Free Blue Mountain by Martine Leavitt

can be free of man.”
    â€œMan has an outpost farther up this mountain,” said the deer. “We go at night to eat the soft grass and the fruit and flowers.”
    â€œBut doesn’t man hurt you?” Nai asked.
    â€œSometimes,” 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.
    â€œShe has left Kenir’s herd to follow us,” Dall said.
    â€œWen disagrees very much with pumas,” Sham said.
    â€œShe will follow us to blue mountain,” Nai said miserably.
    â€œPerhaps 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.
    â€œBlue mountain will not be as good with a puma eating us one by one,” Mouf said.
    â€œWe could fight her together,” Tuk said.
    â€œTuk, you know we can’t fight the puma,” Dall said.
    â€œWe 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.
    â€œPumas 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,