In Darkest Depths Read Online Free

on using napkins ever since the time they’d had supper with a missionary and the missionary’s wife, who thought that no meal was complete without them. “They live in many lakes and rivers.”
    â€œI recollect hearing stories,” Shakespeare said. He seldom used the napkins she always placed by his plate. To him, it was putting on airs. “I always thought they were tall tales.”
    â€œI expect better of you,” Blue Water Woman said.
    Her tone warned Shakespeare she was annoyed.Given that she had a disposition as mild as milk, he sensed he needed to mend fences. “What did I say? Whites tell tall tales all the time.”
    â€œThere is a difference,” Blue Water Woman said in her impeccable English. “When you and Nate have had a few drinks, you love to tell stories. Black-tail bucks you shot become as big as elk. Bears you killed become twice the size they were when you killed them. Fish you caught that were as long as your hand become as long as your arm.”
    Shakespeare made a sound that resembled a goose being strangled. “You should be hooted at like one of those old tales,” he paraphrased.
    â€œI beg your pardon?”
    â€œSwapping yarns is a tradition with us whites. We do it for the chuckles and the laughs.”
    â€œMy people have a tradition, too. But the stories we tell are tales of the early times. What whites would call legends or myths. To us they have as much meaning as those stories from the Old Testatment you hold in such high regard.”
    Shakespeare glanced at the shelf where their Bible and his other books were neatly lined up. At one end was his prized copy of the complete works of William Shakespeare. He’d bought it from an emigrant bound for Oregon Country. At the time he’d simply wanted something to read during the winter months when the streams were frozen and the snow was as high as a cabin and trapping was impossible. Little had he known the passion that would seize him. He adored the Bard’s works as he adored no other.
    Blue Water Woman had gone on, “I will give you an example. One you have already heard.” She paused. “The Salish believe the world was created byAmotken. He made the first people, but they would not heed him and became wicked so he drowned them in a flood.”
    â€œYes, I know the story,” Shakespeare said. “It perked up my ears considerably the first time I heard it since it sounds a lot like the story of Noah and the flood.”
    â€œMy own ears ‘perked up,’ as you call it, when you read about the giants that roamed the world in those days,” Blue Water Woman replied. “The Coeur d’Alenes say that giants once lived in their country. The giants wore bearskins and painted their faces black and went around at night stealing women.”
    â€œDarned peculiar coincidence,” Shakespeare said.
    â€œTo us, those stories are not tall tales. They are not myths. They are real and true and tell how things were back then. We do not tell them for—how did you put it?—laughs and chuckles.”
    â€œOuch,” Shakespeare said. “A hit, a very palpable hit,” he quoted from Hamlet . He chose his next words carefully. “And you are right. There is a difference between the Bible and the tall tales we whites like to tell. I never meant to suggest that Salish stories of water creatures are hot air, and I apologize if I gave you that idea.”
    Blue Water Woman grinned. “You are sweet when you grovel.”
    â€œHow now, woman,” Shakespeare retorted. “Again you prick me with that rapier you call a tongue.”
    â€œWhat is wrong with calling you sweet?”
    â€œThou art so leaky that we must leave thee to thy sinking,” Shakespeare said. “It is not the sweet I object to.”

    â€œI am afraid you have lost me,” Blue Water Woman said in feigned innocence.
    â€œShameless tart,”