Soul Stance River - 33

Fort Clatsop is up and true, 50 feet square, with a smokehouse, pallisades, barracks and two gateways furnished from the aromatic and reliable wood of the great Fir trees, we keep busy by scraping elk hides for clothes, making moccasins, hunting and boiling sea water in kettles to manufacture a nutritious salt, the Clatsop Indians are not the onery thieves that the Chinook are, in fact, they are merry hustlers with fine things to trade, the Clatsop chief, Coboway was in fort today, smoking and learning how we leather stitch when I began negotiating for his sea otter robe, a fur of extraordinary waterproof warmth and deep colored beauty several layers ringed, overlapping one another like roof tiles with a thin elk hide underneath the length of a knee cloak with the incandescence of morning mountains snowy whites, granite greys and cool browns, I believe that is why Clark and I are contending for it, that rare robe reminds us of the Rockies, the rugged majesty, Coboway isn't being simple though, actually he's being a prick about it, refusing all sorts of neat and valuable things and then Sacagawea comes into the room shakin her meaty hips around and the chief comes to life and says he'll trade for her beaded belt, Clark looks at me like hey, not fair because he knows I can get Janey, Sacagawea's American name, to give it up for my blue velvet coat that she just purrs for, J.A.B.