Blue Mountain Read online

  “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.

  “Man has completely despoiled the valley,” Kenir said.

  After a long silence, an elder ewe said, “What will we do, Kenir?”

  Kenir’s words bit sharper than the wind. “We will starve if we don’t go. We must live in the corner man does not want.”

  “Maybe he wants all of it,” Mouf said. “Maybe it is time for Tuk to save us.”

  The herd turned their eyes to Tuk.

  When he understood they were waiting for him to speak, he said, “We know man only hunts the rams. And maybe the predators will stay away because we are so close to man.”

  Balus snorted, but Kenir nodded. “We have no choice.” She began to tread her way down the steep and toward the road.

  Dall followed, and then the rest of the herd. Tuk came last.

  No one knew what Dos had told him to do in the snowstorm that night. No one knew but him.

  * * *

  The man trail was like nothing Tuk had seen on the mountain—not stone, not earth, not wood. It smelled like man, like guns, like burnt stumps. It smelled of old blood.

  “Many animals have died on this trail,” Kenir said. “Man machines run along it and destroy any in its path.”

  Suddenly she ran across the black trail, and most of the herd ran behind her, including Tuk and his band. The trail clicked under his feet. On the other side, he slowed and turned.

  Balus and two of his mates were standing on the road, licking it.

  “Balus, come!” Tuk called.

  “I’m not afraid,” he answered.

  “He’s licking the salt,” Kenir said. “In this way the man machines trick you.”

  Just then a machine roared up the black trail. Tuk closed his eyes, waiting for some sound of death. But it did not come.

  He opened his eyes. The machine had stopped, growling, and Balus was safe. With a baleful look at the machine, Balus and his mates slowly moved across the trail, and the machine raced away.

  The whole herd stood in awe of Balus, even Tuk, for whom Balus reserved a pointed smile.

  Tuk had seen Kenir wary and alert, but he had never seen her afraid as she was now, leading the herd into the valley. The monster machines were silent and motionless beside the great pits and piles of earth. Farther off was the tumble of human dwellings, full of the rich and overpowering scent of man, sweet as lilies, bitter as poison plants.

  Kenir led them as far from the machines as she could to a place where the snow was undisturbed. There they found grass beneath the thin snow, but it was meager, as if it had already been grazed down.

  * * *

  When the sun was fully risen, a man climbed inside one of the monster machines. With a crack and a roar like a mountain storm, the machine came to life. The machine showed no interest in the herd, though it moved and growled. It only wanted to eat the earth.

  “The monsters seem to mean no harm to us,” Tuk said, but the herd clumped together in fear. Tuk wandered away, walking slowly along the edge of treed mountain, grazing on wolf willow.

  “Tuk,” Kenir called. “Stay with us.”

  “I am looking for a trail west,” he said, “to blue mountain.”

  Balus snorted. “Blue mountain. Story mountain, you mean.”

  His yearling mates snickered.

  “We know of no trail, Tuk,” Pamir said. “You see that thick forests guard the way, and everywhere treed mountain is flanked by his brother mountains, all of them pathless.”

  “Bighorn need sight lines,” said an elder ewe.

  “Bighorn need rocks to climb,” said another.

  “Bighorn do not migrate,” Balus said. “But then, perhaps Tuk is not a bighorn.”

  WOLVES

  In the winter valley it was always more night than day, the clouds bore snow instead of rain, and the sun shone cold. So the winter passed. During the coldest times, the man machines stood quiet, not hungry for the frozen g
round. Every day Tuk, sometimes with Rim or Ovis beside him, foraged the west perimeter of the valley, looking for a breach in the forest that might lead over treed mountain. But the lowermost branches of the pines seemed to root themselves into the ground, and the dense overgrowth forbade entrance. If there was a trail, the trees guarded the secret well.

  After many days the herd had grazed every inch of the snow-bleached grass, and even the brush and willow at the forest’s edge was depleted.

  “I have a pain,” Mouf said one evening.

  “A pain?” Tuk asked.

  “Yes. In my middle.”

  Rim walked all around Mouf, studying her middle from various angles.

  “No, you don’t,” he said.

  “It isn’t on my outside. It’s on my inside,” Mouf said.

