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  Jerry tensed up. “Minnie . . .”

  The woman raised her chin. “I’ll not leave strangers outside to be murdered. Mind you, it’ll be crowded—we can’t offer you food or bed, just floorspace.”

  Luis exchanged a glance with Brandon. “Murdered?”

  “Now, Minnie . . .”

  “Bigfoot,” Minnie said. “If you was camping nearby, you’re lucky to be alive.”

  “Bigfoot.” Brandon scrubbed a hand over his mouth, but it didn’t disguise the smile in his eyes.

  Luis wasn’t tempted to smile—if Quick-draw Jerry saw one of the mammoths, he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot to protect his family.

  “Maybe it wasn’t Bigfoot,” Jerry said. “It ran off before I got close enough to see it good. But if it was a bear, it was the biggest damn bear I ever saw in my life. Huge, hairy thing.”

  “It came here last night,” Minnie said. “Ate everything in the garden.” Her face collapsed in tears. “Everything. I don’t know how we can make it.”

  Jerry put a hand over her shoulder. “It’s a setback, that’s for sure. Look, you want proof? Come up here, I’ll show you.”

  Jerry led them up the path to the little garden. “Look at it. My wife put her heart into that garden. We were counting on the vegetables to get us through the winter. But now . . .”

  It had been trampled. Bits of cabbage leaves, turnip greens, and carrot tops were scattered, along with a few straggly cannabis plants. Huge gouges scarred the dirt.

  Luis felt sick. One of the mammoths, maybe more than one, had eaten everything in sight, using their tusks to dig out some innocent family’s store of food.

  Jerry pointed to the ground where a wide, flat foot had left a circular footprint. “See that? That’s no moose or bear.”

  Brandon leaned down, pretending to examine the footprint closely. “I’ll be damned. You might have something here. A genuine Bigfoot sighting.”

  “You got a phone or something you can take a picture? Here, I’ll put my foot next to it so’s you can see how big it is.”

  Brandon obligingly snapped shots. “Tell me who to send them to, and I’ll forward the pictures as soon as we get back into cell tower range. Maybe you could make some money off that. An eyewitness account of Bigfoot ought to be worth something.”

  Luis nodded approval. A Sasquatch rumor could be very useful in obscuring any random mammoth sightings.

  “I’d appreciate it.” Jerry chewed his lip. “I’ll need something. I’m not sure Minnie will want to stay here, not with Bigfoot around.”

  As they returned to the hut, Brandon whispered, “What do you think? Diamond?”

  “Or Turq, or both.” All the mammoths loved carrots and turnips. No garden would be safe now that the clever animals had learned to sniff them out of the ground. “We’ll have to get them out of the area as soon as we can.”

  “Sure, as soon as the storm passes.”

  Brandon joined Jerry on the roof, using the butt of his camp hatchet to tack the tarp over the plywood while Luis helped Minnie salvage what was left of the vegetables.

  “You were camping nearby?” she asked. “You must have heard something.”

  Luis tried to look innocent. “Nothing unusual, but we were a few miles upstream.”

  “Jerry went out with his pistol and took a couple of shots at it, trying to scare it off, you know? He just made it mad, I think. It roared like a lion, scared little Mikey half to death.”

  Shit. Luis hoped Jerry’s aim was bad. “I’m sorry it damaged your garden.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve prayed and prayed, but I don’t see how we can stay. I just don’t see it. With the garden gone before anything was even ripe, and Bigfoot threatening our lives . . .”

  The mammoths would be gone in a day, but there was no way Luis could let her know that. Besides, he reminded himself, these people were homesteading illegally in the wildlife refuge. They weren’t supposed to be there.

  “We’ve got some food with us,” he said, “and we’ll be glad to share what we have tonight. I wonder if anyone else has seen Bigfoot around here?” Fanning the rumor would be in the mammoths’ best interest.

