Blue Mountain (8 page)

The wildlife was more abundant on meadow mountain than it had been on treed mountain. Through swollen eyes Tuk saw elk and deer, coyotes and badgers, and birds of every kind. He could still catch the scent of man in his nose when the wind blew down the mountain.

They traveled slowly, stopping often to rest. Gradually they were able to eat a little and the pain in their faces lessened.

At evening, they spied the rest of the band.

The others, when they saw Tuk and Rim approaching, leaped about and ran to meet them. As they came closer, they slowed and stopped and looked tenderly at Tuk's and Rim's swollen noses.

“Are you dead?” Mouf asked.

“Mouf,” Dall said, not taking her eyes off Tuk. “You can see they are alive.”

“But are your faces dead?” Mouf asked.

“Our faces met with some angry bees,” Rim said.

“Bees?”

“Yes,” Tuk said. “We may not look so well, but white wolf won't trouble us anymore.”

Dall showed them the small mountain meadow they had found, and they all grazed on the new spring grasses. But though their stomachs were full for the first time since they'd left their old mountain, and though the night was mild, and though the scent of the wolf was gone, none of them slept easily.

*   *   *

When he woke the next morning, Tuk saw Ovis standing beside a pika and his treasure of winter seeds.

“Why are you here?” the pika asked.

“We are going west to blue mountain,” Ovis answered.

“I've heard,” answered the pika, “that all the animals who go to blue mountain fall off the edge of the world.”

“Did you hear that, Tuk?” Mouf said. “The part about falling off the world?”

A mule deer coming down the mountain stopped to speak to them.

“Are you going up the mountain for man's flowers?” he asked.

“No,” Ovis said. “We are going to blue mountain, where we can be free of man.”

“Man has an outpost farther up this mountain,” said the deer. “We go at night to eat the soft grass and the fruit and flowers.”

“But doesn't man hurt you?” Nai asked.

“Sometimes,” the deer said, turning away, as if Nai had said something impolite. “It is the price of fruit and flowers. Are you the ones who have brought the puma?”

Tuk looked at his bandmates, but none of them appeared surprised. He had smelled puma coming from the south since he'd arrived in the meadow, and now he saw that the others had as well, though no one wanted to say it.

“She has left Kenir's herd to follow us,” Dall said.

“Wen disagrees very much with pumas,” Sham said.

“She will follow us to blue mountain,” Nai said miserably.

“Perhaps it is not even our puma and she will go away,” Dall said.

Tuk knew it was, but he did not say.

All that day they grazed the spring grass and felt they could not go up or down. They had a puma at their backs and man ahead on their trail.

That night, as if she knew they had become aware of her, the puma screamed the white out of the moon until it was tattered and gray. Tuk felt an urge to scream back at her.

“Blue mountain will not be as good with a puma eating us one by one,” Mouf said.

“We could fight her together,” Tuk said.

“Tuk, you know we can't fight the puma,” Dall said.

“We could fight her, but we don't because we are weak and afraid,” he answered.

Dall raised her head slowly until it was very high and her eyes met his. She spoke in a soft, even voice. “Since the beginning of the mountain, our kind chose peace, and for time and time we thrived. Now the world is changing, and will we change with it? Or will we allow ourselves to die? Perhaps you will make a new kind of bighorn. But do not accuse me of weakness and fear if I choose the other way.”

Tuk knew that Dall's gentleness had always come out of strength. That was why they all loved her. That was why he loved her.

He knew that his need to fight came out of fear, fear that the mountain didn't care, that the story of their band would end badly. One of his horns was full of temper, and the other knew that if he went to blue mountain as he was, he would be infecting it with something worse than pumas.

“Pumas fear nothing but man,” Ovis said. “That is what her scream said. She does not even fear the high cliffs. Nothing but man, and sometimes the puma eats a man just to swallow her fear.”

When some time had gone by and no one had fallen asleep, Tuk said, “What if we went to the outpost and stayed there until our scent was completely disguised by man scent? She might lose the trail or turn back.”

