Blue Mountain (2 page)

 

EAGLE

 

One day was like another for Tuk—the warm summer air, an abundance of food, the closeness and comfort of his fellows. At times Tuk would see blue mountain beyond the shadowy green mountains, climbing into the clouds, blue at its roots but white at its peak. Sometimes he would turn away from blue mountain to see Kenir gazing at him, as if disappointed that he was still a lamb, that he was not yet big enough to save them. Then she would call him to her and tell him the stories of their kind.

But Tuk and his mates grew quick and fearless under the watch of the herd. They feasted on every grass, learning the taste of fescue and foxtail, buttercup and betony, twinflower and groundsel. At the height of summer the sun burned the blue out of the sky, the berries weighed down their branches in the heat, the grasses baked, and the warblers slept in the shade.

Eventually the lambs were too big to nurse anymore. “Now you must get all of your strength from the food the mountain grows,” Pamir said to Tuk, pushing him away. No longer would she be his mother. Kenir and the other barren ewes would watch over the lambs now.

Sto was grazing unhappily a distance from her mother when Balus saw her and said, teasing, “Sto, I see you are scared to be so far from your mother. You had better run back.”

Tuk put himself between her and Balus. “Don't be afraid, Sto,” Tuk said. “We are the bighorn, the lords of the mountain. Watch!” He lowered his head and said to the grass, “Feed me!” He plucked a mouthful of grass sweetly with his teeth. Rim laughed.

“Lords of the mountain?” Balus said to his mates standing nearby. “If we are lords of the mountain, why does man hunt us at his will? Why does the herd shrink year by year until it offers no safety?”

Tuk put his nose to the golden cinquefoil that quivered in the breeze at his feet. “I command you to shine,” he said to the flower, and so it did, like a tiny yellow sun in the grass.

All Tuk's bandmates laughed, but Balus scowled.

“Spin!” said Tuk to a spider that spun its web in a bush.

“You must do as he says,” said Dall, and they both looked on proudly as the spider continued to spin.

“Lie still,” Rim said to a rock.

“Sing,” said Ovis to the nuthatch in the tree.

“Blow,” said Dall to the wind.

“You see, Sto?” Tuk said. “All is as we would wish it to be.”

Sto looked up. “Fly!” she called in her timid voice. The others looked and saw a golden eagle hovering on the hard sky with wings like pine boughs. “Fly and dive!”

As if it had heard, the eagle banked and dipped and down, down it swooped.

“Run!” Tuk cried.

The lambs scattered, all but Sto, who gazed up, enthralled. Tuk ran back toward her. “Sto! Come!”

The eagle fell from the sky, but Sto did not move. Tuk saw the eagle's sharp wings and its blade of a beak and saw it pounce into the meadow and rise again with a lamb in its talons.

Tuk saw that it was Sto.

She was lifted up and up and her white coat got smaller until she was a star in the day sky, until the eagle, flying toward blue mountain, vanished.

Tuk heard no sound. Sto did not bleat, the eagle did not cry. It might not have been, except that Sto was gone from the herd. The meadow was quiet. Tuk was surprised most of all by the silence inside him.

He felt as if the meadow had shifted under his feet. His bandmates gathered together closely, but Tuk stood apart, staring in the direction the eagle had flown, in the direction of blue mountain that might only be a story.

“Lord of the mountain, how will you save the herd?” Balus said close behind Tuk. “You couldn't even save a lamb from a bird.”

He went away, but his words rattled in Tuk's head.

Kenir approached the nursery band. Tuk still gazed in the direction the eagle had flown. When Kenir came close, he said, “The eagle took Sto because I did not fight him.”

“No,” Kenir said. “Because our numbers have dwindled, we have little protection from predators who would stay away if we were a large, healthy herd.”

“Why? Why have our numbers dwindled?”

“Winter,” she said.

“I am not afraid of winter.”

“Are you not?” Kenir said. “In winter, snow covers the mountain, the ground, the grass. Squirrels sleep in holes in the trees, marmots keep warm underground, the puma has her cave, and wolves their lairs. But the bighorn has nothing but the mountain. The bighorn does not sleep through the winter like the bear. In winter we are hungry.”

