Once peeled, he laid it on some rocks that kept it off the ground and in the direct sunlight and while the moist film left by the bark was drying he paused to drink out of the stream. Again, he had not really been listening – though the run-in with the bear should have made him more alert – and now he once more heard the gurgling sound of ravens talking and jays swearing over the rippling of the stream.

He was sure it all meant something, especially the sound of the ravens talking to one another and wondered if it was possible to learn their language enough to understand what they said.

Still, the sounds – even the complaining of the jays, and now and then the chukker of a red squirrel – did not seem to signal anything of alarm, or urgency, and he let himself sit and lean back against the side of the canoe and enjoy letting the sun cover him.

Slight doze. Not deep, nor hard, but enough to feel rested and hungry – the break gave his stomach time to finish off the berries he had eaten – and he found the willow had dried enough to allow him to work on it.

Using the knife he sharpened the slightly thick end into a kind of truncated point. Then he split the end exactly in the middle so it could be opened slightly.

Into this split he inserted the metal tang from the end of the spear head Old Carl had put in the canoe and then wrapped it snugly with thick cord from the ball of woven net twine that came in the bundle. This he pulled and tied off as tightly as he could pull using his teeth and when it was done he could not move the steel point no matter how he pulled on it.

So he had a fish spear.

Though the fish were not running like they would later in the season, in shoals so thick you could nearly walk on them, there were always some strays caught in the shallow pools. Leif waded in to stand knee-deep in the cold stream as still as he could with just the tip of the spear down in the water.

He waited. The roiling current made shadows that whirled here and there like fish and twice he almost tried to spear one of them but held back, held back until what fish that were truly there became accustomed to his legs and body being in the water.

Then a silver flash rolled in next to his ankles and he lunged with the spear.

And missed. Thrust higher than the body of the fish and he realized that the water altered the placement of the salmon. It wasn’t where it appeared to be but slightly lower. He had to thrust not at the top of the back of the fish but towards the bottom edge for the spear to catch the middle of the body.