Lou did not think to run. She told herself that she was perfectly safe, that she was on land and the creature was a water dweller.
But then the water swelled upward with astonishing rapidity, creating a wave that bore down on Lou with the swiftness of an avalanche. A foot the wave rose, then a foot and a half. Belatedly, Lou started to turn, but she was only halfway around when the wave slammed into her legs. She was bowled over and fell onto her side, the breath whooshing from her lungs. For a harrowing instant she was engulfed in a cold, wet cocoon. Without thinking, she gulped for air and sucked in water. It got into her mouth, into her nose. Gasping, blinking her eyes to clear them, she groped frantically about.
Suddenly Lou’s arms were seized, and she was swung into the air as if she were weightless. Involuntarily, she cried out, then saw who had seized her. “Oh! Thank goodness!”
Zach had her by the right arm, Shakespeare by the left. Shakespeare was staring at the lake, but her husband only had eyes for her.
Unlike his sister, Evelyn, Zach had slightly more of his mother in him than his father. He was big, like Nate, and broad of shoulder, like Nate, and had green eyes, like Nate, but his black hair and swarthy complexion and facial features were inherited from Winona. He wore buckskins, and was a walking armory.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Lou said, embarrassed by her lapse and annoyed that she was soaking wet. She shrugged loose of them. “You are back sooner than I expected.”
“Forget that,” Zach said, and motioned at the water. “What in God’s name happened?”
“I saw it,” Shakespeare said.
Zach glanced at him. “What?”
“I saw it!” Shakespeare repeated. “For just a second there, before it dived, I saw the thing that lives in the lake.”
“I saw it, too,” Lou said. “But I can’t tell you what I saw.”
Zach looked her up and down and then at the lake, and scowled. “I would like to see it,” he said, and wagged his rifle. “Up close, so I can kill it.”
“I don’t know as it meant to harm me,” Lou said.
“I don’t care,” Zach said. “Nothing hurts you and lives.”
Louisa tenderly touched his cheek. “My protector. But there is not much we can do. It’s too big to catch and it hardly ever comes to the surface for us to shoot it. I say we leave it be.”
“If a bear broke into our cabin while we were away, I would not let the bear live because it might come back when we were there,” Zach said. “If a mountain lion stalked our horses, I would hunt it down and shoot it before it killed one of them. This is no different.”
“No harm was done,” Lou stressed. Then she remembered her morning sickness and the time an aunt lost a baby early on when she fell from a wagon. Pressing a hand to her belly, Lou said, “At least, I hope no harm was done.”
“What are you—?” Zach began, and gripped her by the shoulders. “Wait! Are you saying what I think you are saying? You are with child?”
“What’s that?” Shakespeare said.
Louisa was disappointed that her surprise might have been spoiled. “I can’t say for sure yet, but some of the signs are there, yes.”
Whooping for joy, Zach swept her into his arms and spun her in a circle. “A son! We might have a son!”
“Or a daughter,” Lou said.
“A boy to teach to ride and shoot and hunt!” Zach said happily.
“Or a
Shakespeare put a hand on her arm. “You better let Winona and my wife have a look at you.”
“I’m fine,” Lou said. “Besides I’m not certain yet. And I would rather not tell anyone until I know for sure.”
“We will keep your secret, but it never hurts to be safe,” Shakespeare cautioned, and bestowed a grim glance on the water. “Which is why I can’t put it off any longer.”
“What are you talking about?” Zach asked.
“That thing,” Shakespeare said with a nod. “Whatever it is we keep glimpsing and hearing. It could have killed Lou just now.”
“You are making more out of it than there was,” Lou assured him.
“I am entitled to my opinion,” Shakespeare replied. “And in my opinion, this has gone on long enough. We must find out what it is. Better yet, we must prevent it from ever harming us.”
“I call that overreacting,” Louisa said.
“I call it prudent,” Shakespeare countered. “What if you are right and you are with child?”
Louisa laughed. “I’m pretty sure Zach is the father and not the thing in the lake.”
“Poke fun if you want,” Shakespeare said. “But if you have a child, he or she will want to play near the water or go for a swim. What happens if the creature does to your offspring what it just did to you?”
“I never thought of that,” Lou admitted, troubled at the prospect.
“That is why you young folks need me and my white hair around,” Shakespeare said. “So you can benefit from my wisdom.” He paused. “I have made up my mind. I am going to find out once and for all what that thing is.”
Gilding The Goat
“It is the silliest idea I have ever heard.”
Shakespeare McNair glared across the supper table at his wife. “I shall unfold equal discourtesy to your best kindness,” he quoted indignantly.
“You could go to a lot of effort for nothing,” Blue Water Woman said. “The creature in the lake does not come to the surface often.”
“Three times in the past month is not what I would call rare,” Shakespeare countered.
“My people say that water devils are bad medicine.”
“Devils, as in more than one?”
Blue Water Woman dabbed at her lips with a cloth napkin. She had insisted on using napkins ever since the time they’d had supper with a missionary and the missionary’s wife, who thought that no meal was complete without them. “They live in many lakes and rivers.”
“I recollect hearing stories,” Shakespeare said. He seldom used the napkins she always placed by his plate. To him, it was putting on airs. “I always thought they were tall tales.”
“I expect better of you,” Blue Water Woman said.
Her tone warned Shakespeare she was annoyed. Given that she had a disposition as mild as milk, he sensed he needed to mend fences. “What did I say? Whites tell tall tales all the time.”
“There is a difference,” Blue Water Woman said in her impeccable English. “When you and Nate have had a few drinks, you love to tell stories. Black-tail bucks you shot become as big as elk. Bears you killed become twice the size they were when you killed them. Fish you caught that were as long as your hand become as long as your arm.”
Shakespeare made a sound that resembled a goose being strangled. “You should be hooted at like one of those old tales,” he paraphrased.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Swapping yarns is a tradition with us whites. We do it for the chuckles and the laughs.”
“My people have a tradition, too. But the stories we tell are tales of the early times. What whites would call legends or myths. To us they have as much meaning as those stories from the Old Testatment you hold in such high regard.”
Shakespeare glanced at the shelf where their Bible and his other books were neatly lined up. At one end was
