Legend Keepers: The Promise

By Bruce Smith

Garson and Buddy are bound by the prophecy of looming peril foretold in an ancient legend. But a boy and a mountain goat's unlikely friendship and determination are not enough to halt the return of the Great Warming. In this fast-paced and inspiring final book of the Legend Keepers eco-adventure, each must overcome personal challenges a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hidden Shelf Publishing House
• Release date: Aug 13, 2024
• ISBN: 9781955893411

Bruce Smith

Bruce Smith is a wildlife biologist and science writer. He spent most of his 30-year federal career managing wildlife populations on the Wind River Indian Reservation and the National Elk Refuge in Wyoming. His research has produced over 40 technical and popular papers and book chapters focused primarily on large mammal population ecology, diseases, migratory behavior, and predator-prey relationships. After a combat tour with the US Marines in Vietnam, Bruce earned B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Montana. His Master's research focused on winter ecology of mountain goats in Montana's Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area. Half-way through his government career, he investigated population regulation of the Jackson elk herd in Wyoming for his doctorate degree from the University of Wyoming. His first book, Imperfect Pasture (2004), records changes in the ecology of the National Elk Refuge during its 100-year history. Wildlife on the Wind (2010) is based on his four years working with the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Indian tribes. At their request, he catalogued the status of the reservation's diverse wildlife and helped foster a landmark recovery of elk, deer, moose, bighorn sheep, and pronghorn antelope. Where Elk Roam (2011) chronicles his 22 years studying and managing Jackson Hole's famous migratory elk herd. Life on the Rocks (2014) portrays in words and photographs the natural history and conservation challenges of the mountain goat throughout its North American range. His latest nonfiction book, Stories from Afield, is a collection of outdoor adventure stories. After leaving the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 2004, Bruce and his wife Diana moved to southwest Montana where he continues his conservation work and writing.

Book preview

LegendKeepersPromise Head Image

Written by Bruce Smith

Hidden Shelf Publishing House

P.O. Box 4168, McCall, Idaho 83638

www.hiddenshelfpublishinghouse.com

Legend Keepers: The Partnership

Copyright © 2024, Bruce Smith

Hidden Shelf Publishing House

All rights reserved

Cover Art: Diana Smith

Graphic Design: Rachel Wickstrom

Interior Layout: Kerstin Stokes

Editor: Jessi Lowe

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Names: Smith, Bruce L., author.

Title: Legend keepers : the promise / Bruce Smith.

Series: Legend Keepers

Description: McCall, ID: Hidden Shelf Publishing House, 2024.

Summary: Garson and Buddy are bound by the prophecy of looming peril foretold in an ancient legend. But a boy and a mountain goat’s unlikely friendship and determination are not enough to halt the return of the Great Warming.

Identifiers: ISBN: 978-1-955893-44-2 (hardcover) | 978-1-955893-42-8 (paperback) | 978-1-955893-41-1 (Kindle) | 978-1-955893-43-5 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH Mountain goats--Juvenile fiction. | Climactic changes--Juvenile fiction. | Friendship--Juvenile fiction. | Human-animal relationships--Juvenile fiction. | Montana--Juvenile fiction. | BISAC

JUVENILE FICTION / Animals / General | JUVENILE FICTION / Science & Nature / Environment | JUVENILE FICTION / Legends, Myths, Fables

General Classification: LCC PZ7.1 .S65 Le 2024 | DDC [Fic]--dc23

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

The Legend Story, Told by Roark the Raven

Chapter One

­­Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Epilogue

About the Author

To the Reader

Legend Keepers Map

If you think you’re too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a room with a mosquito.

—African Proverb

The Legend Story as Told by Roark the Raven

Long, long ago, toward the end of the Great Ice Age, a Great Warming began melting snow and ice from the mountains of the West. Animals that lived in the cold either adapted to the changing conditions or they perished.

"As hardship befell both goats and ravens on Goat Mountain, two legendary heroes stepped forth—the mystical billy goat, Mouw, and Ten, the magical raven. As told in the Legend, Mouw mined rock with his horns, freeing slabs of limestone from the valleys. He heaped the rock onto Ten’s broad back. Load after load, Ten winged skyward on the morning updrafts and piled the rock where Shining Mountain stands today. Soaring so high into the sky, the summit grew a dome of snow and ice. Shining Mountain became a refuge from the Great Warming.

Because the lives of ravens and goats are forever linked, together these ancient heroes built a lofty new home.

