A station wagon with a Christmas tree lashed to the roof backed out in front of Dale's pickup. "Get that piece of shit off my street," Dale scrooged. "And Merry Christmas to all you scumbags," he added, in keeping with the season.

Dale Pearson, quite unwillingly, had become the Johnny Appleseed of the Christmas tree, having planted tens of thousands of seedlings to replace the thousands that he had chain-sawed to build rows of tract mansions across Pine Cove's hills. But while the law stated that the replacement trees had to be planted within the municipality of Pine Cove, it didn't say that they had to go in anywhere near where they had actually been cut down, so Dale planted all of his trees around the cemetery at the old Santa Rosa Chapel. He'd bought the land, ten acres, years ago, in hope of subdividing it and building luxury homes, but some hippie meddlers from the California Historical Society stepped in and had the old two-room chapel declared a historic landmark, thus making it impossible for him to develop his land. So in straight rows, with no thought for the natural lay of a forest, his construction crews planted Monterey pines until the trees became as thick around the chapel as feathers on a bird's back.

For the last four years, during the week before Christmas, someone had gone onto Dale's land and dug up truckloads of live pine trees. He was tired of answering to the county about having to replace them. He didn't give a damn about the trees, but he'd be damned if he'd put up with someone siccing the county watchdogs on him over and over. He'd fulfilled his duty to his Caribou buddies of passing out joke gifts to them and their wives, but now he was going to catch a thief. His Christmas present this year was going to be a little justice. That's all he wanted, just a little justice.