his prized copy of the complete works of William Shakespeare. He’d bought it from an emigrant bound for Oregon Country. At the time he’d simply wanted something to read during the winter months when the streams were frozen and the snow was as high as a cabin and trapping was impossible. Little had he known the passion that would seize him. He adored the Bard’s works as he adored no other.
Blue Water Woman had gone on, “I will give you an example. One you have already heard.” She paused. “The Salish believe the world was created by Amotken. He made the first people, but they would not heed him and became wicked so he drowned them in a flood.”
“Yes, I know the story,” Shakespeare said. “It perked up my ears considerably the first time I heard it since it sounds a lot like the story of Noah and the flood.”
“My own ears ‘perked up,’ as you call it, when you read about the giants that roamed the world in those days,” Blue Water Woman replied. “The Coeur d’Alenes say that giants once lived in their country. The giants wore bearskins and painted their faces black and went around at night stealing women.”
“Darned peculiar coincidence,” Shakespeare said.
“To us, those stories are not tall tales. They are not myths. They are real and true and tell how things were back then. We do not tell them for—how did you put it?—laughs and chuckles.”
“Ouch,” Shakespeare said. “A hit, a very palpable hit,” he quoted from
Blue Water Woman grinned. “You are sweet when you grovel.”
“How now, woman,” Shakespeare retorted. “Again you prick me with that rapier you call a tongue.”
“What is wrong with calling you sweet?”
“Thou art so leaky that we must leave thee to thy sinking,” Shakespeare said. “It is not the
“I am afraid you have lost me,” Blue Water Woman said in feigned innocence.
“Shameless tart,” Shakespeare grumbled. “Why is it that when a woman says she is sorry she is apologizing, but when a man says he is sorry he is groveling?”
“Women have too much pride to grovel.”
Shakespeare sat back. “Let’s change the subject.”
“Fine,” Blue Water Woman said. “We will go back to the thing in the lake and your silly plan to catch it.”
“Change the subject again.”
“No. We have not settled this one.” Blue Water Woman took a sip of her tea. She was deeply worried, but she did not want her worry to show. Knowing him, he would take it the wrong way. “You are not as young as you used to be,” she said.
Shakespeare was taken aback. She hardly ever brought up their ages. Yes, he had seen eighty winters, but he was as spry as a man of sixty, and said so.
“Yes, you have wonderful vitality,” Blue Water Woman conceded. “If you were going after a bear or a mountain lion, I would not fret.”
“Then why make an issue of this water devil?”
“Because we have no idea what it is,” Blue Water Woman said. “It could be very dangerous.”
Shakespeare snickered. “If it turns out to be a cow I will be safe enough.”
“Scoff all you want, but in the old times there lived many animals that have long since died out. Monsters, whites would call them. Some were as big as buffalo and could live both in the water and on land.”
“The thing in this lake has never come out of it,” Shakespeare felt compelled to mention.
“My point,” Blue Water Woman said, “is that we are dealing with something we know nothing about. It could be a creature left over from the time before there were people.”
Shakespeare was about to tell here that was pure nonsense, but he settled for saying, “That is unlikely, don’t you think?”
Blue Water Woman did not appear to hear him. “There were beaver the size of horses and horses the size of beaver. There were cats with teeth as long as a bowie knife, and animals with horns on their noses and others with tusks. Birds so big that when they flapped their wings it sounded like thunder.”
“I would like to have ridden one of those,” Shakespeare said.
“You are scoffing again.”
“Over in a place called the British Isles there are folks who believe in tiny people with wings and little men who dress all in green and cache pots of gold at the ends of rainbows,” Shakespeare said. “I scoff at that, too.”
Blue Water Woman puckered her mouth in disapproval. “You are not taking this seriously.”
“On the contrary,” Shakespeare said. “I always listen to what you have to say. But my mind is made up. I want to know what is in the lake, and by God, I will find out.”
“Even if it kills you?”
Shakespeare picked up his fork and stabbed a string bean. He wagged it at her, saying, “Is that what this is about?”
“In a word, yes,” Blue Water Woman admitted.
“I thought so.” Shakespeare stabbed another string bean, then a third. He wagged them at her, too. “Dost thou jeer and flout me in the teeth?”
“I love you.”
“Then give me more credit. Yes, I am getting on in years, but I still have all my faculties. I can hike five miles without getting winded, I can ride all day without being saddle-sore, and I do my husbandly duty by you three nights a week.”
“I have always liked that part,” Blue Water Woman said.
“The duty?”
“How much you enjoy lying with me. Some women say their husbands do not do it nearly as often as you do.”
“The night I stop is the day you can plant me,” Shakespeare said. “But we have strayed off the trail. I resent the slur that I am old and feeble. I have just as much vim and vinegar as Zach, and he is a lot younger.”
“Nate, perhaps,” Blue Water Woman said. “But Louisa told me that Zach cannot keep his hands off her. They lay together almost every night.”
“The boy is a satyr!” Shakespeare declared. “And what is she doing telling you that? Don’t you females keep secrets?”
“No.”
About to take a bite of the string beans, Shakespeare paused. “Wait. You haven’t told anyone about our bed time, have you?”
“What little there is to tell.”
Shakespeare burst into laughter. He laughed so hard he nearly stabbed himself with the fork. When at last he could catch his breath, he beamed at her and said, “That was your finest ever.”
“Thank you.”
“But let’s get this settled once and for all. If I were thirty you would not object to me going after this thing. Heck, if I were fifty you wouldn’t squawk.”
“Have you looked in a mirror lately? You are neither thirty nor fifty. Nor even sixty.”
“White hairs do not a simpleton make, wench. I will thank you to treat me with a little more respect.”
Blue Water Woman sighed. Setting down her cup, she rose and came around the table. “I only brought this up because I care.” Bending, she embraced him, resting her cheek on his shoulder. “Were I to lose you, my life would be empty.”
Shakespeare fidgeted in his chair. “How do you expect me to stay angry with you?”
Blue Water Woman kissed him on the cheek. “I don’t.”
“Damn your feminine wiles.”
“I love you, too.”
They kissed again, longer and passionately. When Blue Water Woman pulled away, Shakespeare pushed back his chair and stood.
