“Enjoy yourself.”
“That goes without saying,” Lou replied, and lowered her voice so Zach would not hear. “If all goes well, nine months from now Winona and you will have those grandchildren you have wanted.”
“Don’t do it on our account,” Nate said. “Only if you are hankering to change diapers.”
Louisa chuckled. “I’ve been ready for a couple of years now. It’s that stubborn son of yours who always balks.”
Zach twisted in his saddle. “What was that? Are you two talking about me again?”
“Not everything is about you, one I love,” Lou impishly returned. “Some of us can go a whole day without mentioning you.”
“Women,” Zach said.
“Men,” Lou retorted.
Shakespeare winked at Nate. “If these two were any more loving, you would think they were enemies.”
“You don’t fool anyone,” Louisa said. “Not after what your wife has told us. You are more romantic than all of us combined.”
“Yes,” Zach said. “What was that about you posing in the altogether with a flower in your teeth?”
Shakespeare McNair turned the same color as a beet. “Blue Water Woman told you that?”
“And more,” Louisa said.
“The woman is a fiend!” Shakespeare declared. “Such an injury would vex a saint.”
“Saint McNair,” Zach said, and laughed.
“You find that humorous?”
“I seem to recollect that to be a saint, you have to be as pure as the driven snow. Unless the snow is black, you wouldn’t qualify.”
McNair roared with glee. “By jove, Horatio Junior, that was a good one. My wit is beginning to rub off on you.”
“Just so a little of that romance rubs off on him as well,” Lou remarked, regarding her husband adoringly.
“Time to leave,” Zach said.
Nate and Shakespeare stood looking after them until they entered the trees. Zach turned and waved and his father waved back. Then the vegetation closed around them.
The ground was level until they came to the base of the mountain to the northwest. There it sloped upward, gradually at first but ever steeper as they climbed. It was a challenge to both rider and mount. Now and again, when they crossed open areas, Zach would tilt his head back and stare at the whitish-blue relict far above.
At midday they stopped to rest the horses. Lou opened a parfleche and gave Zach pemmican. She had made it herself, adding extra berries as he liked. She sat on a log to eat and he sank down beside her.
“We don’t have to go to the glacier, you know.”
Lou stopped chewing in surprise. “What?”
“We don’t have to go all the way to the glacier,” Zach repeated. “It will take days to get there.”
“But you’ve wanted to see it since we came,” Lou noted. “I thought you would leap at the chance.”
Zach shrugged. “I’ve never seen a glacier close-up before. But it seems a shame to waste days we could better spend relaxing in a meadow somewhere.”
“What is this?” Lou asked. “Why the sudden change of mind?”
“No reason,” Zach said.
“Liar. You’re thinking of those sounds we hear. Thinking that whatever makes them might be dangerous.”
“Can I help it if I don’t want any harm to come to you?” Zach countered. “It’s bad enough we are constantly running into bears and whatnot.”
Lou tenderly touched his cheek. “It’s sweet of you to be so concerned.” She patted the flintlocks tucked under her belt and the rifle propped on the log next to her leg. “But I can take care of myself.”
“I never said you couldn’t,” Zach said. “Why invite grief, though, if there is no reason?”
“I can’t believe my ears,” Lou said. “You, of all people, shying from possible trouble?”
“So?”
“So you have spent your whole life courting trouble, not running from it. You get into more scrapes than anyone I know.”
“That’s different,” Zach said. “I never start those scrapes. Usually I’m minding my own business and the Blackfeet or someone else comes along and wants to separate me from my hair.”
“Danger is danger, and you thrive on it.”
Zach wagged a piece of pemmican at her. “Shows how much you know. I didn’t do much thriving that time that grizzly drove me over a cliff. Or that time the wolverine jumped me.”
“You know what I mean.” Lou’s lovely blue eyes narrowed. “You really don’t want to go all the way to the glacier?”
Zach was quiet a bit, chewing. “I heard it last night.”
“What?”
