In a way, the mystery was like that of the mountains themselves when Shakespeare first came to the Rockies all those decades ago. He was one of the first, if not the first, to boldly go where no white man had gone before: to venture east of the mighty Mississippi River into the unknown realm beyond.
Often, Shakespeare relived those wonderful days in his mind’s eye. He saw again his first grizzly, witnessed the passage of his first nigh-endless herd of buffalo, set eyes again for the first time on the towering ramparts that would become his home for the rest of his life.
The thing in the lake was another first. It was new; it was different; it was unknown. Shakespeare had heard all the Indians’ accounts. But he had never beheld any of the creatures that spawned those accounts. Now he had his chance.
Shakespeare was not one of those whites who doubted everything Indians said on general principle. Some whites refused to believe anything Indians told them simply because they were Indians. A prominent man of the cloth had been quoted in the newspapers as stating that those of the red race were inveterate heathens and liars. Heathens, because they did not believe in the white God. Liars, because anyone who did not believe in the white God was incapable of being true in anything.
Shakespeare had chuckled when he read it. It was just plain silly. From his own experience, Shakespeare knew that most Indians viewed with low regard anyone who talked with two tongues. Honesty and truthfulness were highly esteemed.
So when Indians told Shakespeare about the early times, about the days when the land was overrun by many strange and fearsome beasts, he listened. He had poked fun at Blue Water Woman, but he did not doubt for a minute that her tribe, and many others, believed their legends to be true, and every legend had its kernel of truth.
King Valley, as Shakespeare did not mind calling it, since Nate was the one who came up with the idea of moving there, had long been known as bad medicine by the Crows and the Utes. The valley was a throwback to the old times. It was said that something lived up near the glacier that fed runoff into the lake. It was also whispered that the lake itself was the haunt of something. Both somethings were said to be from the time long ago, and best avoided.
Now, after repeated puzzling and bizarre incidents, Shakespeare would very much like to know what the something in the lake was.
For more than a week, he and Nate kept watch from the steeple every chance they got, sometimes together, sometimes singly. They had made a bench where they could sit in relative comfort and scan the lake through Nate’s spyglass.
Shakespeare was proud of the steeple. It had taken a lot of sweat to build. They only had enough planks to make it ten feet high, but combined with the height of the cabin, their new vantage afforded them a sweeping view of the lake, which was exactly what they needed.
The morning after they built it, Shakespeare took Blue Water Woman up the stairs and bid her sit on the seat and admire the view. Not only could they see more of the lake, but more of the valley, too.
Breathtaking to behold, the glory of creation unfolded before them in all its spectacular splendor.
Blue Water Woman sat and gazed quietly to the east, north, west, and south. Then she smiled in that mild manner she had, and said, “I like this. Your steeple is still silly, but I like this.”
Shakespeare made a show of clearing his throat. “You made all that fuss for nothing.”
“This will be a good place to come and sip tea when I want to get away from you.”
Shakespeare started to laugh, then caught himself, and thought it prudent to show some indignation. “Shall quips and sentences and paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humor?”
“Do you know,” Blue Water Woman said, “that I have heard there are wives whose husbands talk plainly and simply and do not quote an old, moldy book every time they open their mouth?”
“My book is not moldy!” Shakespeare took immediate offense. “This is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Blue Water Woman smiled sweetly. “That is exactly my point.”
Shakespeare could not help it; he cackled. She was the only woman he had ever met who could hold her own in banter that most women would not abide and some could not understand. The Bard, after all, was an acquired taste. Shakespeare liked to think of old William S’s works as a fine wine distilled from the vineyard of the human condition. All there was to know, for those who wanted to know, could be found in the Bard’s recitals of humanity’s foibles and passions.
It was one of Shakespeare’s great regrets that he had never made it to England. A visit to the Bard’s own country would be heaven. He had it on reliable authority that people over there, by and large, adored the playwright, and read his plays for the pleasure of the reading. On the American side of the pond, William S had his partisans, but it was nothing like in Britain.
