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on our cabin.”
    â€œNate said that he was going over to help Shakespeare with a project, but he did not—” Winona paused and blinked. “Did you say a steeple ?”
    â€œYes. You have been east of the Mississippi River. You have seen the houses of worship, as whites call them, with the big bells they ring when it is time for people to come and pray and sing?”
    â€œTheir churches, yes.”
    â€œI am going to have a steeple without the church.”
    It made no sense to Winona. Granted, her husband was deeply religious. In the evenings, after supper, she would sit in the rocking chair and sew or knit while he would be at the table reading, and often the book he read from was the Bible. She once asked Nate if he missed going to services, and he said that while it would be nice to mix with people who shared his beliefs, his body was his temple, and the congregation consisted of him and God. He then read a passage from Scripture to that effect.
    â€œI should be thankful,” Blue Water Woman was saying, “that my idiot of a husband is not putting a bell in our steeple, or I would need to keep my ears plugged with wax.”
    â€œBut why a steeple?”
    â€œSo he can keep watch for the water devil.”
    Winona started to laugh but caught herself. “You are serious?”
    â€œI am afraid so.” Blue Water Woman sighed. “If I live a thousand winters, I will never understand him.”
    â€œIt is men,” Winona said. “They do not think like we do.”
    â€œIt is Shakespeare,” Blue Water Woman replied. “He does not think like anyone.”
    Winona grinned.
    â€œShow me one other white who spends every spare minute reading William Shakespeare or quotes him every time he opens his mouth. It is ridiculous.”
    â€œOh my,” Winona said. “If your husband ever heard you say that, he would throw a fit.”
    â€œI may throw one myself when I get home and see their steeple,” Blue Water Woman said. “That is myman for you. Once he sets his mind to something, he does not rest until he has done what he set out to do. And now he has taken it into his head to go after the water devil.”
    â€œYou are worried.”
    â€œI am glad Nate is helping. Shakespeare needs someone with common sense to keep an eye on him.”
    Ever sensitive to her friend’s moods, Winona remarked, “But it is not his age that is bothering you, is it?”
    â€œNo,” Blue Water Woman admitted. She gazed out over the water and bit her lower lip. “It is the water devil.”
    â€œI am sure Nate and Shakespeare will be careful,” Winona sought to soothe her.
    â€œCareful is not always enough. Some things are better left alone. A grizzly in its den. An eagle in its nest. A creature as big as a horse that lives in the water.”
    â€œIn the water, yes. So long as Nate and Shakespeare stay on land, they will be safe.”
    â€œSo long as they stay on land,” Blue Water Woman echoed.

Steeple Knight
    Shakespeare McNair would never admit it to his wife, but to him this was great fun.
    Shakespeare always liked a good challenge. Through out his life, he overcame one challenge after another and enjoyed each triumph. Add to that his love of a mystery and the fact he got to spend a lot of time in the company of the man he regarded as the son he never had, and he had a new spring in his step and a perpetual boyish grin on his wrinkled and weathered face—when he was not around Blue Water Woman.
    He was not trying to deceive her in any way. He loved that woman with every particle of his being. It was just that she would never understand what the mystery of the creature in the lake meant to him.
    In a way, the mystery was like that of the mountains themselves when Shakespeare first came to the Rockies all those decades ago. He was one of the first, if not the first, to boldly go where no white man had gone before: to venture