“You all right over there?” Samuel called.
“Right fine,” Emala replied between laughs. Just because she was laughing, he thought something was the matter. Times like this, she wondered what the good Lord had in mind when he made men. Maybe he made them for women to laugh at. That made her laugh harder.
“What are you laughing at?” Samuel shouted.
“Silly things,” Emala said.
Samuel muttered something and resumed searching for snakes.
Emala dabbed at her eyes and hefted her rifle and took a few deep breaths. “Lordy,” she said in amusement. There were days when she amazed herself at how humorous she could be. She did so like to laugh. Her ma used to say it came natural to plump ladies, that skinny ladies were much too serious. Which always made Emala glad she was plump.
Grinning, Emala spied Zach and Louisa King way off on the north shore. She wondered if they were having as much fun as she was.
“You shouldn’t be doing this,” Zach said for the tenth time since the hunt started.
“I’m with child,” Louisa King replied. “I’m not helpless.” She was small of frame with sandy hair she liked to crop short and eyes the same color as the lake. Usually she favored buckskins, but this past week she had taken an old brown homespun dress out of her trunk and was wearing that.
“Still, it’s rattlers,” Zach said. He was worried sick she’d be bitten; he could lose her and the baby both.
“I am not scared of snakes.”
“That’s your problem,” Zach complained. “You’re not much scared of anything.”
“I was scared that time the army took you into custody and you were put on trial. I was scared I’d lose you.”
“I’m still here,” Zach said.
Lou sighed and turned and stared across the bright blue of the sunlit lake at the virgin valley beyond. She loved it here. Initially she had balked at moving from their old cabin in the foothills, but the move had turned out to be the smartest thing she ever did, next to marrying Zach. She liked the colors. She liked how the light green of the grass merged into the slightly darker green of the deciduous trees, the oaks and cottonwoods and willows, and how they, in turn, merged higher up into the even darker greens of the spruce and pine. Here and there stands of aspen were scattered. At this time of the year their leaves were a pale green, but in a few months they would flame with red and orange and yellow, the precursor of fall. Above the trees were high cliffs and jagged ramparts and crests crowned with snow.
A bald eagle soared over the valley on outstretched pinions, its predatory gaze on the ground. Several buzzards wheeled in concentric circles over woods to the east. In the water a streak of silver flashed clear and splashed down again.
“I hope we live here forever,” Lou said.
“Could be we won’t. Could be it will get as crowded here at it did along the front range.”
“Crowded?” Lou teased. “We had five neighbors stretched out over twenty-five miles.”
“For the Rockies that’s crowded.”
“You and your pa,” Lou said, and laughed.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Only that you and your father love the wilderness. You can’t stand to be hemmed in. It’s a wonder you’re not upset about the new people who have joined us. I don’t mean just the Worths. I mean Waku and his family.”
Zach hadn’t been happy about it. His father tended to be too nice and offered sanctuary to anyone who needed it. If it had been him, he’d have told them to find a spot elsewhere.
Lou watched a pair of geese paddle majestically by. She liked how they held their heads high and moved along the water without hardly any movement of their bodies. “I think if I’d been born an animal I’d like it to have been a goose.” She’d heard tell that geese mated for life. Feathered romantics, was what they were.
“That’s plain silly.” Zach never ceased to be amazed at the things that came out of her mouth.
“We should keep looking,” Lou suggested. “We have a lot of shore to cover yet.”
“I can do it alone,” Zach tried again.
“If you were a horse you would have blinders on.”
“Dang it, woman.”
“I love it when you sweet-talk me.”
Zach gave up. There was no reasoning with her at times. She got something into her pretty head and nothing could change it. And she
“Dang it,” Lou imitated him. “Here I was hoping to give the first rattler we find a big hug.”
“Ornery wench.”
“Wench?” Lou repeated. “Did you just call me a
Zach grinned.
Lou beckoned to the geese and said, “Quick! Come here and take a look! He has honest-to-God teeth!”
Zach laughed, and felt his worry lessen. She had that effect on him. She always seemed to know just what to do to make him feel good. “Don’t tell anyone, but I love you.”
“Oh my. Does this mean you have designs on me?” Lou grinned and patted her belly. “Oh. Wait. You already did have designs.”
“You’re hopeless,” Zach said, and commenced to prowl among a jumble of rocks and boulders.
Louisa was pleased with herself. It took some doing to get him to not take things so seriously. Sure, he was serious by nature, but he had a wonderful sense of humor if he would only let it out more.
Lou came to a group of small boulders and carefully picked her way among them. She didn’t dare slip. A fall might cause her to lose the baby. She smiled in anticipation. Her very own son or daughter. She hoped it was a girl, but Zach hoped it was a boy. She wished there were some way to tell. She had asked Winona and Winona said that her people believed that if a woman was carrying the baby high, it was likely to be a girl, and if she was carrying the baby low, it was likely to be a boy.
Lou looked down at herself. She had barely begun to show. It was much too soon to tell if she would carry high or low. Another few months maybe. She stepped around a knee-high boulder and over an ankle-high slab of rock and was within a few feet of the water’s edge. She crouched and dipped her hand in and touched her wet hand to her neck and her forehead.
“What are you doing?” Zach asked from off a ways.
“Cooling off.”
“Be careful you don’t fall in.”
Louisa looked at him to see if he was serious, and he was. As if by being pregnant she must be clumsy. A sharp retort was on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed it. She dipped her hand in again and this time took a sip. Across the lake to the south was Shakespeare’s cabin, figures moving near it.
Lou stood and wiped her right hand on her dress. With her rifle in her left hand she turned to catch up to Zach. She had to pass a couple of boulders that made her think of giant eggs. She was almost around them when a rattlesnake reared in a patch of shadow.
“Oh God,” she blurted.
The snake was big and thick and its eyes seemed to bore into her with wicked intent. Its tail began to buzz.
Lou almost bolted, but the rattler was too close. She thought of the baby, and of how sick a bite would make her even if she didn’t die. All that poison, it might harm the baby, might cause her to lose it. So she stood still, goose bumps breaking out all over.