At this moment, though, seated on the bench in the steeple with the sun poised on the western brink of the world, Shakespeare was not thinking of the genius from Avon. He was scanning the lake from end to end through the spyglass. He saw fish jump. He saw ducks. He saw geese. He saw gulls. He saw a pair of red hawks. At one point a golden eagle dived and snared a fish in its great talons, then took wing again, flapping powerfully to gain altitude.
It was the eighth evening after the steeple’s completion. Shakespeare had spent every minute he could on the lookout and not seen any sign of his quarry. He had begun to think that maybe his wife was right and he had gone to a lot of trouble for nothing, that perhaps their sightings of the thing would be no more frequent than before.
Then, as he was sweeping the spyglass from west to east, a tingle of excitement coursed through him.
The wind was still, the lake a mirror, its surface as calm as calm could be. But suddenly, out toward the middle, the water swelled upward as if something were pushing it from below. Shakespeare watched in fascination as the swell moved to the west, leaving broad ripples in its wake.
“I’ve found you, by God!” Shakespeare exclaimed. He waited with bated breath for the thing to show itself, but all he saw was the swell. After sixty or seventy feet it grew smaller and smaller until finally the lake’s surface was as flat and smooth as a mirror again.
“Damn!” Shakespeare grumbled. What were they to do if the thing never showed itself? Some fish, after all, rarely left the depths, and when they did, they never broke the surface, but swam below it where searching eyes could not see them.
Still, Shakespeare was hopeful. He related his sighting to Nate the next day in the steeple as they sat talking over the best way to see the thing up close.
“The only way is to be out on the water when the creature comes up,” Shakespeare said.
“It is too bad you and I do not have a canoe,” Nate remarked. They rarely traveled by water, so he saw no need for one.
“Yes, that is too bad,” Shakespeare agreed, and smiled a devious smile. “But we know someone who does.”
The Nansusequas loved their new home. The tall trees, which had never been scarred by an axe, reminded them of the dense eastern woodland from which they came. The Nansusequa had always dwelled in the deep woods; it was why they called themselves the People of the Forest.
Only five escaped the massacre of their tribe. Wakumassee, the father, and Tihikanima, the mother, and their three children: Degamawaku, their son, who had been seeing a lot of Evelyn King; Tenikawaku, their oldest daughter; and Mikikawaku, their youngest.
The family always wore green. Their buckskins, their blankets, their robes—everything they owned was dyed green out of reverence for the source of the green world in which the Nansusequa lived. That Which Was In All Things, they called it, or simply the Manitoa.
On this particular morning, Wakumassee was outside their Great Lodge mending a fishing net when a clatter of hooves heralded the arrival of Shakespeare McNair on his white mare.
Waku beamed and put down the net to greet his visitor. He owed Nate King and McNair a
debt impossible to repay. They had taken his family in when all was lost. They had permitted him and his loved ones to stay in the valley, safe from the whites who had slaughtered the rest of their kind.
“Welcome, friend!” Waku said. His English was not all that good, but he was working hard to master the tongue.
“Men of peace, well encountered!” Shakespeare declared, and warmly clapped him on the shoulders.
“Eh?” Wakumassee tried to sort out the words to make sense of the meaning. McNair was forever saying things that confused him. He had mentioned it once to Nate King and Nate had laughed and said not to worry, that NcNair said a lot of things that confused him, too.
“A hearty good morning to you, sirrah,” Shakespeare elaborated. He regarded the net with interest. “I say. I didn’t know you had one of those.”
“We like to fish,” Waku responded, proud he had said it as it should be said.
“I thought you were hunters.”
“Hunt too,” Waku said. He gestured to the east. “We fish much in rivers.” He paused. “I say that right?”
“Close enough.” Shakespeare squatted, set down his Hawken, gripped the net in both hands, and tugged. “This is strong enough to hold a buffalo. What is it made of?”