  “Not that I heard, but next time I go to Cody, I’ll be asking around.” She dropped her voice, looking to the hut’s open door. “I fired up the gas generator last night, got on the shortwave, and reported it to the state police. I don’t think they believed me. Jerry didn’t want me to—this land ain’t supposed to be open for settlement and we don’t got much kerosene for the generator—but suppose that monster killed us? They need to know there’s something out here. Something unnatural.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Rainbow

  A helpful villager with an all-terrain vehicle met Estelle and Sera at the airstrip and transported them and their baggage to the clinic, the newest and nicest building in Rainbow Village. Estelle put the coffeemaker on to brew while she gave the exam room a quick scrub, setting Sera to mop the floors and wipe down the four-chair waiting room.

  At noon, Estelle officially opened the clinic and released Sera to explore the village. No reason to worry about the girl. Everyone who lived in the village was Athabaskan—they’d know on sight who she was. Her biggest danger was being stuffed with more sourdough bread and raspberry preserves than were good for her.

  Three women were already waiting at the clinic door, two with babes on their hips. Estelle welcomed them by name, dispensing smiles and reassuring small talk.

  All afternoon, Estelle checked blood pressure, listened to hearts, weighed babies, administered vaccinations, swabbed throats, passed out antibiotics, reassured a young woman with an almost-due pregnancy, and cleaned and stitched one festering laceration. Children got colorful pencils as a reward for being brave, women got small bottles of hand lotion. Medical data and test results were uploaded to Alaska Eagle Med via satellite, and when needed, she could always consult with headquarters staff about a troubling set of symptoms or get an opinion on an electrocardiogram.

  As the line of dark clouds drew closer, the trickle of patients petered out. Everyone seemed eager to get home before the rain started.

  When Estelle locked up the clinic at six, Sera was on the steps with a gaggle of village children, looking at something on her phone. The children giggled every time Sera spoke in her Louisiana accent. One of the girls shyly touched Sera’s hair, fascinated by her springy curls.

  “Go on home,” Estelle said. “Storm’s coming.”

  Sera fell in beside her for the walk up the street, the children in their wake. “I feel like I’m leading a parade,” Sera whispered. “Are we the only Black people they’ve ever met?”

  “Maybe, the young ones. They may only know the Black people they’ve seen in movies.”

  Rainbow’s homes reminded Estelle of Louisiana’s old shotgun houses, but the steep roofs and covered porches sheltered the residents from cold and snow instead of tropical rains and burning sun. Satellite dishes sprouted from most of the roofs. Behind the houses, garden plots and smokehouses dotted the precious few feet of flat valley floor before the mountain walls rose to hem in the village. No cars in sight, but almost every home had an all-terrain vehicle parked nearby, and a caterpillar-tracked snow machine under a tarp or in a shed.

  And dogs. Husky mixes in a variety of colors lounged on porches and frolicked in yards, all with the long legs, strong chests, and eager attitude of dogs bred to run.

  “I think there’s more dogs here than people,” Sera muttered as they stepped around one curled up in the middle of the single street.

  “Could be. They’re working dogs. They haul sleds in winter.”

  As the breeze picked up and the sky began to darken with cloud cover, mothers called their children in, leaving the village street quiet.

  Sera scanned the sky. “Everyone’s talking about the storm. Should we be worried?”

  “Heavy rain’s unusual here, and even with a little rain, there may be danger of flood. There’s permafrost
under the soil, so the ground can’t absorb much.”

  Sera nodded solemnly. Flooding was something every New Orleans resident understood.

  Annie’s house was halfway through the village. A battered rocker graced the porch, the small garden in back was overgrown with weeds. The house was a little bigger than most: Annie’s husband had been a village success, supplementing subsistence hunting and fishing with cash earned in summers as a firefighter for the forest service. Hoping for a big family, he’d added a half story with two tiny bedrooms above the chinked-log main floor.

  “Good evening, Miss Annie,” Estelle called through the screen door. “How are you today?”

  “Come in, come in,” the lady called back. “Bring that girl in with you and let me see her.”

  Thin, gray-haired, and bright-eyed, Annie sat ensconced in her battered recliner, strategically located so she could see out the window as well as watch the television.

