Just as the archer started to knock a voice startled him. "Go on in son, you're welcome here"
Husky stood off aways. How he got there and behind him the archer could only guess. Husky had appeared out of nowhere, as if a ghost.
There was a lot of talk in town about Husky. Whack job. Cabin crazy. Weird. But there was other stuff too. One of only a handful to survive in his platoon. So handsome, once, all the girls as far as two counties over tried to make him their own. Never the same after the war. Kept going back to pull them all to safety...
Inside the archer waited for the older man to settle into his chair, hand hewn from aspen. The archer sat down too, on a stuffed sofa he was none too sure about.
"Your daughter, shes the one that led her team to States her sophomore year?" The archer was a little troubled hearing this. It must have shown on his face for Husky added "I read the papers son. There was a big article on her. Remember?"
The archer relaxed.
He looked around, and in the dim light let his eyes rest on an incredible elk shed laid over on the top of a side table. Husky must have noticed the interest.
"Pretty big shed that one."
"Where did you find it?" The tines on the royal was at least as long as his arm and maybe longer.
"Why don't you tell me?"
"I didn't come here for games Husky"
Husky chuckled. He packed an old briar pipe and lit a match.
"That shed came from up on the high top. On Bull Mountain."
"I saw a bull growing a rack much like that one just this spring" the archer said, and realizing he was almost whispering, tried to cover his embarassment with a cough.
"Anything else you see? A lot of bulls on that mountain have big racks. Its so damn hard to get in there hunters just don't pressure it much."
"This one had some bad scars. Never seen anything like it to be honest."
"Scars you say?""
"Three raking scars right along his left flank."
Husky pulled on his pipe and a cloud of smoke drifted off him only to disappear into the shadowed corners of the shanty. He looked up into the rafters for a moment.
"Thats no regular bull elk you saw son. He's not anything like any bull before, or ever will be."
Husky nested his pipe into the deep ashtray nearby.
"That, son, was the Monarch of Bull Mountain. Only one like him, ever.
When I lived up there and before the fire took the cabin, I watched the young Monarch many times. He favored the small park that was the cabins view. I watched him from the washbasin window."
The old mountain man crossed and uncrossed his legs, shifted himself in his chair and continued.
"The first year the Monarch was big enough to have his own group of gals was a dry year. A lot of elk had come up to the high top to find forage and it was the luck of the young Bull to have so many. He thought he was pretty big stuff and marched around like he was King of the World. He had thrashed about every bull this side of the high top, so I can't blame him the error."
The archer leaned toward the old man, hanging on every word.
"Now, a big fire had burned that summer over in Deadman. The forage was poor there from both fire and drought and most of the cow elk had come over from there to the high top and onto Bull Mountain.
"And after those cows, came looking the Black Bull..."
Topic: The Monarch of Bull Mountain --DONE!-- (Read 4651 times)
