"Hopes the snakes are ready," Emala said.

"Excuse me?"

"Pay her no mind, Mr. King. She's in one of her moods. We've just been talkin' about how dangerous it is hereabouts and how we need weapons, and she thinks it's silly."

Nate smiled at Emala. "Your husband is right. This isn't like back East. You never know what you're going to run into. You can walk out the door one morning to fetch water from the lake and meet up with a griz. Or you can go for a ride with your daughter and come across a war party. You must always be prepared for the worst but hope for the best."

"I trust that the Lord will watch over us," Emala said.

"You take your faith seriously."

"You can bet your boots I do. Or your moccasins." Emala proudly held her head high. "I can read, Mr. King. I have my Bible and I read from it each and every day. And I trust in the Lord like the Bible says to."

"That's good," Nate said. "I trust in the Lord, too. But trust won't stop a hungry griz from eating you. Or an Apache or a Sioux from putting an arrow in you."

"Faith can move mountains," Emala said.

"This isn't about faith. It's about breathing. If you don't go armed, you won't be around for long."

"I don't know as I believe that."

"Emala," Samuel said.

"I mean, what are the odds of me walkin' out my door and there's one of those big bears or an Indian out to kill me? I bet it hardly ever happens."

"It only takes once," Nate said.

"We don't need a heap of weapons," Emala insisted.

Samuel gave her another of his looks. "Darn you, woman. Don't listen to her, Mr. King-"

"Nate. Please call me Nate."

"Don't listen to her, Nate. She is set in her ways. I want weapons. I want weapons for all of us. As soon as I can afford them."

"I've been thinking about that and I might have a way to help. We'll talk more about it later. For right now, our plan is to sweep the entire lakesh.o.r.e from end to end. We'll each take a section. You and your family can start here and work north to Zach's. Zach is going to do the stretch from his cabin to Waku's lodge."

"We are honored to help."

Nate clapped Samuel on the arm and walked off and as soon as he was out of earshot Samuel turned to Emala.

"You are a trial."

"What did I do?"

"Arguin' with him like that. After all they have done for us."

"I was just speakin' my mind," Emala said. "Can I help it if I have a lot of mind to speak?"

"Enough. We have snakes to hunt."

"At last," Chickory said, and grinned. "I can't wait to bash a few." He hefted a log he had taken from the woodpile to use as a club.

Randa held up her hands. In each she held a fist-size rock. "If I can bean a rabbit on the hop I can surely bean me some snakes."

"Lordy," Emala breathed. "My family have become killin' fiends."

"Let's go," Samuel said, and moved toward the trees. "We'll spread out. We want to do this right so look under every rock. Every rattlesnake we find, we kill. If it's a big snake and you need help, give a holler. Just don't get bit."

They s.p.a.ced themselves. Samuel was near the trees. Then came Chickory with his club and Randa with her rocks.

Emala, with her rifle, was by the lake. For some reason the weapon felt heavier than it usually did. She put her thumb on the hammer as Winona King had showed her how to do. She still didn't have the hang of loading. All that business about pouring the black powder and the patch and ball and the ramrod. Samuel always had to load for her.

Emala was glad to be by the lake. She figured there'd be fewer snakes near the water. She didn't know much about rattlesnakes, but she was pretty sure they didn't like water. Water moccasins did. Water moccasins terrified her. She remembered seeing one when she was little. She'd been six or seven and sitting on the bank of a pond when a water moccasin swam past. It scared her silly. She'd screamed and her ma s.n.a.t.c.hed her up and backed away from the water moccasin, which paid no attention to them.

Emala checked on her children. Chickoy was looking under a rock. Randa was searching around some boulders.

Samuel looked at Emala and smiled. She smiled back, but she wondered what he was up to. He hardly ever smiled at her like that. He must want something, she decided. He was always nice to her when he wanted something. Men were sneaky that way.

Emala came to a cl.u.s.ter of rocks. Big rocks, middling rocks, little rocks. How they got piled that way was a mystery. She thought maybe the rising and falling of the lake might have something to do with it. Shakespeare had told her that sometimes the lake level rose when it rained real hard and that in the summer the level often dropped.

Emala poked at the rocks with her foot. A few clattered from the pile. She poked harder and a few more clattered. No snakes, though. She went to move on, then thought maybe she should sort through the whole pile. The Kings would. They were good people, the Kings. She liked them, liked them a lot. She was grateful as grateful could be for them helping her family.

Emala shifted the rifle to her elbow and bent down. It was hard, bending. She was big across the hips and more plump than most women. She liked that word, "plump." She didn't like the word "fat." She had been plump ever since she could remember. "Plump as a peach," her mother would say. Or "Plump as a baked turkey." Emala liked being compared to a peach, but she wasn't so pleased about being compared to a turkey.

Something shot at her from the rocks.

Rearing back, Emala opened her mouth to scream. But it was only a bug. A brown beetle that scuttled swiftly away.

"Lordy," Emala breathed. Her heart was thumping. If it had been a snake she might have fainted. "I'm not cut out for this." She moved on. She had a job to do and she always did a job, any job, to the best of her ability. Whether she liked the job or not.

The others had gone farther than she had. She walked faster, careful not to misstep. She'd broke her leg as a girl and been wary ever since. Plump ladies didn't get around so good with broke legs.

Emala saw a flat rock about as big around as a cook pot. It didn't look very heavy, but when she pushed it with her shoe it wouldn't budge. Grunting from the effort, she bent and slipped her fingers under the edge and lifted. The rock wouldn't rise. That was good, she thought. There couldn't be a snake under there if it was wedged fast like that. She went to walk on and stopped. She wasn't doing the job right if she didn't look under it.