  “This is my niece, Serafina,” Estelle said. “My younger sister’s girl.” Village residents tended to be exact about their relationships.

  “Well, that’s fine.” Annie peered over reading glasses, making no move to rise from her chair. “Come closer, girl. My, she favors you, doesn’t she?”

  Estelle took her stethoscope and blood pressure kit from her medical bag. “Chérie, why don’t you make yourself comfortable on the porch for a few minutes?”

  Sera took the hint. “I think I’ll try out that rocker.”

  “Careful, dear,” Annie called. “There’s a storm coming!”

  Estelle wrapped the cuff around Annie’s thin arm. “How you been feeling, Miss Annie?”

  “Oh, I’m doing just fine.”

  That was always her answer, at least at first. Annie claimed to be seventy-three. Her husband had died two years ago of alcohol-related liver failure. Their only son who’d lived to adulthood, the one whose room Annie now lent to visitors, had joined the army and died in Afghanistan, leaving her without grandchildren to look after her.

  Estelle listened to Annie’s heart, heard the ragged sound of a valve that no longer did its job, and noted the swelling of her ankles. It wasn’t that her heart muscle wasn’t strong: it beat reliably, but with the leaky valve, the blood wasn’t getting the push it needed to circulate well.

  A bolt of lightning lit the window. Thunder cracked and the first spate of hard rain came down in a heavy gust.

  Estelle was happy she had no need to fly in this weather. She was even nervous with the plane on the ground—she’d doubled the ropes on the Cessna’s tie-downs and cinched them as tight as she could. An Alaska Eagle colleague—now an ex-colleague—had once been careless about mooring his plane, and a strong wind had flipped it like a flapjack.

  Annie looked anxiously toward the porch. “She’ll get wet. The TV man said this could be more rain than we’ve had all year.”

  “Don’t worry about Sera.” Estelle entered Annie’s vital signs into her tablet. “In Louisiana in summertime, we’d get storms like this every day. Have you been able to get out and about a little when the days are nice? Been to church?”

  Annie bit her lip. “Well, I just get so tired, you see.”

  That meant no. A blanket was bundled onto a chair within Annie’s reach, and a few clothes were stacked nearby. Annie must have stopped going up the steps to her bedroom and was sleeping in her recliner.

  “You’ll feel better, once you have the surgery,” Estelle said. “With a new heart valve, you’ll feel like a new woman.”

  “Are you sure it’s the right thing to do?” Annie gazed at her cozy room. “I haven’t left Rainbow for more than ten years. I don’t really care for flying, you know.”

  “Then maybe it’s about time you saw more of the world. The flight’s only a couple of hours. You can do that, can’t you? Put up with two hours in a plane to get your old energy back? You’ll be able to take care of yourself, walk to church, and work in your garden.”

  Annie nodded. “I’d like that. I hate being old.” She looked up with a twinkle in her eye. “Maybe I’ll look out for a new husband in Fairbanks, too. If I’m going to be feeling young again, I might want a man around the house. Wouldn’t that make the village talk!”

  Estelle found Sera on the porch, rocking and smiling at the rain. “I love watching a storm,” Sera said.

  The rain pelted down, bouncing off the porch steps, broadening the street puddles into lakes.

  “Me, too.” Estelle leaned against the log wall. “When I was a girl, I’d sit by the window and watch the dark clouds roll in, guessing how long it would be until I saw the first lightning. Then I’d count the seconds until the thunder. The rain would come down in buckets, then in an hour or a day, it would all be over and the sun would shine again. It always made me feel hopeful, like the rain could wash away some of the anger and misery in people’s lives and give everyone a fresh start.”

  Sera scrunched her nose. “Mom never felt that way. She’d say, ‘Come away from the window, baby. It makes me nervous.’ Everything made Mom nervous, but storms especially.”

  “And did you?” Estelle asked softly. “Come away from the window?”

  “Of course I did. I knew . . .”

  For a moment, the only sound was the rain pattering on the porch roof.