Chapter One

Return to Goat Mountain

Tuesday, October 1

Buddy didn’t know it would be so hard. Finding her band of mountain goats a new place to live was proving complicated. And dangerous. She and her adoptive mother, Oreo, were leaving Shining Mountain. When they arrived at their ancestral home on Goat Mountain, they’d face their biggest test. She knew it. Oreo knew it better still. They’d need to convince the members of their band to leave and travel to a new home they had never seen.

Buddy had explored Shining Mountain and found that it would provide a refuge from the hardships of the Great Warming. Meltwaters from its summit glacier fed gardens of tasty and nutritious grazing. When snow buried the mountain, sprawling cliffs on the mountain’s west flank provided a winter sanctuary for the band of goats who now lived there.

Yes, Shining Mountain would make a fine new home, but there was this new problem.

The band’s matriarch, the one who ruled the roost, did not want a new band invading her mountain.

Each band has its own home, Mystic had told Buddy that morning. We have enough resources for ourselves. For how long, I don’t know. Make do with what you have.

Don’t fret over what we can’t control, Oreo counseled Buddy as they ambled down Shining Mountain. We must keep our attention on the task at hand. Stay alert for Ursidarr and men.

Buddy listened carefully. She knew Oreo was right. The forest through which they must pass once again could be sinister. When they had traveled here in August, it was nearly the end of them both. Ursidarr’s attack on Oreo could have taken her life, rather than the bear just ripping a gash in her shoulder. Their separation, caused by the attack, left Buddy vulnerable in a place without cliffs or crags. Alone, and without those safe havens of the mountain goat’s domain, Buddy was a thirty-pound meal on the hoof awaiting a predator’s jaws and claws.

Not a bear, but a run-in with human men at the wasteland nearly ended Buddy’s search for a new home. Instead, Whodare, a pint-sized yet fearless pygmy owl, tricked the men and guided Buddy onward. Against all odds, she and Oreo reunited at Shining Mountain.

During the five weeks they waited for Oreo’s injured shoulder to mend, Buddy had met Tenanmouw. To the other goats’ surprise, the burly billy had welcomed this kid goat from an unknown place. He showed her the lushest gardens where Shining Mountain’s melting glacier watered tasty grasses and flowering plants. He also saved her from death by wolverine. Twice!

The other goats in his band didn’t know that Tenanmouw shared a special bond with Buddy. They were the Legend Keepers from their respective bands, the latest in a long line of goats entrusted with guarding the Legend of Shining Mountain … and the future it foretold.

But Tenanmouw was not the leader of his band. In mountain goat society, matriarchs ruled. Those dominant nannies called the shots. And Mystic had made clear that Buddy, Oreo, and their band from Goat Mountain were unwelcome on Shining Mountain. All Buddy had strived to do now seemed in vain.

As she and Oreo plunged into the forest of whitebark pines, a jumble of uneasy feelings gripped Buddy. Among them, she was leaving the place she’d met Garson, the human boy who promised to help her band. Would he be able to stop the warming? And would she see him again?

Buddy felt dispirited. Defeated. It made her feel like curling up in a warm spot in the sun. And staying there. But giving up wasn’t in her nature.

Soon the forest’s firs and spruces crowded the whitebark pines. Their crowns mingled like interlocking fingers, blotting out the sky. That cramped, creepy feeling seized Buddy once again. I shouldn’t be here.

Oreo felt no better about facing the upcoming dangers.

After tramping downhill for hours, weaving through fallen trees and underbrush, the ridge began to level. That could mean just one thing. They were approaching the wasteland—the place where yellow clankers and round-footed rumblers lived. These black-breathed belching beasts, and the men that lived in them, felled the trees with Rrrrrripers, rounded them up with clankers, loaded them onto rumblers, and sent them down the east side of the mountain. What fate awaited them, Buddy didn’t know. It must be terrible, she winced. Maybe they’re eaten by other clankers—or maybe by men!

Buddy shuddered. We should be able to hear them by now. Instead, the forest was still as the depths of a glacier’s crevasse. She only heard the racket in her head.

Buddy stopped; her feet locked in place.

What is it? Oreo asked.

The wasteland.

We’re not there yet.

But we’re close.

Oreo saw that Buddy was trembling.

I can’t help but remembering that man who chased me when I was here before. Buddy paused. I was so scared.

Oreo stepped beside her and lovingly licked an ear.

