This elk was making a fool of him.
He had been following the bull since first light, moving carefully through the timber above the lower valley, stopping whenever the wind shifted, listening whenever the woods seemed to change their mind. Twice he had nearly gotten a shot. Twice the mountain had taken the chance away from him. Now he stood still among the pines, one hand on his bow, listening to his own breathing and the faint rustle of the trees.
Nothing.
He looked down at the track again. The animal was still ahead of him. Heavy. Unhurried. Certain it belonged here. He smiled despite himself. Then he moved on.
The ground angled upward for a time, and the trees thinned as he climbed. Stone showed through the roots. Wind moved more freely here, carrying the smell of cold water and open ground. He pushed through a last stand of timber and came out onto higher rock. Then he stopped.
Below him lay a place he had never seen.
A flat lake rested in the bowl beneath him, still and dark except where morning light touched it. From its southern edge a creek slipped away, winding southeast across the open ground as if it already knew where it was going. Farther down, glinting in the sunrise, just above a falls, another creek entered from the south and joined it.
The land between was broad and open, framed like a great bowl.
To the east, the ridge rose steep and broken, the Flatirons standing out like a shattered wall catching the morning sun. To the west, the ground climbed more gently toward a smoother ridge, timbered and long-backed. Between those rising walls lay the flat shelf and the meadows below it, green and quiet and rich with water.
And farther south, beyond the shelf, the country fell away into the valley below—In a future time it would be named St. Vrain country, though he did not call it that. From where he stood, the whole place seemed gathered into one shape: lake, shelf in the middle, open ground below, water threading through it all.
He forgot the elk. For a long moment he simply stared.
The mountain above gave him a clear view of the whole basin. He could see game trails crossing the flats. Sunlight flashed along the creek bends. A stand of darker timber near the western rise promised shelter from weather. Even at this distance, the place looked alive.
Then he saw movement. Not the bull, but cows grazing lower down near the water, lifting their heads now and then, easy and unafraid.
His hunter’s mind returned, but slower now, changed by what his eyes had found.
He crouched and watched.
If the elk fed here, others would too. Deer. Smaller game. Fish would be in that water—he could feel it even before he saw the first ring spread across the lake’s surface. Beaver might work the lower creek where the banks softened. There would be berries later in the season. Good timber close at hand. Water that did not have to be searched for.
A place worth coming back to. A place worth remembering.
He stayed on the mountain longer than he meant to, studying it all—the broken eastern wall, the gentler western rise, the joining creeks above the falls, the open shelf, the wider valley below. It seemed less like a chance discovery than something waiting to be seen.
At last he eased back from the rock and breathed again. The eagle cried out from above and there was the bull. A clean kill. He began the work of moving the food down to the lake on the flat almost as if he was meant to be there…
He had come following one elk.
Instead, crossing over the pass from that northern height, he had found a place large enough to hold many seasons. As he worked over the following days it seemed as if there were no others. No sign at all… A few bear had come to the smell of meat but his was good, packed into the snow. Two fresh kills further out near the falls kept them busy. He watched the fish and made a trap that fed him also. Below the trees on the southern end of the lake he had found enough stone to make a crude windbreak fire shelter. He did not know it yet but that one little wall below the tree would become home soon. The others would come and see it too. It was as if the Great Spirit had made this land for him.
As he climbed back over the pass he knew. The others would see. This place was his.