To Build A Shipt - Don Berry

by Don Berry

Vaughn looked at me, then back at Kilchis. "What about Sam?"

  "He is sullics, Tenas Sam. He is mad. You must keep him away from my people now, or there will be trouble."

  "What has he done?" Vaughn said apprehensively. I was holding my breath out of pure fear.

  "It is the woman of Cockshaten, Star of Morning?"

  "I don't understand, Kilchis. Ben, do you—"

  "Tenas Sam makes my people afraid," Kilchis said, leaning forward again. "They are frightened, because he is sullics. He wants Cockshater's woman, he wants to buy her. This is a long time ago, now."

  "Holy jesus," Vaughn breathed. "Ben, do you know anything about this?"

  "No, hell, nothing like that. It's just a girl, Vaughn, I never—"

  "Cockshater does not want to sell his woman," Kilchis went on. "But Tenas Sam will not listen."

  "Kilchis, I swear. We don't know anything about this."

  "That is why I tell you," Kilchis said patiently. "He is of your people and you must keep him away. He frightens my people and they do not like it. They want him to go away."

  "How, frightens them how?"

  "He is not like other men, Tenas Sam. He comes every night to the lodge now. He comes into the lodge and he stands over my people. He says he will kill everybody. He says he will bring the Boston soldiers into the Bay and kill all my people and he will take the woman."

  "That's—that's impossible, Kilchis. Sam wouldn't—"

  "That frightens the people, what he says. Sometimes he makes loud cries in the lodge at night, and the people cannot sleep. Sometimes he makes strange noises like animals, and weeps like a woman. Sometimes he stays outside the lodge and makes scratchings on the wall."

  "Oh, god, oh my god," Vaughn said, putting his head in his hands.

  "My people do not want to listen to him talk about killing. When he comes to the lodge and looks at the woman they are frightened. Sometimes he sits all night looking at the woman. When he makes the terrible sounds and scratching on the wall and talks about killing, the people are frightened. They want him to go away."

  "Why have your people done nothing to him?"

  "They are frightened. He is sullics, he is not like other men. They do not wish to touch him, but they do not want him around like that."

  Vaughn turned to look at me, and his expression was panicky. "Ben, what are we going to do now?"

  "I don't know, Vaughn. Jesus, I don't."

  Kilchis waited patiently while we spoke English, then said, "I give you Estacuga. You must keep Tenas Sam away from my people."

  "We'll—we'll talk to him, Kilchis."

  "He is one of your people. I want peace here. I do not want sullics men screaming in the night like animals and taking our women."

  "Yes, I understand, Kilchis. We'll—try."

  Vaughn sounded helpless, as we both felt. We were shocked by Kilchis' description, as though he had plunged us in cold water. I was full of an incredible dread when I thought about Sam, creeping down to an Indian lodge in the middle of the night, crying out, scratching on the walls, weeping.

  We left the lodge, leaving Estacuga with Kilchis until the morning, when we could decide what to do about a trial. After what he had told us about Sam, the trial of a murderer seemed minor.

  "Well," Vaughn said, laughing nervously. "Now we know why he don't sleep down at the Ship."

  "Listen," I said. "I saw this woman—Sam acted awful strange. But I didn't know anything about the rest of it."

  "He's lucky he's still alive, Sam is."

  "They're terrible superstitious, the Indians. I guess we're all lucky nothing happened before we found it out."

  "Hah!" Vaughn snorted. "Listen, you take a man who does those. things Kilchis says he's been doing. You figure you can just say, Sam, you better quit now?"

  "He's just trying to scare Cock Hat into selling him the girl."

  "Still. It takes a pretty—unusual sort of mind to take that particular line."

  "What the hell's wrong with him?" I said.

  "He's in love," Vaughn said. "Ain't it sweet?"

  "The. hell of it is—Vaughn, I even seen this girl. Christ, that's what I can't understand, I seen her, and there's nothing to see."

  "Real women ain't no problem," Vaughn said. "It's when you get an idea of a woman in your head that you're in trouble."

  "Well, we're all in the kettle now."

  "You know," Vaughn said thoughtfully, "if there's one thing in this world I don't want to suffer for, it's another man's illusions. I got enough trouble with my own."