Dall sighed from deep in her belly. “It is a good idea. In the morning we will climb in the direction of the outpost.”

*   *   *

The starlings were chattering with one another and the sun promised warmth when the band set off up the mountain to the outpost.

Sham was big with the lamb growing inside her. She was resolute and never complained, but she frequently told them Wen's opinions about hunger and sore feet and fatigue and flies and especially pumas.

The outpost, when they finally came to it, turned out to be a shelter made of killed trees stacked upon one another. It had the familiar scent of man on it—fire and salt and metal—but not as overpowering as Tuk remembered from man in the winter valley. The outpost had a woodsy smell, a natural smell that was mildly reassuring.

They saw the trees and flowers the deer had spoken of, but the bighorn were not tempted by anything to do with man. The band stayed only close enough to be within the wash of man scent. The scent of the puma was soon driven out of their nostrils, and Tuk knew that meant the puma could no longer smell them, either. Together they talked of how they would leave the next day, drenched in the scent of man, and with luck be at the top of meadow mountain by evening.

There they hoped to have a close view of blue mountain for the first time.

When they bedded down, Mouf said, “What if blue mountain isn't there, Tuk? What if it's just a story and the story is that Mouf and her friends and most important Wen all fell into a blue mountain nothing and at the bottom of the nothing was the throat of a huge puma? What if?”

 

NET

 

In the night, the pop of a gun.

Up!

Around him Tuk's bandmates leaped up.

Up!

But Tuk could not get up.

“Tuk! Run!” Dall cried.

But he could not move. The more he struggled to get up, the less he could move.

Something bound him like a great spider's web. The gun had shot a net over him.

In another moment he saw a man, and another, and one more. They came closer until they touched him.

Flee! Flee!
Tuk told himself, but the more he struggled against the web, the tighter it became.

Two men knelt to bind his forelegs and back legs. One of the men seemed to speak to him in a soft, strange language—tricky sounds, as if he could speak the language of every animal at once. It had the music of birds in it, the buzzing of mosquitoes, the clicks of beetles, the round depth of an elk's call, and the gutturals of a porcupine.

Tuk was helpless, but still he tried to fight. One of the men put a covering over his eyes. Tuk realized that he was not injured, but trapped.

The men continued to make their tricky language, but over it he heard, “I'm here, Tuk.”

“Mouf?”

“Yes, I'm here.”

“Are you trapped?”

“No. I'm just here.”

“Run, Mouf!”

“No. I will stay here with you.”

“The men will see you!”

“They see me. They are making their sounds at me, but they aren't trying to trap me.”

“Mouf, is that really you?”

“I think so.”

“But—but you are so brave.”

Peaceable Mouf. Tuk could not tell her how it eased his fear to know that she was nearby, that he could smell her familiar scent. He thrashed against the web.

“Don't fight the web, Tuk,” Mouf said. “It just makes it worse.”

He tried to calm himself.

“Dall? The others?” he asked, panting.

“They are safe,” Mouf said.

He felt as if he were falling from a great height into the dark. He couldn't fight the web anymore. It had won. He wasn't sure if a moment or a moon passed. Mouf was closer now, and absolutely still, as if the men were not there making their tricky sounds, sometimes lowing like cows, sometimes bleating like lambs, sometimes tapping like the sound of hail on stone.

“Mouf, what are they doing?”

“They are putting something on your ear.”

Just then Tuk heard a sharp sound in his ear, and at the same time felt a pain. He cried out in surprise. He felt another sharp pain in his shoulder like a sting, and then he felt sleepy and calm, as if he were dreaming.

“They are taking the web off you now.” Mouf sounded far away.

In a few moments he felt the web fall off, and the cover was removed from his eyes. He was awake, aware of everything around him, and yet unable to move. He saw the men closely now, that their faces and arms were naked as newborn mice. Two of them talked to Mouf, who ignored them with great dignity. The other stroked Tuk's side, and he thrilled at this gentleness.

