Blue Mountain (3 page)

“The puma knows your name,” Mouf said quietly.

Bighorn never felt dizzy, but Tuk was dizzy now, looking down at the puma child broken on the rocks below. He could not be sorry that it was the puma child and not him, that it was the puma child dead in the dark and not Mouf. But he remembered what Balus had said, that maybe he was not a bighorn, that maybe he was some other kind of creature.

More slowly now, and with much urging and assuring, he helped Mouf reach the top of the cliff. Once they were onto the ridge, Mouf and Dall and Tuk's other bandmates pressed him and licked his face, nudging closely.

“Is Tuk saving us now?” asked a ewe.

“Only Mouf, and she is so small she hardly counts,” said another.

“He pushed the puma child,” Balus said. “I saw.”

The herd looked at Tuk in silence, waiting for him to deny it, but Tuk said nothing. One ewe sniffed him. “He
smells
like a bighorn,” she said.

Gradually the herd made their way slowly back to the meadow.

“Come, Tuk,” Mouf said. But he did not come.

“Come, Tuk,” Rim said.

But he would not come, even when Dall led his bandmates back to the safety of the herd.

Tuk stayed alone at the top of the cliff in the dark, and the puma child stayed still at the bottom of the cliff, and if the white light of the moon touched them both, neither of them knew it.

 

NOT TODAY

 

In the morning Tuk awoke on the ridge. He opened his eyes only a little, without moving, and then closed them again quickly.

Dos, the king ram, and Kenir were standing beside him.

“Kenir, I have traveled to the south of this mountain, but there the mountains are all trees and no meadow. I have traveled to the east, but there the mountains are all rock and no meadow. This past summer I traveled to the north, but there the mountains gradually flatten into territory that is good for elk and deer, but not for bighorn. All that is left is the west, and that way is closed in with thickly treed mountains.”

“This one says he has seen a mountain to the west,” Kenir said. “He calls it blue mountain.” Tuk felt they were both looking at him now.

“Story mountain?” Dos said. “All my life they said it was like the fog we wade in at daybreak, like the clouds that vanish with the sun. It was not made of stone and earth like this mountain, they said. It was a dream, a wish, or a tale you tell in a storm to keep you warm.”

Tuk could not pretend to be sleeping any longer. He stood up, and said, “I have seen it!”

Dos fixed his golden eye on Tuk.

“Tuk,” Kenir said. Tuk remembered his manners and performed a low-stretch bow to Dos.

“You're big,” Tuk said to Dos.

“Big enough to eat a lamb in a bite or two,” Dos said.

“I'm big for a lamb,” Tuk said.

“Three bites, then,” Dos answered.

“Our kind doesn't eat flesh,” Tuk said.

“So that's what was causing my indigestion.”

“I have seen blue mountain, sir. Can you lead us there?”

“It is the matriarch who leads the herd, west or otherwise,” Dos said.

“But it is for rams to explore,” Kenir replied.

After a pause, Dos said respectfully to Kenir, “I would speak with this Tuk alone.”

Kenir nodded and walked away.

When they were alone Dos asked kindly, “Is it true you pushed the puma child?”

Tuk was high enough to see the whole herd below, his bandmates and Balus and the yearlings looking up in wonder to see him talking to Dos. Tuk was high enough to see the barren ewes that had been like mothers to him, and the proud rams. He was high enough to see how the bighorn lived gently on the mountain, graceful on the steeps, strong on the tough alpine grasses, and how they found safety in fellowship.

He looked down at the puma child far below on the rocks. “Yes,” he said. “I fought.”

Tuk wondered if Dos had heard him, because for a time he did not speak.

“Someday, Tuk,” he said at last, “you will have big horns. With them you could fight a lone wolf, but wolves are seldom alone. My horns cannot protect me from a hunting pack. Even if they could, I cannot protect every weak or sick or aged bighorn in the herd, or every lamb. My horns do not protect me from man, from their hunger for our territory or from their guns. But the mountain gave us gifts—feet to climb the steeps and teeth to find forage on the heights, and strong bodies and thick coats so we need not fear the cold, and noses that can read the wind, and, most of all, our stories that we pass down through the generations so no trail is lost, no lesson unlearned. As a herd, we are strong.”