  SEVEN

  1

  I was glad the Indians were as ignorant of law as we were. The trial of Estacuga would have been open to criticism. The plain fact is, we had no law at all in the country at the time and didn't know how to go about it. We were so uncivilized we couldn't even convict a man of a murder he freely admitted.

  Early the next morning the whites drew straws for office. I drew judge, Warren Vaughn got to be attorney, and Joe Champion was foreman of the jury. Most of the rest of the Ship crew were members of the jury.

  At the time it seemed perfectly natural that the trial should be held down by the Ship, though looking back I can't see any good reason for it. But she was the focus for everything, and we couldn't get away from her. The judge's bench was the huge fir butt next to the ways. Vaughn brought me down a chair from his cabin.

  There were even more people gathered for the trial than for the laying of the keel. I think the entire population of Kilchis' band was there, and the majority of the whites. Some other Indians from the surrounding tribes came to watch but Kilchis sent them away. He said this was a concern of the Bay people, and was nobody else's business. I was greatly relieved by this, as the presence of hostile strangers would have complicated the affair in ways I didn't like to think about.

  We were all nervous and on edge as it was, but we had agreed we had to go through with it as best we could and get this man condemned, preferably before noon. We wanted to have the rest of the day to work, though as it turned out we didn't.

  When everybody was gathered Kilchis went off to get the prisoner. 'The jury and the spectators, all of whom were sitting on the ground, fidgeted around and muttered to each other. Vaughn walked back and forth, also muttering, but to himself. I expect he was rehearsing his speech. Joe Champion got on my nerves worse than anybody. He had taken his usual non-active posture with his hands clasped on top of his head, staring up at the sky with his mouth half open. He could do this for hours, absolutely motionless, unless you gave him something definite to do. He strongly resembled an idiot, and every time I followed his glance up in the air to see what was falling, so did I.

  "Damn it, Joe," I said. "Can't you pay attention?"

  "Attention? Is somethin' happening?" He looked at me in puzzlement, his damned elbows sticking out at the side of his head like ears. I had to admit nothing was going on, and irresistibly Joe turned his eyes back to the sky and opened his mouth.

  My bench was not the best in the world, either. There is no possible way to put your knees under a stump. I had to sit off to the side with the stump under my right arm, and that chair teetering precariously on the uneven ground.

  After a awhile the Indians got bored, too, and started wandering around the Ship, which was only a few feet away from my bench. This infuriated Vaughn, who was working himself up to a rousing condemnation anyway, and he hollered at them to get away from the frames. There was, altogether, an enormous amount of noise. The jury muttered, all the Indians were chattering like squirrels. Since there was nobody left in the village itself, all the dogs had followed the parade and there must have been a hundred and fifty of them. Like all the Indian dogs, these mongrel pups had terrible, shrill, yapping voices that never stopped. They were also extremely ugly; waddling, fat little creatures who were kept that way for feast days; These dogs swirled in and around and about the Ship, the judge, the jury, and the spectators like a swarm of bees going in all possible directions. Yapping,
yapping, yapping and snarling and whining and howling when they got close enough to someone to be kicked.

  At last Kilchis appeared with Estacuga walking beside him, and the two of them slowly came up to the Ship. It was the first time I had seen Estacuga except under the blanket, and he was a terrible sight. The whole left side of his forehead seemed to be split open, and his eye was still puffy and swollen. I expect there must have been a number of bones in his face broken, and he seemed to have trouble moving his jaw. He showed no particular pain, but he was such a pathetically beaten sight I felt sorry for him. The day was extremely warm, even that early in the morning, but Estacuga was completely wrapped from shoulders to ankles in the same Hudson's Bay blanket that had covered him the night before. Kilchis made him sit down ahead of the spectators, just in front of the stump that served as my bench. The jury and Vaughn and I looked at him, and he looked back at us all in turn without saying anything.

  "Well, let's get started," Vaughn said finally. He seemed to have lost a lot of his spark when he saw how badly beaten the poor Indian was.

  "All right," I said. "This court is now in session." I slammed the stump with one of our carpenter's mallets, which produced no noticeable effect on the noise.