  “You knew she was vulnerable,” Estelle said. “You did everything you could to help her cope. You said you don’t like people tiptoeing around you, treating you like a bomb that’s about to blow up. But I’ll bet that’s exactly how you spent your days with Marie: tiptoeing around her moods, trying to cheer her up, trying not to upset her.”

  “She . . . she had enough problems. I wanted to make things easier for her.”

  “Of course you did, chérie. But I’m sure the grief counselor told you—Marie’s problems were deep inside her. Nothing you did caused them. Nothing you did could cure them.”

  “Sometimes I hate her,” Sera said, so low Estelle almost didn’t hear. “I can’t believe she did this to me. Left me.”

  Estelle started to make excuses for Marie—she was sick, it wasn’t you she was trying to hurt—but caught herself in time. “You’re angry,” she said instead—an invitation for Sera to vent.

  “Damn right I am! She should be here. She should be checking my homework, telling me not to stay out late, and making me change my dress for church. She should be telling me my boyfriend’s no good or my hair needs braiding. That’s what mothers are supposed to do, isn’t it?” She paused long enough to sniff. “I was a good girl, all the time. All my life, I tried to cheer her up, not make trouble, so she’d be happy! Why couldn’t she just be happy?”

  Sera’s face crumpled. The grief that had hovered just under the surface for days rose like floodwaters. Estelle gathered her in her arms as sobs shook the girl’s shoulders.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Sera.”

  “I tried,” Sera whispered. “I tried to help her.”

  “I know,” Estelle said. “I’ve seen how hard you try. You try to stay out of the way, not to cause trouble. You went along with the sightseeing because I asked you to. You came to Rainbow because I insisted, and didn’t say a word even though you were sick to your stomach the whole way. You were even polite to all the kids’ nosy questions. You try to smooth things over, even when you’d rather be anywhere else, doing anything else.”

  “I hoped you didn’t notice.”

  Estelle rubbed her back. “I recognize those things because I grew up in a troubled family, too.”

  Sera lifted her head. “You mean Gran and Gramps? Did they always fuss and fight?”

  “Oh, God, yes. That’s the reason I got out of Louisiana as soon as I could and went away as far as I could. I told Marie she should leave, too, but she never was able to break away.” Estelle stared out at the roiling clouds and drew her windbreaker closer. “One of the things that happens in a troubled home is that the children, the most helpless members of the family, start to feel like they have to be the responsible
ones. They try to make everything all right, to calm down the fights, to keep the adults from doing terrible, hurtful things.”

  “The grief counselor said something like that. But what about you?” Sera asked. “I wished myself on you. Aren’t I just adding to your problems now?”

  Estelle smiled. “That’s my choice. I’d much rather have you with me than worry about you being all alone in Fairbanks. Or, God help you, with my parents. With a little consideration on both our parts, we’ll get by.”

  Despite the storm battering the porch roof, Sera began to look a little brighter.

  “Now,” Estelle said, “I understand Annie’s sister’s daughter-in-law has left some venison stew for our supper. Let’s go heat it up.”

  Yelling came from the upper end of town, too indistinct for Estelle to make out the words. Curious figures came onto porches, peering through the rain.

  A man came pelting through the downpour, bare-headed, no poncho or jacket, yelling as he went. “Mudslide! . . . house . . . still inside!”

  Porches emptied as men dashed up the sodden street.

  “Get my medical bag!” Estelle followed at a run.

  CHAPTER 13

  Stormy weather

  At the homestead, black clouds moved in from the west, hiding the sun. As drops began to fall, everyone crowded into Jerry’s tiny hut.

  Luis tried to think of something nice to say. “Compact,” he offered. More like claustrophobic. “More room inside than you’d expect.”

  Minnie beamed. “See how Jerry made a loft for the bed? Gives us tons of floor space.”

  The room was definitely cramped with four adults and a child. The floor, walls, and roof were all made of plywood, not even varnished. No toilet, other than the woods. The hut provided a bare minimum of shelter for summer, but in winter? Even if the wood hadn’t rotted by winter, it would do nothing to keep out the cold. A small cast-iron woodstove was centered in the room, its steel chimney routed dangerously near the sleeping loft.