“Dina,” Ruthe said. She didn’t say, You don’t mean that, but Kate could hear it all the same.

“And what does our absentee landlord do?” Dina said. “Nothing, that’s what. And they’re going to continue doing nothing, because if they started cracking down on every charter member of the NRA, it would send up a scream you could hear on Mars.”

Kate didn’t quite know how they’d made it from snow machines to gun control, but from long experience Ruthe had an answer. “I’m a member of the NRA,” she said mildly. At Dina’s glare, she added, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

Kate laughed, and then at Dina’s glare turned the laugh into a cough.

“They want to drill for oil in ANWR,” Dina said. “They want to punch some exploratory holes in Iqaluk. Of course they want to get rid of the rangers like Dan O’Brian, the ones who’ve been here for a while, the ones who don’t just talk the talk. Never mind that Alaska is the last place in the nation, maybe even the last place on the planet, that still looks like it did in the beginning. Oh, yeah.” She snorted smoke. “You bet. It’s the rangers with practical experience on the ground who might actually have a clue as to how that would affect the wildlife who will be the first to go.”

Kate turned to Ruthe, who looked ever so faintly apologetic. “Well,” Ruthe said, her soft voice sounding the antithesis of Dina’s harsh tones, “I’m not sure we shouldn’t let them drill.”

Dina sat straight up in her chair. “What!”

“With conditions.” Ruthe’s gaze was limpid. “They can drill in ANWR, if they keep their mitts off parks and refuges in the rest of the state.”

Dina sat back, scowling ferociously at the possibility that Ruthe might have a point. “Like they’d agree to that.”

“So far, we’ve got the votes,” Ruthe said. “Unless they changed the Constitution when I wasn’t looking, which these days seems more and more possible, every president still has to go through the United States Congress. That’s a hundred senators and over four hundred representatives, each and every one with his or her own agenda and priorities. If we put this problem away for them, think how grateful they’ll be.”