Ettie looked for Merle. He was gone.
The girl returned to her friends. Moving her hat off the rock, she sat down again and began to untie a boot.
"Oh, you fool," Ettie muttered. She studied the opposite shore, but still couldn't see Merle.
One of the other girls, a skinny thing in jeans and a faded blue shirt, got up and stuffed a bag into her pack. Then she took off her shirt. Her breasts were small mounds, white except for their dark tips.
"Oh, Merle, Merle." The temptation would be too much for him.
She considered rushing down to the girls, yelling and trying to scare them away. That might ruin everything, though. They'd be sure to tell someone — maybe a ranger — about the wild woman who chased them off. A spell might take care of that, but why take chances? A good spell's hard to call down, and you can't always count on one to take care of business.
Be better off to find Merle and stop him before he did something foolish.
She looked at the girls. The one who'd tested the water was on her feet, pulling down her shorts. The buxom one had her T-shirt off, and was reaching behind her back to unhook her bra. The skinny one sat right where Merle had planted the bodies, and tugged off her boots.
Ettie still couldn't spot Merle. She guessed he was across the lake from the girls, spying on them, probably hard as a club by now and going crazy.
She scurried across the slope, staying low. She squeezed through crevices, slid down steep slabs on her rump, ducked behind every rock cluster offering any concealment, making her way slowly across the end of the lake. When she paused to catch her breath, she found all three girls stark naked. The one in the lead was knee-deep in the lake, walking backward, urging her friends to come in. The skinny one eased in a foot and jerked it out quickly. The other squatted down, breasts bulging against her knees, and tried the water with her hand.
Ettie left the sheltering rocks. The area ahead was a barren slab of granite that angled slightly downward. It offered no protection. If the girls happened to look toward the end of the lake, they would see her crossing. She squirmed along on her belly, watching them.
The girl in the lake had started to swim. The one crouched on the bank was scooping up water and rubbing it on her shoulders and breasts as if to get used to its cold. The skinny one, cringing and hugging herself, was wading in slowly. None of them so much as glanced in Ettie's direction.
She reached the end of the open space without being seen, and crawled behind a rock. She peered over its top. The small inlet where Merle had been fishing was no more than thirty feet away. Plenty of shelter between here and there. As quickly as she could, she rushed down to it. From the recessed shore, the girls were out of sight. She heard splashing and voices, then a sudden outcry that knotted her stomach before she recognized it as a shriek of laughter.
They're having a great time, stupid bitches. If they knew.
She hopped across the water on stepping stones, and crouched at the base of the outcropping. Merle's abandoned fishing pole lay against the rocks in front of her, a shriveled bit of beef jerky on its hook.
Ettie worked her way up the slope, then peered over the top, first at the swimmers, then at the rocks along the bank. From this height, she expected to see Merle crouched behind a boulder.
She didn't see Merle. But she saw his scattered clothes.
A movement caught her eye. To the left. In the water. Just below a jutting clump of rocks. All she saw, at first, were rings, rippling outward as if a stone had been tossed in. Then there was the pale blur of a body sliding along beneath the surface.
Rage seized Ettie. She wanted to scream and yank Merle from the water. The fool! The fool!
She scrambled to the top of the outcropping and stood up straight. The first girl was floating on her back, arms out to the sides, her wet breasts shiny in the sunlight, her matted pubic hair glistening as she kicked closer and closer to the long, gliding form of Merle. The boy couldn't be more than a few inches below the surface, but he hadn't come up for air, yet, and none of the girls knew he was there.
"You!" Ettie shouted. "Girls!"
Three wet, astonished faces snapped toward her.
"Get out! There's snakes! Poison snakes. Water moccasins!"
Two of the girls screamed and started splashing for shore even while Ettie yelled. The third, the one who'd started it all by leading her friends down to the lake, trod water and looked around. "I don't see any," she called.
"There!" Ettie snatched up a stone and hurled it. The girl turned to her right as it smacked the water. Not far to her left, Merle's head broke the surface. "Right there! See it?" His head turned toward Ettie, then quickly submerged.
He knows he's found out, she thought. Sure enough, the pale blur of his body turned beneath the water and started back.
"Tracy!" called one of the girls.
"Come on, Tracy," yelled the other. "Let's get out of here!"
Both girls stood on the far shore, cowering and clutching themselves, trying to hide their nakedness from the intruder as they yelled to their friend.
Tracy frowned up at Ettie. "You're some kind of a nut," she said. Then she swam casually across the lake.
Merle, still underwater, reached the cluster of rocks where he'd started. His head popped up. "Stay down," Ettie snapped.
The girl waded ashore on the far side. Before rushing to join her friends, she thrust her middle finger at Ettie.
"Mom?" Merle sounded pathetic.
"Stay down. I'll tell you when to come out."
He waited, only his head out of the water, while Ettie watched the girls get into their clothes, swing their packs on, and start toward the far end of the lake. "Okay now?" he asked.
"No. Stay where you are."
The trio, often glancing back, reached the footpath and started striding toward the main trail. Ettie turned away. She climbed down the rocks, snapped the baited hook off the line, and picked up the springy stick Merle used as a fishing rod.
She carried it up the slope. When the girls were out of sight, she stepped down and walked along the shore to where Merle was waiting. "Okay," she said. "You can come out now."
"You gotta look away."
"Get out!"
He sighed. "Yes, ma'am." He stood in the waist-deep water and waded ashore, both hands cupped over his groin.
"You haven't got no sense at all, boy."
"The Master, He — "
"Don't you go laying it on the Master! Weren't nothing but your pecker wanted those girls. Bend over."
"Ettie, please."
"Do what I say." He bent over, and she swung the fishing pole hard against his rump. Crying out, he clutched his buttocks. "Move your hands." He was sobbing. As his hands dropped away, Ettie saw a red stripe across his skin. Her throat constricted, and Merle went blurry as tears filled her eyes. She drew back the switch to strike again, but instead of swinging, she threw it down. "Go on and get dressed," she said in a shaky voice. "And don't you ever do nothing like that again, or you'll be the sorriest man that ever walked on two legs."
"Yes, ma'am."
Ettie walked away.
Chapter Eleven
Hey, look!" Julie's arm swung up, and she pointed.
Nick gazed up the shadowy trail. Off to the side, he saw a small cleared area between two trees. It was a patch of raised ground, roughly rectangular, enclosed by a border of small stones. A weathered plank of wood tilted from the earth at its far end.