Monarch of Bull Mountain, part two: Son of Monarch

[Cyclic-Rivers]

Great Read!!!! Thanks Joshua, hope you have a  great Weekend to keep the fuel!

[jhg]

My computers down, but sit tight. I will be back with more and the hunt of The Archer's lifetime is about to begin...  

Joshua, himself gunning for the Monarch this fall.

[23feetupandhappy]

TTT

 

[wixwood]

Patience my friends. Let our fellow hunter meditate and prepare himself as well as us for the adventure.

[Doc Nock]

Talent takes time. Creativity takes contemplation.

And computers take an act of God!        :eek:    

[ron w]

[23feetupandhappy]

[jhg]

Sorry everyone- my access is limited right now. Not trying to jack with anyone. I can't write here- its a library and I can't take enough time. The story is ready though. Be glad to get it out so I can think about other things...  

J-

[23feetupandhappy]

Not impatient just showing our interest    

 

[ron w]

   

[Trumpkin the Dwarf]

[23feetupandhappy]

Anyone know what happened to JHG

I'm itching for a good Elk Tail!!!!!

[Doc Nock]

When I saw this back up, I was hopeful Ben got lined back out... his writing is quite good...

Sent him an email but if he's lost his computer then he likely quit his email provider.  Last was Aug 2014.

I hope he's ok.  He has talent...

[jhg]

Husky worked over the rope with his tired hands, breaking open the strands to accept the fid. He fed the strands, milking down the standing part carefully, wanting a nice transition. He finished the eye splice with a small whip of waxed string. He looked out over his porch rail, beyond the firs and up into the mountain slopes, dark in their own shadow. The dark timber there was a cool, dank, moody place. Husky remembered climbing into its embrace, a long time ago when he was still young and before he had gone to fight. He had stood on the bottom near his truck, parked only half off the dirt trace and even then almost high centered already. Maybe there was enough room for a good driver to get by. And if they couldn't get by, he had thought, maybe they shouldn't be driving in these mountains anyway. Husky turned to the mountain, stepped into the timber, and disappeared. He went up. He did not stop. He wasn't going to stop until something, he didn't exactly know what, stopped him. What he did know was he would keep going until he got into the deep timber. The deep timber. Because that was where he wanted to be. It was that simple. He wanted to see it. Husky couldn't exactly remember the last time anything had been easy like that, physically, or in his mind. It is easy to climb high when you are young, he thought, and you carry nothing on your shoulders.

[jhg]

Up on the high top summer was a fitful mistress, moody, often cool and temperamental. But she was beautiful. The archer sat a grayed fallen tree. He could see across a meadow not big enough to be called a park. It sloped away from him undulating like ocean swell.  The archer knew that in the troughs could be hidden secrets. His eye traveled across the grasses waving in the breezes and he could even see the flowers, hidden almost, low amoung them. But he knew he couldn't see down into the low places. He wasn't even sure where they were, but he knew they would be there and in them, maybe, an elk, or a deer. Even bear.

The archer wasn't in a particular hurry. He liked to sit and hear the country.  He didn't adjust so much as let go. He simply was. A part of its collective sigh. The sun was soft on him but even here under its warm hand the archer could feel the thicker, cooler air behind him in the timber. It pushed to the meadow edges, then paused like a heavy, secretive beast, invisible, but there. The deep timber. Heavy trunked, tall, magnificent moss laden branches, shy flowers and timid seeps that burbled under root elbows or from miniature rock gardens. Away, up the slope behind the archer this dark timber stretched, almost silent, always brooding. Behind him it held its ground, the defining feature but for the mountain itself. Here, above the archer, in this forest of giants, lay the Monarch, half his huge body under the same sun, warming the nagging scars he had earned long ago at the deadly tines of the Black Bull of Deadman gulch...

