The Escort

The days were getting much shorter. The Sun barely made himself known, bouncing for just a moment off the corn snow then charging back into the clouds. Much like a young boy at play.

He had walked only a mile or two when his aged body surrendered to thirsts’ demands. The small creek was only a short walk through Willow Draw, in summer a botanical delight, full of ferns and large leafed plants that even in then appear to have been lost on a journey somewhere tropical. They were nowhere to be seen on this cold, faint day. He reached the spot, overcome by winter’s blanket of drifted snow, pocked by an occasional cottonwood branch or a gob of leaves welded together by soil, shadows and wet.

Many elk have moved through here he thought as he came on to a set of singular tracks headed away from the water across a jagged rock slide and up to a sunny ledge. Mountain lion. He looked around instinctually, hunching his shoulders a bit, searching the cliffs above. The hair on his neck bristled and stood up at attention. Listening for a fallen boulder or crunching snow. The tracks were fresh. He knew that. The people of the Shining Mountains would all know that. The cat was near.

The irony of death. Once a great chief, now walking alone to the wilderness of another place, the next level of life. A destination long ago written into the story. Honor. The old man had asked for company, maybe even in the form of this panther, who may very well be hungry enough for this old Ute.

He sat and rested for a moment, remembering the days that he had run through these woods in pursuit of game or to elude his friends in the games of the warriors. He felt his heart pounding away in his chest like that monster on the steel rails that he had once seen near the Great River. Again the thirst was getting the best of him. He arose and picked his way through the shale and up onto a flat spot above the stream. Just as he began his descent he saw the cat, alert, standing vigil on a outcropping fifty feet above timberline. The animal had seen him and watched with the intensity common to these creatures. Was he hunting?

White Goat had been named by his mother some 46 years ago. She had watched mountain goat and bighorn sheep traverse these mountains with uncanny skill, hanging off ledges, scampering up morsels of rock, disappearing from predators through metamorphic pyramids. The creatures were in complete harmony with their world, natural and at peace for the short stay. She wanted her son to be like the animals. Some ten years passed before they saw their first White man. It was then that they knew the old ways would soon disappear.

He wished he still possessed the agility of a warrior as he stumbled through mangled aspen, battered by boulders spat out with the scowl of some ancient avalanche. Among these pathetic stumps sprouted new branches, not knowing what else to do but grow tall in the face of their smothered predicament. He reached the water and drank. Satisfaction short lived, his eyes scanned the ledge above but the cat was gone.

Perhaps he is stalking me from a hiding place in the pines, thought White Goat. But there is plenty of other, more appetizing game about. Why would the lion want an old man? Bones and a little hair are all that’s left of me. Not much of a meal for a mighty panther. I am only a minor player in my own death. I must deliver my spirit and I am tired.

The old man stretched out under some aspen trees in a glen that would be full of water in the spring. It was frozen now with icicles dangled like dripping daggers all about the alpine thicket. He wrapped himself in his blanket and fell asleep dreaming of the bright simple world of his father, Red Buck, and the dark, blue-eyed future in store for his beloved children. Tears accompanied him to sleep.

During the night he heard something moving in the woods. A younger man would have investigated the intrusion. But White Goat just rolled over away from it, exposing his back to whatever it may have been. He was on his final journey. No reason to fight it. Maybe it would be concluded there.

In the morning he awoke refreshed in a way that had eluded him for many years. He felt that he would make it a long way before the next night fell. He peered through the forest, down the stream and up into the high mountains. There was the lion once again, eyes fixed on him. The animal did not snarl, nor did it move for a few moments. Then it turned in one swift motion and bounded upward and out of sight.

Although not entirely certain why, White Goat followed climbing effortlessly up the steep path, over snowfields and into the open. He got a whiff of the cat, still ahead of him. It stopped and looked back, then hid from the old man’s gaze. If he fails to catch his intended prey he might circle back and jump me from the rear, thought White Goat. He looked around the silent domes, his name condemned to the dance card of this feline predator. White Goat took refuge in a small cave knowing feeble attempts to hide from the beast would be fruitless.

He was growing hungry but there would be great feasts where he was bound. The cat was nowhere to be seen and he resumed his trek. His path took him down through heavily wooded banks that he once embraced as redoubt from the angry Comanche after Ute raiding parties picked the plains dwellers clean. Horses and slaves. Further on would be the great park where he had traded with the Apache and the Arapaho during rendezvous. To the east were the boot-black smokestacks of the whites.

The west hosts the plateaus of the Paiutes, the Wasatch Mountains and later the Shoshone and Bannock. As a young chief he had traveled to the Salt Lake for a great pow wow with these tribes. He had seen Crow and Nez Perce. All sought refuge against the whites, their mines and railroads but the wise ones knew it would not be.

The lion appeared again standing softly in a small clearing near the approach to a tight valley. It had once been summer’s lush, green bottomland. Now it was suspended in frozen sleep. The cat was preening itself contentedly. Then it was gone again.

What a lovely valley this has always been, thought White Goat even though the game is far below and the weather quite severe up this high. He walked to the tree line where he could view the silver mountains. Then he sat down. There was the lion perched, only yards away watching. The trip had exhausted him and he reclined on one elbow, his breathing was heavier, more desperate. He realized he would never sit back up again. Pulling in the thin air became an impossible effort. His eyes closed. The wind picked up. His spirit passed and the beast went back down the mountain, another soul safely home.

– Kevin Haley