In Darkest Depths (10 page)

Blue Water Woman was a Salish. The whites called them Flatheads. The whites also called the lake at the heart of Salish territory Flathead Lake. To her, growing up, the lake had been as much a part of her life as the grass and the trees and the sky. She could swim by the time she had seen six winters. Thereafter, she spent every free minute she could in or near the water. Her fondness went far beyond that of any other Salish. So much so, that she earned the name Blue Water Woman.

Now she lived up to that name. She cleaved the water with barely a splash and swam with the agility of a seal. Ahead loomed a dark mass. She had been right. It
was
the water devil, and it was swimming slowly along, as if water devils did not have a care in the world.

Her mouth clamped tight and her lungs filled with air, Blue Water Woman pumped her arms and legs. It did not turn or look back. Either it was unaware she had dived in or it did not regard her as a threat.

Blue Water Woman clutched her knife more firmly. She thought of Shakespeare, the man who meant more to her than the breath she was holding, who
meant more to her than anything, and her resolve to kill the beast became an iron rod of vengeance.

She did not care how big the thing was. She did not care that it could kill her with a casual swat of its huge tail. She did not care about anything except avenging the other half of her heart.

She gained quickly, swimming wide of the tail and then angling toward the great bulk of the body. Inwardly she smiled at the image of plunging her blade in again and again. She was almost close enough, the thing was almost within reach of her knife, when something seized hold of her ankle.

Nate King could not say which had shocked him more: that Blue Water Woman had stripped naked right there in front of him, or that she had thrown herself into the water after the water devil. But he had not lived as long as he had in the wilds by letting shock slow his reflexes. No sooner had the water swallowed her than he was up and stripping off his pistols and possibles bag and powder horn and ammunition pouch. Then he dived in after her.

Nate spotted her right away, swimming with amazing swiftness. He swam after her and discovered that while he had always been accounted a powerful swimmer, she was faster. He was a catfish, she was a bass. He tried to catch her and couldn't. The realization that if he didn't, she might die, lent extra energy to his limbs, but she still stayed ahead of him.

The fish filled his vision. This close, there could be no doubt what it was. An enormous fish, the most enormous he'd ever seen, the most enormous he'd ever heard off. No doubt there were bigger fish in the oceans and elsewhere. But in
this
lake at
this
moment,
this
fish was a leviathan.

The thing could slay either of them as easily as they could slay a tiny guppy.

Fear for Blue Water Woman spurred Nate into exerting his all. She swam wide to avoid the tail, and in doing so, enabled him to narrow the gap, enough that by hurtling forward, he was able to grab her right ankle and hold fast.

Blue Water Woman glanced back. The fire of her vengeance became the fire of resentment. She jerked her leg, but Nate would not let go. Twisting, she pushed his arm, but could not move it. She glared at him and saw he was not looking at her but at something behind her. She sensed movement and knew what she would see before she turned.

The fish seemed to fill the lake. It floated an arm's length away, staring at her, its head in shadow. By some trick of the light she could see its eyes. They gleamed like twin embers, but not with fury, or with hate, or with any emotion as humans understood them. Blue Water Woman looked into those eyes and the emotion she saw, if a fish could be said to have emotion, was sadness, a deep, pervading sorrow such as she had seldom beheld in any person or animal. It stunned her. She did not move as the fish came closer, until it was so near they were practically touching.

Blue Water Woman looked, and she could not stab it. She looked into those eyes and she would never be the same again.

Then it was gone. A flick of its tail and fish dived for the dark depths it called home.

Blue Water Woman shook herself to break the spell. She felt Nate tug on her ankle. He gestured toward the surface and she nodded. Together, they swam up and gulped air.

“Are you all right?” Nate asked.

“I am fine,” Blue Water Woman lied.

Nate swam to their canoe, climbed in, and offered her his hand. “Let me help you up.”

Blue Water Woman started toward him.

“Out for some exercise, are you?”