If it hadn’t been for Whodare, he might have caught me. And then …

I know, but he didn’t, Oreo interjected. She rubbed her chin along the top of Buddy’s head. I too have Whodare to thank. She guided me to your trail after the rain had washed away your scent. She brought us back together.

I wish I could repay her for all she did. Maybe we’ll see her, Buddy said hopefully, looking into Oreo’s ebony eyes.

Maybe we will, if her territory’s still here.

Oreo’s words struck Buddy like a blast of winter wind. Is that possible? Would Whodare leave because of what the men did to the trees where she lives?

Like their moods, the sky had grown somber since they’d left Shining Mountain. No longer a patchwork of white clouds prancing on blue, a leaden gloom smothered the sun. The temperature was dropping.

A storm is coming, Oreo warned.

A sudden blast of wind shook the forest. Branches clashed with those of neighboring trees. Lean trees squeaked. A distant crash rattled them both. Buddy huddled close to Oreo.

When calm returned and pine boughs again hung listless, they pushed on, deep in thought. Only their footfalls on dried needles and twigs interrupted the silence.

There it is, Buddy blurted.

In a broadening saddle between forested drop-offs on either side, the wasteland loomed.

They crept to the edge and peeked through a final curtain of trees. Was the wasteland as they remembered it? Were the round-footed rumblers and yellow clankers that spewed black breath still there? Just asleep?

A stark landscape sprawled before them. Only a few spindly saplings remained standing. The stacks of limbless pine and fir trunks that Buddy had seen before were gone. Splotches of blackened ground marked where heaping piles of limbs and shrubs had studded the wasteland. A charred smell fouled the air. The only comfort was the absence of clankers and rumblers.

I’m glad they’re gone. And the men who live inside them, Buddy said with a heavy sigh.

All that remained of the forest were hundreds and hundreds of two-foot-high bumps, like so many gravestones memorializing a former land of giants.

It looks bigger than before, Oreo said.

Oreo’s words made Buddy feel anxious. Could even more trees be gone?

Oreo, let’s find Whodare.

"And how do you intend to find her? Last time, she found you. And in the dark."

Buddy scrunched her forehead. Maybe start where I first saw her. By the big spruce tree that I spent the night under. Her expression brightened. And call her name.

Skeptical as she was, Oreo knew how important Buddy’s friendships were to her. Whodare—like Roark, Maurice, and Tenanmouw—had found and befriended her in time of need. They helped Buddy reach her goal. Each one also saved her life.

They skirted the edge of the wasteland, staying vigilant for signs of men—just in case. Maybe they’re hiding, Buddy whispered, like a mountain lion waiting to ambush us.

At the southern edge of the wasteland, Buddy paused and scanned the forest. It should be around here. The big tree with branches bending to the ground was nowhere to be seen. They searched a little farther. No luck. Nothing looks familiar, Buddy lamented.

Are you sure this is the right place? Oreo asked.

I thought it was …Whodare! Buddy called.

The ears of both goats twisted and strained for any sound.

Whodare, she called again. Did you hear that, Oreo?

A muffled Took, took floated from the forest.

That’s Whodare telling us where she is.

But where did it come from?

They padded east along the edge of the wasteland.

Whodare!

Took, took came the reply, louder than before.

It’s coming from that tree! Oreo gestured her nose toward a flattened lodgepole pine lying along the border of the wasteland. Most of its branches were dead. Bark has slipped from part of the trunk.

Whodare, where are you? Buddy bleated.

Took, took.

"She must be inside the tree," Oreo said.

Sure enough, that’s where the Took-tooking came from. Yet, they couldn’t see her.

Took, took. In here I am.

Her voice was muffled because the hole from which Whodare hooted was mostly under the trunk. The goats could only see one of the pygmy owl’s huge golden eyes glaring out.

Staring helps me not. Out of here you must get me!

Buddy interpreted Whodare’s outburst for Oreo, who didn’t share Buddy’s gift to talk with owls and other animals.

Ignoring the urge to ask how she’d become trapped, the goats sized up the situation. This was a thick-trunked tree. Much larger and heavier than they could budge. Except. Above the hole where Whodare was trapped, the trunk had snapped clear through. The bottom twelve feet—including the hole containing Whodare—were separated from the rest.

That crash we heard earlier must be when this tree blew down, Oreo said.

How strange, Buddy thought, that Whodare would be inside.

After Oreo made sure no rocks would keep them from rolling the log, she smiled at Buddy. We might be able to do this.

Free me you will, Whodare hooted excitedly, as a feather spun from the hole.

The goats centered