"How did you get your tools and gear for the cabin you built up on Bull Mountain?"
It was a simple question, but the archer felt foolish for not having been the one who asked it.
The three of them sat Husky's porch, a light mist falling, making the drawshaved handrail on the stairs glisten.
Husky looked at the archers daughter with that playful glint he got when he was pleased, or up to something, or both.
"Mules."
"Mules?" The archer wished he'd kept that one back.
"You know, the kind with legs and ears? Sorta like a horse but smaller? Sure footed?" Husky could be a tool if you left yourself open.
Bushwacking up any mountain, let alone Bull, with mules or even pegesis, seemed like a very particular kind of long term torture and the archer said so.
"Not so bad if you take the trail." Husky snuck a wink the daughters way. He was enjoying himself now. There was no known trail up the Bull. It was bushwack all the way, save game trailing when you could.
"Then there is a trail?"
"Yes"
The eves dripped and across the turnout some small birds wheeled into the scrub timber. The archer leaned back into his chair and looked over at the old man. "Whats it going to cost?"
"Oh, I don't know. How bad do you want to know?" Husky knew the archer wanted to know very badly, but he was still having his fun. Just to get up on Bull Mountain was work enough. Husky knew that. Then to hunt it, maybe bring down (if you were lucky) probably the biggest damn bull elk there ever was on your back, well, that was an incredible amount of sustained effort.
The archer just kept looking at Husky. He didn't have to say anything.
Finally he broke the silence: "Well, how much can it cost? I mean, what do you get a man who has everything?" and the archer looked up at the hewn rafters and out across the turnout to where a sort of forlorn pole shed stood, roll roofing and all.
The three laughed at that and the archer felt better. He had redeemed himself. Husky heaved up out of his chair and came back out of the cabin with some soiled and edge worn maps. He opened them up and weighted down the corners with pieces of junk he found laying around on the porch.
It was the river crossing that held the key. Husky had found a way to cross the river safely with pack stock that nobody knew about. It was genius, really. The archer was impressed when the three of them stood above the crossing. It looked impossible. Yet there was a way, a thin line where the riverbed and the current relented to allow a crossing.
"How the hell you find this anyway?" Husky looked over at the daughter before he answered. She was standing a little away from them in her STATES MVP hoodie and with the fast water loud below them Husky was sure she couldn't hear. "I was drunk one night and sort of ended up down there in my truck. I had to winch it out the next day and thats when I saw the crossing. Wallowing around the truck trying to get a chain purchase on the frame. I got lucky"
They talked awhile about the best way to lead the pack stock into the current and where to angle them up stream about halfway across, then back downstream to pick up the sandbar that would lead them out onto hard ground. When they were finished Husky turned back up toward the truck parked on the road shoulder. He paused for a second with a sad, faraway look down the river: "I was lucky" the old man repeated, almost to himself and the archer knew this time he wasn't talking about finding the crossing. He put his hand on his friends shoulder to comfort him. There was nothing to say. They turned from the river and together they climbed up the bank to the roadside...
Topic: Monarch of Bull Mountain, part two: Son of Monarch (Read 2896 times)
