“I think that is what the sailormen call a silver hake,” said Rob; “but if Skookie doesn’t approve of it, I guess we won’t take any chances.”
The fish kept on biting at Rob’s peculiar lure and at the pieces of salmon which the other boys used as bait. In the course of an hour they had the bow end of the dory well piled up with codfish, and Rob declared that they had enough. They also had nearly a dozen gnarled, knobby-looking fish, mostly all head, which Skookie insisted were better than codfish, to which they later all agreed. Sailors call these fish “sea-lawyers,” because of their wide mouths, as they explain it. They rowed in to the beach near the mouth of the creek and dressed their fish on the shore not far from the salmon pool. After this they lay about in the sunshine of a beautiful day and idled away an hour or two more.
“I’ll tell you what, fellows,” said John, after a time, as he stopped throwing pebbles into the pool, “we ought to have some sort of a camp down here at the mouth of the creek, too. Look over there at that rock face on the other side of the creek; that would be a fine place to build another house. I think it would be fun.”
“But look at us, all crippled up as we are,” said Rob. “We never were in as bad shape to go to work.”
“Oh, well,” demurred Jesse, “we wouldn’t have to do it all in one day. I think, too, it would be some fun to build a barabbara all of our own.”
“I suppose we could float some logs down the creek,” said Rob, “and maybe pick up some drift-wood on the beach and tow it around with the dory. And there’s some drift right here at the mouth of our creek. We could build it over there just back of those scrubby trees, and with the cover of those and the tall grass no one could see it from the water unless he looked mighty close. And, as John says, it might save us a walk once in a while.”
“If that wasn’t a rock wall over there,” said Jesse, “we could make a dugout; but there isn’t any cave or opening in the rock there.”
“No,” said Rob, “and we can’t build a bark house like a Chippewa, nor a mat house like a Siwash, nor a tepee like a Sioux. On the whole, I have noticed that every country knows how to build its own houses best. The natives here make barabbaras because they have material for that sort of house, and they seem to do pretty well, if they do smoke a little.”
“Suppose we build a barabbara, then,” suggested Jesse.
“Ask Skookie,” suggested Rob.