Mammoth Dawn Read Online Free Page B

land to tackle the really big projects that made his wife happy.
    “After this, Alex, nobody will even bother remembering all the little things you did in your reckless youth.”
    Impatient with the two romantics, and smiling with anticipation, Cassie led them toward the top of the ridge. All around the valley, thick pine and aspen forests covered the hills. Cassie slowed her horse as they entered a rank of thoroughly stripped trees that showed long scraped gouges in the bark.
    Helen was amazed, and concerned. “They’re foraging all the way up here? They shouldn’t be wandering so far afield.” She urged her gray mare into the great field of sedges and sages so carefully arranged by innumerable days of gardening.
    Cassie cocked her hat back with a wry smile. “Do you want to be the one to tell them where they can and can’t go, ma’am?”
    Alex made a mental note to see about putting a few sonic “discouragers” up here. He couldn’t imagine what would happen if a stray happened to wander down the valley to within view of the protesters at the gate. Then he’d have to deal with the local sheriff, the Feds, a dozen regulatory agencies, and a host of tabloids.…
    As they emerged from the aspens, the girl’s sweeping arm drew Alex’s attention to the grassy lowland in the bowl of the valley. “See, they always come together at dusk. It’s the best time to watch.”
    Their horses standing close together, the three of them looked down onto Clement Valley in the last light of afternoon. Helen could barely tear her dark eyes from the sight below, but she gave her husband a loving glance that said, We did this, you and I.
    Alex stood transfixed by the slowly moving shapes before him. His company had been right to keep the media resolutely away from the valley, and here was the proof. You had to see the woolly mammoths for yourself.
    Whenever he had a fresh glance at the herd, the beasts seemed like sailing ships. There was a stately glide to their passage as the great russet vessels crossed the flatness, each beast moving as though before steady winds. Only slowly did the mammoths tack and turn, ponderous yet inevitable.
    As if Cassie had trained them to recognize her, the nearest behemoth raised its head and let out a long, soaring salute. The next took up the sound, and the next, and soon nearly three dozen massive beasts joined in the trumpeting call.
    Alex felt an eerie shiver travel down the length of his spine. The strange, echoing song reached even deeper into his primal core, building in layer after layer, delving into bass notes seldom heard outside the cathedrals of Europe. Even when the haunting chorus faded into the soft sigh of a breeze among the shadowed pines, the three human interlopers remained still, afraid to move as if they had been the ones transported through time, not the mammoths.
    “Humans haven’t heard that call in ten thousand years,” Helen said as she leaned over to kiss him. He was too overwhelmed to say anything at all.
    O O O
    With Cassie in the lead, sitting high on her roan mare, Alex and Helen rode down toward the mammoths in the last light of afternoon. The herd was accustomed to horses, and especially to the smell of the young ranch hand who tended them. Raised entirely without predators, the mammoths were unwary. Though his mare seemed a bit skittish, Alex did not feel threatened as he approached the magnificent woolly behemoths.
    The sedge grasses were tall and resilient, grazed short and trampled flat especially around the muck of watering holes. Playing the Helyx CEO, Alex noted that at the grassy margins the cottonwood branches and even bitterbrush were being browsed down to nubs. He would have to speak to the tenders about keeping the food supply going so the animals didn’t wander into the stands of trees bounding the meadows. Soon, the herd would outgrow this valley.
    He made a mental note to look into buying even more land, maybe expanding the huge Helyx Ranch into