“I’d appreciate the loan.I remember many facts when I read something, and I’ll take notes on things I want to refer to later.”
“Remind me to give it to you before you leave,” Sally scratched Herbert behind his ears.“Do you mind if I let Herbert come with us?”
“Not at all.Is he well-behaved?”
“As well-behaved as you can expect a piglet to be.I don’t need to tie a string around him.He just follows me on his own.”Sally let Herbert out of the pen and walked toward the river with confidence.“Let’s go check my nets.I think you’re going to want something very similar to what I have, but you’ll need to make it all bigger, of course.We may even want another person to join in on the salmon-fishing.Most locals eat salmon for at least one meal a day in winter.Katie tells me the local Indians—or Eskimos—will trade just about anything for salmon.It’s almost like money to them.”
“Interesting.Well, I’m here to learn.”Agnes could see large poles on their side of the river with something attached to it.“Is that the net?”
Sally nodded.“The men made it so I could pull it up by myself.They may need to engineer a pulley system for you.It will be much heavier than what I deal with.Or even two or three nets.We’ll all talk about it before we start making the nets in the morning.”
“We’re making the nets?”Agnes asked.“I thought the men were...”
“The men will make it so you can pull the net out of the water, but we make the net.They make the smokehouse.You’ll see.We’ve been through this recently, so the men are probably already deciding what they think is best.”
“Jasper has been good about letting me do what I want to help.I hope he doesn’t regret that.”
“He won’t.I know you’ll be able to handle it.”Sally smiled at her friend.“All right.Let’s pull up the net.You watch.I’ll show you how I do it, so you’ll know, but then I want you to help me get the fish.”Sally pointed to a large, smelly basket.“That’s where we’ll put them.Would you get it for me?”
Agnes nodded.“Of course.”She brought the basket and then stood watching as Sally pulled the net from the water.“How heavy is it?”
Sally shrugged.“A little heavier than a tray filled with drinks at the restaurant.You’ll be able to pull it out if we keep to this size.”
“All right.”The net was filled with writhing fish.
“We’re only after salmon,” Sally said.She grabbed one wriggling fish and held it up.“This is a salmon.The others we throw back.”
“Why only salmon?”
“I guess we could do other fish as well, but from what I’ve read and heard, salmon are the best for our purposes because they taste so good smoked.Then we don’t need to keep them frozen in Belle’s cold house.”
“I see.I still think I want a cold house.”Agnes wasn’t certain if asking for a cold house was too much, but it seemed like it would help them all.
“I told Tom that last night.He wasn’t part of building the first cold house, but he said that it’s mainly digging a deep hole, then putting as much ice in as we can handle.There’s no icehouse here, but you could take some ice from Belle.Or wait to fill it until fall when everything will already be freezing.”
“I see.He didn’t seem to think building another would be a problem?”
Sally laughed softly.“You will have to meet Tom to understand.He’s very easy-going, and he’s happy with whatever I do as long as I feed him.And even if I forgot to feed him, he’d be happy if he had hardtack and jerky.”
“Just the thought of jerky makes me want to gag after all we had to eat on that trip here.”Agnes shuddered just thinking about it.
“I feel the same.But the men don’t seem to mind.Truly.They do like to have big meals with variety, but if they don’t, they just eat what’s there.”
“Good men.”
“They all seem to be very good men so far.I know little about Jasper.Is he a good man?”
Agnes thought about her friend’s question for a moment.“He is.He treats me with kindness and respect.His only reservations about me doing goats as well as salmon was all the work involved, but he told me if I would do the work, it would be all right.He was a little worried about money, but I had some set aside.”
Sally nodded.“No wonder our men get along so well.They sound much alike.”
Agnes dropped to her knees and started pulling salmon from the net and tossing them into the basket as Sally was doing.“This is a lot of fish!”
“And most of it is salmon at this time of year.We won’t get salmon in the winter, so we have to make the most of it during the warmer months.We get different types of salmon during different times of the year.”Sally watched as Agnes plucked a small salmon from the net.“Throw that one back.It’s too small to be worth processing.”
Agnes threw the salmon back into the river.“Perhaps we’ll catch the same one in the spring.”
“It’s possible!”
