“Thank you.”
“But let’s get this settled once and for all. If I were thirty you would not object to me going after this thing. Heck, if I were fifty you wouldn’t squawk.”
“Have you looked in a mirror lately? You are neither thirty nor fifty. Nor even sixty.”
“White hairs do not a simpleton make, wench. I will thank you to treat me with a little more respect.”
Blue Water Woman sighed. Setting down her cup, she rose and came around the table. “I only brought this up because I care.” Bending, she embraced him, resting her cheek on his shoulder. “Were I to lose you, my life would be empty.”
Shakespeare fidgeted in his chair. “How do you expect me to stay angry with you?”
Blue Water Woman kissed him on the cheek. “I don’t.”
“Damn your feminine wiles.”
“I love you, too.”
They kissed again, longer and passionately. When Blue Water Woman pulled away, Shakespeare pushed back his chair and stood.
“I need some air.”
“I am sorry I care so much, Carcajou.”
“It is my soul that calls upon my name,” Shakespeare softly quoted. “How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night, like softest music to attending ears.” He smiled and went out, remembering to take his rifle from beside the door. The cool evening air was a welcome relief from the flush of ardor. Overhead, stars had blossomed.
Shakespeare walked to the lake and gazed out over the dark waters. He thought of the thing in the depths, and more of the lines he had read countless times tripped from his troubled lips. “There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.” He stopped, and scowled. “There’s the rub. I am not ready. I would savor her until the end of time if I could.”
The crunch of a step brought Shakespeare around with his Hawken rising. The tall, broad-shouldered figure strolling toward him showed white teeth in a warm smile.
“I thought I saw you out here,” Nate King said.
“Horatio!” Shakespeare delightedly exclaimed, using his pet name for the man he loved as a son. He clapped Nate on the arm. “You are a balm to these tired eyes.”
“I just got back from Bent’s Fort,” Nate related. “I brought the sugar and flour the women wanted and enough powder to last us all for the next year.”
“You just got back, you say?” Shakespeare asked. It was a ten-day ride to the trading post and another ten days to return. “How is it you are over here talking to me instead of treating that adorable wife of yours to your company?”
“Winona just told me that you plan to try and catch the creature in the lake.”
“Oh, hell,” Shakespeare said.
“What is the matter?”
“I am not a dunce. My wife has been talking to your wife and now she sends you to do their handiwork.” Shakespeare kicked a stone, and it rolled into the water. “Females! They cut off our heads with a gilded axe and smile as they deliver the killing stroke.”
“Was that the Bard?”
“Somewhat,” Shakespeare said. “But you can turn around and go right back to your cabin. I want to do it and I will do it, and I don’t care who thinks I shouldn’t.”
Nate grinned. “Stamp your foot a few times and you will remind me of Zach when he was five years old.”
“Fah!” Shakespeare rejoined.
“Simmer down.”
“I will not. At my age a little simmering is good for the blood.”
“It is true what they say, then. The older we get, the younger we act.”
“What sock did you pull that one out of? It is mine to do, do you hear me? I will pit brain and sinew against the water devil, and may the real devil take the hindmost.”
“Be sure you are right, and then go ahead,” Nate said. “That motto worked for Davy Crockett, and it will work for us.”
“Us, Horatio?”
“That is why I came over,” Nate said. “Remember the grizzly that lived in the valley when we first came here? We tried to live in peace with it, but it chased my son over a cliff and tried to make a meal of my family and me. I had no choice but to kill it.” Nate turned toward the lake. “We need to know what is out there and whether it is a danger to our families.”
“Then you are not here to talk me out of going after it?”
“On the contrary. I am here to tell you I am with you. We will see this through together.”
Shakespeare McNair chortled. “This is the reason you are the manly apple of my eye. To battle, then, Horatio! Unleash the dogs of war!”
Bats in The Belfry
It was not quite ten o’clock the next morning when loud banging and scraping noises drew Blue Water Woman out of her cabin to stare in bewilderment at the roof. Planks left over from the chicken coop were unevenly stacked at one end. In the center, hammering away, was her husband. Their ladder was propped against the side of the cabin, and Nate King was just coming down it.
“Good morning,” he greeted her.
“Good morning to you,” Blue Water Woman responded, and then focused on the man she had married. “Carcajou?”
Shakespeare went on hammering.
“Do not pretend you cannot hear me,” Blue Water Woman said.
With an exaggerated sigh, Shakespeare lowered his hammer and shifted on his knees. “What is it, woman? Can’t you see we men are busy at important work?”
“You did not tell me Nate was here.”
“Do you expect me to mention every trifle? Should I tell you when I heed Nature’s call? Or pick my teeth?”
“Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, and it was not me.”
“Me either,” Shakespeare said, selecting a nail. “If my disposition were any sunnier, you could not stand to look at me except on cloudy days.”
“What are you doing to my roof?”
Shakespeare reacted as if she had slapped him. “Your roof? We both live under it. Which makes it mine as much as yours and entitles me to make improvements if I so desire.”
Blue Water Woman put her hands on her hips. “How do you improve a roof that has nothing wrong with it?”