“Plant,” Waku said. “Not know white name.”
“That’s all right.” Chuckling, Shakespeare said, “Ask and you shall receive.”
“Pardon?” Waku had learned that was the word to use when he was puzzled, and around McNair he was puzzled a lot.
“I have come to ask a favor.” Shakespeare glanced at the net. “Actually, two favors.”
“What I can do, I will,” Waku said.
“Maybe you should hear me out,” Shakespeare suggested. “It could be you don’t want to.”
Waku put his hand on McNair’s shoulder and looked him in the eyes. “You and Nate King save us. You much kind. Give us new home. Give me hope.” He struggled to find the right words. “I always your friend. Any help I can be, I do for you.”
“I thank you,” Shakespeare said. “I take it you have heard about my Holy Grail?”
“Pardon?”
“Perseus had the Gorgon. Theseus fought the Minotaur. St. George went up against a dragon. And now I am about to pit myself against the demon of the depths.”
“Pardon?” Waku said again. He had been confused before but never this confused.
“Ah. Then you haven’t heard. No matter.” Shakespeare indicated the net. “I wonder if I might borrow that. It appears to be more than big enough for my purpose.”
“Yes. Take. All I have be yours,” Waku said. “You want catch fish?”
“I don’t know what it is I want to catch, but I know I want to catch it, and once I catch it I will know what it is.”
“Ah.” Waku said, but he had no idea what the white-haired white was going on about.
“I would also like to borrow that,” Shakespeare said, and pointed.
“Our canoe?”
“Yes.” Shakespeare led the way over to the side of the Great Lodge, where the canoe sat ready to be carried to the water. Unlike the mountain tribes, who fashioned their canoes from hides or bark molded over wooden frames, the Nansusequa made their canoes using a single large log. They chipped out the center and sanded and smoothed the entire craft. The resultant dugout, while heavy and ponderous, was next to unsinkable.
“Take it,” Waku said.
“I don’t need the canoe right this minute,” Shakespeare explained. “It might be tomorrow, it might be next week, but sooner or later I will, and I wanted to get your permission in advance.”
“Take any time.”
Shakespeare took Waku’s hand in his. “I thank you, Wakumassee.’ Tis sweet and commendable in your nature to be so generous.” He bent and lowered his voice. “One thing more, and it is important. Our arrangement is to be our little secret.”
“Secret?” Waku repeated, trying to remember what the word meant.
“Yes. You are not to tell a soul.”
“Not tell Nate?”
“No. He has a leaky mouth and is bound to mention it to his wife, who will run to mine to inform on me.”
“You not want your wife find out?”
“Her most of all,” Shakespeare said. “The Gorgon and the Minotaur were as kittens compared to her, and as for the dragon, it would call her sister.”
“I not understand. But I do as you want.”
Shakespeare gazed at the lake. “O monstrous beast,” he quoted, “I am ready for you. Pit your wits against mine, and may the loser lead apes in hell!”
Watching and Jousting
For another week Shakespeare and Nate kept diligent watch—and saw nothing, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. It got so Shakespeare took to pacing back and forth and muttering under his breath.
“You are letting it get to you,” Nate commented late one afternoon, as he raked the lake with the spyglass. “I have not seen you this wrought up in a coon’s age.”
Shakespeare shook a fist in the general direction of the creature’s watery realm. “I thought for sure we would have seen it a few times by now and have some idea of its habits. At the very least we should have found out whether it is a fish or something else.”
“We need more time,” Nate said. “More patience.”
“Maybe you can afford to wait, but I can’t,” Shakespeare said. “As everyone keeps reminding me, I am getting on in years. I would like to find out what this thing is before I am looking up at the world through freshly dug dirt.”
“You have twenty good years left in you.”
