Like the steady fire of a million cannons, the ear-splitting roar of the river ice cracking up reverberated off the distant Mackenzie Mountains, still shrouded with their winter mantle of snow and ice. Locals knew better than to be caught out on the river this time of year, when the thick winter shell begins to split and break into huge, house-sized chunks, sometimes rising from the frigid waters like giant freshwater glaciers, slowly beginning the long journey downriver to the Arctic.
This was a time of year when you traveled by land, or by air, or you didn't travel at all. During this short transition from winter to summer, without the luxuries of spring, there could be no travel on the Mackenzie at all, and travelers found themselves stranded in the north country's few settlements until the river was clear enough for boat traffic to resume. Once in a while, some foolhardy soul would venture out onto the ice with his dogsled or modern snowmobile, and if he was lucky, he might make it back with only a wet chill and soaked clothing, but if his luck ran out, they'd never find his sled or his body as the surging Mackenzie carried him to the frozen Arctic.
Arnie Dennison was no fool, there could be no question about that. Maybe he paced his cabin like a caged polar bear waiting for the river to clear so his barges could resume hauling gear and supplies for the mineral exploration sites downriver, but he knew better than to tangle with the elements. Up here in the Arctic, a man develops a healthy respect for the fickleness of Nature, in a land where wandering out for a breath of fresh air in the perpetual darkness of midwinter can mean quick death, a land where temperatures sometimes soar from fifty below to eighty above in less than a day, and can swing the opposite way just as quickly.
He'd been up here in the forgotten part of Canada too long to make the kind of mistakes newcomers sometimes died from, and he planned to leave this frozen land one day a hell of a lot richer than when he'd made his way north in 1956. He was hardly more than a kid then, and single, searching for that overnight million he knew was just waiting for him somewhere up here. Gold, maybe, or oil, or that new mineral everybody was talking about then, uranium.
But he'd learned the hard way that there was no quick and easy way to get rich, here or anywhere else, and by 1960, after four years of working on riverboats, roughnecking on oil rigs, and finally, flying geologists into the Arctic tundra for a charter-plane operator he'd met in Alaska, he began to see the pieces falling into place.
He must have watched a thousand men straggle into this desolate country at one time or another; some of them found what they were looking for, most didn't. But through it all, through rich strikes and crushing near-misses, the ones who stayed on, year after year, were not the miners, not the geologists from the big oil companies back in the States not the crackpots with their homemade Geiger counters, but the merchants – the men who sold them the food, the wolfskin parkas, the rifles and ammunition, the men who carried them in with stars in their eyes, and ferried them out, often broke and disgusted. No matter how well or how poorly the fortune-hunters fared, the suppliers came out on top. And that was where Arnold L. Dennison wanted to be – right on the very top.
Four years later, when he met Flo in Vancouver, he was more in a position to seriously think about getting married than in those rugged, leaner years scrounging for every cent. Business was surprisingly good right from the start, despite all the fatalistic warnings from the old-timers along the river. He shrugged off their admonitions as just what they were: fearful, empty predictions from frightened old men, afraid of new blood, new competition.
He'd tried his best to get along with the longtime residents, but he knew only too well that some of them resented his success, though he gave it little thought how they cared.
Florence was working in a British Columbia beer bar when they first met, through a girlfriend of hers who just happened to have a date the night Arnie arrived in town and gave her a call. Her loss was Flo's gain, Arnie always told himself, and he made sure she remembered it. Flo never complained about the harshness of life in the sub-Arctic, and Arnie liked that – a woman's place is at her man's side, no matter how rough the going gets, he often said.
Flo was still in bed when Arnie stomped in with the mail, shaking the matted snow from his parka and boots in the narrow hall before entering the living room. This cozy cabin was his most important accomplishment, he felt, and it gave him great pleasure to know he'd built it with his own two hands, the materials either hauled in from his own forest holdings or paid for with his struggled-for earnings.
It had started as a two-room cottage, just after Flo came up from Vancouver, and half a year before they were married. They lived in it for nearly two years before Arnie was able to save enough to really finish it like he'd dreamed of on those long winter nights. It had cost him about fifteen thousand dollars, in all, but he had a home that couldn't be duplicated back in the States for twice that amount, and twenty-five acres of land surrounding it besides.
The new kitchen had been the first addition to the old structure, furnished with all new appliances that had taken nearly four months to make the long journey from Whitehorse, down in the Yukon Territory. Then came the three bedrooms, and Arnie's pride, his paneled office. That was when he knew he'd really made it, the day that plush retreat was finished. In the snowed-in winter months, he ran all the operations of Dennison Suppliers amp; Outfitters from that office, and he spent most of every single day behind that door, poring over his books, wracking his head for a better or cheaper way to run his business, or a new angle to try, a new dollar to earn.
"Flo, get your ass out of bed!" he shouted this day. "It's not your birthday." He hung his heavy jacket by the door, over the heater vent so it could dry out, and tugged off his leather boots. Placing them close, but not close enough to crack, to the heat source, he plopped down in his favorite chair in the living room, directly in front of the smoldering ruins of the fire he'd started before he left for the post office two hours earlier.
Flo entered, her hair uncombed and her eyes still half-closed with sleep.