Nate was filling his arms with planks. He looked up at McNair. “You didn’t tell her what we are going to do?”
“Stay out of this, Horatio.”
“I took it for granted you would,” Nate said. To Blue Water Woman he said, “It was his idea. A darned good one, too.”
“Perhaps you will share his brilliance with me since he saw fit not to,” Blue Water Woman prompted.
“We figure that we need to get a good look at the thing in the lake so we will have a better idea of how to deal with it,” Nate explained. “And the higher we are, the more of the lake we can see.”
“What does that have to do with my roof?”
Shakespeare slid to the edge and balanced on his hands and knees. “We are building a steeple.”
“A what?”
“Do you remember that time we went back East? All the churches we saw with bell towers on top? Those are called steeples.”
“You are turning our cabin into a church?”
Shakespeare did his strangled goose impression. “Honestly, woman. The silly notions you come up with. Have I taken out our table and chairs and replaced them with pews? Have I torn down the fireplace and put in an altar?”
“Do not give yourself ideas.”
“All I am building is a steeple. Then Nate and I will take turns keeping watch through his spyglass. Our big handicap has been that we can’t see much of the lake from the ground, but the steeple will remedy that.”
“You couldn’t climb a tree?”
Shakespeare made a sweeping motion with his arm. “Show me a single tree anywhere near the water and we will use it instead.”
Blue Water Woman couldn’t. To the west and north the woods only came to within a hundred yards of the
water. To the south grew grass. To the east the forest was slightly closer, but the closest trees were short and thin.
“I thought not,” Shakespeare said triumphantly. “Now will you go pester a chipmunk and leave us be?”
“Not so fast,” Blue Water Woman said. “How high will this steeple of yours be?”
“As high as it needs to be for us to see out to the middle of the lake. But I would say no more than thirty feet.”
Blue Water Woman stared at the chicken coop, which was eight feet high, then at the roof of their cabin. “Do you have a brain?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You are not building a thirty-foot steeple on my roof.”
“I keep telling you. It is our roof, and I will do as I please.”
“Not if you want to share my bed, you will not.”
Shakespeare stiffened, then said to Nate, “Did you hear her, Horatio? Blackmail. She thinks she can threaten me with the loss of a few cuddles.” Of Blue Water Woman he demanded, “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t.”
“I will give you more than one. That lumber you are using was for the storage shed you have been promising to build. The roof might not be strong enough to bear the weight of the steeple. We have bad lightning storms from time to time, and lighting likes to strike things that are up high. We have strong winds, too, and a Chinook might bring your steeple crashing down.” Blue Water Woman paused in her litany. “Shall I go on?”
“Scoffs and scorns and contumelious taunts,” Shakespeare quoted. “I should be angry with you if the time were convenient.”
“Well?”
“Well what? Yes, we have storms, and yes, we have high winds. And soon we will have our very own steeple.”
Blue Water Woman refused to let him have the final say. “If you were any more pigheaded, you would have a snout and a curly tail.”
Shakespeare went to push to his feet and nearly pitched over the edge. Squatting back down, he responded, “Dwell I but in the suburbs of your good pleasure? Why must you dam the flow of my stream?”
“Oh my,” Blue Water Woman said, and giggled.
At that, Nate laughed.
“Enough of this tomfoolery,” Shakespeare snapped. “Go away, wench. We have a steeple and stairs to build and the day is wasting.”
Blue Water Woman’s grin evaporated. “What was that? No one said anything about stairs.”
“How do you expect us to get up to the steeple? We can’t use a ladder all the time,” Shakespeare said, as he clambered higher to resume work.
“Will these stairs be inside the cabin or outside the cabin?”
“What difference does it make?”
“If they are inside, that would mean you intend to put a hole in my roof. And I will shoot you before I let that happen.”
“Ye gods, woman. You could nitpick a man to death, even beyond the grave. But rest easy. The stairs will be outside, on the west end of the cabin, so we do not disturb you with our comings and goings.” Shakespeare bestowed a smirk on her. “See? I can be considerate, your broadsides to the contrary.”
“I think I will go visit Winona,” Blue Water Woman announced. “I need a drink and we are out of brandy.”
“Good riddance to you and small pox,” Shakespeare shot back. “Stay most of the day if you want, and when you ride home you can admire your new steeple. It will be the envy of the neighborhood.”
“I have always suspected it, but now I am sure. You are a lunatic.” Blue Water Woman sniffed and raised her chin high. “I must get my shawl.” She marched into the cabin.
“Women!” Shakespeare declared. “If God were not drunk when He created them, then He is the lunatic.”
Nate lifted planks and carried them toward the ladder. “Weren’t you a little hard on her?”
“Do you see these claw marks?” Shakespeare touched his perfectly fine neck. “She came near to drawing blood. I am lucky to be alive.”
“You are lucky she puts up with you.”
Shakespeare aligned a nail and raised the hammer, then glanced down at Nate. “The Bard had it right when it came to women. We should all do as he says and we will have a lot less indigestion.”
“What did he say?”
