Trask by Don Berry

Author:Don Berry [Berry, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fur trade, Oregon, Fiction, Literary, Historical, Trappers
Publisher: Viking Press
Published: 1960-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

The lodge in which they were quartered was comparatively luxurious. The sleeping-platform was covered with cattail mats, as were the walls. Board shelves were hung along the length of the rafters, and Trask could see they were well stocked, lines of baskets and even wooden boxes were visible from below. The space beneath the sleeping-platform was packed almost solid with one sort of container or another. At the far end of the lodge, behind the mat screens, there was a stack of spare mats almost two feet high, and beside it another neat pile, of blankets. The drying-racks in the rafters still had plenty of fish and meat on them, in spite of the fact that winter was nearly over, and the new season about to begin.

Trask commented on this.

"The salmon don't come into the bay down here until late summer," Charley said. "Not spring, like the Columbia."

"Why is that?" Trask asked. "There's only eighty miles' difference, why should the salmon come months later down here?"

"Why?" Charley said, with a trace of irritation. "That's just the way it is."

Trask shrugged and continued his examination of the lodge. Charley lay back on the sleeping-platform and seemed to lose interest in his surroundings.

At the back end of the lodge, Trask found a long pit dug under the platform. It went well below ground level, and was filled with small, neatly wrapped packages of food being kept at constant temperature. The area directly around this cooling pit was packed earth, without the freshly swept sand carpet of the rest of the lodge. The entire house was immaculately neat; in spite of the absence of any storage containers other than baskets, there was no loose article to be found anywhere. The only element detracting from the atmosphere of cleanliness was the ever-present smell of smoke and fish.

Trask returned to the hre and sat on one of the mats that surrounded it. He noted absently that the stones of the fireplace pit were apparently unworked, and had been selected with great care. They fitted well enough together to make an almost solid wall, as if mortared. "I wish I had a smoke," he muttered. He stood nervously and went to the skin flap over the entrance. Lifting it slightly, he peered out, trying to remain unseen.

Two of the black-daubed warriors were standing guard. One of them sat cross-legged facing the entrance, while another stood immediately beside it. Trask was looking past the edge of the elk-skin kilt. As he watched, another man came around the corner carrying a strung bow; then another. The last two were apparently making regular rounds of the lodge.

To the left of the entrance were their packs. Trask's was laid open and all the contents spread out on the tarpaulin. He could not see if anything had been taken. One of the walking patrol stopped and squatted abruptly by the open pack. He picked up articles one by one and examined them, turning them over and over curiously, even if their nature and use were obvious.

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