Going to the Sun Read online

  Going to the Sun

  Jean Craighead George

  to the Rocky Mountain goats

  CONTENTS

  1 The Jaw

  2 The Knife Rim

  3 Encounter

  4 The Chalet

  5 The Ledge

  6 Molly and Jason

  7 Remus

  8 Andromeda

  9 The Voice

  10 The Road

  11 The Kid

  12 Old Gore

  A Biography of Jean Craighead George

  CHARACTERS

  in order of appearance

  MARCUS KULICK, sixteen-year-old boy who has won rifle and hunting awards

  ED KULICK, Marcus’s father, a sportsman ruined by a deceitful friend

  MELISSA MORGAN, fourteen-year-old girl, daughter of the deceitful friend, loved by Marcus

  WILL MORGAN, Melissa’s brother, a poacher and arrogant young man

  BILLY FRED, a hand on the Morgan ranch

  POTTER DORST, rural postman

  ANDY BURNES, town sheriff

  TOM MORGAN, father of Melissa and Will, and business partner who foreclosed on Ed Kulick

  IGNATIUS WHITE FALLS, Blackfoot Indian who believes Will’s spirit is in a goat

  LAURA MORGAN, Melissa’s mother

  AMANDA KULICK, Marcus’s mother, supporter of her husband’s point of view

  GRANDMA, Marcus’s grandmother, with whom he lives while at school

  JIM HARVEY, a hand on the Morgan ranch

  BOX MARX, policeman who arrests Marcus

  DR. ROBERT WING, wildlife manager and expert on the law of compensation in hunting and predation

  JEROME MORGAN, Melissa’s aunt, a lawyer, justice of the peace and owner of the Chalet

  SINGING BIRD, wife of Ignatius White Falls, and a witness to weddings at the Chalet

  FRED PORTER, New York hunter who likes to hunt but respects animals

  JOHN HERBERT, New York hunter who feels as Fred does

  LARRY WISEMAN, New York hunter who hungers for a trophy of a goat head

  GOAT CHARACTERS

  OLD GORE, dominant billy goat, king of the cliffs and crags

  ROMAN NOSE, second dominant billy goat, friend of Old Gore

  MOLLY, young, motherly nanny goat

  JASON, her spry, inquisitive kid

  TWISTED HORN, matronly, steady nanny goat

  REMUS, her kid

  HELEN, sleek, fleet nanny goat

  ROMULUS, her yearling

  MEDUSA, wooly nanny who dwells apart from others

  PAUL, her unsociable yearling

  CASSIOPEIA, three-year-old nanny

  ANDROMEDA, nanny whose kid died; step-mother to Remus

  ORION, three-year-old billy

  PERSEUS, three-year-old billy

  1

  THE JAW

  The sun blazed triumphantly on the first day of the hunting season. It turned the white peaks of the Montana mountains gold and made bright trinkets of the yellow aspen leaves.

  Marcus Kulick adjusted the sling of his hunting rifle and paused on the steep trail that led to the high country. The Jaw Mountain was in view now and he could rest and admire it. The jagged peak was well named. In the frosty morning it looked like a white bone in which monstrous teeth were set. Not a cloud marred its beauty, from the bottom of the glacier-cut bowl where he stood to the top of the brutal peak.

  Marcus scanned the icy peak that dominated the Mission Range of western Montana. Somewhere on its hostile slopes walked a mountain goat, a regal beast with black eyes, dagger-like horns and pure white fur. His beard was a legendary seven inches long and his massive shoulders were humped mountains. He was called “Old Gore” in the valley, for years ago he had spiked a hunter and led another to his death off a steep cliff. Old Gore dwelled in clouds and storms. He appeared and disappeared, the massive white king of the mountain whom every hunter in Hungry Bear Valley aspired to shoot.

  Marcus felt lucky. Only twenty-five permits had been issued by the Montana Game Commission to hunt mountain goats this year. Out of the thousands of applicants his name had been drawn. Mountain goats were not food like the elk and deer, but “trophy animals,” to be mounted by a taxidermist and hung on the wall. The man with a goat head over his fireplace had status. He had proved his endurance and skill in the mountains, his knowledge of wild things and of steep crags and avalanches, for goats dwell only in the high peaks. They lure the hunter higher than the timber wolf and mountain lion, up beyond the grizzly and the elk to the very top of North America, where the winds scream and avalanches await the weak and unlearned.

