Into the Unknown

Chapter Eleven

The effect of that flash of light was remarkable.

Nate and Shakespeare rushed off to get their horses. Winona and Blue Water Woman hustled the younger women toward Nate’s cabin. I was left with Zach, who was intently watching the rim.

“Damn me for a fool.”

“Why?”

“I was careless,” Zach said. “We were followed all the way here.” He pointed. “Look! There it is again.”

Indeed, the flash was repeated in the same spot as before, only this time it persisted for several seconds before blinking out.

“What do you make of it?” I inquired.

“Whoever is up there is using a spyglass,” Zach said. “Which means they are up to no good.” He indulged in a rare burst of lurid swearing.

“You are guessing.”

“It’s a good guess,” Zach replied. “If they were friendly, why didn’t they show themselves to us on the way here?”

“They?”

“No white man would come this far into the mountains alone.”

I was thinking of his trick with the talus and the stream we had ridden in for so many miles. I reminded him of them.

“It wouldn’t shake a good tracker off our scent.”

“What will you do if you are right and you catch them?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“On who they are and why they are here,” Zach said.

“What if they refused to tell you?”

His smile was chilling. “Whether they want to or not, they will.”

Presently, his father and McNair came galloping from the cabin. I swung on my horse, which Zach had recovered, and Zach and I fell in behind them as they swept by. I must confess, I thought they were far more agitated than the occasion warranted.

That ride was something. We fairly flew around the lake. When we reached the green lodge of the Nansusequa, we stopped long enough for Nate King to inform them of what was going on. “Keep a close watch,” he said to Wakumassee. “We’ll let you know what we find.”

Then we were off again. We climbed through the heavy timber until we neared a wide cleft that turned out to be the mouth of a canyon. It was here Nate drew rein and alighted. Shakespeare was quick to join him. Bent at the waist, they scoured the ground. After a while they straightened and looked at one another, and I could tell they were puzzled.

“Deucedly strange, Horatio,” Shakespeare said.

“Or clever,” Nate responded.

Zach stirred. “There aren’t any tracks, Pa?”

“The most recent are yours and Mr. Parker’s and your packhorses,” Nate said.

“There are a few spots where the grass has been bent since but no clear prints,” Shakespeares said. “Odds are they cut up a blanket and tied the pieces over their horses’ hooves.”

Nate stepped to his mount, opened a parfleche, and took out a shiny brass tube. A flick of his wrist, and the tube telescoped into a spyglass. He spent several minutes surveying the woods and the valley floor. Finally he scowled and lowered it. “No sign of anyone.”

“They have to be somewhere,” Zach said.

“‘Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me,’” Shakespeare quoted.

I felt I must contribute, and so, motivated by my doubts, I remarked, “Perhaps we are overreacting.”

Nate King gave me a kindly smile. “Our families are here. Our loved ones. Our friends. Threats to their lives must be met swiftly.”

“But we don’t even know there is a threat,” I said.

Shakespeare wagged a finger at me. “Would you have us be like Caesar and ignore the portents? Constant vigilance is the price we must pay if we would go on living where we will.”

Part of me agreed, but another part felt a tad silly. “What now?”

“We split up,” Nate King said. “Shakespeare and I will swing to the south. Zach, you and Mr. Parker try the north. Work your way down and stay alert for sign. Fire two shots in the air if you find anything.”

I was in no mood for this. I was tired and hungry and had relished the idea of spending the rest of the day resting. But they were my hosts, I their guest, and it would be remiss of me not to help them. Still, since I cannot track, there was little I could do other than follow after Zach and watch for evidence of anything out of the ordinary.

We roved back and forth for over an hour, gradually descending until we were once again at the lake shore. Once there, Zach drew rein in disgust.

“Nothing.”

“Maybe we are mistaken,” I suggested. By “we” I meant “them,” but I was being tactful.

At that moment his father and McNair emerged from the woods to the south of the lake. Nate spotted us and waved, and they came around to meet us at Nate’s cabin. By the look on his face, it was plain they had not found the sign they were looking for.

“Not so much as a trace,” Nate confirmed.

“All we can do is wait,” Shakespeare said, and once again reached into his bottomless bag of quotes. “‘It is the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril.’”

“If you are saying it stinks, I agree,” Zach said.

I sought to be the voice of reason. “It could be they will prove to be friendly.”

“‘One may smile and smile, and be a villain,’” Shakespeare quoted.

Nate cleared his throat. “This is what we will do. I will go warn Waku and his family to stay on their guard. The rest of you wait here. We will have supper together, and later decide our course of action for tomorrow.”

As he trotted off, I turned to McNair. “Permit me to compliment you on your knowledge of the Bard.”

Shakespeare reached back and patted a parfleche. “I never go anywhere without my copy of his works. Every spare minute, I spend reading him.”

“Might I ask why? I mean, why him as opposed to some other writer?”

“There are no others. They are all imitators. Old William S was the genuine article.”

“It is the last thing I would expect,” I said.

“Why? Because trappers and mountain men are supposed to be brainless clods who can’t read or write?” McNair clucked in disapproval. “Let me tell you something. Back in the days when beaver was in demand, the trappers would hole up for the winter. And do you know what they spent their days doing? Every hour from dawn until dusk, and often after by candlelight? They read. They collected every book they could get their hands on and devoured them from beginning to end. The Bible was one, of course. Sir Walter Scott’s works. Washington Irving. Jane Austen. The poets, Byron and Shelley and Keats. A favorite of most was that novel by Shelley’s wife, the one about the creature made of dead parts.” He paused. “We read, and we talked about what we had read, then we read some more. The Rocky Mountain College, we called it, and there was never a college anywhere from which men learned more.”

