In Darkest Depths

Aquatic Cavalry

The canoes were gone.

Nate King stood at the spot they should be, consternation flooding through him. Any hope he had of finding Shakespeare quickly had been shredded. The hurricane-force winds had sent the canoes out onto the lake, where the waves had carried them off or sunk them. But the storm was not entirely to blame. Part of the fault was his. He should have come back when the storm first hit and dragged them higher.

Hoping against hope, Nate scoured the lake, but all he saw were geese and ducks and gulls.

Nate had to get out there. He racked his brain for an idea. Building a new canoe would take too long. But there was something else he could build, something that would only take a couple of hours. With a little luck, he could complete it before the women returned and demanded to go with him.

Turning, Nate raced for his cabin. He saddled his bay and led it from the corral. Then he collected his axe and all the rope he had, climbed on, and galloped toward the woods. He knew right where to find a stand of slim pines ideal for his purpose. Bigger trees would provide bigger logs and be safer, but felling and trimming them would take most of the day.

Rolling up his sleeves, Nate gripped the heavy axe and went to work. He swung with steady, practiced strokes, the axe biting deep. After each tree toppled, he removed the branches and shoots. He worked as fast as he could, but worry made his frantic pace seem much too slow.

Four trees were down and Nate was chopping a fifth when a feeling came over him that he was being watched. He had learned the hard way never to ignore his intuition, and he glanced up, reckoning a deer or an elk or some other animal had strayed by. But the watcher was two-legged. “You!”

“I’m happy to see you, too, Pa,” Zach said dryly. He gestured at the downed saplings. “Why do you need firewood at this time of year?”

Instead of answering Nate asked, “What are you doing here? What about Lou? Should you have left her alone?”

“She practically threw me out of our cabin,” Zach reported. “She was fine this morning when we woke up except for feeling a bit queasy. She sent me over to get some of those sage leaves Ma keeps on hand.”

The Shoshones chewed the leaves for stomach upsets. Nate had used them on occasion himself. “I am not chopping firewood. I’m making a raft, and I could use your help.”

“A raft?” Zach repeated.

Nate explained about Shakespeare taking the dugout and going back out on the lake by his lonesome. “We fear he was caught in the storm,” he concluded.

“I saw some of it out my window—” Zach said, and stopped. “Dear God, Pa. Some of those waves had to be three feet high. No one could survive.”

“We don’t know that,” Nate said angrily, and swung again, sending slivers flying. “Start hauling these to the lake. With your help I can get done in half the time.”

“Sure thing. Lou will understand. She cares about that old grump as much as we do.”

Nate doubted anyone other than Blue Water Woman was as fond of McNair as he was. He owed Shakespeare more than any man could ever repay. When he first came to the Rockies, he was as green as grass and would not have lived through his first winter if not for McNair’s sage advice and kind help. Their bond of friendship had grown to where Nate regarded Shakespeare as more of father than a friend. His real father had always been cold and aloof, completely unlike Shakespeare. Nate sometimes wished his father had been more like his mentor, but then Nate might never have left New York for the wilds of the frontier. He would never have met Winona, never had Evelyn and Zach.

Nate was glad he had come West. He had seen things few men ever saw, lived as few men ever lived. He would not trade his experiences for all the jade in China. Yes, life in the wilderness was fraught with danger, but every pearl, it was said, came at great price, and the pearl of true freedom, of being able to live as he wanted without let or hindrance, was worth the perils that had to be overcome.

“Pa?”

Nate realized his son was trying to get his attention. He looked up. “What is it?”

“You can stop chopping,” Zach said, and pointed.

Blue Water Woman was riding along the water’s edge toward Nate’s cabin. She had a rope in one hand. The other end was tied to a bark canoe she was pulling after her.

“Let’s go,” Nate said. Hastening to the bay, he climbed on and galloped to meet her. She spotted them, and was off her horse and untying the rope from the canoe when they reined to a stop.

“Where did you find it?” Nate asked as he alighted.

“Washed up on the shore.” Blue Water Woman glanced at where the canoes had been before the storm struck. “There wasn’t one for you to use? It is a good thing I brought it, then.”

“I was making a raft,” Nate explained. He looked in the canoe; the paddles were missing. He mentioned the loss, adding, “I have one at my place. But only one,” he emphasized.

Blue Water Woman patted the canoe. “Finding this is an omen. I am going with you, and I will not brook no for an answer.” Something more than simple anxiety was telling her she must hasten out on the lake after her man.

“What about me?” Zach asked.

“You were fetching sage for Louisa, remember?” Nate reminded him. He was unhappy with Blue Water Woman’s decision, but he had no right to stop her.

“She won’t mind if I help out.”

“Three in the canoe would be too crowded.”

Blue Water Woman looked at Nate and impatiently motioned to the water. “Why are we still standing here? Hurry and fetch that paddle.”

The breeze was at their backs when they pushed off. Nate knelt in the bow; Blue Water Woman was in the stern, her hands clasped in her lap. To look at her, at how calm she was, no one would guess what she must have been going through.

“You are holding up better than I am,” Nate commented, as he dipped the paddle in the water and stroked.

“Have you ever been attacked by a mountain lion?” Blue Water Woman asked.

Nate recalled a harrowing encounter he’d had with one of the big cats years ago. “Yes. Why?”

“There is a mountain lion loose inside me. It is ripping my stomach and clawing my heart, and if we do not find my Carcajou, it will tear me apart.”

The lake spread out in a blue-green sheen before them. Here and there were ducks, singly and in pairs and squadrons. Geese honked and plunged their long necks into the lake after fish. Gulls wheeled white in the sky, their high-pitched cries letting the world know they were there.

