Trask - Don Berry Page 2

  Solomon had been there first, of course. But somehow Solomon was different. You couldn't imagine that Clatsop Plains had ever been without Solomon Smith and Celiast; they were like a core, a symbol of the meeting of white and Indian.

  Trask had seen a lot of mixed marriages in his time; trapping out of Fort Hall—sometimes wintering in the mountains—he had been tempted more than once by the easy availability of a squaw to keep his fire and make his meals and warm his body at night with her own. Most of them you could have for a pint of whisky that was half water; and they'd spread their legs for less than that. The "marriages" dissolved as fluidly as they were made. Sometimes they ended in passion—as they were made—and then there was anger, and trouble with the tribes. He admitted to himself his temptation had not been particularly great; for he learned soon enough the available squaws were the tramps of the tribe, and he had a strangely fastidious bent for a mountain man. Drunks and whores and witless profiteers stealing scraps and living on tidbits snatched from under white noses. And these were all the hungry trappers ever got to see, at least by the time he got to the mountains. It was not, after all, so very different from the white way. Except that most of the men he'd run with would have been shocked at the idea of marrying with a white woman of the same level. Somehow the difference in skin seemed to make it all right. For some.

  Solomon and Celiast, now—that was different. Celiast was the daughter of the Clatsop tyee, Coboway. In the Clatsop tribe she was a strong and respected figure, and her marriage to Solomon Smith had not diminished that respect. It was a new relation to Trask, one he had not seen before; the meeting of the races on a basis of respect and equality. He flushed as he recalled his first assumptions concerning the marriage, before he had gotten to know Celiast for what she was. Trask shook his head ruefully. It was bad when a man made assumptions. It had always been bad for him, anyway. The assumptions he made, as far as he could remember, had invariably been wrong. Not just some of the time; but always. One of those things; it was the way he was. He had always to look at things carefully and with his head clear, or he did it wrong. There was no reason for it that he could see, it was a difference of people. Some were quick and instinctive—Hannah was like that—and others had to work things out and reason them through carefully and that was how he was. It was all right, as long as you knew it.

  From where he sat on the dunes, Trask could see two of the cabins on the Plains. Several miles south of him, beyond Little Beach and the mouth of Neahcoxie creek, was the great headland Neahseu'su, humped like a buffalo at the edge of the sea. The ocean was still turbulent from the night's storm; the only trace of it that remained, other than the still wet dune grass flattened by the wind. The sound of the surf was steady and loud in his ears. It would be several days before it quieted, and he would be reminded of the storm's fury each time he heard it. He looked back at the fertile Plains, with its squares of cultivation and fenced pasturage for the dairy cattle.

  It's good land, he thought. It seemed good to me five years ago. What's wrong?

  Land, land, good land. And yet that had been the thing that came to his mind when talking to Hannah. He had not been able to think it out before, but he had told Hannah the trouble in him was about the land, something about it. Why was that? Something about the land that was not satisfying him, something that made him uneasy. Yet all the settlers expected a great growth of population in the Plains. Look at the resources, they said. Look at the timber in the hills, look at the size of those potatoes. Look at transportation, right on the artery of the whole Northwest, the Columbia. Look at this, look at that.

  He had looked at it all, and something still seemed wrong. There was something deceptive in the reasoning, and he was not good enough with words to draw it out.

  The coasters stopped at Astoria, it was true. And there was no doubt Astoria would grow, but . . . The real growth was inland, it always had been. In the Willamette Valley, the rich valley. Oregon City, a hundred miles from the mouth of the Columbia. He had the strange conviction it would make little difference to anyone but the Plainers if the coasters simply quit docking at the mouth and went straight up to Oregon City. There were even a half-dozen houses at Portland, now. "Little Stumptown" they called it in Oregon City; still, there were those who

  thought it would grow.

  He could not make sense of his own feelings. He had a sureness about it, but when he tried to explain the idea that Clatsop Plains was somehow blocked, he could not put it in the right words to make sense. There was always somebody with arguments that sounded so much

  more reasonable.