  Marcus stared at the Jaw and recalled the morning he had found his permit in the mailbox of his ranch home. He had run the mile to town to tell his father, Ed Kulick, the president of the Montana Rifle Club. Ed was in his office above the post office and, suspecting that the coveted pink envelope might be for himself, growled when he heard the news. Then he thought about it and slapped Marcus on the shoulder. “You’ll be the first sixteen-year-old in Montana to bring down a goat,” he had said. “My son.” He puffed on his pipe. “You know your mountains well. You’ll get one.”

  Marcus was a hunter. He, like his father and grandfather, had stocked the meat house on the Kulick ranch with elk, deer and bear; and the year he became sixteen he had carved the venison roast on Thanksgiving. A Thanksgiving dinner at the Kulick ranch house was a hunter’s ceremony. A whole venison was put on the spit in the huge walk-in fireplace in the dining hall and the male Kulicks, grandfather, uncles, fathers and sons, cooked and carved it.

  Marcus had learned to hunt at five. Since then he had brought home elk, deer, jackrabbits, wild grouse and one year he had killed a grizzly bear. When the hunting season had closed that year, Marcus took up target shooting and won the National Rifle Association’s state-wide medal. After that he had garnered so many medals that even his mother had lost count of them.

  Now, out here on the mountain he would bring home the real prize—Old Gore.

  A month ago Marcus had started a beard in preparation for this hunt. The sideburns were red; the soft hair over the lip, gray. Only the chin beard was black like his hair. Yesterday when he had trimmed this colorful beard, he had day-dreamed of Melissa. He often did, thinking back to the time when they had first met. She was in fifth grade, he was in seventh. She was standing close to him under the North Fork Bridge and he had just kissed her. Swallows dove over their heads and the river sang at their feet. The deep shadows under the bridge had turned her red-gold hair into canyon colors. His hands were trembling. Her cheeks were bright and flushed.

  “Let’s be in love forever,” he had said when the school bell rang the end of recess and she had turned and darted out into the sunlight.

  So much had happened since that day. Marcus wondered at the complicated web that time and people and events had woven around them. He shook his head, rubbed his beard and forced himself to think of the goat of the Jaw.

  Marcus felt a bit uneasy and somewhat nervous. Old Gore was luring him up the mountain as he had many hunters before him. The goat brought hunters up the demonic Jaw, then disappeared and left them to the mountain. Occasionally ledges broke under their feet and injured them, and once, legend had it, Old Gore’s mountain had sent a hunter running with bolts of lightning and shots of wind.

  Marcus took out his binoculars and studied the enemy. Sheer walls dropped down from the jagged peak, then sloped off gently where the mudstone lay. Wild grasses and blue penstemons colored these high slopes. He focused his field glasses on the flower beds, for it was here the mountain goats grazed and rested. He saw no goats.

  An icy wind from the high glacier blew down the trail and stung his face. Marcus moved forward cautiously. He was
testing his knowledge and skill against the white goat’s. The test was dangerous. He hoped he would find Old Gore below the glacial cirque. Above it the weather was brutal. It was marked by instant storms and thundering avalanches, the elements that had protected the goat from wolf and lion and helped it evolve into a fleet-footed mountaineer. The goat was a creature of chasms and glaciers, of perpendicular walls and violent storms. Marcus shivered, thrilled by the adventure before him—rocks, ice, wind and a canny foe. He strode up the trail, the long, winding path that zigzagged up the mountain. The Blackfoot Indians called it “Going to the Sun.”

  2

  THE KNIFE RIM

  A stone rolled off the trail about fifty feet above Marcus’s head, bounced through the false huckleberries and came to a stop in front of him. He heard footfalls and looked up. Someone else was on the trail. Perhaps another hunter was aiming his gun at the great white goat. Marcus shifted his pack, hiked swiftly around a hairpin switchback and jogged uphill to another.