Blue Water Woman shielded her eyes from the glare and peered all about. “Where is he?”

“We will find him,” Nate said, more to boost her spirits than out of an unshakable conviction that they would.

“Were it not for his white hairs, I would do as white women do with their young and put him over my knee and spank him.”

“Spank him anyway,” Nate said. “It would serve him right.”

Blue Water Woman mustered a grin to be polite. “I have never understood that.”

“What?” Nate said, preoccupied with ripples to the northeast he could not account for.

“Hitting a child. My people think it is bad medicine. So do the Shoshones.”

“I know,” Nate said. Shortly after Winona had announced she was pregnant for the first time, they sat down and talked about how they wished they could tell whether the baby was a boy or a girl, and what names they liked, and how they would go about rearing it, no matter which it was. At one point he had joked, “If we have a daughter, you will have to do the spanking. I could spank a boy, but never a girl.”

Winona had asked him what spanking was, and when he explained, she had recoiled in horror, then went on to say that for a Shoshone, the idea was unthinkable. “Hit a child and you wound their heart for life.”

“I turned out all right,” Nate told her. “And my father tarred the dickens out of me at least once a week.”

Appalled, Winona insisted there would be no tarring in the King family. Nate, as he always did, respected her wishes. But there had been times—

“Nate?” Blue Water Woman said. “Do you see them, too?”

Nate nodded. She was referring to the ripples he had noticed. They had grown in number and size. Something under the surface was agitating the water. Something big, by the looks of it.

“Could it be the water devil?”

Nate had been wondering the same thing. He steered the canoe toward them and almost immediately the ripples vanished.

Blue Water Woman sat forward and declared, “It is the water devil!”

Nate was not so sure. It could be anything. Plenty of big, ordinary fish inhabited the lake. He came to the approximate spot and leaned over to probe the depths, but it was like trying to see the bottom of a well.

Blue Water Woman was bent over the other side. “Do you see anything? Anything at all?”

“No.” Nate resumed stroking. The splash of his paddle and the honking of nearby geese nearly drowned out a loud splash. He looked but saw only ripples.

“What was that?”

“A fish,” Nate said. “The kind we like to fry in a pan.”

“I thought I saw a fin,” Blue Water Woman said. “A huge fin,” she emphasized. “It must be the water devil. It has killed my husband, and now it is after us.”

“You are jumping to conclusions,” Nate warned. Which for her was unusual. Out of all of them, she had always been the most level-headed. Even more so than his wife.

“It will return,” Blue Water Woman predicted. “When it does, you will see for yourself.” She put a hand on the pistol at her waist. “For what it has done to my husband, it deserves to die.”

“There you go again,” Nate said. “Sit back, will you?” Her weight was not enough to tip the canoe, but she was leaning much too far out.

“There!” Blue Water Woman exclaimed, jabbing a finger. “I told you!”

All Nate saw were a few small ripples. “That could be a minnow,” he teased her.

“I saw the head. It was peeking at us.”

“Peeking?” Nate repeated, and chuckled.

“That is not the right word?” Blue Water Woman took pride in her mastery of the white tongue. She was not as adept as Winona, but she flattered herself that she spoke it fluently.

Nate went on chuckling. “It fits, I suppose.” But the notion was as silly as a grizzly bear peeking from behind a tree. “Whatever it is, it’s not bothering us.” He rose higher to search directly ahead. “We shouldn’t forget why we are out here.”

“As if I ever could,” Blue Water Woman said somberly. Long ago she had accepted that one day she might lose her husband. He was older, and he insisted on taking risks men his age should not take. But she had never imagined it would end like this. As she had been doing all morning, she reached out with her heart, seeking some sign that he was still alive. Often when he was away from her, she could feel him deep inside, but now she felt only a strange coldness. That, more than anything else, scared her, scared her terribly.

“When we find him we will have a good laugh over all of this,” Nate remarked.

“Have you been drinking?”

Nate snorted. He was not much for hard liquor. Every now and again he treated himself to a little brandy, usually on a winter’s eve in front of the fireplace, but that was the extent of it. “I rarely do and you—”

The canoe gave an abrupt lurch, as if they had collided with a submerged object. Instantly, Nate dipped the paddle in to bring them to a stop, then checked on both sides. “What was that?”

“The water devil.” Blue Water Woman did not look. She drew her pistol and held it in her lap.

Nate continued paddling. They went ten feet without incident—twenty feet—thirty. Some of the tension started to drain from him. Suddenly the canoe gave another lurch. He started to bend over the gunwale. There was a loud bump from below, and the canoe rose out of the water a few inches and settled back again.

“Do you believe me now, Horatio?”

Under less harrowing circumstances Nate would have laughed. She never call him that. Only Shakespeare did. “I believe you.”

Ripples appeared in front of them and moved slowly off to the east.

“Follow it,” Blue Water Woman directed.

“But Shakespeare—”

“If he were alive, I would know.” Blue Water Woman raised her pistol. “Understand this. I intend to kill it. You can help, or I will come back out by myself. Either way, it is going to die.”

Nate did not reply. But she was not thinking straight. Her pistol would have no more effect than a pebble. He stroked harder, regretting that they did not have a harpoon.

“Faster,” Blue Water Woman urged. “Bring us up next to it.”

“What good will that do?” Nate asked. But he did as she wanted. The ripples were moving so slowly that he easily caught up and paced them. “Now what?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder. He thought she would take a shot. But she had something else in mind.

Blue Water Woman set her pistol down and drew her knife. In a swift, fluid movement, she stood, whipped her dress off over her head, dropped it at her feet, and dived over the side.