  And it would have made little difference, since he was not particularly interested in arguing about it, if it weren't for his own uneasiness. And arguments or no, he could not deny that he was troubled. That made it something that had to be worked out, just to settle his own mind. Well, he would have a talk with Solomon and Celiast. When he talked to them, he didn't always have to make everything make sense. Those things he could not say accurately, they could guess, and understand what he was thinking. Hannah could do that, but she was too closely bound up in his own life; it was her life, too. He needed a new view, a clear view.

  He stood up on the dunes and walked down to the beach, turned south and followed the 1ong sweeping curve around the small bay that formed the mouth of the Neahcoxie.

  Chapter Two

  The white settlers had given the name Neahcoxie to the sluggish stream that wound languidly across Clatsop Plains to the sea. The name was taken from the Clatsop village of Neahcoxie, located near the mouth of the stream; it had never occurred to the Clatsops themselves to name moving water. It was like air; everywhere, and in every place the same. There was no need to distinguish between the parts of it in different places. All was chuck, though the universal jargon made a grudging distinction in favor of the Pacific Ocean by calling it salt chuck.

  Six Clatsop villages were strung down the Plains, from Konape in the north to Necotat, almost in the shadow of Neahseu'su. The village of Neahcoxie was several miles north of the headland and it was near this village that Solomon Smith had first built his cabin. In time he had replaced his own relatively crude log hut with an Indian cedar plank house, as most of the sensible settlers eventually did. The Clatsops still retained some of their age-old carpentry skills, though with the coming of the white settlers the craft was rapidly dying.

  Trask's path took him through Neahcoxie, and he saw the village was already preparing for the summer run of salmon. Several new canoes were in the first stages of construction; cedar logs being hollowed with mallet and chisel. They were netting canoes; not as impressive as the great ocean-going craft of the past, but still beautiful. The Clatsops no longer went to sea.

  Many of the workmen Trask knew, and they greeted him as he passed, stopping now and then to inspect a canoe out of courtesy

  "Klahowyu, Tlask!"

  "Klahowyu." Trask stopped and appraised a long dugout, making a show of meticulous inspection, running his linger along the inside rim. The workmen stopped; stood back to give him space to examine the work. They watched him seriously as he moved along the length of the log, which as yet was only begun.

  Trask stepped back a few paces and regarded the log, pulling absently at his nose. Then he turned to the carpenter in charge the building and nodded slowly.

  "Hyas kloshe canim, " he said emphatically. "Very good canoe.

  The Clatsop grinned broadly and nodded his head eagerly, his eyes

  shining with pleasure. "Ahaha, ahha, hyas kloshe canim!"

  Trask moved down the village, watching the people work. Women, young and old, sat tying seines of wild flax in front of their houses. Those he knew gave him klahowya, and also many he had only seen at a distance. All the village seemed to recognize the tall, bony man with the eagle's nose.

  Just away from the village, three men worked hollowing out half a dozen smaller canoes. These were only seven feet or so in length, and made of logs of much smaller diameter. The men worked quickly, and without the usual bantering humor that accompanied Clatsop efforts. Their faces were morose, unpleasant to see.

  Trask stopped, startled.

  Then he moved on again, but in that moment the feeling of pleasant camaraderie he had had in the main village disappeared. The contrast depressed him, the main village happily preparing for the summer run of salmon, busied with the things of life; and behind, just out of sight, men busied with the things of death. The burial canoes.

  What had startled him was the number of the death canoes. So many, so many. . . And the death rate increasing all the time. Births could not keep pace, and the numbers of each village slowly dwindled, year after year, in a relentless slide toward extinction.

  Trask shook his head. The "Boston sick" was taking more and more each year, even years when there was nothing that could be called an epidemic. And there seemed to be nothing either Indian or white could do about it.

  He was gloomy by the time he reached Solomon's house; and tried to pull himself out of it before entering. There was no need to depress Solomon; he had watched the relentless thinning of the villages with the same—or a greater—frustration and anguish.

