Going to the Sun, Page 3

  Come to the Chalet. I’m working there this summer. Love, M. Marcus reeled onto the street, shouting joyously; the Chalet belonged to Melissa’s aunt, Jerome Morgan, and was on the low side of the Jaw, where his goat was.

  He tucked the note in his shirt and leaped for the truck. A man blocked his way. Marcus recognized Billy Fred and stepped aside to let him pass. A hand fell on his shoulder from behind and he was spun around. He looked into the broken-toothed smile of Jim Harvey, another Morgan employee.

  “You better not come around here,” said Jim.

  “We liked Will,” said Billy Fred. “Stick to your own part of town.”

  “I didn’t want to hit him,” Marcus cried. “He hit first.”

  “Want to argue?” A snarling Jim held up his fists. A third man crossed the street.

  “Get away!” Marcus warned as he climbed into his truck. He had started the engine when the door was yanked open and Jim grabbed the steering wheel. The truck rolled; Billy Fred jumped in, pulled on the emergency brake and turned off the engine. He pulled Marcus from the cab and struck him in the face.

  “Quit,” Marcus yelled.

  “Keep away from Melissa, you murderer.”

  Jim swung at him and Marcus ducked. The third hand grabbed him. Marcus dropped to his knees, rolled against his legs and sent him sprawling into the road. Lightly Marcus sprang to his feet, clutched the lamp post and shinnied above Jim’s head. He warded him off with his feet; then Billy climbed up after him. Marcus waited until his hand was near, kicked it, and Billy Fred let go with a yell.

  The cry brought Sergeant Marx of the Police Force out of the back of the trading post. He shoved his way through a small crowd of people who had gathered. He looked at Marcus on the lamp post.

  “Git down here!” he shouted.

  “Arrest them!” Marcus yelled. “They started it.”

  “Do you want to be booked for talking back to an officer?” Sergeant Marx shook his stick at him.

  Marcus sighed and dropped to the ground.

  “That’s better,” the sergeant said and clipped handcuffs on him. Then Billy leaped on Marcus, and the sergeant shoved him off. He told everyone to step back and gave Marcus a push. He kept shoving him until he was across the street and in the police station. Blood ran down Marcus’s face. Sergeant Marx elbowed him and picked up the telephone.

  “Kulick?” he said to Marcus’s father. “I’ve got your kid here. There’s been a fight. Come git him before there’s real trouble.”

  Marcus’s head throbbed and his lip hurt. He slumped against the wall and waited for what seemed an interminable time for his father to come to the station. Finally Ed Kulick arrived. His square jaw looked like solid stone; his eyes were flashing.

  “What’s this all about?”

  “I’m sorry, Ed,” said Sergeant Marx. “But you’d better keep your kid at home for a while. The Morgan hands want revenge.”

  Ed Kulick loomed toward Sergeant Marx. “Tell Tom Morgan,” he said, “that I know he’s behind this. He paid them to do this. I know for a fact. Tell him I’ll sue him to the poor-house if he doesn’t lay off.” Ed’s fist came down on the station desk with a thud. The telephone jingled and the paper-weight jumped.

  Sergeant Marx shrugged, unlocked the handcuffs and picked up the precinct car keys. He glared at Marcus.

  “Mebbe you ought to go see your brother in California. It’ll be healthier for you there.”

  Marcus saw his father’s face turn red. He knew the big man well. Ed Kulick was about to explode and strike out. Quickly Marcus walked out the door before his father’s fist came down again. They reached the street in silence.

  “My kid’s gonna drive that truck home,” he heard his father shout. “Let anyone interfere and I’ll take the law in my own hands.” Ed Kulick kicked the fire hydrant with his boot and strode across the wide street to his pick-up. Marcus felt proud. His was a difficult father; but he was loyal, and that meant a lot to him.

  At home Marcus immediately went to his room, sorted his equipment and packed it in his backpack. He polished his gun and mended a rip in his tent. Around nine in the evening, he was ready for a dawn departure. He walked into the living hall. His father was standing with his back to a small fire that snapped in the huge fireplace. Marcus sat down on a couch and looked into his ruddy face. It was weather-lined and wind-beaten. His black eyes looked tired.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” Marcus said.