  Tuk and Dall looked at each other. Starvation found the smallest first.

  “Am I dying?” she asked.

  “No. You’re just hungry,” Tuk said.

  “How long do you have to be hungry before you are dying?” Mouf asked.

  “I don’t know,” Tuk said, “but we will all find out together.”

  Just then, Tuk raised his nose. A breeze in the brambles. The machines, the garbage heaps of man, the pines, and—

  There!

  Wolf!

  Not one. Two. And close.

  “Wolf!” he said to his bandmates.

  At first he could not tell from which direction the wolves were coming. The cross breezes and the man smells confused him. His haunches quivered, his lungs burned with frozen air.

  He smelled them again, stronger this time.

  “Wolf!” he called again, so the herd could hear.

  Others took up the cry.

  Every muscle drove him to climb to safety, but there were no rocks to climb in the valley.

  The band leaped and scattered in alarm. The wolves, wherever they were, were unconcerned now with stealth. They did not fear man as much as the puma did. They were coming, and quickly.

  Where to go? Where to go? Nowhere! The valley was flat and unbroken, except for the man dwellings and—and their monster machines like small hills—

  “Follow me!” Tuk said to Dall, and as she did, so did the others. Running, he led his bandmates, and behind them the rest of the herd, across the flat—straight toward the herd of monster machines.

  “Where are you going?” Dall gasped for air at his flank.

  “Come! Come!” Tuk called.

  The wolves were behind—he could hear their footpads, their panting.

  Nai’s and Mouf’s eyes were rolling with fear.

  Tuk ran toward the machines, closer, closer, until he felt squeezed by fear before him and behind.

  “Jump!” he cried. “Climb up!” In a single bound, fleet and nimble, Tuk leaped onto one of the machines as if it were a pile of stones.

  In a moment all his bandmates were perched beside him, and a breath or two later the rest of the herd also leaped gracefully onto the machines. Huddling close together, they had just enough room.

  The two wolves paced on the ground below, their tongues dripping. Their feet were not made for clinging to small, slippery places. They could not climb.

  Tuk could not get the fight out of his mouth.

  “Go away, dogs,” he said.

  One wolf, a female as gray as the moon behind a cloud, gazed up at him.

  “Do you call us dogs?”

  “I do,” said Tuk.

  “Hush,” Dall said.

  The white wolf lifted his nose at Tuk as if memorizing his scent. The gray wolf snarled and leaped at the machine, trying to get some footing. In the next moment the wolves spooked at some movement near the man’s dwelling and ran to the moon shadow behind the machines.

  “Am I really standing on this man thing?” Ovis whispered.

  “We might be dreaming,” said Mouf.

  Just then Tuk saw a lone bighorn. It was Sham, and she was running, running toward them. The wolves, prowling on the other side of the monster machines, looking for a way up, had not seen her yet.

  “Make room!” Tuk said.

  “There is no room!” Balus called from another machine.

  Sham ran toward them, and now the wolves caught her scent.

  “Help!” Sham cried as the wolves ran around the machine and saw her.

  “Here!” Tuk called. “There’s room for you here. Now, Sham, switch!”

  Tuk jumped down as Sham jumped up.

  And before Tuk, face-to-face, the wolves.

  Tuk leaped.

  In a single liquid bound he leaped over their heads and ran. Speed, agility, trickery—he ran across the valley floor, straight toward the human dwellings. Fast, fast, faster he ran, shattering the clouds of his own breath before him.

  The wolves were close behind him, running steady and untiring. They would follow until he slowed from exhaustion, and Tuk knew, at this speed, that would be soon.

  “This is the young one that called us dogs,” panted gray wolf behind him.

  “For that we shall gnaw on him before he is dead,” said white wolf.

  Without slowing, Tuk saw, at the edge of his vision, the gray wolf’s moon-shadow lift into the air and soar toward the shadow of his own haunches.

  Bang!

  Gunshot shook the shadows.

  Tuk leaped and saw gray wolf spinning in the air. As Tuk landed on his feet, gray wolf landed dead on the ground.

  White wolf dashed back toward treed mountain and slipped into the dense forest—vanished as if he had never been.

