The Bull tilted his head and the massive rack that crowned it swayed like a bone limbed tree. He took one step forward and the other bull had seen enough, turning in place to put some timber between them. The rut had not even started and there was no shame in retreat so as to perhaps consider another day. The Monarch stood still and listened to the younger bull climbing the slope. Motionless, the muscled shoulders of the Bull still seemed to undulate with power and even the small squirrels storing seeds gave way to his majesty, scolding as his presence dominated everything around him. The Bull was showing the fine results of a summer of rest and thick browse, his coat a healthy sheen. He tested the scent laden drifts of cool air that brought him their secrets and tattle tales, assessing each bit of information, dissecting its meaning, balancing its message against his years of experience and innate caution. He didn't like being away from his secret canyon. He was not afraid to leave it behind for many days either, especially in the fall when the urge to spend more time walking his old familiar haunts and reasserting his place among the elk that lived there became strong.
A downey woodpecker climbed a tree nearby, his rat-a-tat-tat workman-like. The Monarch watched him, not in focus, but as one piece of a larger reality without a beginning and with no end. The Bull simply experienced everything around him as an extension of himself.
He walked forward and soon found himself among a small group of other elk that had been feeding along the break between black timber and aspen. Here was good water, plentiful grasses and forbes, tender aspen shoots from spring growth and reliable breezes to bring warning. He knew this place well and walked out among the other elk almost ignoring them in a display of regal assertion. It was his habit from many years of total and unconquerable certainty that his place was unique and unassailable. But the Monarch knew he would be challenged. It was the way of things wild and he welcomed it. He was more than willing to play his part in the ancient struggle, even if it meant death.
He quietly bugled to assert his position. It was an invitation and a warning. An invitation to any cows that he was welcoming them into his protection and a warning to any other bulls nearby that in the coming weeks they might well consider carefully their actions. But during the coming rut, there were always bulls that could not control their desire even under the red flag of better judgment. This is when the Monarch would tender them no mercy and if he was given the chance he would put them down into the black dirt of the high top on Bull Mountain so that there would be no doubt as to who was in charge or who was to be punished.
As the years had passed the Bull found himself less and less willing to waste his energy on encounters that could be determined in other less physically expensive ways. Without knowing it and without thought, the Bull had simply adapted to the realities of elk life. He unconsciously understood that to prevail he must portion his physical expenditures against the deposits that had been carefully made all summer. It was not wisdom that had taught him this, but an innate knowing that he was not as quick as he once had been in his youth, nor as strong. Therefor he waited his chance carefully so that the outcome was certain and always in his favor. He sensed that to ever falter would be the end of his reign as Monarch of Bull Mountain. This chafed against the reality that the Bull could not ever accept a lesser position than the one he had fought for and earned so many years ago against the Black Bull of Deadman Gulch. It was that moment the die was cast that separated the Bull from the others. He wanted to be King. No other role would ever be satisfactory and the Bull would have died in the struggle to attain it. This one fact, more than his size, was what made the Bull special. It had been mere luck that so many years ago the Black Bull had relented long enough that the Monarch, with no foe in front of him, had thought the contest over and somehow limped away. If the contest had been pressed he would have fought on until killed. He simply could never surrender.
Topic: The Monarch of Bull Mountain --DONE!-- (Read 4658 times)
