the problem, Dan?”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “May I make a suggestion?”

“Who’s ever been able to stop you?” she said, even more puzzled at this unaccustomed deference. Dan O’Brian was notoriously loud and up-front by nature, it was one of the reasons he got on so well with the Park rats.

It seemed to her he chose his words with care, as if he were tiptoeing over a minefield expecting one of them to explode whether he stepped on it or not. “You might like to consider the possibility of deeding Canyon Hot Springs over to the Park Service.”

Her eyes widened. It might even be fair to say they nearly popped out of her head.

“We have the ability to look after it,” Dan said. “Maybe even develop it as a remote, hike-in-only campsite.”

Kate’s laugh was deep and spontaneous, and then she realized he was serious and the smile vanished from her face. She squared her shoulders and pushed out her jaw. “Old Sam left it to me,” she said. “Why would I give it to you? The Parks Service has made a career out of sequestering millions of acres of public land that is public only insofar as people can afford to get to it. At least if I keep hold of the springs I can say they’re open for everyone to use.”

His mouth pulled up at one corner. “Yeah, and how much do you think the shareholders of the Niniltna Native Association are going to like that idea?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I heard Auntie Joy wants to start charging people for berry picking on Native lands in the Park.”

“Canyon Hot Springs belongs to me, not the NNA.”

Dan looked down at the file in his hand and didn’t say anything.

She remembered that Canyon Hot Springs was colored in in green on the map in his office. “Dan? Would you have even told me about the homestead Old Sam filed on Canyon Hot Springs if he hadn’t mentioned it in his will?”

Dan didn’t answer.

She looked around the room, at the file cabinets lining the walls. “How many so-called abandoned claims have you got in these files, Dan? Have you even tried to find the claimants’ heirs? Or do you just ignore them in hopes people will forget about them?”

Again, he didn’t answer.

She grabbed his arm. “Dan? Does title revert to the government if the land remains unoccupied?”

He pulled free of her grasp. “I’ll make you those copies,” he said, and vanished down the hall.

*   *   *

Kate left the Step in a state of considerable disquiet.

It wasn’t like she had to have title to Canyon Hot Springs. It wasn’t like she spent a lot of time there. It was an overnight trip in winter, and in summer the thick brush made it nearly impassable to anyone without a machete and the determination of Genghis Khan. The unmapped rocky outcrops and sudden spurs of the Quilaks provided their own effective camouflage, too. Kate had gotten lost two or three times on the way there last year.

The hot springs sat in a narrow canyon where the majority of the real estate was essentially vertical. There was no airstrip and there never would be because there was no conceivable place to put one. She doubted there was enough room to land Dan’s new helicopter there. Probably couldn’t squeeze in a parachute, for that matter. The brush was too thick to bring in a four-wheeler in summer. No, certain access was only by snow machine or by piton, pickaxe, and rappelling rope.

Two thirds of the Park was taken up by an undulating topography that gradually descended westward from the foothills of the Quilaks, punctuated by glaciers, glacial moraines, rivers, creeks and streams, a butte here and there, and a few freestanding mountains. The other third was given over to the Quilaks themselves in the east and the Chugach Mountains on the southwest coast. The Quilaks and the Chugachs were separated by the Kanuyaq River, which wound sinuously through the Park from above Ahtna to Prince William Sound. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline marked the Park’s western boundary, as did the Glenn Highway, which along with the Kanuyaq River provided relatively easy access to the adjacent land.

The eastern boundary was marked by the Canadian border, on the other side of which were more mountains and gorges and glaciers, all as impassable as the ones on the Alaska side and as overrun with wildlife, much of it bigger than you were and all of it hungry.

There was no easy way into the Canyon Hot Springs, and getting out could be as problematic as getting in. Why the hell had Old Sam chosen the most remote, the most difficult to access hundred and sixty acres in the whole Park and possibly all of Alaska to homestead?

She had never thought of Old Sam as an unsociable guy per se, but then she had yet to be born when he’d staked his claim, so she couldn’t attest to the man he’d been then.

But she knew people who could.

Four

Auntie Joy lived in another of those ubiquitous log cabins with a floor plan that appeared to have been the only design option for anything built in the Park up to the Good Friday Earthquake of 1964. Kate’s grandmother’s original cabin, Old Sam’s cabin, Kate’s parents’ cabin—they were all one large room on the main floor with a sleeping loft above. Auntie Joy’s cabin was on the riverbank in Niniltna, about equidistant between Emaa’s and Auntie Edna’s, only a little farther to Auntie Vi’s, an easy walk for a mug up and a good gossip in either direction.

