Devil Moon

Chapter Seven

Evelyn King was in love. It had taken a while for her to admit it, but now that she had, she was giddy with glee. Which was strange, since until recently the last thing on her mind was boys. Now one in particular was all she ever thought about, or dreamed about, or imagined going on long rides with in the mountains or on long walks around the lake or simply sitting and staring into his eyes. She giggled and caught herself.

“What is happening to me?” Evelyn asked out loud, and shook her head in amusement. She was changing. Her mother had always said the day would come when she would go from being a girl to being a woman, and she’d always scoffed. Maybe it happened to other females; it wasn’t going to happen to her.

Evelyn had doubted she would ever fall in love. She had doubted she would ever marry and have a family. So what if her mother and most other women since the dawn of creation had done it? But once again her mother had been proven to be right.

Now that Evelyn thought about it, her parents had been right about a lot of things. It made her wonder what other notions she held that she was wrong about. It frazzled a person, being mistaken like that.

Life sure was strange, Evelyn reflected. There she’d been, a perfectly content sixteen-year-old girl, happy with her life and with no hankering to change it, and life went and threw a surprise at her. Life went and kindled a flame that she couldn’t quench if she wanted to, and she didn’t want to.

Evelyn smiled at her reflection in the lake. “Who would have thought it?” she asked out loud. Certainly not her. She’d had no interest in boys. None whatsoever.

She resumed her stroll around the lake shore toward her parents’ cabin. Around her the valley was vibrant with life. King Valley, it was called, named after her father. By the calendar it was early autumn, but you wouldn’t know it from the hot weather. Indian Summer, folks back East would say. A last heat wave before the weather turned chill and the oaks and the aspens changed color.

Someone was coming toward her, a man with a mane of white hair and a warm smile. Like her father, he wore buckskins and was armed with a Hawken rifle and a brace of pistols. She returned his smile with affection.

“Forsooth, fair maiden! Don’t you look pretty in your new dress and bonnet!”

“Uncle Shakespeare,” Evelyn said. He wasn’t really her uncle, but he had been his father’s best friend since before she was born and she had known him since she could remember. “What are you up to today?”

Shakespeare McNair stopped and placed the stock of his rifle on the ground and leaned on the barrel. “I paid your father a visit to needle him.”

“What about?”

“Anything and everything. I like to bring color to his cheeks.”

“You are the biggest tease I know. Ma says if a person could make a living at teasing, you could have stayed back in the States and been rich.”

Shakespeare stiffened in mock indignation and quoted the Bard he was named after. “ ‘O serpent heart, hid with a flowery face. Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?’ ”

“Now, now,” Evelyn chided. “She was only saying.”

“That’s the trouble with females,” Shakespeare grumped. “They are forever using their tongues as rapiers and piercing us poor men to the quick.”

“You men deserve it.”

“Since when? What do we do that you women delight in pricking us so?”

“It’s how you are.”

Shakespeare sniffed and quoted, “ ‘You do unbend your noble strength, to think so brainsickly of things.’ ”

Evelyn laughed. “Is that even a word? Brainsickly? Sometimes I think that William S., as you like to call him, just made up words to suit him.”

Shakespeare’s indignation became genuine. “Why, you upstart. I’ll have you know he was the greatest word-weaver who ever drew breath. He made poetry of the plain and showed the real and the true of all that is.”

“Oh, really?” Evelyn said. “What about that silly play of his with the fairies and Cupid?”

Shakespeare made a sound remarkably similar to a goose being throttled. “Did my ears deceive me, child? Did you just call the Bard silly?” He quoted again. “ ‘Is there no military policy how virgins might blow up men?’ ”

Evelyn gave a mild start. “What did you just say?”

“That you have besmirched the greatest writer of all time.”

“No. That other thing.”

“Oh. You mean about virgins?” A sly smile curled McNair’s seamed features. “That reminds me. How is the handsome Romeo these days? Rumor has it that the two of you are glued at the elbow.” He chortled merrily and said, “Glued at the elbow! I do make myself laugh, if I say so myself.”

“That will be enough of that.”

“Oh ho?” Shakespeare returned. “The young maiden can dish it out, but she can’t take it?”

“You shouldn’t poke fun at something like that.”

“Like what? Love?”

Evelyn was growing annoyed. She cared for Shakespeare dearly, but he had a knack for getting a rise out of people. “I never said I was in love.”

“You never said you weren’t. Not that anyone would believe you if you did. The proof of the pudding is in the tasting, young one.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“Meaning if it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it won’t do any good to call it a moose.”

Evelyn put her hands on her hips. “I’ve heard that people your age tend to babble a lot and I reckon it must be true.”

“Here, now,” Shakespeare said. “Pick on anything you want but my years. I have earned these wrinkles honorably.” He glanced behind him and then gazed past her and came closer and lowered his voice. “How are the two of you doing, by the way? Has Horatio said anything about Dega and you?”

“Horatio,” as Evelyn well knew, was Shakespeare’s nickname for her father. “What would Pa have to say about what I do? It’s between Dega and me.”

“Does your father mind the two of you being together? Sometimes parents take exception.”

“I don’t see how he could,” Evelyn said. “So what if I’m white and Dega is an Indian? Pa married a Shoshone, after all.”

“That wasn’t what I was talking about,” Shakespeare clarified. “Land sakes, girl, I married a sassy red wench myself.”

“Oh, Uncle Shakespeare.”

“Don’t ‘Uncle Shakespeare’ me. I will call my wife that to her face and she will be flattered.”

“So Blue Water Woman is a wench, is she?”

