watched. He had learned the hard way never to ignore his intuition, and he glanced up, reckoning a deer or an elk or some other animal had strayed by. But the watcher was two-legged. “You!”
“I’m happy to see you, too, Pa,” Zach said dryly. He gestured at the downed saplings. “Why do you need firewood at this time of year?”
Instead of answering Nate asked, “What are you doing here? What about Lou? Should you have left her alone?”
“She practically threw me out of our cabin,” Zach reported. “She was fine this morning when we woke up except for feeling a bit queasy. She sent me over to get some of those sage leaves Ma keeps on hand.”
The Shoshones chewed the leaves for stomach upsets. Nate had used them on occasion himself. “I am not chopping firewood. I’m making a raft, and I could use your help.”
“A raft?” Zach repeated.
Nate explained about Shakespeare taking the dugout and going back out on the lake by his lonesome. “We fear he was caught in the storm,” he concluded.
“I saw some of it out my window—” Zach said, and stopped. “Dear God, Pa. Some of those waves had to be three feet high. No one could survive.”
“We don’t know that,” Nate said angrily, and swung again, sending slivers flying. “Start hauling these to the lake. With your help I can get done in half the time.”
“Sure thing. Lou will understand. She cares about that old grump as much as we do.”
Nate doubted anyone other than Blue Water Woman was as fond of McNair as he was. He owed Shakespeare more than any man could ever repay. When he first came to the Rockies, he was as green as grass and would not have lived through his first winter if not for McNair’s sage advice and kind help. Their bond of friendship had grown to where Nate regarded Shakespeare as more of father than a friend. His real father had always been cold and aloof, completely unlike Shakespeare. Nate sometimes wished his father had been more like his mentor, but then Nate might never have left New York for the wilds of the frontier. He would never have met Winona, never had Evelyn and Zach.
Nate was glad he had come West. He had seen things few men ever saw, lived as few men ever lived. He would not trade his experiences for all the jade in China. Yes, life in the wilderness was fraught with danger, but every pearl, it was said, came at great price, and the pearl of true freedom, of being able to live as he wanted without let or hindrance, was worth the perils that had to be overcome.
“Pa?”
Nate realized his son was trying to get his attention. He looked up. “What is it?”
“You can stop chopping,” Zach said, and pointed.
Blue Water Woman was riding along the water’s edge toward Nate’s cabin. She had a rope in one hand. The other end was tied to a bark canoe she was pulling after her.
“Let’s go,” Nate said. Hastening to the bay, he climbed on and galloped to meet her. She spotted them, and was off her horse and untying the rope from the canoe when they reined to a stop.
“Where did you find it?” Nate asked as he alighted.
“Washed up on the shore.” Blue Water Woman glanced at where the canoes had been before the storm struck. “There wasn’t one for you to use? It is a good thing I brought it, then.”
“I was making a raft,” Nate explained. He looked in the canoe; the paddles were missing. He mentioned the loss, adding, “I have one at my place. But only one,” he emphasized.
Blue Water Woman patted the canoe. “Finding this is an omen. I am going with you, and I will not brook no for an answer.” Something more than simple anxiety was telling her she must hasten out on the lake after her man.
“What about me?” Zach asked.
“You were fetching sage for Louisa, remember?” Nate reminded him. He was unhappy with Blue Water Woman’s decision, but he had no right to stop her.
“She won’t mind if I help out.”
“Three in the canoe would be too crowded.”
Blue Water Woman looked at Nate and impatiently motioned to the water. “Why are we still standing here? Hurry and fetch that paddle.”
The breeze was at their backs when they pushed off. Nate knelt in the bow; Blue Water Woman was in the stern, her hands clasped in her lap. To look at her, at how calm she was, no one would guess what she must have been going through.
“You are holding up better than I am,” Nate commented, as he dipped the paddle in the water and stroked.
“Have you ever been attacked by a mountain lion?” Blue Water Woman asked.
Nate recalled a harrowing encounter he’d had with one of the big cats years ago. “Yes. Why?”
“There is a mountain lion loose inside me. It is ripping my stomach and clawing my heart, and if we do not find my Carcajou, it will tear me apart.”
The lake spread out in a blue-green sheen before them. Here and there were ducks, singly and in pairs and squadrons. Geese honked and plunged their long necks into the lake after fish. Gulls wheeled white in the sky, their high-pitched cries letting the world know they were there.
Blue Water Woman shielded her eyes from the glare and peered all about. “Where is he?”
“We will find him,” Nate said, more to boost her spirits than out of an unshakable conviction that they would.
“Were it not for his white hairs, I would do as white women do with their young and put him over my knee and spank him.”
“Spank him anyway,” Nate said. “It would serve him right.”
Blue Water Woman mustered a grin to be polite. “I have never understood that.”
“What?” Nate said, preoccupied with ripples to the northeast he could not account for.
“Hitting a child. My people think it is bad medicine. So do the Shoshones.”
“I know,” Nate said. Shortly after Winona had announced she was pregnant for the first time, they sat down and talked about how they wished they could tell whether the baby was a boy or a girl, and what names they liked, and how they would go about rearing it, no matter which it was. At one point he had joked, “If we have a daughter, you will have to do the spanking. I could spank a boy, but never a girl.”
Winona had asked him what spanking was, and when he explained, she had recoiled in horror, then went on to say that for a Shoshone, the idea was unthinkable. “Hit a child and you wound their heart for life.”
“I turned out all right,” Nate told her. “And my father tarred the dickens out of me at least once a week.”
Appalled, Winona insisted there would be no tarring in the King family. Nate, as he always did, respected her wishes. But there had been times—
“Nate?” Blue Water Woman said. “Do you see them, too?”
Nate nodded. She was referring to the ripples he had noticed. They had grown in number and size. Something under the surface was agitating the water. Something big, by the looks of it.
“Could it be the water devil?”
Nate had been wondering the same thing. He steered the canoe toward them and almost immediately the ripples vanished.
Blue Water Woman sat forward and declared, “It
Nate was not so sure. It could be anything. Plenty of big, ordinary fish inhabited the lake. He came to the approximate spot and leaned over to probe the depths, but it was like trying to see the bottom of a well.
Blue Water Woman was bent over the other side. “Do you see anything? Anything at all?”
“No.” Nate resumed stroking. The splash of his paddle and the honking of nearby geese nearly drowned out a loud splash. He looked but saw only ripples.
“What was that?”
“A fish,” Nate said. “The kind we like to fry in a pan.”
“I thought I saw a fin,” Blue Water Woman said. “A huge fin,” she emphasized. “It must be the water devil. It has killed my husband, and now it is after us.”
“You are jumping to conclusions,” Nate warned. Which for her was unusual. Out of all of them, she had