  As he rounded the second bend, the wind shifted and he could hear the person striding down the trail toward the Knife Rim, the narrow blade of rock that ran between the lowland valley and the bottom of the glacial cirque. It was the most treacherous stretch of the trail, a slim ledge that dropped four hundred feet on either side. Climbers had problems passing each other on the Knife, for the trail was narrow, and packs and gear wide. Marcus tightened the straps on his pack and glanced up the mountain. He would like to be off the Knife Rim before the twilight darkened the trail. Thrusting his thumbs into his hip belt, he accelerated his pace, rounded the switchback and came upon the Rim.

  Here Marcus stopped. A young man was tramping across the narrow reef. Marcus recognized him immediately. He was Melissa’s brother, Will Morgan.

  The Morgans and the Kulicks had not spoken to each other since the day four years ago when Tom Morgan, Melissa’s father, had foreclosed on a business deal with Ed Kulick, Marcus’s father. Ed was forced into bankruptcy and the Kulicks lost their ranch.

  In the years that followed, Ed Kulick gave hunting lessons and acted as a guide. He also took the job as President of the Montana Rifle Club.

  Two days after the foreclosure Ed Kulick took Marcus out of school in Bear Valley and sent him to Missoula to live with his grandmother and attend school there. No son of his, Ed had said, would sit in the same building with a Morgan offspring.

  The Morgans, their fortunes booming, sent their children to Eastern boarding schools, and Marcus and Melissa did not see each other for almost two years.

  On a summer noon of that year Marcus ran into the post office to pick up the family mail. Melissa, head bent, was filling out a form at the window. Billy Fred, a Morgan ranch hand, had his face to the wall, opening his mailbox.

  “Melissa,” Marcus whispered hoarsely. “Don’t look up. Meet me under the bridge at four.” He could see the soft veins in her neck swell and her cheek muscles tighten. Then she nodded and glanced at Billy Fred. The ranch hand was struggling with his lock combination. Melissa turned and smiled at Marcus. His hands moved out to touch her hand, but he thought better of it. He might never let go.

  “At four,” he said softly and backed out of the door without checking the mail.

  Marcus arrived at three and waited on the familiar slope under the bridge, tossing stones into the river, thinking great dreams for himself and Melissa. The swallows darted back and forth.

  Promptly at four a horse galloped into the school yard. Presently footsteps sounded and Melissa came down the embankment. Marcus ran to meet her, then pulled her close.

  “Melissa,” he said, “I still love you. I can’t carry on the family feud.” He kissed her on the nose.

  “Neither can I,” she said. “I think of you all the time and dream I am with you.” Marcus put his arms around her and rocked her softly against his body.

  For the next two weeks they left messages under the post-office steps and met as often as they dared. Sometimes they arranged to ride horses to the national forest north of Hungry Bear. There they met by a waterfall and swam, and talked and dreamed of a cabin on the side of a mountain where only bears and swallows came.

  One day they raced their horses out of the forest. They laughed and shouted until they reached the old lumbering road. Then they stopped in silence. Billy Fred was passing on his horse. He glanced at them, kicked his mare and rode off toward the Morgan ranch.

  “He saw us,” Melissa said. “I may not be seeing you for a while.”

  Marcus did not hear from Melissa until late August; then a postcard signed “The North Fork Bridge” arrived from Milan, Italy, and he surmised that her parents had sent her away. Each day he checked the steps but found no more notes from her.

  Now it was September 15, the first day of the hunting season, and Marcus was face to face with Melissa’s brother, Will.

  Although he had not seen Will since seventh grade, Marcus recognized the blazing red hair and white eyelashes. They were a Morgan identification badge. Will also recognized Marcus. He stopped on the Knife and studied him, a glint of surprise in his eyes.

  Marcus shifted his rifle and walked forward to meet him.

  “Hello,” Marcus said.

  “Hello.” Will’s lip trembled nervously. “Hunting?”

  “Yeah. You?” Marcus looked at Will’s rifle and meat pack. “Elk?” he asked.

  “Meat. I’m hunting meat.” Then Marcus saw the gleaming black tip of a goat horn protruding from Will’s pack. No one in Bear Valley had a permit but himself.