“What have we been talking about? The thing up near the glacier. You were snoring and I couldn’t sleep so I stepped outside for some fresh air and I heard its cries.”
“And now you are having second thoughts.”
“The moon is full. We always hear it more when the moon is full.”
“But the moon won’t be full by the time we get there,” Lou noted.
“All I’m saying is that we don’t have to go there if you find a spot you like on the way up.”
Lou shifted and peered through the trees but could not see the white mass. “Aren’t you curious, though? I am. I’d like to know what makes those sounds. What if it is dangerous? What then?”
“All the more reason we should leave it alone,” Zach said.
“You’re missing my point. What if it is dangerous and it decides to pay us a visit some night? Say, after our baby is born. Wouldn’t it be better to find out what it is now rather than later?”
Zach had not thought of that and admitted as much.
“We don’t need to decide now. We can decide when we get up higher. But I think we should have a look-see.”
That evening they camped on a ridge covered with aspens. Zach kindled a fire and Lou cooked supper. They had plenty of provisions, enough to last a month if need be. She had brought a slab of venison from a buck Zach shot two days ago. She cut the meat into strips, then put them in a pan on a flat rock near the flames. In another pan she mixed chopped carrots with chopped onions. In a third she mixed cornmeal, water, and sugar to make a johnnycake. She reached for a spoon and froze.
Zach heard it, too. The crackle of the undergrowth. Something was coming toward them. He grabbed his Hawken and whirled just as the animal, grunting and snorting, came barreling into the open.
Four
Zach thought it was a bear. The grunts and the snorts were typical of the sounds a bear made. But to his bemusement, and relief, it was a creature far less formidable.
“It’s only a porky,” Louisa said, wagging the spoon. “It scared me out of a year’s growth.”
The porcupine stopped. Normally, porcupines avoided humans. This one grunted and started and sniffed, then did the last thing Zach expected; it kept coming.
“What in blazes?” Zach raised the Hawken to his shoulder and curled his thumb around the hammer.
“Don’t shoot it,” Louisa said. “It can’t do any harm and we don’t need the meat.” She giggled girlishly. “It’s sort of cute, don’t you think?”
Zach thought no such thing. With their long barbed quills, blunt heads, squat bodies, and short legs, they had to be the ugliest creatures alive. They were good eating, though. Shakespeare was partial to porcupine meat, and had served it when he had them over for supper.
The porcupine came to within about six feet of them, and stopped.
“What do you suppose it wants?” Lou wondered.
“It smells the food,” Zach guessed. “Or it wants our salt.” Porcupines craved salt like some men craved whiskey He wagged the Hawken at it. “Shoo! Go away, you blamed nuisance.”
The porcupine just stood there.
“Maybe I should give it some salt and it will go away,” Lou suggested.
“It will only want more,” Zach said. He took a step and poked his rifle at its snout. “Do your ears work? Get out of here bef
ore I give you a boot in the backside.”
“I wouldn’t, were I you,” Lou said. “I hear the quills hurt like the dickens and are awful hard to get out.”
Zach knew all about those quills. Once, years ago, his mother had taken them to visit her people. The Shoshones—or the Snakes, as the whites called them—were camped near the Green River. Their first night there, some of the dogs put up a racket. The next morning Zach was strolling about the village when he saw a small crowd and heard a dog whine. He went over and saw that one of the dogs had half a dozen quills sticking from its mouth and face. A porcupine had wandered into the village and the dogs had driven it off. Now the dog’s owner was trying to pull the quills out, without much success. The quills were embedded deep, the barbs caught fast. The warrior pulled and pulled but they would not come out. Finally it was decided to cut the quills and dig out the barbs, but as soon as the man began prying with his knife, the dog yelped and jerked back and would not let him try again. Three days later the dog’s face was swollen to twice its normal size. By the sixth day, its face was a mass of festering sores that oozed pus and reeked terribly. On the twelfth day the dog died.
“Watch out!” Lou cried.