“Woo her, wed her, bed her, then rid the house of her.”
Winona King was outside her cabin skinning a rabbit. She had caught it in a snare that morning, and by evening it would be chopped into bite-sized morsels and simmering in a stew. She loved rabbit stew. When she was little her mother had made it now and again, but nowhere near enough to suit her. Buffalo meat was their staple. They also ate venison a lot. Rabbit and other small game was resorted to only when buffalo and deer meat were not to be had.
Laying the rabbit on its back, Winona made slits down its hind legs. She peeled back the hide, slicing ligaments and muscle and scraping as required, careful to keep the edge of the knife toward the body, until she had the hide bunched around the rabbit’s neck. The hide would make fine trim for a couple of her buckskin dresses.
Absorbed in her work, Winona was startled when a shadow fell across her. Her husband had gone off earlier, and her daughter was across the lake visiting Degamawaku’s family.
Winona spun, her hand dropping to one of the pistols wedged under the leather belt she wore over her dress. Hostile red men and renegade whites roamed the mountains, and meat-eaters were abundant. Perils were so commonplace that she never ventured outside the cabin unarmed. Bitter experience had taught her the folly of doing so.
But now, about to unlimber a flintlock, Winona stopped with it half-drawn, and smiled.
“Tsaangu beaichehku,” Blue Water Woman said.
“Tsaangu beaichehku,” Winona said, which was Shoshone for ‘Good morning.’ While her friend knew some of her tongue and she knew some Salish, they usually used the language both knew almost as well as each knew her own. Decades of living under the same roof with a white man had made them fluent in the white tongue, so much so that both their husbands liked to boast they spoke English better than most whites. “This is a pleasant surprise.”
“I had to get away for a while,” Blue Water Woman said. “I hope you do not mind that I came here.”
“Mind?” Winona said, and laughed. “You are the sister I never had. Why would I mind?”
Blue Water Woman folded her arms across her bosom and poked the ground with the toe of a moccasin. “It is that husband of mine. There are times when I want to pull out my hair.”
“What has he done now?” Winona asked.
“You have not heard?” Blue Water Woman said. “He and your husband are building a steeple on our cabin.”
“Nate said that he was going over to help Shakespeare with a project, but he did not—” Winona paused and blinked. “Did you say a steeple?”
“Yes. You have been east of the Mississippi River. You have seen the houses of worship, as whites call them, with the big bells they ring when it is time for people to come and pray and sing?”
“Their churches, yes.”
“I am going to have a steeple without the church.”
It made no sense to Winona. Granted, her husband was deeply religious. In the evenings, after supper, she would sit in the rocking chair and sew or knit while he would be at the table reading, and often the book he read from was the Bible. She once asked Nate if he missed going to services, and he said that while it would be nice to mix with people who shared his beliefs, his body was his temple, and the congregation consisted of him and God. He then read a passage from Scripture to that effect.
“I should be thankful,” Blue Water Woman was saying, “that my idiot of a husband is not putting a bell in our steeple, or I would need to keep my ears plugged with wax.”
“But why a steeple?”
“So he can keep watch for the water devil.”
Winona started to laugh but caught herself. “You are serious?”
“I am afraid so.” Blue Water Woman sighed. “If I live a thousand winters, I w
ill never understand him.”
“It is men,” Winona said. “They do not think like we do.”
“It is Shakespeare,” Blue Water Woman replied. “He does not think like anyone.”
Winona grinned.
“Show me one other white who spends every spare minute reading William Shakespeare or quotes him every time he opens his mouth. It is ridiculous.”
“Oh my,” Winona said. “If your husband ever heard you say that, he would throw a fit.”
“I may throw one myself when I get home and see their steeple,” Blue Water Woman said. “That is my man for you. Once he sets his mind to something, he does not rest until he has done what he set out to do. And now he has taken it into his head to go after the water devil.”
“You are worried.”
“I am glad Nate is helping. Shakespeare needs someone with common sense to keep an eye on him.”
Ever sensitive to her friend’s moods, Winona remarked, “But it is not his age that is bothering you, is it?”
“No,” Blue Water Woman admitted. She gazed out over the water and bit her lower lip. “It is the water devil.”
“I am sure Nate and Shakespeare will be careful,” Winona sought to soothe her.
“Careful is not always enough. Some things are better left alone. A grizzly in its den. An eagle in its nest. A creature as big as a horse that lives in the water.”
“In the water, yes. So long as Nate and Shakespeare stay on land, they will be safe.”
“So long as they stay on land,” Blue Water Woman echoed.
Steeple Knight
Shakespeare McNair would never admit it to his wife, but to him this was great fun.
Shakespeare always liked a good challenge. Through out his life, he overcame one challenge after another and enjoyed each triumph. Add to that his love of a mystery and the fact he got to spend a lot of time in the company of the man he regarded as the son he never had, and he had a new spring in his step and a perpetual boyish grin on his wrinkled and weathered face—when he was not around Blue Water Woman.
He was not trying to deceive her in any way. He loved that woman with every particle of his being. It was just that she would never understand what the mystery of the creature in the lake meant to him.
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