But nothing happened. The creature kept coming. The lance was swept aside by the rushing water and bobbed up and down in the wake.
“Damn!” Zach reached for the second harpoon. Up to the very last instant he thought the thing might pass under their canoe as it has passed under Winona and Blue Water Woman’s.
Then the creature slammed into them.
Lou screamed and clutched at the sides of the canoe. The bow swept upward and the whole craft tilted. Zach reached for her, and she lunged for his arms. But before she could grab hold, the canoe rolled.
Louisa gasped as cold water enveloped her, and in gasping, she swallowed water. Clamping her mouth shut, she tried to hold her breath, but there was no breath to hold.
Zach, tumbling, felt a blow to his side, then a scraping sensation and pain. He tumbled end over end, water getting into his nose and ears but not his mouth. He’d had the presence of mind to suck in a breath of air in the split second before he went under.
Dimly, Zach was conscious of a great bulk sweeping by him. He glimpsed a silhouette: a narrow head, an enormous arched body, what might be fins or a tail. Then the thing was gone, and he kicked toward the lighter water above. Breaking the surface, he turned this way and that, seeking his wife. Nearby, the canoe floated on its side but was slowly sinking.
A shadow fell across him. Zach twisted as immensely powerful hands gripped him by the shoulders and started to lift him out of the water. “No, Pa. Not yet.”
“We have to get you out of the water,” Nate said.
“No!” Zach glanced wildly about. “Where’s Louisa? Lou! Lou!”
From all quarters help was coming: Shakespeare, paddling like mad from the east; Winona and Blue Water Woman, their faces grim; Waku and Dega with their slow-as-a-turtle log dugout.
But otherwise the lake was undisturbed. The swell was gone. The creature was gone. And so was Louisa.
“Dear God,” Zach said, and dived. He reasoned that she had to be somewhere close, unless the thing had caught her in its jaws and carried her off. Or maybe—and he inwardly shuddered—maybe she had received a blow to the head and been knocked out and was even then sinking slowly to the bottom.
Zach grew frantic. He turned right and left, seeking some sign. But the sunlight did not penetrate far enough. All was murk and shadow.
Where are you? Zach mentally screamed.
There!
A small figure floated barely a dozen feet away, head down, arms and legs dangling limply.
Zach’s heart leaped into his throat. He flew to her, cleaving the water fit to rival a fish. Clamping an arm around her waist, he kicked upward. She did not stir or otherwise react. As they broke the surface, he clasped her to him and shook her. “Lou! Lou! Can you hear me?” She did not respond. Her eyes did not open. Chin slack on her chest, she was deathly pale.
“God, no!” Zach breathed.
Canoes materialized on each side. Nate reached down and took Lou. Swinging her up as if she weighed no more than a feather, he gently deposited her in the bottom of his canoe
In the other canoe, Winona and Blue Water Woman both offered their hands to Zach. “Climb in,” his mother urged.
“I’ll stay with Lou,” Zach said.
Shakespeare glided up and leaned over to see Lou. “Is she breathing?”
Nate bent and put a hand over her mouth and nose. “I don’t think so. I don’t feel anything.”
“Lou!” Zach cried, and started to scramble up, rocking his father’s canoe.
“Hold off!” Shakespeare commanded. To Nate he said, “We must act quickly! Pick her up with her back to you and wrap your arms around her middle. Let the upper half of her body sag some.”
Nate did not ask why. He did it.
“Now clench your hands together over her belly,” Shakespeare said, “and pump your hands up under her ribs. Don’t be timid, neither. You have to do it hard and fast.”
Nate looked at him.
“I know,” Shakespeare said.
“But what if—”
“Would you rather she were dead? Hurry, Horatio!”
Zach did not understand why his father hesitated. Lou had stopped breathing. They must not delay a single instant. “If you don’t, I will,” he said, and again began to climb in.
Nate did as McNair had instructed, pumping his arms in and out, gouging his knuckles deep. He did it half a dozen times, but he might as well have been squeezing a tree for all the good it did. Dread rising, he pumped harder and faster. He willed himself not to think of her possible condition and what this might do to her. In and out, in and out, he rammed his fists nearly to her spine.
“Please, Lou,” Zach said. “Please.”
Nate despaired of reviving her. On an impulse, he stood up, causing the canoe to wobble and tilt. He might have gone over the side had Zach not held on to the gunwale to steady it. Upright, he tried again. Lou was bent almost in half, her head hanging low.
Nate rammed his fists once, twice, a third time, and suddenly water gushed from Lou’s mouth. She weakly stirred, and groaned. “It’s working!” he cried, and in his excitement, rammed his fists into her harder than ever.
Something other than water spewed from Lou’s open mouth and spattered the canoe. She coughed and wheezed and flailed, her eyes snapping open in alarm. “What? Where?”
“You are safe,” Nate said, and eased her down as Zach swung a leg up and over and squatted on the other side of her, his arm around her shoulders.
“Lou? It’s me, Zach. Are you all right?”
Unable to stop coughing, Lou wagged a hand at him and bent over again. Her shoulders shook and she moaned.
“Thanks, Pa,” Zach said. “You saved her.”
Nate did not reply. He was thinking of something else.
“Lou?” Zach tried again. “You nearly drowned. Pa had to almost break you in two to get you to breathe.”
Gasping in breaths, Louisa said, “It feels like he did.” But she raised her head and smiled at Nate. “Thank you. I thought I might be a goner when I went under.”
Zach kissed her on the cheek and stroked her hair. “You had me worried for a bit there.”
Lou stared at his dripping buckskins. “Was it you who jumped in and got me out?”
“I couldn’t let you sink,” Zach said. “You owe me a backrub.”
Lou caressed his brow, then had to bend over again. The wet sounds gave way to dry, racking heaves. At length she subsided and swiped at her dripping mouth with a sleeve. “Lordy, if I had known this would happen, I wouldn’t have eaten so much breakfast.”
“We have to get you to shore, little lady,” Shakespeare said.
Lou shook her head. “Don’t be silly. I am fine. We have to keep after whatever did this to me.”
“You’re the one being silly,” Zach said. “We are taking you home so you can rest, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Since when did you get so bossy?”
Winona was easing her canoe in closer. “I agree with my son,” she said. “You need a hot bath, and then you should climb into bed and stay there until tomorrow morning.”
“But it’s not even noon yet!” Louisa objected. “I refuse to let you make a fuss over me.”
“When you married my son you became my daughter, and my daughters always do as I say”
Their argument was interrupted by Wakumassee and Degamawaku, who had drifted in from the west. They commenced pointing excitedly, and yelling.
“Look! Look! There!”
The thing was coming back.
A Glimpse of Mystery