High Country : A Novel

by Willard Wyman

  After Lamedeer scored his third touchdown, the coach called Ty over.

  “Maybe you can stop that Indian from running around us,” he said, his eyes on the field. “Or through us.”

  The boy Ty replaced was upset, kicking at the ground and throwing his helmet and swearing as he passed Ty. On the field the Butte players looked bigger, the grass stains on their uniforms darker. Ty saw some of them were looking at him.

  Before he was sure he’d lined up right, they were coming at him, two players shoulder to shoulder, John Lamedeer behind them with a hand out, guiding them. Ty managed to slide between the blockers and Lamedeer turned upfield too soon, the others there to pull him down.

  He had gained, but not so many yards as before. They were back at Ty again on the next play, Lamedeer planting a foot as though to turn up the field then sweeping past Ty like water around a boulder. Ty reversed himself just in time, cutting the runner off against the sideline. Lamedeer slowed to a trot as he went out of bounds, tossing the ball to the official as he came back, looking at Ty.

  It went that way through the afternoon, Ty sometimes laughing as he forced Lamedeer to run inside or sprinted wide to pin him against the sideline. On one play the Indian almost got past Ty with speed so sudden Ty had to dive out to grab his jersey, Lamedeer’s momentum whipping them out of bounds and scattering players as they rolled over one another and into the bench. Ty looked up and saw the boy he’d replaced standing over Lamedeer, swearing and gesturing before being yanked away.

  It was Fenton who had done it, dropping the boy right in front of Bull Trout, who was coming over to take care of things himself. The player looked small between the two big men.

  “Your boy is playing a fine game, Mr. Pardee.” Trout looked at Fenton as though the boy weren’t there at all. “A little short on technique, but he runs them down. I didn’t know packers could run without a horse.”

  “You should see him wrangle mules,” Fenton said. “Or run alongside a hay truck. This would be child’s play if it weren’t for that fast Indian.”

  The players had gathered around when Fenton pulled the boy away. They stepped back so Ty and Lamedeer made their way onto the field.

  “Better let me run,” Lamedeer said to Ty seriously. “We should be beating you bad by now.”

  “ Yo u’re way ahead. I don’t think we can catch up.” They were on the field now, starting to jog. “It’s fun, isn’t it?”

  “If I can’t run it ain’t,” Lamedeer said, going back to his huddle.

  “Them boys would of whipped you a lot worse had you not figured out that runner,” Fenton said. They were having dinner in the Elkhorn, Ty so glad to see Cody Jo and Fenton he hadn’t even thought to ask about his parents.

  “Mary and Will wanted to come, Ty,” Etta said, as though to remind him. “They said there was some business at the ranch.”

  “I see you improved on the company you keep.” It was the waitress who’d fed them after their night in The Bar of Justice. “And you tidied up. Last time you didn’t look so prosperous.”

  “Bet his pards didn’t look much better.” Fenton spoke up as though they were old friends. “I tell those boys they’d fare better stayin’ in the damn mountains. Then winter comes and my advice goes to hell.”

  “He was a beautiful runner, Ty,” Cody Jo said. “It was like watching some medieval contest. The two of you dueling it out with one another.”

  Ty liked hearing her talk, hearing all of them talk. He felt good. And he hadn’t been so hungry since Jasper’s dinner high in Lost Bird Canyon.

  He didn’t see Will and Mary until three days after the big Christmas snow, and he was lucky to get into the Bitterroot then. Horace got him a ride out with a drummer who had tire chains. It took them five hours to get to the Missouri Bar.

  Dan was sweeping it out. Ty got a broom and helped, surprised to see he was bigger than his brother now.

  “They tell me you played football for the Spartans,” Dan said. “Dad worries you’ll get hurt and he’ll be out more money.”

  “He likes to worry. Tell him they got insurance.”

  “Ma don’t worry. She enjoys having Jennifer around.”

  “Jennifer Malone?”

  “No one told you?” Dan looked at him. “She’s in the family way. Jimmy married her.”

  “He did? That the business that needed tending?”