  One of Solomon's slaves, the old man, met Trask outside the door. He had been captured and enslaved by different tribes so many times in his long life he had forgotten his original band. All the coastal tribes were slavers, and the Chinook—of which the Clatsops were one band—had once been middlemen in the trade for the whole coast; go-betweens for the vigorous northern raiders, the Nootka and Makah and even Tlingit, and the tribes of the interior who wished to buy. But the white man had put a stop to that; though not through any moral influence. The white—carried epidemic of ten years past had wiped out nine-tenths of the Chinook.

  The old man gave him klahowya, wrinkling his eyes and showing toothless gums. He swung the door open for the white man to enter.

  The inside was dark and cool.

  "Hello, Bridge," Solomon said, extending his hand.

  "How are you, Solomon." Trask paused for a moment, letting his eyes become accustomed to the darkness inside the house.

  "A good storm last night," Solomon said. "Have a smoke."

  "Thanks."

  Solomon Smith was a little shorter than Trask, a little heavier. His face had the same dark permanence as the other man's, but was not as heavily creased and lined by wind and sun. His eyes were dark brown, almost black, and he was clean-shaven, his chin as bare as any lndian's.

  Trask lit his pipe and leaned back in the chair Solomon indicated. For the first few moments neither man spoke. Sat quietly pulling on the pipes, exhaling clouds of blue smoke that gathered around the beams above them, savoring the pleasure of tobacco.

  Trask tried to marshal his thoughts in logical fashion, but they were too tenuous. He was almost surprised to hear himself say, "Solomon, what do you know about Murderer's Harbor?"

  Solomon leaned forward, interested. "Not much," he admitted. "I was through there once. Celiast could probably tell you more."

  "Mm." Trask puffed thoughtfully.

  "Thinking of going down there?"

  "Hadn't thought much about it, to tell you the truth. Just popped out of my head."

  "That's the Killamook country."

  "I know," Trask said.

  Solomon was silent for a moment. Then he stood, crossed to the door, and called the old slave. "Mika klaatawa klap Celiast, " he said. The old man nodded quickly and started off at an awkward lope.

  Solomon returned and sat down. "Celiast could tell you more," he repeated. "Old Man'll get her."

  Trask nodded. "Thanks. What's she up to?"

  "Berrypicking. Her and the two women."

  "What's left?"

  "Not much. A few late strawberries is all. They just went out for the walk mostly. We don't really need three slaves around here anyway, but Celiast has to have'em for the sake of appearances."

  Trask was slightly surprised. "Celiast worried about appearances?"

  "Well—" Solomon was apologetic, a little embarrassed. "It wouldn't be too good if the people got the notion Coboway's daughter was chako Boston."

  "No, I guess not," Trask agreed. If the tyee's daughter became too Americanized, the Clatsops would suffer for it. It occurred to Trask that Solomon and Celiast had to face this kind of problem every day; had to think carefully what effect each action of their own would have on the tribe. "No, that wouldn't be too good."

  "Matter of fact, " Solomon said, returning to the previous subject, "I had a Killamook slave a while back, but I gave her to Coboway. She was from right around in there, Murderer's Harbor."

  "How serious is this thing between the Clatsops and Killamooks?"

  Trask asked.

  Solomon shrugged. "How serious is anything? Depends on the individuals involved. They skirmish sometimes. It just depends."

  "You have any trouble while you were going through?"

  "No." Solomon shook his head. "But—you know I walk pretty soft in a situation like that."

  Trask nodded.

  The old man poked his head in the door and piped, "Celiast, yaka clako." He giggled toothlessly in the general direction of Trask, then disappeared.

  Celiast came in a few seconds later, carrying a woven cedar-bark basket half full of strawberries. Outside, Trask could hear the faint voices of the two slave women arguing about something. Celiast walked quickly across the room, motioning Trask to keep his seat.

  "Klahowya, Bridge. Good to see you here."

