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.”
Gilding The Goat
“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.”