They turned. Coming toward them, on his knees in the bow of the dugout and paddling with his hands, was a white-haired devil of a different sort, wearing a grin a mile wide.

“Shakespeare!” Nate exploded. “We found you!”

“I would argue that I found you, Horatio, since I saw you first.”

Blue Water Woman squealed in delight and stroked to the dugout. “Carcajou!” she cried. “You are alive!” Pulling herself up, she threw herself into his open arms and clung to him as if to life itself.

“You are getting me wet, woman,” Shakespeare grumbled. “And I was just starting to dry out.”

“I have been in the water,” Blue Water Woman said huskily, her face pressed to his neck.

“In the middle of the lake?”

“I thought you were dead. I was avenging you.”

Shakespeare looked down at her. “Do you always do your avenging in the altogether?”

“You noticed.”

“Men always notice little things like naked women. All a woman has to do is take off her clothes, and she is a regular sensation.”

“I have missed you.” Blue Water Woman kissed him and closed her misting eyes.

“Not so fast, wench. Here I am gone for a while, and I come back to find you cavorting with my best friend.”

“Behave. He saved me from making a mistake.”

“He was a mite slow,” Shakespeare said.

“Not that,” Blue Water Woman responded in mild exasperation. “I was going to stab the water devil.”

Shakespeare gripped her shoulders and pushed her back. “You didn't! God in heaven, tell me you didn't.”

“I didn't.”

Shakespeare exhaled in relief.

Nate was not following any of this. “Hold on. You were the one who kept saying the thing was a menace and had to be killed. I thought that was what all this was about?”

“Since when do you listen to me?” Shakespeare rejoined.

“I am serious. We have gone to all this bother. The steeple. The canoes. Lou nearly drowing. And now you are saying it was all for nothing? That you have changed your mind and don't want the thing dead?”

“That is pretty much it, yes. Remember the Bard. He said that the quality of mercy is not strained; it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.”

Nate shook his head in bewilderment. “You are as fickle as the weather. Next you will be saying that it was a mistake for us to come out after it.”

“A mistake and then some,” Shakespeare concurred. “What merit were it in death to take this poor maid from the world?”

“Are we talking about a woman or the creature?

“Ah, Horatio!” Shakespeare beamed. “A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.”

“I can never tell when you are serious.”

“I am always serious,” Shakespeare said. “Except when I'm not.”

“You are a lunatic.”

“And you have not so much brain as ear wax.”

“Enough.” Blue Water Woman pecked her husband on the chin. “Stop teasing him, Carcajou. Why have you changed your mind about the water devil?”

“Fish,” Shakespeare said. “It is a
fish
. Not a water devil. Nor a beast. Not a monster or a demon or a creature. It is a plain and simple fish.”

“I have looked into its eyes,” Blue Water Woman said, and shuddered.

“
Et tu
?” Shakespeare quoted. “And what did you see in them? What did your womanly intuition tell you?”

Blue Water Woman hesitated. “I am not certain.”

“I am,” Shakespeare said. “Have I mentioned that it saved me? That the dugout had capsized and I could not right it? And the fish did it for me?”

Nate started to laugh but caught himself. “Wait. The fish has gone from menace to savior? I take my words back. You are not as fickle as the weather. You are
more
fickle than the weather.”

“The answer is there, Horatio, if you but have the eyes to see,” Shakespeare said.

“I don't even know the question.”

Shakespeare swept an arm at the watery expanse in which their canoes were drifting. “My mistake was one anyone could make. After those incidents we had, I jumped to the conclusion the fish was out to harm us. To be honest, I didn't think it
was
a fish. I figured it was a holdout from the dawn of time, and that when we cornered it, it would turn out to be something completely new. Or, I should say, completely old.”

“I never saw a fish like this one,” Nate said.

“It is unique. But it wasn't always. It had to come
from somewhere, and that somewhere was other fish.”

“You are taking the long way around the bush.”

“Straight tongue, then,” Shakespeare said. “The fish was not trying to harm us. It wanted to be friends.”

