In Darkest Depths (2 page)

Louisa King was giddy with delight. The past few mornings she had woken up feeling queasy. It was a sign, she hoped, that at long last her dream would come true. But she did not say anything to her husband. She wanted to be certain.

On this particular day, Zach had gone off at daybreak with Shakespeare McNair to hunt. They were low on meat, and the valley teemed with deer.

Louisa spent the morning and early afternoon puttering about their cabin. She washed the breakfast dishes. She picked up the clothes Zach had left lying about. She picked up the bullets and patches he left on the table. She put away the whetstone he left on the counter. She cleaned up the feathers he left lying on the bedroom floor.

If Lou had told him once, she had told him a hundred times not to fletch arrows in their bedroom. But did Zach listen? No. Everything she said to him went in one ear and bounced out again.

If there was anything in all creation more aggravating than men, Lou had yet to come across it. Zach was living proof. He had a knack for irritating her in a hundred and one small ways.

Yet for all that, Lou loved him as she had never
loved anyone. He was everything to her: her joy, her peace, her very breath. She could no more imagine life without him than she could imagine life without the sun or the moon.

How strange life could be, Lou mused as she strolled from their cabin to the lake and stood idly admiring the blue sheen of its peaceful surface. When she was young, she'd never expected to fall in love, never figured to take a husband, never believed a man could claim her heart. She thought she would somehow be immune to men. So what if women had been falling in love with them since the dawn of time? She was different. She was special. She was unique.

Lou laughed at her folly. Why was it, she wondered, that people denied their own natures? What made them think the passions that governed the rest of the human race did not govern them? Part of it, she supposed, was just plain silliness. It was ridiculous to imagine that with the millions upon millions of people in the world, and the untold millions who had lived before, that anyone, anywhere, ever had a thought that had not been thought or felt a feeling that had not been felt. It had all been done before. Truly, and literally, there was nothing new under the sun.

A commotion in the water intruded on Lou's pondering. A short way out, small wavelets were rippling the surface, seeming to rise out of nowhere and for no reason.

Lou moved to the water's edge for a better look. She was aware of the creature that supposedly lived in the lake. The Kings and the McNairs talked about it often enough. But she had never seen it and would dearly love to.

Opinions varied. Her husband and father-in-law leaned toward the notion that it was a great fish. Blue Water Woman thought it might be something out of Flathead legend. Shakespeare McNair, of late, had taken to calling the thing a monster.

If Lou could see it, she could settle the debate once and for all.

With that in mind, Lou hunkered so there was less chance of the thing seeing her. The wavelets were growing. Whatever was making them, she deduced, was rising toward the surface. She grinned, every nerve taut, excited that
she
would be the one to solve the mystery.

Something appeared deep down, a dark shape that gave no clue to its identity. Lou had been raised in the wild by her father and had hunted all her life, and she was good at judging size at a distance. But in this instance the best she could conclude was that the thing was longer than a horse and as broad as a buffalo. It boggled her that a fish, if that is what it was, could be so huge.

“Keep coming!” Lou whispered excitedly. “I want a peek at your big self.”

But the thing stayed where it was. Several small fish leaped out of the water and swam frantically off, as if in fear of being eaten.

Louisa rose a bit higher for a better look.

Without warning, the thing exploded into motion and shot toward her at frightening speed. Frozen in surprise, Lou did not think to run. She told herself that she was perfectly safe, that she was on land and the creature was a water dweller.

But then the water swelled upward with astonishing rapidity, creating a wave that bore down on Lou with the swiftness of an avalanche. A foot the wave
rose, then a foot and a half. Belatedly, Lou started to turn, but she was only halfway around when the wave slammed into her legs. She was bowled over and fell onto her side, the breath whooshing from her lungs. For a harrowing instant she was engulfed in a cold, wet cocoon. Without thinking, she gulped for air and sucked in water. It got into her mouth, into her nose. Gasping, blinking her eyes to clear them, she groped frantically about.

Suddenly Lou's arms were seized, and she was swung into the air as if she were weightless. Involuntarily, she cried out, then saw who had seized her. “Oh! Thank goodness!”

Zach had her by the right arm, Shakespeare by the left. Shakespeare was staring at the lake, but her husband only had eyes for her.

Unlike his sister, Evelyn, Zach had slightly more of his mother in him than his father. He was big, like Nate, and broad of shoulder, like Nate, and had green eyes, like Nate, but his black hair and swarthy complexion and facial features were inherited from Winona. He wore buckskins, and was a walking armory.

“Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” Lou said, embarrassed by her lapse and annoyed that she was soaking wet. She shrugged loose of them. “You are back sooner than I expected.”

“Forget that,” Zach said, and motioned at the water. “What in God's name happened?”

“I saw it,” Shakespeare said.

Zach glanced at him. “What?”

“I saw it!” Shakespeare repeated. “For just a second there, before it dived, I saw the thing that lives in the lake.”

“I saw it, too,” Lou said. “But I can't tell you what I saw.”

Zach looked her up and down and then at the lake, and scowled. “I would like to see it,” he said, and wagged his rifle. “Up close, so I can kill it.”