  "Listen," I said, "can't you shut up those dogs? They're going to drive us all crazy." Vaughn asked Kilchis in the Jargon.

  Kilchis nodded and said something in his own language to the crowd. Most of the squaws and slave women got sticks and pieces of scrap lumber from around the Ship and methodically started clubbing the dogs, who simply ran around in circles and howled and yipped. After this the women sat down again, and the dogs returned to yapping in their normal voices. It had looked like a brutal massacre while it was going on; but it changed nothing. The rest of the trial took place with the dogs racing and staggering about and barking at each other and us, so that from time to time you had to shout to be heard.

  "All right, Vaughn, which are you going to do first, the prosecution or the defense?"

  "Christ, Ben, I can't—I mean, Judge—I can't hear myself think."

  "Well, I can't stop them, can I? I tried, didn't I?"

  "All right, all right," Vaughn said discouragedly. "I guess I'll do the prosecution first."

  I slammed down the mallet. "Who's your first witness?"

  "That wife of Kilchis, that woman that was there."

  "Call the first witness, then."

  Vaughn asked Kilchis. "Estacuga is here," Kilchis said.

  "Why do you not ask him?"

  I looked at Vaughn, and he just shrugged. I was sure we had to have witnesses and testimony to make it official, but there wasn't any real reason Estacuga couldn't testify first if he wanted to.

  "All right. Well, Estacuga, what do you have to say?"

  He stood up in front of the stump, clutching his blanket. As he rose the blanket edge flipped open briefly and I stared. In one hand, hidden beneath the blanket, he had a huge butcher knife.

  "Vaughn, come here!" I said.

  Estacuga started to make his speech, but he stopped when he saw we weren't listening.

  "Jesus Christ, Vaughn. He's got a knife under that blanket a mile long," I whispered.

  "Well; what do you expect me to do about it?" Vaughn looked pale.

  "Take it away from him."

  Vaughn half laughed. "The hell with that, I don't want to get cut."

  I looked at the jury. Joe was watching the sky. There was nobody else I thought would be inclined to do it.

  "Well, we sure as hell can't have a trial on a man with a butcher knife."

  "Kilchis," Vaughn said. "This man has a weapon."

  "What man?"

  "Estacuga. He's got a big knife under his blanket."

  Kilchis said something rapid in the Salishan dialect they used, and Estacuga murmured a brief answer.

  "He says it is his own knife, he did not steal it."

  "You have to take it away from him," I told the tyee.

  "`We can't do this trial on a man that's fit to murder us with a knife?

  He said something again, and this time Estacuga answered at greater length. It was awful to watch how carefully he had to move his jaw to speak, and how much it obviously hurt.

  "He wants to keep the knife," Kilchis said. "It is his knife and it makes him feel better to have it. He will give it to you when you hang him."

  "Yeah," Vaughn muttered. "But where, is what I want to know."

  "Kilchis—"

  "This is finished," Kilchis said impatiently. "We are not here to talk about this knife."

  Vaughn sighed and shook his head. "Get on with it, Ben. We'll just have to go ahead."

  "I sure don't like it."

  "You don't have to," Vaughn said.

  "All right, Estacuga, what do you have to say?"

  Estacuga spoke in the ]argon this time, having prepared his statement beforehand. "Nika mamook memaloose Boston klootchman," he said. "I killed the white woman." Then he said the same about the son, and sat down.

  "Did you burn down the cabin, too?" I asked him.

  "Nowitka," he nodded.

  I looked at Kilchis, who appeared to be satisfied.

  "All right, call the first witness," I said.

  "He said he has done it," Kilchis objected. "Why do these other things? Punish him and we will all go home."

  I explained as best I could that it was the Boston law to do things with witnesses and testimony, and there was no help for it. Kilchis was annoyed, and I resolved to get the thing finished as fast as I could. His cooperation was the single thing we had in our favor, and I didn't want him angry at us.

  The slave woman came out of the mass of seated spectators, and with Kilchis as intermediary we questioned her. Because of the languages it was a clumsy process. The question was framed in English, Vaughn translated it for Kilchis into the jargon, Kilchis translated into Salpishan for the woman, who spoke only her own tongue.