"Hey, how come you let the fire go out," he asked, ripping open a large manila envelope with new orders from the American Petroleum base camp far downriver. "I told you to keep an eye on it when I left."
She wiped the sleep from her eyes. "Oh, stop belly-aching. I got up twice, but I must have fallen asleep again. I'll light another one, don't get all worked up about it."
Arnie had forgotten all about the fire by this time, and was engrossed in the increased orders the mail had brought. He shoved the purchase orders back in the envelope and quickly thumbed through the rest of the mail before heading for his study. "Here," he said, not looking up, "I think this one's from that little pussy, Ginny. You read it… I've got too much work to do." He waved it in Flo's direction, and she left the fire long enough to take it from his hand.
Ripping it open, it didn't take her long to read it over, and it was obvious the girl's spirits were somewhat less than high.
"Arnie, you should take a look at this letter," said Flo, still thumbing through the last pages. "The poor kid sounds miserable. She can't find a job, and Fred never writes, and she's so lonely all by herself there."
Arnie didn't look up. "By herself? What'ya mean, she's got millions of neighbors in Los Angeles. I don't call that being alone."
"Don't be so heartless," snapped Flo. "Have you forgotten what it means to be down on your luck, and not to have anyone to fall back on?"
Arnie put down his papers. "I never had anybody to help me, and I made it all right. What's the kid complaining about? She's getting those monthly checks from the Army, ain't she?"
"And how much is that? Do you really think that's enough to live on in Los Angeles? Maybe in Norman Wells, but not in California. Everything costs a fortune down there, and you know it. Or have you been stuck up here in the snow so long you've forgotten what it's like?"
Arnie was getting annoyed; he didn't like this kind of talk from anyone, especially his wife. "Stop riding me, woman. If you don't like it here, you know how to get out, don't you?"
Flo's scowling face suddenly softened. "Oh, Arnie, you big bear, stop being so mean. Of course I like it here. I'm with you, aren't I?" She walked over to his chair, and gave him a big hug, throwing both arms tightly around his chest from behind. "You're the only man for me, honey. And if the Northwest Territories are home for you, then they're home for me too."
"Well, don't say things you don't mean," he growled, "It's too early in the day for fighting. What else has Ginny got to say?"
Arnie reminisced about his last – and only – trip to California, right after his brother Fred and Ginny were married. He and Flo had flown down for the ceremony; it was the only decent thing to do, especially since there'd be no other relatives there for the occasion. Mom and Pop were too sickly to make the flight, though Mom wouldn't have been dragged bodily on an airplane, regardless of her health. And Ginny's mother bowed out rather gracelessly, offering some lame excuse about the change in climate being so bad for her arthritis. Fred had written that she really refused to come because he and Ginny had been living together before they were married, and she considered that an unforgivable sin. He remembered what a pretty little number Ginny was, almost too pretty for the likes of Fred, with that gorgeous, just-blossoming figure of hers, and that silky auburn hair that splashed over her shoulders. Ah yes, that was one little piece he wouldn't mind giving a tumble…
"… Arnie? Arnie, were you listening to me?"
He snapped back to his chair in his living room in Norman Wells, and forgot, for the moment, about that tasty morsel stranded without her man five thousand miles away in warm, sunny California.
"… I said, why don't we invite Ginny up here? She could find something to do in the village for the summer, and maybe she'd feel more like making a go of it in Los Angeles by the time winter sets back in. Well, how about it?"
Arnie only looked at her, a slow widening grin spreading across his face.
"Now you cut that out, Arnie Dennison," teased Flo. "That's your sister-in-law, in case you don't remember. And you can just get those thoughts out of your dirty little mind right now."
"Sister-in-law, hell," answered Arnie, "she's a cunt, ain't she? That's all I need to know."
Flo tossed herself into his lap, her arms around his neck. "I can't fool you, can I honey? I guess you and me are just two beans in a pod. To tell you the truth, I was kinda making plans for you in that direction myself. That way I won't feel so bad when I spread my legs for that good-looking Swede foreman of yours, knowing you've got some on the side for yourself."
Arnie gave her a playful slap on her bottom, stinging her flesh through the thin robe. "Okay, slut, you've got yourself a deal… You get me into that sweet little bitch, and Gus is all yours. I'll make a present of him to ya."
"You mean I should invite Ginny? Do you really want me to?" asked Flo.
"Of course. Unless you plan for me to go down there."
Flo leaped up and began to scrounge for a pen and her box of writing stationery. "It's a deal, baby. I'll write her right now, and you can take it down to the postal drop this afternoon." She closed her eyes and ran her hands down between her thighs. "Mmmmmmm… I can just feel that big Swede's dick in me right now. You can start dropping a few hints… like you did with Benny Alexander… 'cause that gorgeous hunk of man is as good as mine."
Arnie laughed to himself – he liked Flo even more when she got like this. It was a part of her that made her that much more a real woman in his eyes – she felt no shame about her sex desires, never kept them bottled up inside like most women. And he didn't mind at all, as long as there was always plenty of that sweet pussy left for him, why should he mind if she spread it around a little. After all, he was quick to do the same thing, every chance he got.
But this was going to be one time when it really mattered… one time he really wanted to get into that little honey's pants… and he didn't aim to lose out, no matter what it took!