Finally, with the fire going well – he could hear the mist sizzle as the sprinkling rain dropped on the flames – he cut long green willows from along the bank to make an angle-shaped drying rack. These he formed in a rough triangle, jamming one end of each willow in the ground, leaning inward and coming together in a point up and over the firepit, well above where the flames could reach, and he put in five crosspieces jammed in forks to make the rack.

Not as good as the large racks the men had made in the fish camp, but it would serve for this smaller load.

The dead fish he had placed on the gravel and he now used his knife to split them open. One had eggs, which he promptly ate raw with a little salt water for garnish – hunger taking him – and one whole salmon, the one the eagle had grabbed and torn a bit, with the guts and head removed, he set on a slanted flat rock and leaned in to the fire to cook.

The rest he split, leaving the sides connected at the head, and turned them inside out, slashed cuts across the red meat to allow them to dry more readily, and hung them, meat side out, on the drying rack he had made over the fire. On the fire he threw some green grass and leaves to make smoke, which the heat powered up through the drying fish and kept the flies – now moving in as they smelled guts and meat – from landing on the fish and planting eggs that would quickly become maggots. In the copper pot he placed seawater – for the salty taste – and the livers and some remaining eggs and the head off the one fish he was cooking on the slanted rock. The pot he placed directly in the flames to make a stew.

It took only a short time for the fish on the rock to cook – or at least cook enough – and he eagerly ate it with his fingers, tearing the meat off the skeletal structure, and these bones and the crisp skin, he also put in the stew pot, scales and all.

Belly full of meat, he added more wood to keep the fire going, put more green weeds and leaves on to make smoke, drank handfuls of water from the stream until his stomach bulged with it and then went looking for berries.

There were not the huge stands he had seen in other places but alongside the trickling stream he found smaller clumps of berry bushes. Perhaps because they were not as many and took more time to pick, the blackberries seemed to taste especially sweet and rich, as if each berry was a special treat. He picked until his lips and fingers were stained dark and the berries had mixed with the water and salmon in his belly when he paused and nearly fell asleep on his feet.