“My creaking joints say different,” Shakespeare said, and to get back to the issue very much on his mind, he pointed at the lake. “The thing has to have a pattern. Once we have that, we have him, her, or it, as the case may be.”
“You’re guessing,” Nate said.
Shakespeare plopped down on the bench and shook his head. “No, I am not. Everything has its habits. Deer, bear, buffalo, birds, bugs, you name it. They do certain things in certain ways. They graze at the same time each day, or at the same place, or they wait for prey at the same spot, or visit the same patch of wildflowers.”
“That is true to a point. But we are dealing with a fish.”
“Are we?” Shakespeare rejoined. “We don’t know what it is. But let’s say you are right. Let’s assume it is a fish of some kind. What do fish do? What pattern do they stick to?” He answered his own questions. “Fish swim and eat. That is pretty much it. Some, like catfish, stay down low. Bass like to stay near the shore and hide in weeds. Trout like fast-flowing streams and rivers.”
“How does any of that help us with it?” Nate nodded at the lake.
“What do we know about it so far?” Shakespeare asked, and again answered before his friend could. “We know it is alive and big. To get that big, it had to eat a lot of whatever it eats. To stay alive, it has to go on eating. Follow me so far?”
“That is logical, yes.”
“But what does it eat? Plants? I don’t think so. Few fish do. Worms and bugs? Not enough of either to be had. Which tells us that the thing must eat other fish.”
“Possible,” Nate said.
“Probable,” Shakespeare amended. “But what kind of fish? Fish near the surface or fish down deep?”
“Mostly down deep,” Nate reasoned, “or we would see it near the surface more than we do.”
“Good point, Horatio. So if it spends most of its time down in the depths, how are we to lure it up?”
Nate shrugged. “I am open to ideas.”
“I wish I had one.”
“All this talk is getting us nowhere,” Nate said. He stood, gave the spyglass to Shakespeare, and moved toward the stairs. “I’d better get home. Winona will have supper on soon and she does not like it when I am late.”
“Off you go, then,” Shakespeare said. “Be careful not to trip over the ball and chain on your way down.” He raised the spyglass to his right e
ye and the water came into sharp focus. Sweeping it from one end of the lake to the other, he said to himself, “Where are you, beastie? We will make you some sport if only you will show yourself.”
But all Shakespeare saw was water and more water, and ducks and geese and sundry waterfowl swimming or floating or taking wing or landing. In his disgust at this state of affairs, he watched several mallards. The spyglass made it seem as if he could reach out and touch them. A male caught his interest. It was quacking up a storm. Why, he could not imagine, since the lake was as tranquil as nature allowed.
The mallard’s yellow beak, the brilliant green plumage on the head, the deep chestnut brown of the front of the body, all were brought out in vivid relief by the bright rays of the setting sun.
Then suddenly the mallard was gone.
Shakespeare blinked, not sure what he had seen. One instant it had been there, quacking like crazy, the next it had disappeared under the surface. It did not dive. It did not sink. It shot straight down as if wrenched from below. He kept the telescope trained on the spot, thinking the mallard would reappear. It did not.
“There are more things in heaven and earth…” Shakespeare began, but he did not finish the quote. He was studying the other mallards. Most had taken wing. One female was paddling around and around near where the male had vanished. The male’s mate, Shakespeare reckoned, and was touched by her devotion. Evidently ducks were not strangers to the noblest of all emotions.
Presently, the female took flight as well. But Shakespeare flattered himself that he detected a certain reluctance in her movements.
By then the sun had set, and gray twilight was spreading like a fog across the water.
Shakespeare lowered the spyglass and scratched his snowy beard. “I wonder,” he said.
The next morning, the sun had not yet risen when Shakespeare climbed to the steeple. He was bundled in a heavy buffalo robe against the chill. At that altitude, even in summer, the nights could be downright cold. He had left Blue Water Woman asleep in bed. Waking her would only result in more criticism of his quest, and Shakespeare could do without that. Besides, she would be up in half an hour.
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