“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.”
Author’s Note
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.
Enjoy the Wilderness series by
David Thompson
from the very beginning!
#1: KING OF THE MOUNTAIN
#2: LURE OF THE WILD
#3: SAVAGE RENDEZVOUS
#4: BLOOD FURY
#5: TOMAHAWK REVENGE
#6: BLACK POWDER JUSTICE
#7: VENGEANCE TRAIL
#8: DEATH HUNT
#9: MOUNTAIN DEVIL HAWKEN FURY (Giant Edition)
#10: BLACKFOOT MASSACRE
#11: NORTHWEST PASSAGE