Give Me Mountains for My Horses by Tom Reed

Author:Tom Reed
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2017-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

One fall, Dave and I rode into the meadow for a week’s worth of hunting. It had been a good year, for I had killed a nice mountain sheep on another ridge far to the north. Now, we came into elk camp with that deep-down feeling of contentment, knowing that if we failed to take an elk out of these hills, it would be okay. If you camp in a place long enough and often enough, it starts to feel like home. The place on Pilgrim Creek felt that way.

Late that night, as we sat around the campfire, preparing for another hunt the next morning, we heard a surreal sound coming from back in the trees. It was a gurgling grunt that we couldn’t identify, as if some hairy Sasquatch was coming into our camp, calling to us from the black timber. The hair rose on the back of my neck.

“Unnnuka.”

Dave looked at me, eyes wide in the firelight. “What the hell is that?”

“Christ, I don’t know.”

“It’s getting closer.”

“Did you ever see the The Blair Witch Project ?”

“Cut it out.”

“Unnnuka!”

“It is getting closer.”

“I’ve got the bear spray.”

“Hey, I think I can make that noise. ‘Unnnuka.’”

“Knock that shit off, it’s coming into camp.”

The sound circled us, then faded into the trees.

Dave gave it another try: “Unnnuka.”

“Hey, damnit, you are calling it right into camp.”

“I think it’s a moose.”

It was. A bull moose, with antlers like the cattle catcher on an old locomotive. He looked as big as a train too. He came closer in the darkness of the meadow and we stepped to the edge of the lodgepole pines, away from the fire and shined our flashlights out into the darkness. There, on the end of her picket rope, was Jade staring face-to-face with a moose perhaps only five feet away from the end of her nose. She just looked at him as if to say, “Yeah, right buddy, whatever. I’ve heard it all before.”

Our flashlight beams hit the moose right in the eye, wiping out his night vision, and he stumbled into the cut of a small stream just beyond Jade, then clambered to his feet and ran around in circles.

I had bear spray, but didn’t want to use it so we tried shouting.

“Hey, get the hell out of here!”

“You called him in here damnit, I think he’s in love with my horse.”

Now, the rest of the horse herd got into the act, galloping in with the awkward pogo-horse motion of hobbled horses to see what was up. They were more curious than anything. That did it. One nice mare on the end of a picket was one thing, but three more was too much for our moose. He turned and ran for the willows upstream, never to be seen again. We walked back to the fire, laughing and thankful that the mountain lady had kept it together.

The next fall, Jade had a repeat performance of her give-a-damn attitude. This time, Dave’s older brother, Al, and I rode in a few days early to set up camp.

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