Tuk did not know hunger, and anyway he could not think what it had to do with eagles and Sto and sorrow like a thistle in his throat.

“In winter,” Kenir continued, “we leave the summer meadow and go down out of the mountain to the winter valley where the snow is not so deep. And what do you think we find there, Tuk?”

“Grass,” said Tuk.

“Yes. We should find grass under the snow, waiting for us—grass that has grown all summer long undisturbed. But men come with their tame sheep and graze the grass to stubble, and we catch their diseases against which we have no resistance. Now man has built a wide trail between the mountain and our winter feeding grounds, and on it many of our number are killed by man's machines. Last year, they began to build dwellings in the valley, filled with the light of the sun even at night. We come back to the mountain fewer than we left, and as our numbers lessen, our predators grow fatter—the puma, the wolf, the eagle.”

She waited a time for him to speak, and when he did not, she turned away, saying, “Today, Tuk, you are older. Do not blame yourself.”

 

FALL RAMS

 

The grass began to brown and grow dry as summer moved into fall. Every day the lambs played, but not as they had before the eagle. The sun came up each morning later and smaller than the day before. The meadow of a morning was white with frost, and though the slanting light burned off the frost by midday, it returned again in the evening. Each day the frost pinched Tuk's ears and hooves harder. Often he would gaze in the direction of blue mountain, as if he thought the eagle would bring Sto back.

One morning a ram stepped princely into the meadow, sporting a great crown of horn. He stood still, wary and proud, his nostrils quivering. All the herd lifted their heads to acknowledge him.

Kenir approached the lambs and said, “He is here for the rut, the mating time. His name is Churo, and once he was my lamb.”

The ram bent his head to graze. The great muscles in his shoulders moved like a river of water under his sleek coat.

A short time later two more rams emerged from the border of trees onto the ridge, and over time four more, each with three-quarter-curl horns. The rams drew together, when they were not grazing, and wrestled with one another.

“For now it is spirited and playful jostling,” Kenir explained to the band. “But the rams are also testing one another's strength. In play they are establishing rank.”

“You mean soon they will fight?” Tuk said.

“They will battle, yes,” Kenir said. “Not to kill or to maim—only to establish which of them will father most of the lambs. When the rut is over, the rams will resume their friendship and travel together again in small bands.”

Tuk and Rim and Ovis shoved and jostled one another playfully as the rams did.

At last came not a prince but a king of rams. He was alpha and old, with full-curl horns. The moment he stepped into the meadow, the other rams stepped away.

“He is Dos,” Kenir said. “The king.” Behind him came another ram, almost as large as Dos, and just as beautiful. “That is his friend, Tragus.”

The rams became more active and aggressive as the moon fattened. Each morning they huddled. The smaller rams nibbled at the horns of the larger ones, rubbed their faces, and were permitted liberties. Sometimes, for no reason, a ram would suddenly whirl about and bound downhill. Another would follow, and a mock battle would ensue.

The battle began in earnest, however, when Dos walked regally down into the meadow to claim Sham as his ewe. Tragus challenged him.

“You are old, Dos, my friend,” Tragus said. “A year older than I.” He spoke as if it were a game or a sport. “Surely you are too tired to fight for ewes anymore.”

“Let's see!” Dos said, and he lowered his horns.

Tragus rose up in a threat stance and charged.

Clash!

The sound of horn on horn rang across the meadow and echoed off the cliff face. Tuk thought it was the most magnificent sound he had ever heard—greater than the sound of a tree falling, or a waterfall, or thunder.

Threat stance, clash!

Threat stance, clash!

Tragus reeled away.

“Next year, Tragus,” Dos said, panting.

But after a short rest, Tragus rose up on his hind legs and again charged.

Clash!

Clash!

Clash!

The sounds burst against Tuk's ears like great boulders falling from the heights to the rocks below.

For hours Dos and Tragus fought. All day and half into the evening Tuk watched.

At last, when the whole sky was filled with fierce color and the meadow glowed gold, Tragus turned away and Dos claimed Sham as his ewe.

“Someday we will be rams and fight,” Tuk said to Rim and Ovis, and they looked at one another with pride.

“Yes,” said Balus behind them. “And I will beat you.”