“I don't know as it meant to harm me,” Lou said.

“I don't care,” Zach said. “Nothing hurts you and lives.”

Louisa tenderly touched his cheek. “My protector. But there is not much we can do. It's too big to catch and it hardly ever comes to the surface for us to shoot it. I say we leave it be.”

“If a bear broke into our cabin while we were away, I would not let the bear live because it might come back when we were there,” Zach said. “If a mountain lion stalked our horses, I would hunt it down and shoot it before it killed one of them. This is no different.”

“No harm was done,” Lou stressed. Then she remembered her morning sickness and the time an aunt lost a baby early on when she fell from a wagon. Pressing a hand to her belly, Lou said, “At least, I hope no harm was done.”

“What are you—?” Zach began, and gripped her by the shoulders. “Wait! Are you saying what I think you are saying? You are with child?”

“What's that?” Shakespeare said.

Louisa was disappointed that her surprise might have been spoiled. “I can't say for sure yet, but some of the signs are there, yes.”

Whooping for joy, Zach swept her into his arms and spun her in a circle. “A son! We might have a son!”

“Or a daughter,” Lou said.

“A boy to teach to ride and shoot and hunt!” Zach said happily.

“Or a
daughter
,” Lou said again. It bothered her that whenever the subject of having a baby came up, he always assumed it would be male.

Shakespeare put a hand on her arm. “You better let Winona and my wife have a look at you.”

“I'm fine,” Lou said. “Besides I'm not certain yet. And I would rather not tell anyone until I know for sure.”

“We will keep your secret, but it never hurts to be safe,” Shakespeare cautioned, and bestowed a grim glance on the water. “Which is why I can't put it off any longer.”

“What are you talking about?” Zach asked.

“That thing,” Shakespeare said with a nod. “Whatever it is we keep glimpsing and hearing. It could have killed Lou just now.”

“You are making more out of it than there was,” Lou assured him.

“I am entitled to my opinion,” Shakespeare replied. “And in my opinion, this has gone on long enough. We must find out what it is. Better yet, we must prevent it from ever harming us.”

“I call that overreacting,” Louisa said.

“I call it prudent,” Shakespeare countered. “What if you are right and you are with child?”

Louisa laughed. “I'm pretty sure Zach is the father and not the thing in the lake.”

“Poke fun if you want,” Shakespeare said. “But if you have a child, he or she will want to play near the water or go for a swim. What happens if the creature does to your offspring what it just did to you?”

“I never thought of that,” Lou admitted, troubled at the prospect.

“That is why you young folks need me and my white hair around,” Shakespeare said. “So you can benefit from my wisdom.” He paused. “I have made up my mind. I am going to find out once and for all what that thing is.”

“It is the silliest idea I have ever heard.”

Shakespeare McNair glared across the supper table at his wife. “I shall unfold equal discourtesy to your best kindness,” he quoted indignantly.

“You could go to a lot of effort for nothing,” Blue Water Woman said. “The creature in the lake does not come to the surface often.”

“Three times in the past month is not what I would call rare,” Shakespeare countered.

“My people say that water devils are bad medicine.”

“Devils, as in more than one?”

Blue Water Woman dabbed at her lips with a cloth napkin. She had insisted on using napkins ever since the time they'd had supper with a missionary and the missionary's wife, who thought that no meal was complete without them. “They live in many lakes and rivers.”

“I recollect hearing stories,” Shakespeare said. He seldom used the napkins she always placed by his plate. To him, it was putting on airs. “I always thought they were tall tales.”

“I expect better of you,” Blue Water Woman said.

Her tone warned Shakespeare she was annoyed.
Given that she had a disposition as mild as milk, he sensed he needed to mend fences. “What did I say? Whites tell tall tales all the time.”

“There is a difference,” Blue Water Woman said in her impeccable English. “When you and Nate have had a few drinks, you love to tell stories. Black-tail bucks you shot become as big as elk. Bears you killed become twice the size they were when you killed them. Fish you caught that were as long as your hand become as long as your arm.”

Shakespeare made a sound that resembled a goose being strangled. “You should be hooted at like one of those old tales,” he paraphrased.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Swapping yarns is a tradition with us whites. We do it for the chuckles and the laughs.”

“My people have a tradition, too. But the stories we tell are tales of the early times. What whites would call legends or myths. To us they have as much meaning as those stories from the Old Testatment you hold in such high regard.”

Shakespeare glanced at the shelf where their Bible and his other books were neatly lined up. At one end was his prized copy of the complete works of William Shakespeare. He'd bought it from an emigrant bound for Oregon Country. At the time he'd simply wanted something to read during the winter months when the streams were frozen and the snow was as high as a cabin and trapping was impossible. Little had he known the passion that would seize him. He adored the Bard's works as he adored no other.

Blue Water Woman had gone on, “I will give you an example. One you have already heard.” She paused. “The Salish believe the world was created by
Amotken. He made the first people, but they would not heed him and became wicked so he drowned them in a flood.”

