Blue Mountain Read Online Free Page B

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
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    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.
    â€œHow long does winter last?” Mouf asked.
    â€œAs long as we can bear it,” Dall said.
    â€œHow long can I bear it?”
    â€œAs 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.
    â€œTomorrow 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.
    â€œI want to go back,” Mouf said.
    â€œStop complaining,” said Nai.
    â€œWhen you have no food in your belly, chewing on a complaint or two can bring a little comfort,” Dall said kindly.
    â€œThen I shall complain of having to listen to Mouf’s whining,” Nai replied.
    â€œThat is not peaceable,” Mouf said.
    â€œNeither is complaining.”
    â€œI will think about that,” Mouf said.
    â€œPlease hurry,” Nai said.
    â€œHush, 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.
    â€œMan has completely despoiled the valley,” Kenir