  How had he slid in so easily?

  Tuk could hear the stillness of the gray wolf, no movement of blood or breath. He turned away from the man dwellings and loped toward the monster machines. Once, he stopped and glanced back to the place where white wolf had entered treed mountain.

  Tuk’s bandmates jumped down as he approached.

  “Why aren’t there wolf bites out of you?” Mouf asked.

  “Man shot the gray wolf,” Tuk said, panting. “The white wolf disappeared into treed mountain.” Dall sniffed at him to be sure he wasn’t injured.

  Slowly, cautiously, one by one, the rest of the herd jumped off the machines and stood opposite Tuk.

  “You jumped right over them, Tuk,” Sham said.

  “What made you think of climbing the machines, Tuk?” Kenir asked. “How did you know it would be safe?”

  “I saw they only roared and moved when man rode them,” he said.

  The herd, including his bandmates, stared at him.

  “What kind of animal are you?” Balus said quietly.

  “The wolves smelled our weakness, our sickness,” Tuk said. “It is just as you said to me, Kenir. The herd is dying. White wolf will come again, and he may bring others. Next time he will know what to do differently. And even if he doesn’t come, the puma waits for us in the summer meadow. Man will build more of their dwellings. Now is the time to go to blue mountain. We must try.”

  Tuk found that one who had been chased by wolves was not as afraid to go on a long journey to a new place as he might have been before.

  “Things are bad here, but we do not know if they will be worse over the mountain,” Balus said. “In any case, you have searched all winter and found no trails fit for bighorn.”

  “I may have found a way,” Tuk said. “I saw the white wolf vanish into the mountain, as if there were a breach. If he could go in, maybe a bighorn…”

  “Ah. He will take us where the wolf has gone. How good,” said Balus.

  “But I—”

  “I, I, I. You sound like a jay,” said Balus. “The bighorn do not speak this way. We are the herd. If we go, we go as we, together. It seems we have all agreed to stay.”

  “No,” Dall said. She stepped to Tuk’s side, facing the rest of the herd. “If it is true that Tuk has found a breach into treed mountain, we—he and I—will go. Any of you are welcome to come with us.”

  Rim went to Tuk’s side, and then Ovis and Nai
and Mouf.

  The herd, even the yearlings, were silent for a moment, chewing on Dall’s words.

  Finally Kenir spoke.

  “Winter is all but over, Dall. The lambs will come soon. Think about them—the mother ewes need cliffs on which to bear their lambs. If the lambs were born on the trail … Well, it is bad here, but at least back on our mountain the lambs will have a chance.”

  Dall nodded. “Then we have two matriarchs now,” she said.

  ELK AND TREED MOUNTAIN

  The next day, when both the sun and the moon were in the sky, Dall and Tuk and the rest of their bandmates walked together toward the place where he had seen the wolf disappear into the mountain forest. The rest of the herd followed, curious.

  Tuk stopped when he saw wolf tracks. The smell of wolf lingered, but he could see no breach. He peered into the forest where the wolf prints vanished.

  “How could he go far into underbrush this dense?” Rim asked.

  Just then Tuk saw that a solitary elk was watching them from a short distance.

  Tuk dipped his head respectfully. “Elk, your kind travels in the dense woods. Tell us—is there a breach here for us to be able to enter the forest of treed mountain?”

  The elk turned her head to look away. “I am beautiful,” she said.

  “Yes, you are beautiful,” Tuk said. “But we are looking for a pathway up treed mountain. Do you know a way?”

  She seemed surprised.

  “Why would I speak to you at all, given that I am so beautiful? Elk do not concern ourselves with questions.”

  “Dall and Nai and Mouf are beautiful, too,” Tuk said.

  “No. Only me,” the elk said. “Only the beautiful animals should live. That marmot, for example, is not beautiful.” And she turned away.

  Tuk and the others looked down to see a marmot at their feet.

  “Marmot, how did the wolf get into the mountain? Is there a path nearby?”

  “No,” he said. “No path.” He gripped a stem of snowy oat grass in both paws. “But since you are not the elk, and since you do not eat marmot, and since you are so polite, I have an inclination to tell you that just past these first few trees is a dry creek bed.”