 

THE PUMA CHILD

 

That evening, just as the herd was bedding down, came the cry: “Puma!”

“Climb! Climb the cliffs!” called the rams.

As though he had heard it many times before, Tuk knew the sound of the puma's soft step into the meadow.

“Climb!” called the ewes and the yearlings.

“Climb! Climb!”

Alongside Rim, Tuk ran to the cliff, but he slowed when he heard Mouf's cry behind him. He would not allow the puma to have his bandmate Mouf as he had allowed the eagle to have Sto.

“Go ahead of me, Mouf,” Tuk said. “Climb fast!”

She leaped ahead onto a ledge of the cliff face.

“Keep climbing!” he called. “I'm right here.”

Tuk heard a snarl and turned to see the puma and her child not far behind him. The kitten had faint spots and was not much bigger than himself, but the puma, softly golden as sunbaked grass, looked as heavy as a ram.

He could climb no higher because Mouf had stopped and was blocking his way.

“Climb higher, Mouf! Their footing isn't as good as ours. As we go higher, the ledges get narrower and they will stop following us.”

Behind him, Tuk heard the puma say to her child, “Hunt.”

The puma child sprang up onto the outcropping below Tuk.

“The mountain is mine, too,” he said, baring his teeth.

“Jump higher,” Tuk said to Mouf. She jumped up and Tuk took her place on the cliff face.

The puma child followed, leaping to the ledge Tuk had just left. He swatted at Tuk's hind leg.

“Again, Mouf,” Tuk said.

She leaped again to a ledge a little higher. Tuk stayed between her and the young cat. Still the puma child followed, leap for leap. The cliff face became steeper. The rock wall was in Tuk's left eye, and the black sky and the moon in his right eye.

Tuk wished he had been born with teeth for breaking bones. He wished his small budding horns were bigger. But all he had was his agility on the mountain. Above, he could see the herd reaching the top of the cliff one by one, gathering together on the ridge. Again the young cat swiped at him and snarled.

“Mouf,” Tuk said, “if you don't move, I am puma food.”

She looked back for the first time and saw the puma child close. Her eyes rolled in fear and she leaped—to a wider, lower ledge.

“Not lower!” Tuk said. “Higher!” He could see the young cat studying his advantage. He was no longer looking at Tuk at all—his eyes were wide as a mouth.

Tuk leaped to a higher ledge. “Mouf, you must get higher than the puma child.”

“I'm almost as high as the moon, Tuk,” she said.

The puma child crouched to pounce on her.

“Mouf, do what I say.” Tuk saw the muscles ripple under the young cat's fur. He lowered his voice. “I will jump down to your spot, and you jump up to mine—at the same time. Switch!”

He jumped down. Mouf jumped up—just as the puma child leaped to where she had been.

Tuk and the puma child were together on the ledge. Tuk scooted backward, away from the cat's sharp teeth, as far as he could go. His hind feet were on the vanishing edge of the shelf. The puma was a good climber, but not as good as a bighorn, and he did not have firm footing. He batted a thick paw at Tuk's face.

“Kill,” hissed the puma mother below.

“I will fight you,” Tuk said.

“Bighorn don't fight.” Again the puma child swatted at Tuk with his heavy paw.

Tuk thought of the eagle. “I fight,” he said.

He butted the puma child with his lamb horns. He butted as if the puma child were the eagle, as if he were Balus saying
I will beat you
, as if he were man and wolf and winter. He butted the puma child hard.

The puma child scrabbled at the rock with his claws, scrabbled for foothold on the ledge, and fell.

He fell

and fell

into the deep well of the dark

and landed with a thud onto the black below.

Tuk's left side was pressed against the stone wall. The rest of him was in air, trembling. Slowly he moved his back feet onto the thickest part of the ledge. He saw the mother puma below, sniffing at her dead child. She looked up at Tuk, her green eyes turned white, reflecting the moon.

“You killed my kitten,” she said. Her voice was measured and purrful. “I will specialize. I will raise my next kitten on this herd, and the next kitten, and the next. I will hunt your herd, and especially you … Tuk.” She opened her mouth wide to show all her teeth and slunk away into the dark.