In Darkest Depths Read Online Free Page A

Shakespeare grumbled. “Why is it that when a woman says she is sorry she is apologizing, but when a man says he is sorry he is groveling?”
    â€œWomen have too much pride to grovel.”
    Shakespeare sat back. “Let’s change the subject.”
    â€œFine,” Blue Water Woman said. “We will go back to the thing in the lake and your silly plan to catch it.”
    â€œChange the subject again.”
    â€œNo. We have not settled this one.” Blue Water Woman took a sip of her tea. She was deeply worried, but she did not want her worry to show. Knowing him, he would take it the wrong way. “You are not as young as you used to be,” she said.
    Shakespeare was taken aback. She hardly ever brought up their ages. Yes, he had seen eighty winters, but he was as spry as a man of sixty, and said so.
    â€œYes, you have wonderful vitality,” Blue Water Woman conceded. “If you were going after a bear or a mountain lion, I would not fret.”
    â€œThen why make an issue of this water devil?”
    â€œBecause we have no idea what it is,” Blue Water Woman said. “It could be very dangerous.”
    Shakespeare snickered. “If it turns out to be a cow I will be safe enough.”
    â€œScoff all you want, but in the old times there lived many animals that have long since died out. Monsters, whites would call them. Some were as big as buffalo and could live both in the water and on land.”
    â€œThe thing in this lake has never come out of it,” Shakespeare felt compelled to mention.
    â€œMy point,” Blue Water Woman said, “is that weare dealing with something we know nothing about. It could be a creature left over from the time before there were people.”
    Shakespeare was about to tell here that was pure nonsense, but he settled for saying, “That is unlikely, don’t you think?”
    Blue Water Woman did not appear to hear him. “There were beaver the size of horses and horses the size of beaver. There were cats with teeth as long as a bowie knife, and animals with horns on their noses and others with tusks. Birds so big that when they flapped their wings it sounded like thunder.”
    â€œI would like to have ridden one of those,” Shakespeare said.
    â€œYou are scoffing again.”
    â€œOver in a place called the British Isles there are folks who believe in tiny people with wings and little men who dress all in green and cache pots of gold at the ends of rainbows,” Shakespeare said. “I scoff at that, too.”
    Blue Water Woman puckered her mouth in disapproval. “You are not taking this seriously.”
    â€œOn the contrary,” Shakespeare said. “I always listen to what you have to say. But my mind is made up. I want to know what is in the lake, and by God, I will find out.”
    â€œEven if it kills you?”
    Shakespeare picked up his fork and stabbed a string bean. He wagged it at her, saying, “Is that what this is about?”
    â€œIn a word, yes,” Blue Water Woman admitted.
    â€œI thought so.” Shakespeare stabbed another string bean, then a third. He wagged them at her, too. “Dost thou jeer and flout me in the teeth?”
    â€œI love you.”

    â€œThen give me more credit. Yes, I am getting on in years, but I still have all my faculties. I can hike five miles without getting winded, I can ride all day without being saddle-sore, and I do my husbandly duty by you three nights a week.”
    â€œI have always liked that part,” Blue Water Woman said.
    â€œThe duty?”
    â€œHow much you enjoy lying with me. Some women say their husbands do not do it nearly as often as you do.”
    â€œThe night I stop is the day you can plant me,” Shakespeare said. “But we have strayed off the trail. I resent the slur that I am old and feeble. I have just as much vim and vinegar as Zach, and he is a lot younger.”
    â€œNate, perhaps,” Blue