Natalie and the valley's derelicts live in a wilderness paradise, but a gold mining company is about to savage a local mountain known as Jane's Hill. Can they stop it? Probably not. But Natalie -- a woman whose attitude was sizably influenced by the life and writings of Gertrude Stein -- continues to work on the problem as she throws "sedate salons" at her Joint, a two-story lodge of rough-hewn logs, and fishes the clear streams for brookies. She knows the mine will kill the river. That's why she finds a conflict in being nice to Parker, the six-foot-tall, sandy-haired mine manager. But then...