The porcupine had turned its back to Zach and was backing toward him, its quills bristling like so many short spears. He quickly sidestepped and poked it with the Hawken, only to have it turn and back toward him again, this time swinging its tail.
“Be careful!”
Zach retreated. He had no desire to kill it. He was surprised more than anything else. Springing to the right to avoid a sweep of the nearly foot-long tail, he jabbed at it again with his rifle.
“You’re only making it mad,” Lou said.
With surprising speed, the porcupine darted in close and swung its tail at Zach’s left ankle. He leaped, clear, but only just, and this time gave it a hard whack with the stock. “Go pester someone else, damn you!”
Lou watched his antics with an amused smirk. “Well, that will certainly calm it down.”
Zach was growing mad, but not at the porcupine, at her. Instead of helping, she was making stupid comments. He was about to give her a piece of his mind when suddenly the porcupine came at him again. Backpedaling, he tripped, and before he could stop himself, he fell on his side with his face barely a foot from their unwanted visitor.
Lou screamed.
The porcupine was quick to seize the advantage. With a loud grunt it jumped at Zach’s face, its bristling quills extended. Zach barely swung his rifle between them in time. As it was several quills scraped his knuckles, drawing blood but not penetrating.
A pistol boomed.
At the blast, the porcupine lurched and stumbled, the top of its head disappearing in a spray of quills, bone, and gore. It twitched a few times, then was still.
Zach slowly rose. “I thought you didn’t want it killed.”
“I changed my mind,” Lou said, and blew a puff of breath at the smoke curling from the muzzle of her flintlock. “It darned near took your eyes out.”
“Strange, it acting like it did,” Zach said, and nudged the prickly form with the Hawken. “Want me to cut it up?”
“Just bury it,” Lou said.
Zach looked around. It was not like her to waste good meat. “Are you sure? I can dry the meat and salt it.”
“I’m sure,” Lou said. She commenced reloading.
Zach filled with pride. She was a fine wife. It was funny how life worked out. He always thought he would spend his life a bachelor. The idea of being tied to a woman and a home for the rest of his days had held little appeal. He had seen himself wandering the frontier, having one grand adventure after another. How silly those thoughts seemed now. How childish. Because now that he was married, he could not imagine himself alone. Specifically, he could not imagine his life without Lou.
She had become everything to him. That she put up with him was a marvel. He was the first to concede he was not easy to live with. He had a temper, for one thing. For another, he was not as neat and tidy as most women liked their men to be. For yet another, he had barely a thimble’s full of patience. He carped a lot. He tended to regard everyone as an enemy until they proved otherwise. As he saw it, the list of his faults was longer than his arm, yet she did not seem to mind.
Then there was her looks. To Zach she was the most beautiful woman who ever lived. Which, in a way, was peculiar, since he knew women with bigger bosoms and shapelier figures. Yet to him, she was lovelier than all of them, and when he first met her, he could not say why she so appealed to him.
Zach had thought about it a lot since, and he had come to the conclusion it was Lou, herself, and not her hair or her lips or her hips, which so stirred him. It was her personality, her spirit, the part of her that was her, to which the part of him that was him responded.
Zach could remember when he was seven or eight. One day he heard his father tell his mother that he loved her, just as his father had done countless times. But on that occasion Zach had looked up from his oatmeal and asked, “Pa, what is love?”
His father had looked at him and said, “You are a little young to be asking a question like that.”
“Answer him, husband,” Winona said from over by the stove. “I would like to hear.”
“Love is a lot of things,” Nate had said. “Love is when you care for someone more than you care for yourself. Love is when you want to do all you can to make the other person happy.” His father had paused. “But most of all, love is a special warmth deep inside.”
Zach never forgot those words. They stuck in his mind, stuck with him as he grew, and then one day he met Lou and the words came back to him in a rush of feeling. He cared for her more than anything, and wanted more than anything to make her happy.
“Are you going to bury it or stand there with that silly look on your face?”