Emala set down her rifle. She gripped the edge with both hands and strained. The rock rose a little but not enough to see under. She strained again. She could feel drops of sweat trickling down her brow and down her arms. She wasn't fond of sweat. When it got in her eyes it stung.

"What are you doin', woman?"

Samuel was there. Chickory and Randa were well along the sh.o.r.e, searching.

"What does it look like I'm doin'?" Emala retorted. "I am lookin' for snakes."

"If you went any slower you would be a turtle." Samuel bent and lifted the flat rock with one hand. There was nothing under it but dirt.

"I can't help it if I'm not as fast or as strong as you."

"We can't be at this all day." Samuel straightened. "The rest of us will be done and you'll still be ploddin' along."

"I do not plod," Emala said.

Samuel shrugged and made toward the tree line. "Try to go faster. Give a holler if you need help."

As if Emala would. It made her blood boil, him treating her this way. Like she was next to worthless. She never heard him complain when she slaved over a hot stove to put food in his belly, or at night when she let him take what she liked to call his "liberties."

It was hard being a woman. Men didn't realize how hard. They didn't cook and sew and clean and give birth to babies. They didn't swell up and feel new life inside of them and go through hours or days of pain-she doubted a man could stand it. Women were tougher. That's why G.o.d let them have babies and not men. When it came to pain men were babies.

Emala grinned at the notion. Her grin became a chuckle and her chuckle a belly laugh.

"You all right over there?" Samuel called.

"Right fine," Emala replied between laughs. Just because she was laughing, he thought something was the matter. Times like this, she wondered what the good Lord had in mind when he made men. Maybe he made them for women to laugh at. That made her laugh harder.

"What are you laughing at?" Samuel shouted.

"Silly things," Emala said.

Samuel muttered something and resumed searching for snakes.

Emala dabbed at her eyes and hefted her rifle and took a few deep breaths. "Lordy," she said in amus.e.m.e.nt. There were days when she amazed herself at how humorous she could be. She did so like to laugh. Her ma used to say it came natural to plump ladies, that skinny ladies were much too serious. Which always made Emala glad she was plump.

Grinning, Emala spied Zach and Louisa King way off on the north sh.o.r.e. She wondered if they were having as much fun as she was.

Chapter Five.

"You shouldn't be doing this," Zach said for the tenth time since the hunt started.

"I'm with child," Louisa King replied. "I'm not helpless." She was small of frame with sandy hair she liked to crop short and eyes the same color as the lake. Usually she favored buckskins, but this past week she had taken an old brown homespun dress out of her trunk and was wearing that.

"Still, it's rattlers," Zach said. He was worried sick she'd be bitten; he could lose her and the baby both.

"I am not scared of snakes."

"That's your problem," Zach complained. "You're not much scared of anything."

"I was scared that time the army took you into custody and you were put on trial. I was scared I'd lose you."

"I'm still here," Zach said.

Lou sighed and turned and stared across the bright blue of the sunlit lake at the virgin valley beyond. She loved it here. Initially she had balked at moving from their old cabin in the foothills, but the move had turned out to be the smartest thing she ever did, next to marrying Zach. She liked the colors. She liked how the light green of the gra.s.s merged into the slightly darker green of the deciduous trees, the oaks and cottonwoods and willows, and how they, in turn, merged higher up into the even darker greens of the spruce and pine. Here and there stands of aspen were scattered. At this time of the year their leaves were a pale green, but in a few months they would flame with red and orange and yellow, the precursor of fall. Above the trees were high cliffs and jagged ramparts and crests crowned with snow.

A bald eagle soared over the valley on outstretched pinions, its predatory gaze on the ground. Several buzzards wheeled in concentric circles over woods to the east. In the water a streak of silver flashed clear and splashed down again.

"I hope we live here forever," Lou said.

"Could be we won't. Could be it will get as crowded here at it did along the front range."

"Crowded?" Lou teased. "We had five neighbors stretched out over twenty-five miles."

"For the Rockies that's crowded."

"You and your pa," Lou said, and laughed.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Only that you and your father love the wilderness. You can't stand to be hemmed in. It's a wonder you're not upset about the new people who have joined us. I don't mean just the Worths. I mean Waku and his family."

Zach hadn't been happy about it. His father tended to be too nice and offered sanctuary to anyone who needed it. If it had been him, he'd have told them to find a spot elsewhere.

Lou watched a pair of geese paddle majestically by. She liked how they held their heads high and moved along the water without hardly any movement of their bodies. "I think if I'd been born an animal I'd like it to have been a goose." She'd heard tell that geese mated for life. Feathered romantics, was what they were.

"That's plain silly." Zach never ceased to be amazed at the things that came out of her mouth.

"We should keep looking," Lou suggested. "We have a lot of sh.o.r.e to cover yet."

"I can do it alone," Zach tried again.

"If you were a horse you would have blinders on."

"Dang it, woman."

"I love it when you sweet-talk me."

Zach gave up. There was no reasoning with her at times. She got something into her pretty head and nothing could change it. And she did have a pretty head. As well as a pretty face and a pretty body and the prettiest smile of any female ever born. "Just be careful, all right?"

"Dang it," Lou imitated him. "Here I was hoping to give the first rattler we find a big hug."

"Ornery wench."

"Wench?" Lou repeated. "Did you just call me a wench? You've been hanging around Shakespeare too long."

Zach grinned.

Lou beckoned to the geese and said, "Quick! Come here and take a look! He has honest-to-G.o.d teeth!"

Zach laughed, and felt his worry lessen. She had that effect on him. She always seemed to know just what to do to make him feel good. "Don't tell anyone, but I love you."

"Oh my. Does this mean you have designs on me?" Lou grinned and patted her belly. "Oh. Wait. You already did have designs."

"You're hopeless," Zach said, and commenced to prowl among a jumble of rocks and boulders.