His ear throbbed with the device they had attached to it. In a few moments the men vanished. Mouf put her nose next to his.

“Time to get up, Tuk,” she said.

His legs twitched, and he ached as if he had fallen a great way, but he stood up suddenly, shaking.

He leaned against Mouf a little, getting his legs. He sniffed and nudged her.

“This way, Tuk.” Mouf led him slowly away from the outpost toward the trees.

Tuk tried twitching his ear as he would to rid it of an insect, but the device was part of his ear now, cold and heavy. In a short while he saw the others coming toward him, silent as shadows. He was still the same Tuk, a yearling with newly grown horns, but from the look of the others as they came creeping back, he might well have been sporting a set of full-curl horns.

“What have they done to you, Tuk?” Dall said, sniffing at the device.

“I don't know.”

“We must go. We must leave this place now, in the dark,” Dall said. She began to walk away, and all of them followed.

 

CLICK!

 

Even if the puma had followed them to the outpost, they reeked so strongly of man smells now that surely they would be hard to track. She would not give up easily, Tuk knew, but he hoped they had made it more difficult to be found.

It was a long time until dawn, but Dall could not rest. They continued their climb toward the top of meadow mountain. When morning came, still the band made its winding way, wading in broad-leafed undergrowth, in shadow and sun, beneath a roof of leaves and bird call.

From time to time the forest would end and open to untouched meadows, and they would briefly rest and feast and feel the breezes and breathe. Then again the closeness of the forest. The trees bent toward them curiously, almost welcoming, as if they had been waiting for the arrival of bighorn since they were striplings.

When the sun was fully up, they stopped in a meadow where the bones of the mountain jutted out.

The device in Tuk's ear was heavy and itchy, but the worst was the unnerving sense that man was always close by. His nose told him no, but his ear reminded him of guns and nets and man's mesmerizing language.

Tuk wandered a little way from the band. He wished he could be a lamb again who knew nothing of pumas and wolves, guns and nets, and devices that itched and burned and clicked.

Clicked?

He listened.

Nothing. Nothing.

Click.

Some part of Tuk had liked the way the others looked at him with admiration for having been in the hands of man and having escaped. They had stared in amazement at the device, as if it gave him a little of the magic of man.

But now he knew something, and it took the heat out of him. He had not escaped man at all.

The device was speaking to man.

It clicked to tell man where he was.

They were tracking him, just as the puma was.

 

HOME

 

After a rest the band continued on its way. Tuk was glad for brave Mouf's chatter so he did not have to listen to the clicks. Now when she asked him questions, he answered agreeably and sometimes asked her a few questions in return.

In the afternoon they came to the top of meadow mountain. It was dotted with trees, but through the trees Tuk saw a rocky crest and, beyond that, the sun-washed sky.

Slowly he walked toward the crest. Slowly he walked through the trees.

Slowly. Slowly.

When Tuk came out of the trees—

When he came out of the trees and stood upon the crest and saw blue mountain close for the first time—

When he saw blue mountain for the first time in the full light, his heart called it home.

Blue mountain was so high and wide it could not fit in his eyes all at once. It lay like a vast sleeping bighorn, the feet swelling out in a lowland, rising to muscled shoulders, and finally to tundra and horns of rock at the peak. It was a whole world tipped over on its side.

He could see, about halfway up the mountain, a sward already greening up from the snowmelt. That would be where Dall would establish their summer feeding range. Higher still were cliffs for the lambing, and beyond that, he could sense territory for the rams to wander.

It was pristine. It was perfect for the bighorn.

“It's real,” Rim said.

“Yes,” Tuk said. “Did you doubt it?”

“Yes.”

“Me, too,” said Tuk. “Sometimes.”

All the others gathered to look with wonder at the mountain before them.

“It's not blue anymore,” said Tuk. “It's green with trees and meadows and gray with rock and white with snow, but no blue…”