Tuk lowered his eyes. “When I did not save Sto from the eagle, I wished to save Mouf from the puma.”

“Ah. Yes, I heard of the eagle. I was very sorry.”

“Maybe I am not the usual kind of bighorn.”

Dos looked down to the rocks below. “You stayed here all night to be alone, to be ashamed. Are you done being alone and ashamed?”

Tuk could not answer that question, so instead he said, “Let's tell Kenir that we should go to blue mountain today!”

Dos stared west, and then he laughed and shook his head. “Not today, Tuk. Today the sun shines. Today the ewes want courting, and I am the king. But perhaps tomorrow—”

Bang!

The air cracked with a noise like rock on rock.

Dos leaped one way. Tuk leaped another, the taste of metal in his mouth.

Bang!

Below, the rams and the whole herd scattered and ran.

The ringing sound of gunshot filled Tuk's mouth and echoed off the cliffs. He sought the safety of the cliff and stayed there a long time, perched above the body of the puma child.

 

EARLY SNOW

 

Men came to the meadow, but Dos and the other rams had run to where they could not find them. The men tromped about and called, but eventually they left and Tuk lost the sight and the scent of them.

The sunlight was slantwise when Tuk and his mates returned to the meadow. Kenir and Pamir and a few old ewes had already wandered back and were grazing as if everything were usual. The wind had picked up by the time the rams also began to creep back from where they had fled.

At twilight Dos limped into the meadow. His right foreleg was black with blood. Kenir hung her head and stopped grazing. The great ram stood tall on three feet and held the other off the ground, quivering. After a time he lay painfully down, and Tuk went to stand beside him. Dos seemed not to see that Tuk was near, and Tuk remained silent and still.

A short time later the wind began to blow hard and cold. The herd and Tuk's bandmates walked around Dos and away, heading toward a bit of shelter amid the rocks. Tragus came last and stood silently beside Dos for a long time without speaking. Finally he gave Dos a low-stretch bow and walked slowly away.

Soon snow was falling fiercely, blowing over Dos and through Tuk's legs, and Tuk saw that Dos would not be able to stand up and paw away the snow to get his food. He would starve.

As the snow began to accumulate, Kenir called for Tuk to come. When he did not, she came and bowed before Dos. “Tell Tuk to go to shelter,” she said.

Dos looked at Tuk as if he had not known he was there all along. “Go, Tuk, before you are trapped by drifting snow,” he said. His voice had lost its power.

“If you go, I will go,” Tuk said.

Kenir stamped her foot. “Dos is waiting for Lord Denu.” When Tuk said nothing she nodded to something behind him. “Come for his sake, then.” Tuk turned and saw Rim waiting a few steps behind him. “He won't come until you do.”

“Go, Tuk,” Dos said, and this time his voice was commanding. “It is not the way of our kind to disrespect the elder.”

“Come with me,” Tuk said.

Dos looked away, in the direction of blue mountain.

“I am for the puma,” he said softly. “After she finds me, she won't be hungry again for a long time. You must find a way west from the winter valley to blue mountain before she hunts again.” The old king held his horns high to the wind. “Son, it is the only way to save the herd.”

Tuk thought about that word
son
for a time. It could be true that the son of a king could do such a thing, could find a way to blue mountain.

The wind blew snow into Dos's face and eyes, but he lay still as stone, still as the mountain, and as silent. The high grasses around him bent and bowed before the wind, and then lay quietly under the snow.

Tuk knew Dos would not speak to him anymore. “I'm ready, Rim,” he said softly to his friend. Together they trudged through the snow toward the shelter.

*   *   *

At the shelter, a place where two rock walls formed a wedge, the bandmates pressed close to one another. Still they suffered from the cold.

In the dark, Tuk thought he saw, in his half dreaming, the puma child's eyes, hungry and afraid, just before he fell. In the place where Tuk's horns had begun to grow, where they itched and were tender, he felt the warmth and softness of the young cat's fur when he pushed. In one horn he was glad, but in the other he was sad. Half of him belonged in the herd, among the peaceable, and half of him was a strange creature who did not belong. He wondered what a man would feel like against his horns.

