Zach pulled out the chair at the end of the table and sat. He was troubled. She never treated him like this unless she wanted something. Women were devious that way. They used their wiles to trick men into doing things the man wouldn’t ordinarily do. He must be on his guard.
Bubbling with contentment, Lou brought over a steaming bowl of potato soup. She placed it in front of him and stepped back, smiling. “Here you go. Whites call this an appetizer. I know you like potato soup a lot. I added extra butter, too, just like you always want.”
“Thank you.” Zach picked up his spoon. He had taken several sips when he realized she was still standing there, watching him. “What’s wrong?”
“I want to be sure you like it.”
“I like it very much.” Zach had learned early in their marriage never to say he disliked her cooking. Either it crushed her so that she sulked for days, or else it made her so mad, she went around slamming doors and giving him looks that would wither rock.
“Good.” Lou beamed. Men were always in better frames of mind when they had full stomachs. She remembered her grandmother saying that the way to a man’s heart was through his gut, and her grandmother had been right.
Zach swallowed more soup, and when she didn’t move, he tactfully suggested, “Why don’t you get a bowl and join me?”
“Oh. Sure. Sorry.” Lou ladled only a little into her bowl. She wasn’t all that hungry. The butterflies in her tummy were to blame. Taking the chair across from him, she took a tiny sip. “This is nice.”
“I told you I liked it.”
“No, not the soup. This.” Lou motioned at the table and at them and at the room. “Our cabin. Our home. It’s nice that we have four walls and a roof over our heads.”
Zach deemed that a silly thing to say. Certainly it was nice. It beat sleeping in the rain and the snow.
“Who would have thought it would come to this.”
“That we’d have a cabin? You told me you wanted one before we were married.” Many times, Zach could have added but didn’t.
“No, I didn’t mean that. I meant us.”
Zach was confused. They were man and wife. They lived together. That was the way of things. He decided not to say anything and devoted himself to his soup. No sooner did he swallow the last spoonful than Lou was at his elbow, taking the empty bowl.
“Now for the main course.”
Zach marveled at how much time she must have spent cooking and baking. There was the roasted grouse. There were carrots and baked potatoes. There was gravy. There was freshly baked bread with butter. “It’s not Christmas, is it?” he joked.
“I just wanted to show you how much I love you, how much you mean to me.”
Zach’s mental guard went up again. “I love you, too, Louisa. There was no need to go to all this bother.”
“Love is never a bother. Love is love.”
Zach fidgeted in his chair. There she went again with another silly remark.
Lou sat back down and folded her hands in front of her. She waited until he forked a piece into his mouth, then cleared her throat. “How do you feel?”
“Like a snake that has swallowed a bird and is so swollen, it can’t hardly move.”
Lou didn’t think much of his comparison, but she smiled and said, “Just so you’re happy.”
“I am.”
“I want you to always be happy. I want
About to fork another piece into his mouth, Zach looked at her. He remembered how lately she had been sick in the morning. Suddenly the feast fit for a king took on a whole new meaning. “You’re with child.”
Lou smothered a frown. She’d wanted to break the news, not have it broken to her. “You don’t have to say it quite like that. But yes, I am.” She waited, and when all he did was bite the piece of pie off the fork, she goaded him with, “Well?”
“Well, what? You must take care of yourself. Don’t lift heavy things. Don’t eat a lot of sugar. Stuff like that.”
Lou waited again, then said, “That’s all you have to say?”
“What else? I’ll need to make a cradle. Or maybe my pa will let us have the one they used for me and my sister. We’ll tell them as soon as they get back. My ma can give you advice on all kinds of female stuff.”
“That’s all you can think of?”
Zach was uneasy. Her tone warned him that she was on the brink of anger, and he had no idea what he had done. “I’m right pleased. We’ve talked about having a baby and now we will.”
“All you are is pleased? You’re not giddy with excitement? You’re not wonderfully happy?”
“Of course.” Zach was none of that. But if saying he was kept her content, he would pretend.
“I mean, I go to all this trouble. I break the greatest news a wife can break to her husband, and you sit there and tell me you have to build a cradle.”
“Do you want the baby to sleep on the floor?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“All right. The bed, then?”
“Where the baby will sleep isn’t the issue. The issue is how you reacted to the news.”
“Be reasonable. It’s not as if it was a huge surprise.”
“A child is taking shape inside me as we speak. The miracle of new life. The greatest thrill we will ever know. And you sit there as if I just told you a weasel got one of the chickens.”
“If a weasel got a chicken, I’d be mad. I’m not mad.”
“You’re not glad, either. Don’t deny you’re not. I can see it in your eyes.”
Forgetting himself, Zach replied, “Don’t tell me how I feel or how I don’t feel. I should know better than you, and I tell you, I’m happy.”
“Oh, Stalking Coyote.”
Zach inwardly winced. She used his Shoshone name only when she was upset. She confirmed her distress by doing the one thing he couldn’t stand for her to do.
Louisa burst into tears.
Chapter Three
Shakespeare McNair cleared his throat. “ ‘To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of trouble, and by opposing, end them.’ ”
Blue Water Woman looked up from her knitting. She was in the rocking chair, by the window. He was at the table honing his ax. If she had asked him once, she had asked him a thousand times not to hone his ax at the table. He always got tiny flakes all over. But did he listen? No. He was a man.
“Is there a point, or were you talking to hear yourself talk again?” Her English was excellent. She didn’t speak it quite as well as Winona King, but she took great pride in how well she had mastered it. For a Flathead, the white tongue was as strange as a tongue could be.
Shakespeare harrumphed and stopped honing. “Did you just accuse me of being in love with the sound of my own voice?”
