“Come,” she called to Gesnip, “and help me wash the mussels.” Then, as she saw the younger girl shivering as she crouched over the fire, “Cleeta, you need not be cold any longer; your rabbit skin dress is done. Go into the jacal and put it on.” Cleeta obeyed with dancing eyes.
Gesnip followed her mother to the stream.
“Take this,” said Macana, handing her an openwork net or bag, “and hold it while I empty in some of the mussels. Now lift them up and down in the water to wash out the sand. That will do; put them into this basket, and I will give you some more.”
Meantime some of the women had taken a dozen or more fish from Sholoc’s baskets, and removing their entrails with bone knives, wrapped them in many thicknesses of damp grass and laid them in the hot ashes and coals to bake.
When the mussels were all cleaned, Macana emptied them into a large basket half filled with water, and threw in a little acorn meal and a handful of herbs. Then, using two green sticks for tongs, she drew out from among the coals some smooth gray stones which had become very hot. Brushing these off with a bunch of tules, she lifted them by means of a green stick having a loop in the end which fitted round the stones, flinging them one by one into the basket in which were the mussels and water. Immediately the water, heated by the stones, began to boil, and when the soup was ready, she set the basket down beside her own jacal and called her children to her. Payuchi, Gesnip, Cleeta, and their little four-year-old brother, Nakin, gathered about the basket, helping themselves with abalone shells, the small holes of which their mother had plugged with wood.
“Isn’t father going to have some first?” asked Payuchi, before they began the meal.
“Not this time; he will eat with Sholoc and the men when the fish are ready,” replied his mother.
“This is good soup,” said Gesnip. “I am glad I worked hard before the water came up. But, Payuchi, didn’t you and Nopal get any clams?”
“Yes,” said her brother, making a face; he had dipped down where the stones were hottest and the soup thickest, and had taken a mouthful that burned him. “Yes, we got some clams, more than I could carry; but Nopal was running races with the other boys and would not come, so I left him to bring them. He will lose his fish dinner if he doesn’t hurry.”
“Mother,” said Cleeta, “may we stay up to the fish bake?”