“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?”