“Yes, I know the story,” Shakespeare said. “It perked up my ears considerably the first time I heard it since it sounds a lot like the story of Noah and the flood.”

“My own ears ‘perked up,' as you call it, when you read about the giants that roamed the world in those days,” Blue Water Woman replied. “The Coeur d'Alenes say that giants once lived in their country. The giants wore bearskins and painted their faces black and went around at night stealing women.”

“Darned peculiar coincidence,” Shakespeare said.

“To us, those stories are not tall tales. They are not myths. They are real and true and tell how things were back then. We do not tell them for—how did you put it?—laughs and chuckles.”

“Ouch,” Shakespeare said. “A hit, a very palpable hit,” he quoted from
Hamlet
. He chose his next words carefully. “And you are right. There is a difference between the Bible and the tall tales we whites like to tell. I never meant to suggest that Salish stories of water creatures are hot air, and I apologize if I gave you that idea.”

Blue Water Woman grinned. “You are sweet when you grovel.”

“How now, woman,” Shakespeare retorted. “Again you prick me with that rapier you call a tongue.”

“What is wrong with calling you sweet?”

“Thou art so leaky that we must leave thee to thy sinking,” Shakespeare said. “It is not the
sweet
I object to.”

“I am afraid you have lost me,” Blue Water Woman said in feigned innocence.

“Shameless tart,” Shakespeare grumbled. “Why is it that when a woman says she is sorry she is apologizing, but when a man says he is sorry he is groveling?”

“Women have too much pride to grovel.”

Shakespeare sat back. “Let's change the subject.”

“Fine,” Blue Water Woman said. “We will go back to the thing in the lake and your silly plan to catch it.”

“Change the subject again.”

“No. We have not settled this one.” Blue Water Woman took a sip of her tea. She was deeply worried, but she did not want her worry to show. Knowing him, he would take it the wrong way. “You are not as young as you used to be,” she said.

Shakespeare was taken aback. She hardly ever brought up their ages. Yes, he had seen eighty winters, but he was as spry as a man of sixty, and said so.

“Yes, you have wonderful vitality,” Blue Water Woman conceded. “If you were going after a bear or a mountain lion, I would not fret.”

“Then why make an issue of this water devil?”

“Because we have no idea what it is,” Blue Water Woman said. “It could be very dangerous.”

Shakespeare snickered. “If it turns out to be a cow I will be safe enough.”

“Scoff all you want, but in the old times there lived many animals that have long since died out. Monsters, whites would call them. Some were as big as buffalo and could live both in the water and on land.”

“The thing in this lake has never come out of it,” Shakespeare felt compelled to mention.

“My point,” Blue Water Woman said, “is that we
are dealing with something we know nothing about. It could be a creature left over from the time before there were people.”

Shakespeare was about to tell here that was pure nonsense, but he settled for saying, “That is unlikely, don't you think?”

Blue Water Woman did not appear to hear him. “There were beaver the size of horses and horses the size of beaver. There were cats with teeth as long as a bowie knife, and animals with horns on their noses and others with tusks. Birds so big that when they flapped their wings it sounded like thunder.”

“I would like to have ridden one of those,” Shakespeare said.

“You are scoffing again.”

“Over in a place called the British Isles there are folks who believe in tiny people with wings and little men who dress all in green and cache pots of gold at the ends of rainbows,” Shakespeare said. “I scoff at that, too.”

Blue Water Woman puckered her mouth in disapproval. “You are not taking this seriously.”

“On the contrary,” Shakespeare said. “I always listen to what you have to say. But my mind is made up. I want to know what is in the lake, and by God, I will find out.”

“Even if it kills you?”

Shakespeare picked up his fork and stabbed a string bean. He wagged it at her, saying, “Is that what this is about?”

“In a word, yes,” Blue Water Woman admitted.

“I thought so.” Shakespeare stabbed another string bean, then a third. He wagged them at her, too. “Dost thou jeer and flout me in the teeth?”

“I love you.”

“Then give me more credit. Yes, I am getting on in years, but I still have all my faculties. I can hike five miles without getting winded, I can ride all day without being saddle-sore, and I do my husbandly duty by you three nights a week.”

“I have always liked that part,” Blue Water Woman said.

“The duty?”

“How much you enjoy lying with me. Some women say their husbands do not do it nearly as often as you do.”

“The night I stop is the day you can plant me,” Shakespeare said. “But we have strayed off the trail. I resent the slur that I am old and feeble. I have just as much vim and vinegar as Zach, and he is a lot younger.”

“Nate, perhaps,” Blue Water Woman said. “But Louisa told me that Zach cannot keep his hands off her. They lay together almost every night.”

“The boy is a satyr!” Shakespeare declared. “And what is she doing telling you that? Don't you females keep secrets?”

“No.”

About to take a bite of the string beans, Shakespeare paused. “Wait. You haven't told anyone about our bed time, have you?”

“What little there is to tell.”

Shakespeare burst into laughter. He laughed so hard he nearly stabbed himself with the fork. When at last he could catch his breath, he beamed at her and said, “That was your finest ever.”

“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!”