“All women are. Some hide it better than others, but deep down all women want the same thing.”

“And what would that be?”

Shakespeare started to say something and caught himself. Instead he smiled and said, “They want a heart to entwine with their own.”

Evelyn thought of Dega and her chest grew warm. “Even if that’s true, I’m still not admitting I’m in love.”

“A woman’s prerogative. And for your sake I will graciously drop the subject.”

“Thank you,” Evelyn said. “I’ll have to tell your wife that she’s wrong about you.”

“What did the wretch say?”

Evelyn snorted. “How did she go from being a wench to a wretch?”

“She’s female. Your kind does it with every other breath.”

“Oh, Uncle Shakespeare.”

“Don’t start with that again. What did my darling wife claim this time?”

“Only that your tongue is so tart, you must have been born with a sour disposition. But she was smiling when she said it.”

“That was the word she used? Tart?”

Evelyn nodded. “She was quite proud of it. She said it was a word worthy of your precious William S.”

“The nerve,” Shakespeare said, and paraphrased, “All that is within her does condemn itself for being there.” Lifting his rifle, he marched on by. “If you’ll excuse me, there’s a certain upstart who needs a tongue-lashing.”

Evelyn grinned and continued on her way. She thought of his remark about the military and virgins and felt herself blush. That was another thing she’d never given any attention until recently. Why should she, when she was never going to marry? Sighing, she stopped and gazed toward the east end of the lake. The Nansusequa lodge was a dark block in the shadows of the tall trees. Dega was there somewhere, going about his daily chores. It had been a few days since she saw him and she dearly yearned to.

That got her thinking. Usually when they were together, others were around. His family or her family or Shakespeare and his wife. It was rare for them to be alone. The last time had been when they went on a long ride up into the mountains. She decided to go on another. Only she couldn’t just tell her mother and father and say she wanted to go off with Dega to be alone with him. She needed an excuse.

Over by the cabin the chickens were pecking and taking dirt baths. The rooster flapped his wings at her as she went by. She opened the door and went in and stood a moment so her eyes could adjust. Her mother, Winona, was at the counter chopping a rabbit into bits for a stew.

“Where’s Pa?” Evelyn asked.

“He went to visit your brother and see how Louisa is coming along,” Winona said in her impeccable English.

Evelyn pulled out a chair and sat at the table. Her sister-in-law was in the family way and everyone was doting over her. She wondered if they would do the same when she was in the family way, and blushed again.

“How was your walk?”

“It’s a beautiful day,” Evelyn said.

Winona turned. She had a bloody knife in one hand, and the fingers of her other hand dripped red drops. “Too beautiful to clean your room as you promised you would?”

“I said I would get it done by suppertime.”

“And you will stall until it is nearly time to eat and then do it,” Winona predicted.

Evelyn wanted to stay on her mother’s good side, so she said, “I’ll clean it in a few minutes. First I wanted to ask you something.”

Winona turned back to the counter and began putting the pieces and bits into a pot. “I am listening.”

“Pretty soon the weather will change,” Evelyn began by a devious route. “Winter will be here and we’ll have snow up to our necks.”

“Sometimes the snow is deep, yes. Do you want your father to repair that sled he made you?”

“What? No. I haven’t used that in years.” Evelyn traced the shape of a heart on the tabletop.

“Then what was your point?”

“Only that once the snow hits, we don’t get to go anywhere. We can be socked in for days or even weeks.”

“Winter is as it is.”

“I know that. I’m not griping about the snow. I’m saying that I’d like to get away for a day. Maybe ride up into the high country.”

Winona shifted toward her. “Oh?”

“Yes.” Evelyn saw the hint of a grin at the corners of her mother’s mouth. Or maybe it was her imagination.

“Would you go alone?”

“No. Pa and you wouldn’t like that. So I was thinking of asking Dega to go along. I was thinking we could pack food and make a picnic of it. The last outing of the summer, so to speak.”

“So to speak,” Winona repeated, and stabbed a juicy chunk. “It is fine by me if it is fine by your father.”

Inwardly, Evelyn smiled. Her father nearly always let her do things if she got her mother’s approval first. “I’ll ask him when he gets back.”

“Have you asked Dega yet?”

“No. If Pa says yes, I’ll ride over to the Nansusequa lodge later. We could go tomorrow morning and be back by nightfall.”

“All day? That is a long picnic.” Winona looked at her. “What will you do with yourselves?”

“Mostly we’ll ride and eat and admire the scenery and the animals,” Evelyn said, her cheeks warm yet again.

“You will go armed. Take your rifle and your pistols. And you will tell Dega to be on his guard at all times.”

“We’re not kids,” Evelyn said.

“You’re not adults, either.” Winona put down the butcher knife. She poured water from a pitcher into the pot and carried the pot and a large wooden spoon to the stove. “After all the things that have happened to you, you shouldn’t take the wilderness lightly.”

“That’s one thing I’ll never do,” Evelyn vowed. Over the years she had encountered bears and wolves and hostiles and more, and nearly lost her life on several occasions.

“I hope Dega’s parents will let him.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Evelyn asked. “They’ve always been as nice as can be to me.”

“I am sure they will,” Winona said. “They are dear people and have become good friends. We are lucky to have them as neighbors.”

“Yes,” Evelyn agreed. “We are.”

“You will be back by nightfall without fail?”

“I give you my word, Ma,” Evelyn said, averting her gaze. She couldn’t look her mother in the eye after telling such a bold-faced lie. She had no intention of making it back by dark. In fact, she planned on the opposite; she was going to stay all night alone with Dega in the wilderness.

She couldn’t wait.