  “It’s not your fault. Forget it,” his father replied. “I’ve been talkin’ to the Fish and Game Department,” he said. “They need someone to count the goats in the Missions. They want to know how the lumbering activities on the north side of the Jaw are affecting goat populations. I told them you’d take the job.”

  Marcus nodded. “I’ll take it.” A job in the mountains far from everyone, with his pack and tent, was just what he wanted. He would be paid to do what he had already planned—to find Old Gore and learn his habits.

  “This’ll be a good opportunity for us to get the lowdown on the goats. There are three men in the East who’ll pay me two grand apiece to lead them to one. Study the grasses and the feeding areas. Make maps of the distribution and range. Goats tend to feed, move on, and then come back. Find where they bed and wander. If we know their range and habits, we can get them. The Forest Service has permitted the Big West Lumber Company to build a road up the Jaw. By fall we can drive the dudes right to their targets ’cause the trees will be gone. They’re clear-cutting.”

  Marcus ran his fingers through his thick black hair. “I thought there was a law against clear-cutting.”

  “No, no. It’s up to the Forest Service. The nation needs the lumber, and these big companies can’t operate at a profit if they bring in big machinery and have to pick and choose. They’ll grow back.”

  Nevertheless, Marcus was alarmed. The Jaw was wilderness, the last outpost where the mind could dream and the body relax. He was saddened to learn that the forests would be clear-cut.

  “If the road goes in,” Marcus said, “won’t dudes and poachers ride up there and kill everything?” He rubbed his sore chin and studied his father. His shoulders stooped more than usual and his hair, Marcus noticed for the first time, was white at the temples.

  “They’ll kill all the goats,” Marcus protested.

  “Naw,” his father said. “You gotta remember the law of compensation.”

  “What’s the law of compensation?”

  “It’s a scientific law of predator-prey dynamics. Dr. Paul Errington of Iowa U. discovered it. Other biologists have corroborated it. They’ve found that if you shoot twenty rabbits, they’ll be replaced by twenty rabbits within the year. If you shoot two rabbits, two will live to replace them.”

  Marcus listened with interest. “That’s amazing,” he said.

  “We call this the law of compensation. Animals compensate when they are preyed upon. When deer numbers are low, females give birth to twins, and if there are too many critters, pheasants for instance, females will desert their nests.”

  “Nature has a kind of birth control,” Marcus said. “Is that really true?”

  “It is,” his father went on, “and the hunter is part of this balance. By shooting animals he keeps the population young and healthy. New ones keep replacing old ones. The hunter today is absolutely necessary in the scheme of things. His hunting keeps wildlife producing young, vigorous stock.”

  Marcus got to his feet. “That’s incredible,” he said. “It’s almost as if nature could think.”

  “Yeah,” said Ed Kulick. “That’s why this whole lottery thing’s ridiculous. If me and those three Easterners take four goats from the Jaw in the fall, four will replace them in the spring. We don’t need this management stuff.” He leaned down, picked up a log and threw it onto the fire. It sputtered and crackled, and the flames shot up the big chimney with a roar.

  “We need hunters, not a lottery. Hunting keeps the animal populations healthy. Hunters cull the wild cro
p and prevent disease. And they shoot the big old animals that dominate the young and prevent them from feeding. The old ones cause fawns and yearlings to starve to death. A waste.” He balanced on the balls of his feet. “I’m putting some pressure on the legislature to get rid of the lottery system.” Ed Kulick stuffed his hands in his pockets. “And...that’s why you have a permit this year, if you’ve been wondering...a little pull.”

  “Oh. I did wonder. Well, thanks. I want that goat. I must get Old Gore.”

  “Well, you can thank me by proving that the system is rotten. Get up there and count the goats. In the fall we’ll shoot four, and then you’ll count them again in the spring and find as many, maybe more than before we went hunting.”

  Marcus frowned and glanced at his father. “You say I will find more goats in the spring? Suppose I don’t?”

