Blue Mountain Read online

“Fight me,” the ram said again in a commanding voice. “I have heard stories that say you win every battle. I have come to prove the stories wrong.”

  “All stories have some truth in them,” Tuk said, turning to face this bold ram.

  He looked then at the giant of a ram, and, bowing his deepest low stretch, he said, “My Lord Denu.”

  Tuk laughed, feeling suddenly young and strong, and assumed a threat stance. Denu also presented, and they charged.

  Their horns clashing sounded like far-off lightning. Threat stance, clash!, over and over until they both panted with exhaustion.

  “You cannot beat me,” Tuk said, though he thought that if Denu charged him one more time, he would.

  “You are a true bighorn,” Denu said, bowing to Tuk. “Come with me. I have a new mountain for you to see. It is glorious—even more so than your blue mountain.”

  Dall was staring up at Tuk, rigid, and she seemed to be trying to say something.

  Tuk nodded to her, and then, with all his stories inside him, followed Lord Denu into the deep light of the evening.

  Down in the meadow, the lambs pestered Dall for a story. For a long time she would not speak, but at last she began: “Tuk was born in the snow and wind of early spring. He was the biggest lamb born on the lambing cliffs that season, and for seasons out of memory…”

  When the story was over, the lambs played, and the mountain—the mountain laughed.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  My father, James Webster, was raised on a ranch in southern Alberta, cheek by jowl with Glacier National Park. When he was twelve years old he was already riding his horse far and wide in the foothills, exploring the lakes and rivers, coulees and forests. He loved nature and the animal world.

  As an adult, he would pack his gear and hike into the Rocky Mountains in Jasper National Park, Banff National Park, Glacier National Park, and the mountains near his home in British Columbia. He walked every trail, and made a few of his own. He knew the wildlife, the names of the trees, and the names and origins of the rivers. He could read the ancient geological story in a rock wall. At one point he became intrigued with the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep and made a study of their ranges, habitat, herd structure, and social order. For many years he trekked into wild places and photographed them and recorded his observations. He loved their independence and their ability to live in the most forbidding places. He loved their wildness. Long before it was in style, he was concerned with wilderness environments and the effects of man’s encroachment.

  He showed me an account he had written of a bighorn sheep through four seasons of the year. I was transported to the mountain and the simple but adaptive life of these remarkable animals. One day my father gave me a gift of all his notes.

  I accepted his gift with gratitude and based this story on it. My story became a very different thing than his beautiful and perfectly accurate rendering, but we tell the stories we can. I found the entrance into my story when I read that sometimes a herd, when faced with serious range depletion, will make a migration into unknown territory.

  I am grateful to my father, who taught his children to have a reverence for the beauties of the planet and all the forms of life that grace it.

  —M.L.

  “Few sights are more gratifying than a herd of bighorn grazing peacefully along a mountain slope, or more stirring than that of an adult ram, horns at full curl, head held high against the backdrop of an alpine setting. It is well past the time for the wildlife and wilderness areas remaining on this continent to be regarded as a sacred trust. Each time man allows another wildlife species to fade from the face of the earth, another shadow is cast over his own quality of existence.”

  —James Webster, from his backcountry notes, circa 1980

  Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York 10010

  Text copyright © 2014 by Martine Leavitt

  All rights reserved

  First hardcover edition, 2014

  eBook edition, October 2014

  mackids.com

  eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Leavitt, Martine, 1953–

  Blue Mountain / Martine Leavitt. — First edition.

  pages cm

  Summary: “Tuk, a bighorn sheep of the Canadian Rockies, leads his herd beyond the snares of man and the wiles of predators to the freedom of the Blue Mountain”—Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-374-37864-6 (hardback)

  ISBN 978-0-374-37865-3 (ebook)

  1. Bighorn sheep—Juvenile fiction. [1. Bighorn sheep—Fiction. 2. Sheep—Fiction. 3. Survival—Fiction. 4. Endangered species—Fiction. 5. Canadian Rockies (B.C. and Alta.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ10.3.L487Bl 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2014003697

  eISBN 9780374378653

  Also by Martine Leavitt

  My Book of Life by Angel

  Keturah and Lord Death

  Heck Superhero

  Tom Finder

  The Dollmage

  The Taker’s Key

  The Prism Moon

  The Dragon’s Tapestry