At the thought, Lou stopped chopping carrots, placed a hand on her belly, and smiled. On an impulse, she put the knife on the counter and went into the bedroom. Attached to the back of the door was the full-length mirror she had pestered Zach into buying. He’d complained about the cost and the effort of bringing it all the way from Bent’s Fort, but it was worth it.
Lou studied her reflection. She stared into her blue eyes, and then at her buckskins and again placed her hand on her belly. She appeared to be perfectly normal. No one could tell just by looking at her. She left the bedroom.
Taking the bucket off a peg, Lou went out. The bright sun, the birds singing in the trees, the beauty of the valley, stirred her. She hummed as she walked to the lake and dipped in the bucket.
Lou was so deep in thought that when a shadow fell across her, she gave a start. Instantly, she reached for a pistol at her waist only to realize, to her horror, that she had left all her weapons in the cabin. Whirling, she exclaimed, “Phew! It’s only you.”
“That’s a fine way to greet this old coon,” Shakespeare McNair grumbled. He quoted his namesake, “ ‘My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, and every tongue brings in a several tale, and every tale condemns you for a villain.’ ”
Louisa laughed in delight and gave him a hug. McNair was one of her favorite people in the world. With his white hair and bushy white beard, he was old enough to be her great-grandfather. Yet he was as spry as Zach and as dear a man as ever drew breath. He wore buckskins, and his rifle was cradled in the crook of his left elbow. “What brings you over to our side of the lake?” she asked.
“I’m going hunting tomorrow and reckoned maybe that husband of yours would like to tag along.” Shakespeare was telling only half the truth. His wife, Blue Water Woman, had told him to check in on Lou.
“Oh. He’s off hunting right now, although he didn’t want to. I sent him after a grouse for supper.”
Shakespeare glanced at the bucket and then at her waist. “Have you no more brains than earwax, girl? Your man is off in the woods and you came outside unarmed? What were you thinking?”
Lou frowned. Zach was always on her, too, about not stepping out the door without a gun. He kept trying to impress on her that all it took was one mistake and she would pay with her life. As he put it to her once, “The wilderness has buried a lot of people and it will bury you, too, if you won’t start taking it seriously. There’s danger around every hill and behind every tree.”
She’d laughed and told him that he exaggerated. But it became a sore point, so much so that she now said to McNair, “Please don’t tell my husband. He’ll have one of his fits, and I want everything to be perfect.”
“You’re about to tell him, I take it?”
Louisa blinked. “Tell him what?”
“Oh, come now.” McNair grinned. “You’re with child. It’s as plain as your rosy cheeks and the glow you share with the sun.”
Lou shouldn’t have been surprised; McNair knew about her recent morning sickness. McNair and Nate King were best friends. McNair was so close to the family, in fact, that to this day Zach called him uncle. “Oh my. How many others know?”
“Just about everybody except your husband. There are none so blind as those who can’t see past the nose on their face.”
“That’s not another quote from William Shakespeare, is it?”
“No, but it should be.”
That was another thing Lou liked about McNair: his passion for the Bard. He had a big book of Shakespeare’s plays and quoted them by the hour. How he could recite it all was beyond her. She was lucky if she remembered a few quotes from the Bible.
“So, am I right? Is this the night you drop fatherhood on his head and change his life forever?”
“You make it sound like a millstone.”
“I’m only saying it’s not to be taken lightly. It’s good you’re both ready for it.” Shakespeare paused. “You are both looking forward to having a baby, aren’t you?”
“Well, it wasn’t as if we planned it,” Lou said, hedging. McNair had hit on the one thing that troubled her.
“Tell me, and be honest. Have the two of you talked this over? What it means to be a parent? The changes the baby will bring?”
“Not exactly, no.”
“ ‘Fair lady, do you think you have fools in hand?’ ” Shakespeare quoted. “You haven’t said a word to each other, have you?”
“Of course we have,” Lou said, a trifle indignantly. But the truth was, they’d talked about it only once, a short while back when she first thought she might be pregnant.
“Good. No one should jump in a poison ivy patch unless they like to itch a lot.”
“You’re comparing a baby to poison ivy? They have nothing in common.”
“Tell that to a parent who has been up all night with a baby with the croup. Tell it to a parent who has to put up with all the caterwauling when a baby is teething. Tell it to a parent who has to change and wash diapers a thousand times. Tell it to a—”
Lou held up a hand. “Dear Lord. You make a baby sound like an affliction.” She bent and lifted the bucket out of the water and Shakespeare immediately took it from her.
“I’ll do the honors.”
“Oh, please. I’m not helpless.”
“Never said you were, girl. But a woman with a child in her brings out all the tenderness a man has. It’s a good thing, too. It makes up for all the times men go around with blinders on.”
“For a man, you sure don’t think highly of your gender.”
“Quite the contrary. I’m quite happy being male. The notion of being female scares me to death.”
“Why?”
“I’d have to put up with men.”
Lou laughed gaily. She headed for the cabin and gazed at the timbered slope beyond just as a jay took wing, squawking loudly. She idly wondered if something had spooked it, then put it from her mind. She had more important things to think about.
Up on the slope, the jay continued to squawk.
Chapter Two
The Outcast sat patiently on the pinto until the jay lost interest and flew away. Of all the birds, he liked jays least. Their shrill cries alerted everything within hearing. They were the bane of every hunter and warrior.
His brother used to argue that vultures were the worst birds because they ate rotting flesh and stank of death and were so ugly, but at least vultures were quiet.
The Outcast stared down the mountain. He could not tell much from that distance, but the white-haired man was plainly old and the sandy-haired woman, plainly young. He saw them talk and laugh and go into a wooden lodge.
A light jab of his heels sent the pinto down the slope. With a caution borne of experience, he rode slowly and hugged the shadows.
The Outcast was surprised to find whites so deep in the mountains, at least ten sleeps from the prairie, if not more. To his knowledge, no whites had ever penetrated this far.
He regarded white men much as he did jays. They were nuisances the world was better off without.
His first encounter with whites came when he was nineteen and went on a raid led by his uncle. Thirty warriors took part. They’d traveled south into the land of their longtime enemies the Nez Perce. But they were not fated to find a Nez Perce village. Instead they came upon a large party of bearded, hulking, coarse men with many horses and many beaver hides and many guns. The horses and the hides were incentive for his uncle to suggest they attack and kill the whites and take all they had, but the taking proved to be harder than any of them expected. They’d downed several of the whites with arrows and rushed in to slay the rest at close quarters. Only the whites drove them off, felling half a dozen warriors with their guns.