  “You will.” He lifted a black brow and looked at Marcus. “We prove our point, scientifically. Then we get rid of the law, and I take as many as ten or twenty hunters at two grand apiece into the mountains...” His father kicked at the fire.

  “And then some day,” he said quietly, “I’ll have enough money to buy Morgan out.”

  At last Marcus saw his real father. He was a bitter man. With sadness Marcus recalled Tom Morgan’s hand on his shoulder as the three of them stood at the foot of the Jaw. “Let us forgive,” Tom Morgan had said. Perhaps it was time. Wildlife should not be threatened because of a feud.

  “I’ll count the goats, Dad,” Marcus said. “But I’ll count them right. Where can I find these scientific studies?”

  “At the state research station,” his father answered. “Up at Elktown, near the Jaw. Spend some time there; you’ll come to understand the role of the hunter.

  “And by the way, hunting licenses support the place and your job.” He paused. “You’ll see. It’s really the hunter who protects wildlife and keeps it healthy.”

  The fire snapped and the smell of pine permeated the room.

  “And about Melissa Morgan,” his father said. “Your mother spoke to me. If you see her when she comes back from Europe, these doors are locked to you—forever.” He stalked across the room.

  “And Marcus.” He pivoted and came back. “What really did happen on the Knife Rim?”

  “He did hit first.”

  “Okay.”

  Marcus smiled at his father. He loved and respected this injured giant whom he now saw to be not a god but a frail human like everyone else. He was wrathful, bitter, and a whole lot headstrong. But he had stuck up for Marcus. He had been loyal to him. Marcus was warmed by this. He went to his room wishing he loved another girl for this weary man’s sake.

  4

  THE CHALET

  The research station at Elktown sat in a cedar-and-hemlock forest a mile off the main road. Ed Kulick dropped Marcus at the turn-off about four in the afternoon, and said good-bye.

  Swinging along, whistling, Marcus hiked to a cluster of log buildings in a clearing. He was greeted by a man of about forty—tall, wind-burned, and smiling—Dr. Robert Wing, a wildlife research manager.

  “Put your pack and rifle in the bunk house,” he said, “and we’ll get to work.” His eyes glistened with enthusiasm.

  “Glad you’re going up with the goats. Practically nothing is known about them—what they do, where they wander, how many make a herd.” He shook his head. “They live where only young bucks like you can survive.”

  Marcus grinned and told the flinty man that to spend a year with the goats was the best job in the world. Wing nodded. “Wish I were seventeen.”

  Dr. Wing did not waste time. He invited Marcus into the lab, spread out maps and charts on a long table, and told him he should not only count the goats but record their travels, their ranges, and try to determine their surplus.

  “Surplus?” Marcus asked.

  “Wild populations of animals always give birth to more young than will live to adulthood...the surplus. These are the animals that get sick or die, those that hunters can harvest without lowering the numbers of animals in a population. We must, however, know who they are and how many before we can shoot them. By intelligently harvesting the surplus, hunters can prevent these animals from dying of disease and starvation.”

  Marcus wanted to know what he meant by “intelligently harvesting.”

  “In deer populations it is best to take the old bucks; perhaps in goat populations it will be best to take the old billies or even the old nannies. You’ll be able to see which ones compete for food with the young and cause them to die prematurely.”

  “How do they compete? What am I going to see?” Marcus asked.

  Dr. Wing tried to explain, then suggested a course of action. He gave Marcus a chart marked off in categories—time, sex, plants, habitats.

  “Whenever you see a goat,” he said, “write down the date, time, sex, and habitat. Set aside a certain hour a day to do this. Then on this map,” he handed it to him, “put an X where each individual is. You’ll begin to see habitat preferences and patterns of movement.

  “Also keep notes on the plants that they are eating. We need to know which plants support goats so that we can grow more.

  “Social actions such as horn rubbing, nursing, playing, butting, and dancing must be recorded.” He gave Marcus a notebook for this. “Always record the date and time.”

  Marcus’s eyes widened. “Did you say dancing?”