The question snapped Zach out of his reverie. Lou had finished reloading and was hunkered by the frying pans. “I was thinking,” he said.
“What about?”
Zach hesitated. He was never entirely comfortable talking about his feelings. He could tell her he loved her, he would sometimes whisper endearments in the quiet of the night, but that was the extent of it. To delve deeper was just not in him. He was not Shakespeare. Wonderful words did not trip lightly off his tongue. Often he had to wrestle with himself to find the right thing to say. Like now. “How lucky I am that I met you.”
“You are a dear,” Lou said affectionately.
Zach bent to grab the porcupine and drag it off, then realized what he was doing. He went in search of a downed tree branch and found a suitable limb under a pine. As thick as his arm and twice as long, it sufficed to roll the porcupine away to a spot at the edge of the darkness. The ground was hard and he had not brought a shovel. There again, the limb was stout enough for him to use it to break the earth into clods and scrape out a shallow oval. He flipped the body into the hole, covered it, and stamped the dirt down.
Lou had a cup of hot coffee waiting. He liked his coffee black. He gulped half to wash down the dust of the trail, then sat back and sighed. The warmth in his belly, the warmth of the fire, the warmth in his wife’s eyes, they filled him with a rare sense of peace and contentment.
Always sensitive to his moods, Lou asked, “Why did you sigh?”
“Just happy, I guess,” Zach answered.
“It means a lot to me, your doing this.”
“So you have made plain,” Zach said. “And maybe you are right. Maybe it is time we started a family.”
“Maybe? I thought you had made up your mind. I thought you wanted this as much as I do.”
“I do, I do,” Zach said. He was wary of spoiling her mood. Women were temperamental that way. “I wouldn’t have agreed if I didn’t want to have one.”
Lou opened her mouth to say something, and turned to stone.
The wind had picked up, as it almost always did at night, gusting strong from the northwest. Earlier it had carried with
it the yip of a lonesome coyote. Once they heard the bleat of an animal caught by a predator. Now the wind brought to their ears a wavering howl. It rose to a piercing screech, then faded to a rumble like that of a bear, only this was no bear.
“The glacier beast!” Lou exclaimed
The short hairs at the nape of Zach’s neck prickled. They did nearly every time he heard it. Right then and there he made up his mind that under no circumstances were they climbing all the way to the glacier. He would find a place to stop long before they got there and concoct an excuse she would accept.
The cry died. They listened awhile but it was not repeated.
Lou was disappointed. “Your father once told me there are creatures in these mountains we know little about. Creatures the Indians say were here before they came. Creatures that should have died out long ago.”
“My mother’s people and other tribes have many legends,” Zach said. “When I was little I would sit on Touch the Cloud’s knee and hear about the time when all the animals were much bigger than they are now. Some were hairy, like buffalo. Others had horns in the middle of their heads. There were cats as big as bears, their teeth as long as sabers.”
“Do you believe all that?” Lou asked.
“The Indians do. It has been passed down from father to son for more winters than anyone can count.”
“You think the thing up at the glacier is one of those creatures?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. But there is a quote Shakespeare is fond of.” Zach had to think before it came to him. “ ‘There are more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.’ Or something like that.”
“Whatever it is, we might be the first to set eyes on it,” Lou said. “Wouldn’t that be exciting?”
Zach smiled, but he did not feel excited. He did not feel excited at all. When they turned in, he lay on his back with his head on his hands and listened for the cry to come again, but whatever made it was silent.
The next day was a repeat of the first. Except for short rests they spent every minute in the saddle, climbing, always climbing. Talus became common. So did slopes littered with boulders, some the size of a log cabin. Blue spruce thrived, the tallest over eighty feet high. A belt of gambel oak was unexpected. A belt of aspens was not. Cottonwoods bordered the stream fed by the glacier, the stream Zach had been paralleling since they left the valley floor. The stream followed a meandering course, as mountain waterways were wont to do, flowing in the path of least resistance.
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