“How do you expect us to get up to the steeple? We can’t use a ladder all the time,” Shakespeare said, as he clambered higher to resume work.
“Will these stairs be inside the cabin or outside the cabin?”
“What difference does it make?”
“If they are inside, that would mean you intend to put a hole in my roof. And I will shoot you before I let that happen.”
“Ye gods, woman. You could nitpick a man to death, even beyond the grave. But rest easy. The stairs will be outside, on the west end of the cabin, so we do not disturb you with our comings and goings.” Shakespeare bestowed a smirk on her. “See? I can be considerate, your broadsides to the contrary.”
“I think I will go visit Winona,” Blue Water Woman announced. “I need a drink and we are out of brandy.”
“Good riddance to you and small pox,” Shakespeare shot back. “Stay most of the day if you want, and when you ride home you can admire your new steeple. It will be the envy of the neighborhood.”
“I have always suspected it, but now I am sure. You are a lunatic.” Blue Water Woman sniffed and raised her chin high. “I must get my shawl.” She marched into the cabin.
“Women!” Shakespeare declared. “If God were not drunk when He created them, then He is the lunatic.”
Nate lifted planks and carried them toward the ladder. “Weren’t you a little hard on her?”
“Do you see these claw marks?” Shakespeare touched his perfectly fine neck. “She came near to drawing blood. I am lucky to be alive.”
“You are lucky she puts up with you.”
Shakespeare aligned a nail and raised the hammer, then glanced down at Nate. “The Bard had it right when it came to women. We should all do as he says and we will have a lot less indigestion.”
“What did he say?”
“Woo her, wed her, bed her, then rid the house of her.”
Winona King was outside her cabin skinning a rabbit. She had caught it in a snare that morning, and by evening it would be chopped into bite-sized morsels and simmering in a stew. She loved rabbit stew. When she was little her mother had made it now and again, but nowhere near enough to suit her. Buffalo meat was their staple. They also ate venison a lot. Rabbit and other small game was resorted to only when buffalo and deer meat were not to be had.
Laying the rabbit on its back, Winona made slits down its hind legs. She peeled back the hide, slicing ligaments and muscle and scraping as required, careful to keep the edge of the knife toward the body, until she had the hide bunched around the rabbit’s neck. The hide would make fine trim for a couple of her buckskin dresses.
Absorbed in her work, Winona was startled when a shadow fell across her. Her husband had gone off earlier, and her daughter was across the lake visiting Degamawaku’s family.
Winona spun, her hand dropping to one of the pistols wedged under the leather belt she wore over her dress. Hostile red men and renegade whites roamed the mountains, and meat-eaters were abundant. Perils were so commonplace that she never ventured outside the cabin unarmed. Bitter experience had taught her the folly of doing so.
But now, about to unlimber a flintlock, Winona stopped with it half-drawn, and smiled.
“Tsaangu beaichehku,” Blue Water Woman said.
“Tsaangu beaichehku,” Winona said, which was Shoshone for ‘Good morning.’ While her friend knew some of her tongue and she knew some Salish, they usually used the language both knew almost as well as each knew her own. Decades of living under the same roof with a white man had made them fluent in the white tongue, so much so that both their husbands liked to boast they spoke English better than most whites. “This is a pleasant surprise.”
“I had to get away for a while,” Blue Water Woman said. “I hope you do not mind that I came here.”
“Mind?” Winona said, and laughed. “You are the sister I never had. Why would I mind?”
Blue Water Woman folded her arms across her bosom and poked the ground with the toe of a moccasin. “It is that husband of mine. There are times when I want to pull out my hair.”
“What has he done now?” Winona asked.
“You have not heard?” Blue Water Woman said. “He and your husband are building a steeple on our cabin.”
“Nate said that he was going over to help Shakespeare with a project, but he did not—” Winona paused and blinked. “Did you say a steeple?”
“Yes. You have been east of the Mississippi River. You have seen the houses of worship, as whites call them, with the big bells they ring when it is time for people to come and pray and sing?”
“Their churches, yes.”
“I am going to have a steeple without the church.”
It made no sense to Winona. Granted, her husband was deeply religious. In the evenings, after supper, she would sit in the rocking chair and sew or knit while he would be at the table reading, and often the book he read from was the Bible. She once asked Nate if he missed going to services, and he said that while it would be nice to mix with people who shared his beliefs, his body was his temple, and the congregation consisted of him and God. He then read a passage from Scripture to that effect.
“I should be thankful,” Blue Water Woman was saying, “that my idiot of a husband is not putting a bell in our steeple, or I would need to keep my ears plugged with wax.”
“But why a steeple?”
“So he can keep watch for the water devil.”
Winona started to laugh but caught herself. “You are serious?”
“I am afraid so.” Blue Water Woman sighed. “If I live a thousand winters, I will never understand him.”
“It is men,” Winona said. “They do not think like we do.”
“It is Shakespeare,” Blue Water Woman replied. “He does not think like anyone.”
Winona grinned.
“Show me one other white who spends every spare minute reading William Shakespeare or quotes him every time he opens his mouth. It is ridiculous.”
“Oh my,” Winona said. “If your husband ever heard you say that, he would throw a fit.”
“I may throw one myself when I get home and see their steeple,” Blue Water Woman said. “That is my man for you. Once he sets his mind to something, he does not rest until he has done what he set out to do. And now he has taken it into his head to go after the water devil.”
“You are worried.”
“I am glad Nate is helping. Shakespeare needs someone with common sense to keep an eye on him.”
Ever sensitive to her friend’s moods, Winona remarked, “But it is not his age that is bothering you, is it?”
“No,” Blue Water Woman admitted. She gazed out over the water and bit her lower lip. “It is the water devil.”
“I am sure Nate and Shakespeare will be careful,” Winona sought to soothe her.
“Careful is not always enough. Some things are better left alone. A grizzly in its den. An eagle in its nest. A creature as big as a horse that lives in the water.”
“In the water, yes. So long as Nate and Shakespeare stay on land, they will be safe.”
“So long as they stay on land,” Blue Water Woman echoed.
Steeple Knight
Shakespeare McNair would never admit it to his wife, but to him this was great fun.
Shakespeare always liked a good challenge. Through out his life, he overcame one challenge after another and enjoyed each triumph. Add to that his love of a mystery and the fact he got to spend a lot of time in the company of the man he regarded as the son he never had, and he had a new spring in his step and a perpetual boyish grin on his wrinkled and weathered face—when he was not around Blue Water Woman.