Nate had heard his mentor express some peculiar notions over the years, but this one beat them all, and he declared as much.

Shakespeare sighed. “Pay attention. I am the schoolmarm and you are the student.” He dipped his hand into the lake and held it out as the drops splattered the surface. “This lake is your home. Once—”

“Mine?” Nate interrupted. “I am a fish now?”

“If I had a tree limb I would beat you. Let me finish.” Shakespeare paused. “Now, as I was saying, this lake is your home and you share it with others of your kind. But one by one they age and die until you are the last one left. The other fish in the lake are not the same. You share the lake with them, but you are as different from them as an elk is from ants. Do you savvy so far?”

“As strange as it sounds, you almost make sense.”

“Good. So you are the last, and you go on living, year after year, winter after winter. But you have no one to call a companion. There is you and only you, and you are as lonesome as lonesome can be.”

“Oh, brother,” Nate said.

“Then one day new critters show up. Two-legged varmints who spend a lot of time near and in the water. You hear them. You smell them. Naturally, you want to find out more about them, so you swim close to them a few times, and because you do not realize how big and strong you are, you break their
fishing line and knock one of them over when you push in too close to shore.”

Nate's eyes widened. “You are not suggesting—”

Shakespeare did not let him finish. “I certainly am. The fish was never out to harm us. It was curious, is all. Curious and friendly, and its friendliness nearly got some of us killed.”

“It is a fish,” Nate said.

“Yes. We have established that fact. For a student you are an awful dunce.”

“You make it sound almost human. You don't
know
it was only curious. You don't
know
it was only being friendly.”

“It fetched you to me, didn't it?”

“I must have missed that part,” Nate said.

“You were following it, weren't you? And it led you right to me. I think it was trying to help.”

“I think I need a drink.” Nate looked at Blue Water Woman, who had been strangely quiet. “What do you think?”

“I think I would like to put my dress on.”

Embarrassed by his oversight, Nate scooped it up, brought his canoe over alongside the dugout, and, averting his eyes, held the dress out. “Sorry. I should have done this sooner.”

Blue Water Woman went to slip it on, then glanced at Shakespeare. “You too.”

“Me what?”

“Look the other way.”

“This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard,” Shakespeare quoted. “I am your husband. I have seen you bare more times than I have fingers and toes times a thousand.”

“Nonetheless, you will look the other way. And when we get back, you will take down your steeple.
And you will never again, for as long as we live, sneak out onto this lake or any other by yourself. Agreed?”

“There's villainy abroad.”

“If there is, it is yours, not mine. Are we agreed?”

“A stewed prune has more faith than you,” Shakespeare resorted to the Bard. “Very well. No looking, no steeple, no sneaking. Is there anything else your humble slave might do for her majesty?”

“Get us to shore. Right away, if you please.”

“I don't have a paddle.”

“Then we will climb in with Nate. But we will not stay out here an instant longer than we have to.”

Shakespeare sighed. “You heard the lady, Horatio. We are coming aboard.”

“And that's it?” Nate said. “We let the fish live and go on with our lives as if nothing ever happened?”

“Remember what the Bard said.” Shakespeare responded with a weary smile. “All's well that ends well.”

As long-time readers of the popular
Wilderness
series are aware, Nate King, like many mountain men, loved to tell tall tales. He relates a number of them in his journal.

In order to truly show Nate's character and quirks, I have taken the liberty of turning some of those tall tales into stories.
The Lost Valley
and
Fang and Claw
are two of the more notable. (Some would add
Mountain
Devil
to the list, but I leave it up to you whether such creatures as Sasquatch or Bigfoot exist.)

Which brings us to
In Darkest Depths
. It, too, might qualify as a tall tale, except that in his journal Nate states that the events really happened and were not a figment of his brandy-influenced imagination.

As with
Mountain Devil
, you must decide whether to believe or disbelieve. I would only note certain news accounts, some of which you might have heard, where incredibly huge fish have been pulled from lakes and rivers and even ponds.

Perhaps, to take a page from McNair's passion, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.