The square windows set into the log walls were hung with ruffles and lace, and as usual when Auntie Joy threw open the door with her trademark beam of a smile and pulled Kate inside, in stepping over the threshold Kate felt immediately transformed into a claustrophobic elephant in a stained-glass factory. “Mutt,” she said, “stay,” and pointed to the patch of grass next to the door before the gates of mercy closed behind her.

Inside, every vertical surface was covered with framed photos dating back to the century before last, from sepia prints in gilt frames to black-and-white photos with scalloped edges to Polaroids whose color was fading to a complete set of senior pictures of this year’s graduating class. Every horizontal surface was covered first by a tablecloth or a scarf or a handkerchief or sometimes all three. The next layer involved lace of some kind, usually tatted by Auntie Joy’s own fair hands. The third and ever-changing final layer was decorative, ivory carvings of seals and bears and loons, glass animals that held votive candles, woven baskets from the size of a thimble to big enough to cradle a baby. Old glass bottles elbowed for room with Aladdin oil lamps, including a brass one that looked like it was still warm from Aladdin’s hands, and a dozen different tea sets.

There were a great many horizontal surfaces, Auntie Joy never having met a piece of furniture she didn’t like, the older the better, and the room was crowded with chairs and end tables and a dining set that perched uneasily on delicate carved legs on a faded but scrupulously clean linoleum floor. Kate had never been to the sleeping loft but she would have bet large that Auntie Joy had managed to squeeze a tulle-draped canopy in under the roof.

There was also an overwhelming preponderance of pink, pink ruffles, pink lace, pink doilies, an afghan knitted in different shades of pink, a quilt assembled from squares that ran from pink plaids to pink polka dots. Kate wondered if Auntie Joy had ever read Christina Rossetti.

There must have been a cookstove in the clutter somewhere because Auntie Joy said, “You sit now, Katya. I make tea.”

She gave Kate a slight push, and Kate almost stumbled over a pair of porcelain dogs guarding a high, round, spindle-legged table covered with china figurines dressed like characters out of the Angelique novels. She caught her balance, sucked in her gut and edged between the dogs and a bright red La-Z-Boy recliner. It was by far the newest thing under this roof and Kate more or less fell into it.

Auntie Joy bustled, if one could be allowed to bustle in that jam-packed little room without breaking anything, and shortly Kate had tea in a cup and saucer adorned with a dainty tracery of leaves and vines and pink roses that she hoped wouldn’t break in her hands, and a matching plate of cookies baked to a crisp brown glory that melted in the mouth. “I want the recipe for these, Auntie,” she said indistinctly.

Auntie Joy beamed. “Before you go, I write.” She settled herself into an elegant openwork chair carved from some dark wood and inlaid with mother-of-pearl, picked up her tatting, and let her fingers busy themselves with an intricate pattern while she fixed Kate with an expectant gaze.

Time for business. Kate put the saucer down on the only available square inch of empty space on the top of a wooden spool draped in some pink velveteen fabric, then drained the cup and set it down even more carefully on the saucer. Then she watched it for a moment to make sure everything else on the tabletop wasn’t going to shove it over the edge. Satisfied, she turned to Auntie Joy. “I’m—Old Sam named me executor of his will.”

It was as if someone had flipped a switch. The tatting shuttle slowed, the beam dimmed and then went out entirely, and for the first time in a long time Auntie Joy looked her age. “He say he do that,” she said, in a voice devoid of emotion.

The way life had drained from Auntie Joy’s voice from one sentence to the next was unexpected and startling. “When?” Kate said. “When did he tell you?”

Auntie Joy made a vague gesture. “Back a ways. He tell us all.” Kate divined that Auntie Joy meant Old Sam had told all four aunties about his will. “Long time gone.”

“Well, it would have been nice if someone had told me,” Kate said. “Maybe given me some advance notice.”

Auntie Joy gave Kate a very auntly look, and Kate was instantly ashamed of herself for whining. “Sorry, Auntie. But it is a little overwhelming, the amount of property he had.” She noticed a slight stiffening in the chair opposite. “For one thing, I didn’t know Uncle had proved up on a homestead claim on Canyon Hot Springs.”

To her further surprise, Auntie Joy, already gray around the edges, turned ashen. “He do that, yes,” she said, almost whispering. “Long time gone, he do that.” She raised her head. “He leave it to you?”

Kate nodded. “He left me the whole kit and caboodle outright, with a letter telling me how he wanted everything distributed.” She thought of telling Auntie Joy about Old Sam’s Niniltna cabin and the
Freya,
and then she thought better of it. Incrementalization in this case could be dangerous, especially to her. If all four aunties were going to explode with outrage over the disposition of Old Sam’s worldly possessions, better she give them the news in a body. Detonate it in a single blast in a safe place somewhere, away from women and children.