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 Testament 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 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 Hamlet. He chose his next words carefully. “And you are right. There is a difference between the Bible and the tall tales we whites like to tell. I never meant to suggest that Salish stories of water creatures are hot air, and I apologize if I gave you that idea.”
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 sweet I object to.”
“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 t
he 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.
“I need some air.”
“I am sorry I care so much, Carcajou.”
“‘It is my soul that calls upon my name,’“ Shakespeare softly quoted. “‘How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night, like softest music to attending ears.’“ He smiled and went out, remembering to take his rifle from beside the door. The cool evening air was a welcome relief from the flush of ardor. Overhead, stars had blossomed.
Shakespeare walked to the lake and gazed out over the dark waters. He thought of the thing in the depths, and more of the lines he had read countless times tripped from his troubled lips. “There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ‘tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.”
He stopped, and scowled. “There’s the rub. I am not ready. I would savor her until the end of time if I could.”
The crunch of a step brought Shakespeare around with his Hawken rising. The tall, broad-shouldered figure strolling toward him showed white teeth in a warm smile.
“I thought I saw you out here,” Nate King said.
“Horatio!” Shakespeare delightedly exclaimed, using his pet name for the man he loved as a son. He clapped Nate on the arm. “You are a balm to these tired eyes.”
“I just got back from Bent’s Fort,” Nate related. “I brought the sugar and flour the women wanted and enough powder to last us all for the next year.”
“You just got back, you say?” Shakespeare asked. It was a ten-day ride to the trading post and another ten days to return. “How is it you are over here talking to me instead of treating that adorable wife of yours to your company?”
“Winona just told me that you plan to try and catch the creature in the lake.”
“Oh, hell,” Shakespeare said.
“What is the matter?”
“I am not a dunce. My wife has been talking to your wife and now she sends you to do their handiwork.” Shakespeare kicked a stone, and it rolled into the water. “Females! They cut off our heads with a gilded axe and smile as they deliver the killing stroke.”
“Was that the Bard?”
“Somewhat,” Shakespeare said. “But you can turn around and go right back to your cabin. I want to do it and I will do it, and I don’t care who thinks I shouldn’t.”
Nate grinned. “Stamp your foot a few times and you will remind me of Zach when he was five years old.”
“Fah!” Shakespeare rejoined.
“Simmer down.”
“I will not. At my age a little simmering is good for the blood.”
“It is true what they say, then. The older we get, the younger we act.”
“What sock did you pull that one out of? It is mine to do, do you hear me? I will pit brain and sinew against the water devil, and may the real devil take the hindmost.”
“Be sure you are right, and then go ahead,” Nate said. “That motto worked for Davy Crockett, and it will work for us.”
“Us, Horatio?”
“That is why I came over,” Nate said. “Remember the grizzly that lived in the valley when we first came here? We tried to live in peace with it, but it chased my son over a cliff and tried to make a meal of my family and me. I had no choice but to kill it.” Nate turned toward the lake. “We need to know what is out there and whether it is a danger to our families.”
“Then you are not here to talk me out of going after it?”
“On the contrary. I am here to tell you I am with you. We will see this through together.”
Shakespeare McNair chortled. “This is the reason you are the manly apple of my eye. To battle, then, Horatio! Unleash the dogs of war!”
Bats in the Belfry
It was not quite ten o’clock the next morning when loud banging and scraping noises drew Blue Water Woman out of her cabin to stare in bewilderment at the roof. Planks left over from the chicken coop were unevenly stacked at one end. In the center, hammering away, was her husband. Their ladder was propped against the side of the cabin, and Nate King was just coming down it.
“Good morning,” he greeted her.
“Good morning to you,” Blue Water Woman responded, and then focused on the man she had married. “Carcajou?”
Shakespeare went on hammering.
“Do not pretend you cannot hear me,” Blue Water Woman said.
With an exaggerated sigh, Shakespeare lowered his hammer and shifted on his knees. “What is it, woman? Can’t you see we men are busy at important work?”
“You did not tell me Nate was here.”
“Do you expect me to mention every trifle? Should I tell you when I heed Nature’s call? Or pick my teeth?”
“Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, and it was not me.”
“Me either,” Shakespeare said, selecting a nail. “If my disposition were any sunnier, you could not stand to look at me except on cloudy days.”
“What are you doing to my roof?”
Shakespeare reacted as if she had slapped him. “Your roof? We both live under it. Which makes it mine as much as yours and entitles me to make improvements if I so desire.”
Blue Water Woman put her hands on her hips. “How do you improve a roof that has nothing wrong with it?”
Nate was filling his arms with planks. He looked up at McNair. “You didn’t tell her what we are going to do?”
“Stay out of this, Horatio.”
“I took it for granted you would,” Nate said. To Blue Water Woman he said, “It was his idea. A darned good one, too.”
“Perhaps you will share his brilliance with me since he saw fit not to,” Blue Water Woman prompted.
“We figure that we need to get a good look at the thing in the lake so we will have a better idea of how to deal with it,” Nate explained. “And the higher we are, the more of the lake we can see.”
“What does that have to do with my roof?”
Shakespeare slid to the edge and balanced on his hands and knees. “We are building a steeple.”
“A what?”
“Do you remember that time we went back East? All the churches
we saw with bell towers on top? Those are called steeples.”
“You are turning our cabin into a church?”
Shakespeare did his strangled goose impression. “Honestly, woman. The silly notions you come up with. Have I taken out our table and chairs and replaced them with pews? Have I torn down the fireplace and put in an altar?”
“Do not give yourself ideas.”
“All I am building is a steeple. Then Nate and I will take turns keeping watch through his spyglass. Our big handicap has been that we can’t see much of the lake from the ground, but the steeple will remedy that.”
“You couldn’t climb a tree?”
Shakespeare made a sweeping motion with his arm. “Show me a single tree anywhere near the water and we will use it instead.”
Blue Water Woman couldn’t. To the west and north the woods only came to within a hundred yards of the water. To the south grew grass. To the east the forest was slightly closer, but the closest trees were short and thin.
“I thought not,” Shakespeare said triumphantly. “Now will you go pester a chipmunk and leave us be?”
“Not so fast,” Blue Water Woman said. “How high will this steeple of yours be?”
“As high as it needs to be for us to see out to the middle of the lake. But I would say no more than thirty feet.”
Blue Water Woman stared at the chicken coop, which was eight feet high, then at the roof of their cabin. “Do you have a brain?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You are not building a thirty-foot steeple on my roof.”
“I keep telling you. It is our roof, and I will do as I please.”
“Not if you want to share my bed, you will not.”
Shakespeare stiffened, then said to Nate, “Did you hear her, Horatio? Blackmail. She thinks she can threaten me with the loss of a few cuddles.” Of Blue Water Woman he demanded, “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t.”
“I will give you more than one. That lumber you are using was for the storage shed you have been promising to build. The roof might not be strong enough to bear the weight of the steeple. We have bad lightning storms from time to time, and lighting likes to strike things that are up high. We have strong winds, too, and a Chinook might bring your steeple crashing down.” Blue Water Woman paused in her litany. “Shall I go on?”
Wilderness Double Edition 28 Page 16
