In Darkest Depths

steeple, or I would need to keep my ears plugged with wax.”

“But why a steeple?”

“So he can keep watch for the water devil.”

Winona started to laugh but caught herself. “You are serious?”

“I am afraid so.” Blue Water Woman sighed. “If I live a thousand winters, I will never understand him.”

“It is men,” Winona said. “They do not think like we do.”

“It is Shakespeare,” Blue Water Woman replied. “He does not think like anyone.”

Winona grinned.

“Show me one other white who spends every spare minute reading William Shakespeare or quotes him every time he opens his mouth. It is ridiculous.”

“Oh my,” Winona said. “If your husband ever heard you say that, he would throw a fit.”

“I may throw one myself when I get home and see their steeple,” Blue Water Woman said. “That is my man for you. Once he sets his mind to something, he does not rest until he has done what he set out to do. And now he has taken it into his head to go after the water devil.”

“You are worried.”

“I am glad Nate is helping. Shakespeare needs someone with common sense to keep an eye on him.”

Ever sensitive to her friend’s moods, Winona remarked, “But it is not his age that is bothering you, is it?”

“No,” Blue Water Woman admitted. She gazed out over the water and bit her lower lip. “It is the water devil.”

“I am sure Nate and Shakespeare will be careful,” Winona sought to soothe her.

“Careful is not always enough. Some things are better left alone. A grizzly in its den. An eagle in its nest. A creature as big as a horse that lives in the water.”

“In the water, yes. So long as Nate and Shakespeare stay on land, they will be safe.”

“So long as they stay on land,” Blue Water Woman echoed.

Steeple Knight

Shakespeare McNair would never admit it to his wife, but to him this was great fun.

Shakespeare always liked a good challenge. Through out his life, he overcame one challenge after another and enjoyed each triumph. Add to that his love of a mystery and the fact he got to spend a lot of time in the company of the man he regarded as the son he never had, and he had a new spring in his step and a perpetual boyish grin on his wrinkled and weathered face—when he was not around Blue Water Woman.

He was not trying to deceive her in any way. He loved that woman with every particle of his being. It was just that she would never understand what the mystery of the creature in the lake meant to him.

In a way, the mystery was like that of the mountains themselves when Shakespeare first came to the Rockies all those decades ago. He was one of the first, if not the first, to boldly go where no white man had gone before: to venture east of the mighty Mississippi River into the unknown realm beyond.

Often, Shakespeare relived those wonderful days in his mind’s eye. He saw again his first grizzly, witnessed the passage of his first nigh-endless herd of buffalo, set eyes again for the first time on the towering ramparts that would become his home for the rest of his life.

The thing in the lake was another first. It was new; it was different; it was unknown. Shakespeare had heard all the Indians’ accounts. But he had never beheld any of the creatures that spawned those accounts. Now he had his chance.

Shakespeare was not one of those whites who doubted everything Indians said on general principle. Some whites refused to believe anything Indians told them simply because they were Indians. A prominent man of the cloth had been quoted in the newspapers as stating that those of the red race were inveterate heathens and liars. Heathens, because they did not believe in the white God. Liars, because anyone who did not believe in the white God was incapable of being true in anything.

Shakespeare had chuckled when he read it. It was just plain silly. From his own experience, Shakespeare knew that most Indians viewed with low regard anyone who talked with two tongues. Honesty and truthfulness were highly esteemed.

So when Indians told Shakespeare about the early times, about the days when the land was overrun by many strange and fearsome beasts, he listened. He had poked fun at Blue Water Woman, but he did not doubt for a minute that her tribe, and many others, believed their legends to be true, and every legend had its kernel of truth.

King Valley, as Shakespeare did not mind calling it, since Nate was the one who came up with the idea of moving there, had long been known as bad medicine by the Crows and the Utes. The valley was a throwback to the old times. It was said that something lived up near the glacier that fed runoff into the lake. It was also whispered that the lake itself was the haunt of something. Both somethings were said to be from the time long ago, and best avoided.

Now, after repeated puzzling and bizarre incidents, Shakespeare would very much like to know what the something in the lake was.

For more than a week, he and Nate kept watch from the steeple every chance they got, sometimes together, sometimes singly. They had made a bench where they could sit in relative comfort and scan the lake through Nate’s spyglass.

Shakespeare was proud of the steeple. It had taken a lot of sweat to build. They only had enough planks to make it ten feet high, but combined with the height of the cabin, their new vantage afforded them a sweeping view of the lake, which was exactly what they needed.

The morning after they built it, Shakespeare took Blue Water Woman up the stairs and bid her sit on the seat and admire the view. Not only could they see more of the lake, but more of the valley, too.

Breathtaking to behold, the glory of creation unfolded before them in all its spectacular splendor.

Blue Water Woman sat and gazed quietly to the east, north, west, and south. Then she smiled in that mild manner she had, and said, “I like this. Your steeple is still silly, but I like this.”

Shakespeare made a show of clearing his throat. “You made all that fuss for nothing.”

“This will be a good place to come and sip tea when I want to get away from you.”

Shakespeare started to laugh, then caught himself, and thought it prudent to show some indignation. “Shall quips and sentences and paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humor?”

“Do you know,” Blue Water Woman said, “that I have heard there are wives whose husbands talk plainly and simply and do not quote an old, moldy book every time they open their mouth?”

“My book is not moldy!” Shakespeare took immediate offense. “This is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Blue Water Woman smiled sweetly. “That is exactly my point.”

Shakespeare could not help it; he cackled. She was the only woman he had ever met who could hold her own in banter that most women would not abide and some could not understand. The Bard, after all, was an acquired taste. Shakespeare liked to think of old William S’s works as a fine wine distilled from the vineyard of the human condition. All there was to know, for those who wanted to know, could be found in the Bard’s recitals of humanity’s foibles and passions.

It was one of Shakespeare’s great regrets that he had never made it to England. A visit to the Bard’s own country would be heaven. He had it on reliable authority that people over there, by and large, adored the playwright, and read his plays for the pleasure of the reading. On the American side of the pond, William S had his partisans, but it was nothing like in Britain.

At this moment, though, seated on the bench in the steeple with the sun poised on the western brink of the world, Shakespeare was not thinking of the genius from Avon. He was scanning the lake from end to end through the spyglass. He saw fish jump. He saw ducks. He saw geese. He saw gulls. He saw a pair of red hawks. At one