“There is nothing to mind,” said Gunson. “It is only a fishing party;” and leading the way through the line of young firs, which acted as a screen, we came upon a group of Indians, two men and four women, all busy cleaning and splitting the fish which another man kept hauling up from the river in a rough net.
It seemed a very primitive way of fishing, and we stood looking on and examining some of the salmon hung to dry upon several roughly rigged up poles, before we went to the edge of the shelf upon which all this was going on, to find straight below us the other Indian standing upon a rough platform, made by driving a couple of stout poles into the wall of rock at a fissure, and throwing a few branches across. This man had a coarse net on a ring at the end of a long, stout pole, and watching his opportunity as the fish came rapidly up the rushing water, he plunged the net down, and brought it up with a gasping, struggling salmon. This was transferred to a hanging basket, and hauled up by the Indian at the edge, and carried to the party who were preparing and drying them in the sun for their winter store.
It was all ridiculously easy. The Indian had only to keep on dipping out fish as fast as they could be prepared, and what I saw quite removed any ideas of our taking advantage of the man who had let the fish he carried slip out of his basket, so that it came with a dart to my side of the screen of firs.
“That’s an easy way of getting a living,” said Esau, as we parted in a friendly way from the Indians, who stared at us in a very heavy, stolid way. “I think I should like to try that.”
“For how long?” cried Gunson, with a laugh. “Why, my good fellow, you’d be tired of catching the fish in a week, and more tired of eating them in a fortnight.”
“Tired?—of eating salmon?” said Esau, laughing. “Oh, you don’t know me. I had some once, and it was lovely.”
“Well, we’ll try one of ours when we stop for dinner,” said Gunson; “but we must do a good morning’s tramp first.”
That good morning’s tramp did not seem to progress much, for the way grew more and more difficult, and it was once taken into consideration whether we had not better strike in away from the river; and we should have adopted this course but for the fear of losing ourselves in the labyrinth of mountains to the north and east, and not being able to strike the stream again.
“You see, hard as the way is, it is sure,” said Gunson; “and as your goal and mine too are on the upper waters of the river, we had better keep to it.”
It was getting toward midday, and the sun shone forth with such power that we felt the little air there was come down the valley like the breath of an oven, and we should have decided to stop at once, cook our dinner, and rest, but for the fact that there was neither wood nor shade. For we had quite left the patches of forest behind at this point, and were tramping slowly over a bare sterile region of the most forbidding character, low down by the river. Higher up where we could not climb the tall trees again appeared, and every ledge and slope was crowned with dwarf pine, fern, and moss.