  “Apparently Rocky Mountain goats dance on the snow —a war dance, we call it. It’s probably related to dominance, but maybe it marks the approach of the rutting season. We just don’t know. That’s why you’re going up there. Your dad says you’re tough and keen-eyed, just the kind of person we need right now.”

  Marcus smiled pridefully.

  “Watch for the dominant animals,” Dr. Wing went on. “We need to know more about the social structure of goat herds. There’s no doubt that if we know this, we can harvest them better. Social behavior regulates numbers just as food does. But how?”

  Dr. Wing was called away, and Marcus leaned over the charts and maps, studied the lists of habitats and read what information there was on the Rocky Mountain goat. Oreamnos americanus, the mountain goat, was not really a goat but a goat-like antelope closely related to the chamois of the top of the Alps. Oreamnos was a different beastie than all others on earth, unique to North America’s Rocky Mountains.

  Marcus studied late into the night, then crawled into his bunk as the moon came up. Through the window, barred with iron rods against grizzly bears, he saw the peak of the Jaw gleaming through the pointed cedars.

  Somewhere below that whiteness sat Jerome Morgan’s Chalet, and somewhere within its stone walls was Melissa. He chuckled. She, or someone, had circulated the gossip that she was in Europe. She wasn’t at all. Marcus winked across the wilderness at her and slipped into his sleeping bag. “I’ll be there soon, Curly Head,” he said.

  Marcus worked a week with Dr. Wing. He sat beside him watching how Dr. Wing took notes on a herd of mule deer that were marked with colored tags on their ears for identification. The longer Marcus watched, the more clearly personalities emerged from these deer, which had at first seemed to be all alike. There was, he noted, a young, stand-offish buck who moved carefully around the dominant buck, or “king buck,” as Marcus called him.

  “What you’re seeing now,” said Dr. Wing one afternoon, “is this social dominance I’ve been talking about. The king buck is dominating the yearlings. He won’t let them feed. About fifty percent of them died last winter because he starved them to death. This experimental herd is not hunted. Ten percent more will die this summer. As you can see, this is an old and unbalanced herd. It doesn’t have many fawns. See that doe? She had a single fawn this spring. She had twins when we kept her in a heavily hunted herd. Females adjust to heavy predation by twinning...Errington’s law of compensation.” He leaned back on his elbow in the meadow grass.

  “Observe how cropped the bushes are; the grasses are down to nubbins.
There are no birds and mammals of the grasses; in fact, there are no birds and mammals below the browse-line, which is about eight feet up. Even the beavers have been eaten out of house and home by the deer, and they’re gone. So are the mountain sheep.

  “Hunting would change this whole area. Flowers would grow, birds would sing.”

  Marcus felt a surge of pride rush over him. He, a hunter, had a duty to perform for the wild things. He was in a sense like the wolf, a keeper of the beasts. He culled and selected them, and kept them from over-populating and dying of disease and starvation. But he was also in awe of the jigsaw of nature that Dr. Wing had revealed to him—the prey adjusting to the predator; birds, plants and small beasts fitting into the world of the deer and the hunter. The more he was shown, the more nature seemed to have its own intelligence. The predator must eat; and so the prey, over the eons, had adapted birth and death to how many of their kind were eaten. Marcus felt he was facing something vast and profound.

  At the end of the week he more or less understood his charts and had some little insight into his job. He decided it was time to find the goats.

  “You’re a keen observer,” Dr. Wing said as Marcus hoisted his backpack to leave. “You have the potential for doing a fine job.” Marcus was happy to hear this. He did want to please his father, who had stood up for him against the town and the world; and he did want to show this wise man, Dr. Wing, that he had picked the right hireling.

  They shook hands. Marcus adjusted his hip belt and slung the strap of his rifle case over his shoulder.

  “You’ll pick up your rations at the cairn beside Sky Lake,” Dr. Wing said. “The trail crew from the Chalet will cache it there every other Tuesday.” He paused and thought last-minute thoughts. “It’ll take several months to get enough material to see any patterns, so stick up there.”

  Marcus walked backwards a few steps, waved, then had his own last thought.

  “Better double the rations,” he shouted. “I’m still growing.” The wildlife manager laughed, nodded and waved him off.