  She was a woman in her middle forties—older than her husband by five years—but she carried herself like a girl. Her eyes were clear and large, her features fine. There was an almost Oriental cast to her face, as was true of most of the coastal peoples. Her forehead sloped sharply back from her brow, showing the effect of the weighted boards with which a high-born child's head was shaped. Trask, while not finding the head-flattening of the Clatsops particularly beautiful, did not find it offensive, either. She had a finely shaped body, except for the legs, which were too short; but this was true of most canoe Indians. Trask found he had gradually accepted a different standard of appearance and now found the sloping forehead and short legs normal.

  "Charley Kehwa said you might be coming," Celiast continued.

  "Charley? How would he know?" Trask asked.

  Solomon laughed. "I didn't tell Bridge he was expected."

  "Charley's a tamanawis man, Bridge," Celiast explained.

  "Well—sure, I know, but——"

  "You don't believe the tamanawis," Solomon finished for him.

  "Do you, Solomon?" Trask asked. "You believe the things Charley and the others claim they can do?"

  "I've been around the people quite a while," Solomon said, his eyes amused.

  "Is that an answer?"

  "It might be."

  Trask shook his head mutely.

  "Well," Celiast said, "it isn't important whether you do or not. What's

  on your mind, Bridge?"

  "Not much," Trask said, wishing to make the thing that troubled him as inconsequential as possible. "I was asking Solomon what he knew about the country around Murderer's Harbor. He said you could probably tell me more."

  "Well—" Celiast hesitated. "You know the Killamooks haven't ever had any whites on their land, not settlers. It's hard to say what they'd think about it."

  "Who said anything about settling?"

  "Charley Kehwa said you had it in your mind to go some place," Celiast said.

  "Charley knows more about my mind than I do, then," Trask said sharply.

  "He might at that," Solomon said, and laughed. "Don't get mad, Bridge. Charley doesn't mean you any harm."

  "Al1 right, I know it," Trask said sheepishly. "Sorry."

  "It was just a dream he had about you, anyway," Celiast said, sorry to see their guest made uncomfortable.

  "All right," Trask said. "But about the Killamooks—what do they say about the murder?"

  "One that gave the harbor its name?"

  "Yes."

  Celiast shrugged. "Not much different from the white version. They say that in their fathers' time a big boat came across the bar and the crew came ashore. They traded, and everything went fine. One of the crew had stuck a big knife up in the sand. A Killamook picked it up, and the crewman attacked him, thinking he was trying to steal it. Maybe he was. The Killamooks killed the sailor and drove the rest of the crew back aboard the ship. Then it sailed away."

  Trask nodded. "Pretty much the way I heard it."

  "That was Gray's ship," Solomon said. "I read the log, when I was teaching school for McLoughlin at Vancouver."

  "But they will trade peaceably," Trask said.

  "As long as they aren't offended, or don't get angry."

  "Sounds reasonable."

  "Maybe," Solomon said. "They get offended pretty easy."

  "One other thing you ought to take into account," Celiast said.

  "There's talk that their tyee isn't very strong on having whites around."

  "Who's tyee there?" Trask said.

  "Name of Kilchis," Solomon said. "Something of a legend, even up here. They say he's strong as three men and shrewd as ten. He rules the band jointly with a man called Illga. Illga, far as I can make out, is the lineal chief, whatever that may mean. Kilchis came from nowhere."

  "He's the one you'd have to deal with, though," said Celiast. "The stories are pretty fantastic."

  "Like what?"

  Celiast shook her head. "They don't bear repeating. He sounds like Kahnie himself."

  "Mn."

  "He may be a nigger," Solomon said.

  "He what?"

  Solomon shrugged. "That's the story. I don't know, myself."

  "Well," Trask said, after a pause, "I guess I'll have to go down and see for myself."

  "That would be the thing, if you really want to know," Solomon said.

  "Bridge," Celiast said, "it isn't any of our business, but—where's your quarrel with Clatsop Plains?"

  "No quarrel," said Trask dubiously. He frowned. "I don't know. Sometimes I think I get an idea of what's wrong, but when I try to put it into words it goes away. I don't know."