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The Way West (1955)

where they lay, with what life remained in them, thinking they had earned the slim chance of a miracle, and sometimes put plunder from the wagons with them -a chest or favorite chair or grinding stone-for every pound now counted. Leaving such, Daugherty had scratched a sign and posted it close by for travelers coming later. It said, "Help yourself." It also said weariness and the sour humor growing out of it. It said help yourself, only you can't, you poor devil like me, and so the joke's on you.
Coming on to good campsites, on to grass and easy water, men and women always tried to believe the hardest miles were rolled. For a little while-until they pulled again into the waste of sand and stonetheir spirits lifted and their voices rang out full. That was the way of them at Salmon Falls Creek, where everything was plenty, and at Salmon Falls. Though grass,and fuel were scanty at the falls, the Indians had fresh salmon and cakes of pounded berries to trade for clothing, powder, knives and fishhooks. Most of all for fishhooks, which Dick had thought to bring aplenty of. Fresh meat tasted good, even salmon, after days of chewing on dried stuff, eaten stiff or mushed up in a pot, though Evans came to feel he'd just as soon not see a fish again if he could have red meat. And the berry cakes were better yet.
Seeing the Salmon Falls Indians, Evans knew why Summers spoke so low of the fish-eating tribes. They were friendly and talkative and sometimes funny, but childish-minded and dirty and naked except maybe for a lousy rabbit skin, and they ate anything-lizards and grasshoppers and pursy crickets that would gag a man. They lived in huts of grass and willow that were