Magdalena Mountain

      Copyright © 2018 by Robert Michael Pyle

      First paperback edition: 2018

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is unintended and entirely coincidental.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Pyle, Robert Michael, author.

      Title: Magdalena Mountain / Robert Michael Pyle.

      Description: Berkeley, CA : Counterpoint Press, [2018]

      Identifiers: LCCN 2017060550 | ISBN 9781640090774 (softcover) | eISBN 9781640090781

      Subjects: LCSH: Quests (Expeditions)—Fiction. | Wilderness areas—Fiction. | Naturalists—Fiction. | Butterflies—Fiction.

      Classification: LCC PS3616.Y545 M34 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017060550

      Jacket designed by Kelly Winton

      Book designed by Jordan Koluch

      COUNTERPOINT

      2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318

      Berkeley, CA 94710

       www.counterpointpress.com

      Printed in the United States of America

      Distributed by Publishers Group West

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      For the women

      who made this book possible:

      JoAnne, Sally, Thea, Mary Jane, Jan, and Florence

      ∼they know what they did∼

      and, of course,

      for Maggie May

      BEFORE

      Should a landing craft from elsewhere settle onto Magdalena Mountain on an early-autumn morning, the visitors might arrive at two conclusions. First, this world is a golden one; the denizens must have monochromatic vision. Second, this world is harsh; the citizens must be tough. Upon leaving, they would jot field notes such as “inhospitable, but rather pretty in a raw sort of way” in their intergalactic log.

      On both counts they would be partly right. The rockslide and its environs indeed glitter in September’s dawn. On the fellfield, all the prostrate herbage has yellowed, except for certain low shrubs that have turned red, and they only lend depth to the overall gold. Sliding up the ridges, the tongues of aspenwood range, in their clones, from cinnamon to lemon, with orange-peel and persimmon in between. Even the granite, the substance of the scene, shines with a varied patina in the rising sun and morning frost, mica catching the sun’s color, feldspar pink going to peach, gray feldspar to platinum.

      So, golden. And rough. But not necessarily inhospitable. True enough, humanity seldom appears on the scene. But there are lives below the surface, many of them. Now, in the chilly gilt of oncoming autumn, they come out of the rocks to bask. They suck every calorie of warmth from the cool fire of the alpenglow. For soon enough, afternoon cloud will rise, promising something rougher yet: rocks in winter. For now, frost holds off. Then the sun passes beyond its perigee, and all the gold is gone. Most of the animals retreat beneath the stones, as a minute caterpillar creeps down deep into a withered tussock of grass.

      1

      The yellow Karmann Ghia left the road at forty-five. Its tires never scored the soft tissue of the tundra. It simply flew over the edge, into the mountain abyss.

      A lookout marmot shrilled at the sight. A pair of pikas, young of the year, disappeared beneath their rockpile as the strange object passed overhead. Clearing the stony incline, the doomed auto glided over the rich mountain turf. Its shadow fell across a patch of alpine forget-me-nots, deepening their hue from sky to delft, then passed over a pink clump of moss campion. A black butterfly nectaring on the campion twitched at the momentary shading. Such a shift of light often signaled a coming storm, sending the alpine insects into hiding among the sod or stones. But this cloud passed quickly, so the sipping butterfly hunkered only briefly, then resumed its suck from the sweet-filled floret. A bigger black form took flight when the bright intruder entered its territory. The raven charged the big yellow bird to chase the interloper out of its airspace, succeeded, and resettled.

      As the slope fell away toward the canyon below, more than keeping pace with the glide path of the Ghia, so fell the yellow missile. Sky whooshed aside to make room for it, otherwise there was no sound but for three shrieks on the alpine air: a nutcracker’s alarm scream; the whine of the engine, gunned by the foot glued to the Ghia’s floorboard; and a third, muffled by the glass, growing into a hopeless wail.

      The thin alpine air parted before the plummeting car, smelling of green musk, of the great high lawn that is the Colorado mountain tundra. The perfumes of a hundred alpine wildflowers filled the grille of the Ghia. Soon the sweet mingled scents would be overcome by the rank fumes of oil and gasoline mixing with the terpenes of torn evergreens as the grille split against pine and stone. But the rider smelled nothing.

      The air took on a chill as the projectile left the sunny upper reaches, crossed over timberline, and entered