“Isn’t it funny how you keep forgetting about the holidays up here?” Sandy said. “I guess they see the old year out pretty quietly. Not like the States.”
Professor Crowell’s eyes twinkled through his glasses. “Don’t bet on it, son. Some of the New Year’s parties I’ve been to in the North make your Stateside celebrations seem like pink teas. In the old days, I remember some shindigs that went on continuously from Christmas right through New Year’s.” He smiled nostalgically. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of them were still going on.”
“But we’ll be spending our New Year’s on Kodiak,” Jerry reminded them. “I was looking at it on the map. It’s just a dinky little island.”
“Not so dinky,” Dr. Steele said. “It’s about a hundred miles long, you know. And I think you’ll find that its citizens have just as much holiday spirit as the people in the States.”
“Do many people live on Kodiak?” Sandy asked.
“It’s not too heavily populated,” Dr. Steele admitted. “Once it was the center of the Alaskan fur trade. The Russians settled in the town of Kodiak in 1784, and it wasn’t until much later that they moved their headquarters to the mainland.
“Nowadays it’s hard to make a living on Kodiak. I think the only major occupation is salmon fishing. There’s rich farming land at the south end of the island, but the natives have always had difficulty raising sheep and cattle. Too many hungry bears around.”
Jerry squinted down the barrel of an imaginary rifle. “Well, there’ll be a few less after we get there, eh, Sandy boy?”
Tagish Charley, who had been staring moodily out of the window, turned his quizzical black eyes on Jerry. “You shoot big as you talk, everything be fine.”
“I think you better go along and take care of these fellows, Charley,” the professor suggested.