At some point in the night, the snow stopped. Tuk awoke, listening. He looked into the dark for Dos, but the old ram had not come. Again he dozed, but even in his sleep he was aware of the cold. He woke early when the wind began to blow again, but now it was a warm wind, and the snow was melting.

“A Chinook,” Kenir said. “The mountain sends the warm wind in tribute to a king.”

When light came, the herd slowly walked to where they had left Dos. Puma tracks surrounded the body of the old king, and the herd wandered away—all in silence.

The rest of the day the lambs were solemn with their first snow. They did not speak of Dos. They knew something of the mountain they hadn't known before, and something of themselves.

“I am sad,” Mouf said.

“We are all sad,” Nai said.

“But I am the most sad,” Mouf said.

The rams walked away from the herd in small groups, not to return to the main herd until the next fall. Tragus left last of all. On the ridge he looked back, as if he were saying goodbye. Tuk saw that he did not look in the direction of the ewes, but in the direction of Dos's body. Then he turned and vanished over the ridge.

Tuk looked for the sharp-edged clouds in the west to vanish and for blue mountain to appear, but it did not.

 

WINTER VALLEY

 

The next day, in the herdish way of the bighorn, they decided almost as one to begin their journey to the winter valley. Kenir went first.

Winter had turned the world white and hard as horn. Snow covered the brittle grasses needed for food to keep them warm. Kenir showed Tuk and his bandmates where to find frozen leaves and berries still on the bushes that the bears had not eaten. She taught the lambs how to paw away the snow to find the crushed and frosty grasses beneath. But mostly they were hungry and cold.

“How long does winter last?” Mouf asked.

“As long as we can bear it,” Dall said.

“How long can I bear it?”

“As long as winter lasts.”

The trail first bordered ice-encrusted shale, then wound through a stand of pines and down a steep rocky face. They walked and walked, but at the end of the day, they were still in winter.

“Tomorrow morning we will come in sight of the winter valley,” Kenir promised.

They scraped their beds and lay close to one another in the snow. Tuk could feel Dall trembling next to him. She put her cold nose against him, and he tried his best to be warm for her. He realized her trembling came as much from being in an unfamiliar place as it did from the cold, even though the trail had been used by generations of bighorn.

He fell asleep with Dos's words in his ears:
Find a way west to blue mountain. It is the only way to save the herd.

*   *   *

They arose when it was still dark. Tuk's dreams vanished like the small clouds of his breath as he rose stiff-legged and starving. He searched for tasteless grass beneath the snow until Kenir said it was time for them to go.

They walked in the dark, and all along the way they found nothing but snow for drinking and leafless twigs when they were forced to walk through trees.

“I want to go back,” Mouf said.

“Stop complaining,” said Nai.

“When you have no food in your belly, chewing on a complaint or two can bring a little comfort,” Dall said kindly.

“Then I shall complain of having to listen to Mouf's whining,” Nai replied.

“That is not peaceable,” Mouf said.

“Neither is complaining.”

“I will think about that,” Mouf said.

“Please hurry,” Nai said.

“Hush, we are almost there,” said Kenir. “Just past that stone outcropping we shall come to a ridge that overlooks the valley.”

Tuk's band ran ahead of the others, out onto the lip of the ridge. Tuk stopped, his toes at the very edge of the rock ledge, nothing but air beneath his nose. The newly risen sun was paling the clouds to the west.

All the herd, one by one, perched themselves in a row on the rock ledge, wondering, until finally Kenir came. The old matriarch took one look and stood rigid, her nostrils quivering.

Below them, stretching west, was a vast valley, but even though Kenir had described it to him, it was not as Tuk imagined.

At the bottom of the last steep fall was a wide human trail, black, with a line running down the middle of it. It stretched from horizon to horizon, and along it man machines raced as quick as an eagle could fly. They roared as they approached and whined as they passed. Beyond that, human dwellings dotted the valley like enormous beaver dams. Great lifeless monster machines with toothen metal scoops lay still beside giant beds of dug earth, heaped into hills and covering the forage. Only a small pasture of grass remained at the foot of treed mountain on the west side of the valley.