Free Midnight come again by Dana Stabenow Page A

Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge was comprised of nineteen million acres and change, supporting the lifestyles of a hundred million shore and water birds, among them Canadian, brant, Emperor and white-fronted geese, tundra swans and duck species from mallard to green spectacled eider.
    It was also, of course, the spawning ground for one hell of a lot of the aforesaid salmon. Kings, reds, silvers, humpies and dogs, so plentiful that this species alone went a long way toward explaining the presence of the largest and healthiest population of aboriginal Americans, the Yupik. Easier to catch salmon than to hunt whales or chase caribou, Jim thought, and probably a lot less dangerous.

    There were also rainbow trout, Dolly Varden, sheefish, whitefish, arctic char, tomcod, and northern pike, the most rabid sports fisherman's dream date, although Jim had never seen the attraction. Pike were bony and virtually tasteless. If you couldn't eat it, why go to all the trouble of catching it?

    The teeming bird and fish populations explained the teeming small mammal population, in particular aquatic mammals such as mink, otter, muskrat, and beaver. Aquatic mammals with nice pelts, Jim observed, and wondered what the trapping was like in the area. There were also red and arctic foxes, hares and voles.

    Large mammals, the moose, the black bear and the grizzly generally turned up their noses at the Delta. Didn't like getting their feet wet, maybe.
    Kate Shugak, a large mammal herself, didn't like getting her feet wet, either.
    Goddamn it. He shook his head angrily and didn't return the flight attendant's smile when she walked down the aisle.

    Below Bering, there were hardly any trees. There were stands of willow and the omnipresent alder, and occasionally a lone spruce, but that was it. The rest was virtually a sea of brush and grass.
    The plane shuddered as the gear came down, and the flight attendant's voice came over the intercom. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are on our final descent into Bering. Please check to make sure that your seat back is in its original upright position and that your tray table has been stowed and locked. Please return all handcarried items to the space beneath the seat in front of you or in the overhead racks. Thank you."

    She hung up the microphone and smiled again at Jim. She was attractive, a brunette in her mid-thirties with flirtatious eyes, and she had been very attentive to the big, good-looking man wearing a Sonics cap and sitting in the window seat of the exit row. She had managed to let fail the information that she flew out of Anchorage. Normally, he would have had her phone number before she had moved the drinks cart to the next row of seats.
    Their shadow passed over the town, curved like a three-quarter moon around the upper bend of the river, houses and roads hopscotching over and around lakes and streams and ponds and trickles, connected by gravel roads on raised beds and a few boardwalks. Most of the dry land looked like a poorly drained swamp. Most of the swamp looked like an overgrown river. Too thin to plow, too thick to drink. The water table had to be right below the surface. Jim wondered what the sewer system was like. He shuddered to think.
    Gamble had told him he was going in as ground crew for an independent airfreight business which operated out of the Bering airport. "You're a pilot, you'll fit right in," the Fibbie had said with an airy wave of his hand, and right then and there Jim should have known enough to run for his life. When he located the ramshackle building at the other end of the airstrip that housed Baird Air, he wished he had.
    The hangar slanted to one side like a sailor on shore leave for the first time in months. The office, a smaller version with windows, leaned against the first building as if it was a drinking buddy the-first had picked up on the town. Both had corrugated tin roofs adorned with generously sized rust spots, and the orange-and-white logo over both