“I had no idea,” I said.

“Most don’t. A lot of folks back east think all frontiersmen are filthy, uneducated louts. And some are. But as many or more can hold their own in any talk about literature and religion, and are cleanly in their habits, as well.”

I smiled. “You make a staunch defender.”

He returned my smile. “I like you, hoss. You don’t put on as many airs as some do. You are too soft, but if you stay out here long enough, the wilderness will cure you of that.”

“Soft?” I said.

“You think the world is a friendly place and it’s not.”

“How can you say that when you have known me such a short while?” I asked.

“You thought we were wasting our time hunting for whoever is in our valley. I could see it on your face.”

“Evidently you read people like you read books,” I said. “And you are right. I confess that I do not see an enemy or a beast behind every tree.”

“It might be better for you if you did,” Shakespeare advised. “Better to be wary than dead.”

Food for thought, but I could not change my ways at the snap of a finger.

The women came out and listened to McNair’s recital of our search. Winona announced that we would eat in a couple of hours, and she kindly asked me if I wanted to rest until then.

I was tired but also fired with enthusiasm. Already I had espied a few woodland birds and several waterfowl unknown to me, and I was eager to capture them on paper. Accordingly, I grabbed my sketchbook and headed around the lake on foot, seeking a particular duck. I had not gone far when I heard footfalls behind me and was taken aback to discover Blue Water Woman hurrying to catch up. She was armed with a rifle and a brace of pistols.

“What is this?” I asked.

“We don’t want you wandering off alone, Robert Parker,” she responded in that soft voice of hers. “Since Winona is busy cooking and Evelyn is helping her, and Zach just got back and Lou wants to spend time with him, I volunteered.”

I was surprised her husband had not come, and said so.

“He wanted to, but I have not been out much today and can use the exercise.” Blue Water Woman absently ran a hand through her long hair. Her smooth complexion belied the streaks of gray.

“This is kind of you, but unecessary.” I patted my pistol. “I can look after myself.”

“No, you can’t.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You are an innocent, was how Zach put it. My husband agrees. You are used to the tame forests of the East.”

I was mildly miffed. Here I was, a grown man, being treated as if I were five years old. But rather than hurt her feelings, I said, “Come along, then. And may I say how impressed I am by your English.”

“Living with that white-haired lunatic has been an education,” Blue Water Woman said with a grin. “But when it comes to learning new tongues, I cannot hold a candle to Winona. She is a born linguist.”

“I had imagined you would communicate with your husband through sign language, or in your own language.”

“We do that, too. I speak four tongues, not counting my own.”

“My word.”

“Winona speaks twice as many and has a smattering of others. Nate says her English is better than his.”

“I look forward to talking to her.” I turned to the lake and scanned it for the ducks I was interested in sketching. Their plumage was brown with green on the wings and around the eyes. But I did not spot any.

“My husband tells me you are something called a naturalist,” Blue Water Woman said. “That your work is to study animals, how they look and how they live.”

“I have loved animals all my life. Even as a small child I would spend hours a day studying the bugs and birds in our yard.”

“It is important, this work you do?”

“I think it is. The more we know about the world around us, about the creatures we share it with, the better we can get along with those creatures.”

“Get along how?”

“I have this dream,” I said, and stopped. I had been laughed at so many times that I was loathe to be ridiculed again.

“I am listening.”

“You will think it silly.”

Blue Water Woman smiled. “Naturalists can predict what people will think? How remarkable.”

I stopped and faced her. She seemed to be sincere so I decided to air my innermost self. “Do you remember when beaver fur was all the fashion for whites? And white men overran these mountains, trapping every stream and river?”

“Of course,” Blue Water Woman said. “My husband trapped for a while. So did Nate King.”

“And what happened?” I answered my question before she could. “I will tell you. The beaver were almost wiped out.”

“For a while there were hardly any, yes. But in recent years we see more and more of them.”

“The same thing has happened to a lot of animals east of the Mississippi. In some states wolves and cougars have been exterminated. In others, game which was once abundant is now scarce. Most people don’t seem to care, but I do. I think we should respect the right of all creatures to walk this earth with us, and not wipe them out because we are afraid of them or because they are a nuisance.”

“My people believe we should live in harmony with all things, too,” Blue Water Woman said quietly.

“My own kind care only about themselves. They take what they want, and the consequences be hanged. If animals like beaver are wiped out, no one cares. They don’t seem to realize that once an animal is gone, it is gone forever. I say that is wrong. And I hope, by my studies, to show how we can get along with the animals that share our world so that we don’t have to wipe out any more of them.”

Blue Water Woman studied me, then placed a hand on my shoulder and gently squeezed. “I like you, Robert Parker. You are a good man. You have my friendship for as long as you want it.”

I thought my ears were on fire. “Thank you.”

She started to say something, glanced past me at the water, and her eyes widened.

I turned.

The thing in the lake had created another swell. Even as we watched, a long form briefly appeared, then dived.

Blue Water Woman smiled. “It is a delight to see.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. But I was looking at her.