  "Where were you the night Estacuga killed the white people and burned down the cabin?"

  "She was with Estacuga," Kilchis said. "I told you that."

  "No, we have to ask her," I said.

  Kilchis asked her, impatiently, and turned back with an expression of triumph. "She was with Estacuga?

  We questioned her some more and in the end we learned what no longer surprised us much, that Estacuga had killed the white people and burned down the cabin.

  By this time I was embarrassed about the whole trial.

  Kilchis obviously considered it useless. And while he knew no more about legal procedure than we did, there was no question but that he knew all there was to know about justice.

  I was doggedly going to go ahead and question the other woman, when there was a sudden movement among the Indians, a kind of shiver as though a cold wind had come off the bay. I thought they were staring at me, then realized they were looking behind me.

  I turned, and there stood Sam Howard, his blond hair flying around his head, his eyes wild and soot-dark.

  "Hullo, Sam," Joe Champion said.

  I turned quickly back to the crowd. I spotted Cock Hat, but not his woman, and was relieved. Sam said nothing, just stared with that maniac look to him. The Indians watched him intently, moving restlessly, but not speaking. For the first time even the side conversations had stopped, and there was no sound but the yapping of the dogs, which we had almost ceased to hear.

  Sam moved up beside me without turning his head and stared down at Estacuga. The Indian looked up at him, and suddenly scrambled to his feet.

  I grabbed Sam's elbow and said, "Sam, he's got a knife."

  Sam shook me off without hearing and went to stand right in front of Estacuga. He was as small as the Indian, and for a moment they faced each other in silence. I was sure Sam was going to get cut. I suddenly thought what that would mean to the Ship, to have Sam hurt, and jumped up myself, knocking over my chair.

  "Sam!" I said. "Listen, don't—"

  "You wasn't alone, was you?" Sam said in
English.

  Estacuga looked around in panic, the wildness of his stare almost equaling Sam's.

  Kilchis and I reached the two of them at the same moment, Kilchis taking the Indian's arm and pulling him away, me grabbing Sam.

  "Sam, you'll get yourself cut! Think of the Ship, Sam, he's got a knife!"

  "He wasn't alone," Sam said angrily. "Ask him. He wasn't alone."

  "All right, I'll ask him. But you come back here, Sam. Jesus, think of the Ship if you got cut."

  Sam let himself be pulled back to the judge's bench and I set the chair up again by the stump and pounded with the mallet. The day was already so hot I was sweating through my shirt.

  "Ask him," Sam kept saying. "Just ask him."

  "Estacuga, were you alone that night?"

  "`Wake."

  "Who was with you, then?"

  Estacuga pointed out Kilchis' slave woman and the woman in the crowd I hadn't gotten around to questioning yet.

  "This is all finished," Kilchis said. "The women did nothing."

  "Ask him," Sam said again. "Ask him why he don't tell the truth. Cock Hat was there and helped him kill them people."

  "Sam, listen."

  "ASK HIM ASK HIM ASK HIM!" Sam's fists were clenched at his side and rivulets of sweat were running down into his eyes. He looked so wild, and crazy he scared us all.

  "Was—was Cock Hat with you?"

  "Wake, wake," Estacuga shook his head definitely.

  "He's lying," Sam said. "Cock Hat killed them people. I know."

  He stared around the crowd until he picked out Cock Hat. When Sam's eyes met his the Indian squatted suddenly to his heels and began to trace aimless patterns in the dirt with his finger.

  "There he is," Sam said, "the murderin' bastard. There he is, he's even wearin' old man Cornwall's clothes. Look at him."

  A Cock Hat was in fact wearing a shiny satin vest, but we had I all seen him in it before.

  Kilchis had come over to stand by the bench, where he was close to Sam. He glanced at the little man out of the corner of his eye. "What does he say?" Kilchis asked me.

  "He said Cock Hat is the murderer, he has the old man's clothes."

  Kilchis stared at Sam for a moment, trying to decide what to do. Then he looked at the crowd and said in the jargon, "Where did Cockshaten get his shining clothes?"