  “You’ve got a goat head,” Marcus said. “Let’s see your permit.”

  Will shrugged. “I don’t need one.” His white lashes lowered over his gray eyes. He turned sideways and tried to pass. Marcus could see the back of his thick neck. Will was his age but shorter than he by about four inches. However, Will was more massive, perhaps twenty pounds heavier. The pack he was carrying jutted a foot above his head and was laden with ropes, ice axes, cutting knives and crampons. Marcus judged it weighed seventy pounds. His own pack tipped the scale at forty-five.

  “You do need a permit,” Marcus said.

  “Are you telling me what I need?”

  “I’m telling you, you need a permit.”

  “You’re as stupid as your old man,” Will said and laughed derisively.

  Anger roared through Marcus’s body and he stepped back so as not to strike the leering face.

  “You’re as dumb as your old man,” Will said again.

  Marcus felt the blood pounding at his temples. He clenched his fists, closed his eyes and counted to ten. Then he moved to pass Will Morgan and get on his way.

  Will stopped him with a shoulder.

  “No, you don’t,” he snapped.

  Marcus hesitated. Death in the mountains could be a push or a gun shot, and no one ever knew whether it was accident or murder. He was face to face with Will on the Knife. A few feet on either side, precipices yawned.

  “Let me pass, please,” Marcus said quietly.

  “Bow down,” said Will. “I’ll walk over you.” He grinned, exposing his large white teeth and pink gums.

  Marcus spread his feet and balanced firmly. Then he saw Will’s eyes and fist, and his jaw blazed with pain. Warm blood trickled from his mouth.

  “You’re crazy,” Marcus shouted. “Don’t fight here. Let me pass.”

  A second blow struck Marcus’s nose. Anger welled up in him. He clenched his fist to hold back years of resentment. Will grinned. Marcus struck. His knuckles sank into Will’s neck. Will staggered, dazed. Reeling unsteadily, he stepped back with one foot, then the other. One more step and he would fall. He stepped back again. Marcus reached for him. Will clutched the air with claw-like fingers, Marcus held him for an instant, then the goat-weighted pack pulled Will backwards and he could hold him no more. Marcus looked with horror into Will’s wide eyes. The Jaw was reflected in the black pupils, and then he fell backwards off the Knife.

  Marcus dropped to his knees.
He wailed as the body bounced and fell on, irrevocably, moving down with the forces of the earth. His own voice echoed back and forth between the walls of the glacial cirque. Over and over, over and over, it repeated his wailing grief, long after the body had struck its resting place and was still.

  Marcus looked around. He was in a dream. But real tears splashed from his eyes and perspiration poured down his cheeks. Slowly he arose. The Jaw was before him, the path was under his feet, his flesh was warm.

  “My God,” he cried. “What have I done? What have I done? This can’t be happening to me.”

  He looked up the mountain. The blue-green ice in the cirque, the green sills where the goats wandered, called to him. He must run. They were summoning him up into the rocks. He must keep on hiking, walk on and on toward Old Gore. Who would know? Who would ever know? He sucked in his breath. Accidents occurred on the Jaw. Marcus need only to cross the Knife Rim and set up his camp. He need only to spend the week hunting Old Gore as he had planned. In a few days he would forget the sight of the flying body that had turned and floated like an eagle. Perhaps tomorrow when Will Morgan did not come down from his hunting trip, a search would begin. They would ask Marcus if he had seen him. “No,” he would say. “Is anything wrong?” And they would go away and leave him to his hunting.

  Marcus ran up the Knife Rim. In a few days he would come down from the Jaw triumphantly bearing the great white goat. He would carry the coveted trophy on his back and march into Bear Valley amid cheers and shouts. He would pause in the center of his home town of Hungry Bear, and his father would run to greet him. No one would guess that he had struck Will. No one would know, for they had not seen each other in three years.

  Marcus’s mouth was dry, his arms tingled. He stopped and focused his eyes on the Jaw. A paralyzing fear prevented his legs from moving. It was as if he were nailed to the Knife Rim. Marcus turned around. He looked down the trail. Tears welled into his eyes as slowly, slowly, he clutched his knee in both hands, picked up one immobile leg and put it down.