Читать книгу Shaman's Dream: The Modoc War - Lu Boone's Mattson - Страница 43

Pretty soon there was going to be a saw-mill. You could see the place it was going to be, close by the stand of trees just below the agency. Not that it was going to make much of a difference to them since they were Modocs. The Klamaths would run it. Make boards for the agency and for all that house building that was going to go on. Square houses, they would be, like the Bostons lived in. With windows, and porches to sit on, and doors to go in and shut behind you. No more rain coming down the smoke hole, getting things wet. Roofs, these houses would have, with shingles split out of cedar. Paint, even. Probably. Like what Ivan put on the buildings over there at the agency. White.

There wasn’t any saw-mill, not quite yet. Keintpoos figured he could wait for it. But right now, for this house, he would go with the old ways.

They had skidded the four big pines, each one tall as four men, all the way from up by the agency, where the trees finally took hold. Got them limbed and the bark skinned off. Ready to take the adze to, to square up the sides. Once that was done, they would be fit to set.

He had found a good spot for digging the house out. By the creek, but up off the low places the tules filled as the stream reached in from the lake. You could see it from the track that led up from Linkville past Klamath Agency to the fort. He had marked out where he wanted it, to show the women where to dig. They knew how to put it without anyone telling them: one wall toward where Sun rises, another to where Sun goes down. Every woman who meant to live there could come pitch in now, until he and Black Jim got the rail splitting going good with the other men. The women could do the digging: his two wives and his sister; Black Jim’s woman, his sister-in-law; his blood sister Mary and her girl, his niece. Then, when they got finished, he and Black Jim and some other men would set the posts in place. The four big beams would take the cross-pieces. On those would go the mats and thatch. Then the layer of dirt, where the grasses would grow and fill in, the whole thing -- up to the hatchway in the middle of the roof -- secure against the wind and rain. They’d have a mat to lower over that doorway when it got to blowing in.

His wives had settled the sleeping arrangements. Lizzie, his young wife; Rebecca, his older. Lizzie could have the end of the place, up in the direction of the agency. Black Jim and his woman could have the part beside her. Mary and her girl could put out their bed rolls on the sunset side of the house. He and his old wife and little girl would take the sunrise side for themselves, so they could sleep with their heads against the wall. No one stepping over them in the night that way. It was better. Everyone with their feet to the west, as they should be. No danger their spirits would slip off while they slept.

Maybe when the mill came in he would see about a wooden house. His wives had tried to make him promise. To quiet them, he did -- he promised to think about it. When they kept on at him, he ordered them to shut their mouths. He’d think about it -- later, he said again.

He figured the old kind of lodge was good enough. Some said they were better. Their damp dug into you by the time the grass finally started showing itself in the spring, but they paid back in their dim coolness when the days got long and hot. You could sleep in them uncovered, just in some clothes, almost until morning. Only in the cold time would you need to unroll a blanket. But you could sing out in the morning when you woke up from your dreams and sat up in your bed, and there would be people around to hear and answer you. When it was raining and you wanted to hang around inside where it was dry, you and everybody else could lie out on the beds and listen to the old wife’s stories to pass away the time.

Some said the wind knifed right through the Boston buildings almost bad as it cut through mat and brush wikiups, brought sickness to your wives and kids all during the time when Sun stayed low in the sky. As far as he was concerned, the other Modocs could put up with their woven mat houses and some sagebrush windbreaks while they waited on the wood planks coming if they were of a mind to. But not him, nor his women. He needed space for a lot of people of his blood to live in. And space for having talks in, if he was going to be a la`qi. He needed a lodge as good as Old Schonchin’s, or else they all would say -- and not just the Klamaths -- that he came down a long way, letting the Bostons talk him in so easy.

Next day or so he would want to set the four timbers, so the women had better keep digging.

And the men had better keep going with the rails. They had almost a mountain of them split now. He didn’t know the tally, but Boston Charley did. He had the men putting some on this pile, taking some from that until there was a whole slew of even little hills of rails stretched out across the flat. Let Knapp come and have a look at that! Then he could send out the wagons to get them and mark it up that the Lost River Modocs had done so-and-so much work. Get them some commissary credit, to spend at Ivan’s.

But it was going to start in to snow again, and pretty soon. The wind had swung about and came now from the direction of Lost River and Linkville. A few gulls sailed in low over his head away from the lake and set down to walk about on the stubble of last summer. They turned their backs to the wind as they sheltered behind the hillocks of bunch grass. Sure enough, here came the snowflakes. Just in time to close up the rail-splitting operation.

He turned and waved toward the men that it was time to go on in. Then he picked up his shirt from the ground and shrugged into it. He swung the axe onto his shoulder and, round-backed, hunching against the wind, he waved to the others again.