Shakespeare got up and went outside. When he came back in, he did as she had suggested and sat in the rocking chair by the fireplace and opened his well-used leather-bound volume of the works of the wordsmith he most admired. But for once he had no interest in reading the plays and sonnets. He could not stop thinking about his next attempt to put an end to the fish.
That was how he thought of it now, as the fish. He had seen it with his own eyes, and it had nearly drowned him. If ever combat was personal, this was. The fish had thrown down the gauntlet and Shakespeare had accepted. It was the fish or him, and it would not be him.
His conscience pricked him anew when they turned in for the night. He snuggled up to Blue Water Woman and nuzzled her neck with his beard, giving her the kind of kiss he usually reserved for nights when they planned to be frisky. Planned, because Blue Water Woman insisted on knowing in advance, a quirk of hers he never fully grasped. He liked to be spontaneous; she liked to plan everything out. Even that.
Inadvertently, Blue Water Woman added salt to his wound by saying dreamily as she drifted off, “Thank you for listening to me. I meant what I said about you being a good husband.”
“Tell me that again in the morning,” Shakespeare said.
He tried to get a little more sleep but couldn’t. By the clock on the small table, it was a little past midnight when he eased back the covers and swung his feet to the floor. He dressed in near silence, thankful, for once, that she liked to sleep with a candle burning. Another of her quirks. The only thing that stopped him from complaining about it was the he had more quirks than she did.
Shakespeare had a lot to gather. Ammo pouch, powder horn, possibles bag, pistols, rifle, knife, a parfleche with food, the coil of rope that hung on a peg, their lantern, and perhaps the most important item of all, the small grappling iron he had for when he went after mountain sheep. The Big Horns lived up in the rocky heights at the highest altitudes. To get to them entailed a lot of climbing, and the iron always came in handy.
Shakespeare was careful not to let the door creak as he slipped out into the cool of night. Hurrying around to the corral, he lit the lantern and saddled his white mare. Next he went to the chicken coop. Several hens clucked and fluttered, but they were used to him, and when he spoke softly, they quieted. Regretfully, he picked up the one he had decided to take, the smallest of the hens, and carried her out. Then came the hard part.
Shakespeare carried the limp body to the mare and tied it to his saddle. He led the mare a short way from the cabin, climbed on, and glanced at the lake.
“I am coming for you.”
The Best Laid Brainstorms
The canoes were where they had left them.
Shakespeare tied the mare to Nate’s corral and carried everything he was taking to the Nansusequa dugout. The paddles and harpoons and net still lay on the bottom. He placed his rifle beside them. The rope, grappling iron, and dead chicken went in the bow. The parfleche with the food, in the stern. The lantern was last.
Shakespeare pushed the canoe out into the water and climbed in. He picked up one of the paddles and peered into the veil of darkness. The risk he was about to take gave him pause. But only for a few seconds. Squaring his shoulders, he commenced paddling.
At night the lake was deathly still. The ducks, the geese, the teal, all were silent. Were it not for the occasional splash of a fish, a person would never guess that the lake teemed with life during the day.
A brisk gust of wind sent goose bumps parading up and down his spine. He blamed it on the chill and suppressed a shudder.
The glow cast by his lantern illuminated a ten-foot circle. Beyond the light, all was liquid ink. He considered turning back and waiting until daylight. But if he did that, the others were bound to try and stop him. With any luck, he could do what he had to do and be back in his cabin by dawn.
It all depended on the fish. The thing had shown a fondness for waterfowl, so maybe fowl of another kind would appeal to its piscine taste buds.
The shore gradually receded. Shakespeare was alone with the canoe and the water and the dweller in the depths. He hoped that if the fish was going to attack, it would at least hold off until he was ready.
His plan was to paddle out to where he had seen the two birds taken. But in the dark, in open water, there were no landmarks, no means to tell where he was, other than the stars. He could approximate, but that was all.
The slight splish each time Shakespeare stroked the paddle, the swish of the canoe as it cleaved the surface, and the occasional splash of a fish were the only sounds. He listened for the howl of a wolf or the yip of a coyote, but the valley was as quiet as the lake.
Shakespeare hoped he was not wasting his time. He would never hear the end of the teasing if he spent all night on the lake and had nothing to show for it. He continued paddling until, as best as he could tell, he was about where the fish had taken the duck and the teal. Resting the paddle across the gunwales, he strained his senses for some sign of his quarry.
All was peaceful.
Working quickly, Shakespeare tied one end of the rope to the grappling iron. The rest of the rope he coiled in front of him.
The next step proved harder than he thought it would. The grappling iron had four hooks, or flukes. They were sharp enough that he figured it would be easy to impale the chicken. But when he tried, he could not get the rounded ends to penetrate deep enough to hold fast.
“I do not need this nuisance,” Shakespeare said. Drawing his knife, he made two deep cuts in the chicken, aligned the cuts with two of the hooks, and jammed the chicken onto the grappling iron. A few tugs satisfied him that the chicken would not slip off.
Lowering his improvised hook and bait over the side, Shakespeare fed out the rope until only a few feet remained. He needed to anchor it, but had nothing to tie it to. He briefly considered tying it to his leg, but the mental image of being yanked over the side persuaded him not to. The only other thing he could think of to tie it to was the spare paddle, which he wedged under him.
Years ago Shakespeare had heard that fish could sense prey from a long way off. The wriggle of a worm, the flutter of an insect’s wings, were enough to bring a hungry fish streaking in for the kill. He began wriggling the rope in the hope it would have the same effect on the fish.
Another gust of wind provoked a shiver. Shakespeare stared to the west. The gusts were stronger than usual. He wondered if a front was moving in. The last thing he needed was to be caught on the lake in a thunderstorm. Sometimes the waves rose two and three feet high. He debated going back, but decided if a storm did break, he would have enough advance warning to reach shore.
Shakespeare continued to wriggle the rope. The quiet of the night and the near total dark gnawed on his nerves. It occurred to him that the fish could be lurking outside the ring of light and he would not know it. He reached for the lantern to extinguish it, then changed his mind. Without the light he could not see the rope, and he must be ready when the fish took the bait.
Shakespeare’s uneasy feeling grew. He and the canoe were an island of light in an ocean of dark. The glow could be seen for miles. Possibly even from the bottom of the lake.
None of them knew how deep the lake was. Once, shortly after they built their cabins, Shakespeare and Nate had lashed together the logs they had left over and ventured out on the lake on the raft. Nate had the notion to find out how deep the lake was by tying a rock to a hundred-foot rope and lowering the rope until it struck bottom.