[jhg]

Deadman Gulch. Some of the worst hell terrain any man might navigate after game. It had rock. It had narrowing canyons that ended in dead fall traps with no way out but back. There were avalanche chutes piled with rubble, back tracking game trails, hanging buttresses, scree, tangled timber stands and the most aweful kind of wind. Elk here tended to be smaller, but heavy bodied,  their frames muscled, flesh annealed by an unforgiving country. But elk there were, and they were healthy.
 Deadmans Gulch had made the Black Bull, perhaps the fiercest herd bull known but for the Monarch himself. A tough place in which to grow, a tougher place to prosper, Deadmans stunted, or it tempered. An animal thrived or it withered. There was no middle ground.

[jhg]

When the archers daughter faced the Monarch of Bull Mountain at six feet, the mighty Monarch, boss bull no one could kill, ghost of the high top, giant and myth and legend all wrapped into one, she had also faced something inside herself. As if a door had swung open, the wind roared through her soul and for the first time she was free and forever never to be the same. She was changed and the archer knew it, for it had changed him too. Between them the bond that was father/daughter had been welded even stronger. A respect between them had begun to grow that no map could have plotted or compass found. In life they had been so alone, only to find they were not alone, but only apart. No gift is so precious as the one we each hold in our soul. To share ourselves is the highest expression of love. So they planned another hunt together up on the high top. And although no one said it, they both knew where they were going. They were going to Bull Mountain. They were going after the Monarch...

[23feetupandhappy]

Oh ya, here we go!!!!!!  

Glad to see ya back  

[jhg]

The archer scouted when he could. His summer fell into a routine, mostly work, but he always made it out to Husky's every week. At first it had been to check on the old man, or to forward the projects started there- the new roof, the foundation, a new well. Spending time with Husky had long ago stopped being a gesture of good will and become a part of the archers life. The truth was, the archer was fond of the old man.
And of course the archery range. It wasn't often Husky's little turn around didn't have a truck or two parked there. It was a good range and challenging. It brought in the areas best archers. There was even talk of holding a regional there. Husky seemed to roll with the changes, to the surprise of everyone, except maybe the archers daughter, who from the start decided he was pretty much capable of anything. When she was on the range the two of them were usually together, and they always were making shots from crazy places- off the ground, blocked sight lines, impossibly tight quarters for a decent draw and release. Let alone limb clearance and second anchors. They loved it and few would have believed the shots those two made, the states most talked about high school athlete and the old mountain man back from the dead. In this way the summer passed.
Up on Bull Mountain change also had come, though there was nothing to mark it. The day waned earlier, the nights inched slowly longer, while the elk put on weight and grew fat, summer coats sleek and smooth. There was still the Monarch, as big as ever, his secretive ways as always unknown. His muscles rolled under skin in waves and his rack had grown even thicker it seemed. But this last thing was an illusion. The King of Bull Mountain was waning, like a late summer sun. His mighty crown only seemed to have added mass by having, this year as last, again grown in shorter...

[jhg]

Husky sat at his crester. It was a home built, using an old rotisserie motor that sounded like it was filled with pea gravel. Husky had his own crest pattern he had used for years and it became known around the range. Someone had even found one of his arrows in a thrift store. Obviously old, it had Husky's crest. How it got there no one knew. The secret life of an old arrow. It was bought for 50 cents. Now it rested on pegs above the old mans  door.
Husky had sealed the shaft with two coats of shellac. He bought his shellac in flake for its superior bond. Everything adhered to shellac. It brought out the best in the woods. It was surprisingly tough and under a smart top coat was as good a finish as anything out there that didn't toxify you to death to use. He took pride in his work. He used his reading glasses, backed up by a desk mounted magnifier like gunsmiths or jewelers use. His cresting brushes where spruce limb tips, whittled to a point, the point pounded between a hammer and his anvil out in the shop. He then worked the tip using a razor knife until it was how he wanted it. They didn't last long, but Husky didn't care. They where easy to make.