  “Ma don’t like to talk about it. And Pa hardly talks about anything but how he had to sell our cows.”

  On the way home Dan told Ty how Will had sold almost everything to the big outfit that had the Hardin ranch. There was just the crazy milk cow left—and some saddle horses. But there was lots of work with the big outfit, which Will claimed was enough. He hadn’t liked worrying about his own cows anyway.

  Jimmy was plowing the road when they turned in. He waved from the big outfit’s tractor as they went by. They parked by the barn, and Ty saw that all the mule rigging was gone. In the kitchen Mary gave him a hug and got a little tearful at how he’d changed. Jennifer was there, just a hint of the baby showing. To Ty she looked even sweeter than when she’d taught him his numbers at the Crazy Pete School. Ty could see that his mother was pleased about the baby, though she said nothing, not even when Jimmy came in and shook Ty’s hand, talking about all his work with the big outfit.

  In the morning Ty went out to feed. Jimmy had plowed a wide track for the tractor, and the big outfit’s cattle knew to gather behind the clatter of the engine. It was easy to pull the hay wagon along behind, Jimmy setting the throttle and stepping back onto the wagon to help Ty with the hay, the tractor making its own way along the rough track. The cattle drifted in behind, bunching around chunks of hay. Ty saw some of Will’s mother cows in with them. And a skinny yearling looked like the calf he’d saved when he broke his arm.

  He only stayed three days. There was little for him to do. Dan was off at the store every day, and Jimmy had things to do for the big outfit. Jennifer and his mother were thick with their own concerns, and every time Ty sat down with his father, Will would go on about how bad things were. When Dan said a lumber truck was pulling out for Missoula, Ty hitched a ride.

  He didn’t see them again until May—the morning Mary died.

  Winter passed quickly, Ty settling into a routine to manage his chores and his schoolwork and repair the tack Fenton and Horace left with him. Fenton even brought in the Meana saddle, saying Horace wouldn’t need it for another year and Ty should rig it to his liking. Ty oiled it, adding a flank cinch and new latigos and making scabbards for different tools. When the weather was good, he’d saddle one of Horace’s horses and work him hard. It wasn’t long before all the horses were in better shape than they’d ever been.

  Horace liked Ty’s quiet way with animals. He would look at the Meana saddle and smile, say he expected Ty would own it some day. “Just can’t figure out whether Fenton’s gonna give it to you or trick me into doin’ it for him.”

  Ty liked being kidded by Horace, but he could never think of what to say. And he couldn’t even imagine owning the Meana saddle.

  He learned algebra and studied history, looking at the maps where Lewis and Clark had tried to cross the snow-choked Bitterroot. He was mystified about why they would try after the Nez Perce warnings but impressed that they didn’t lose any horses. He read Twain and Crane for Miss Wright, talking with her about the stories before she sent him back to read more. And Cody Jo brought him books by Dreiser and Dos Passos, taking him out for Cokes when she was in town, asking him why he thought they wrote the things they did.

  When Jennifer’s baby came, Mary called from the store at the Missouri Bar. A healthy boy, she said, with strong hands. Ty could tell she was anxious to get the baby home. But a few weeks later she was in the hospital herself, sounding so worn he didn’t recognize her voice. They found out what was wrong, she said, only then saying anything was wrong at all.

  “It’s that fever.” Her voice was weak. “They knew right off. They
have medicine. It’ll make everything right.”

  Horace closed up the feed store the next morning and drove Ty out to the hospital. But they were too late. The medicine didn’t make everything right.

  “It would have,” Jennifer told him, the baby tiny under all the wrapping. “If they had known earlier.”

  “When?” Ty wanted to know. “When did it start?”

  “A week.” They stood outside the curtained room where Ty had seen Mary, the blotched skin, the hair still wet from fever, the body worn. “She took to drinking water. The way she does. She wouldn’t complain.”

  “Couldn’t he see? Tell how sick she was?”

  “She wouldn’t say anything, Ty. She said you weren’t to blame him.”

  “She would. That doesn’t make it right.”

  Will was already with the doctor, hands moving along the brim of his hat. The doctor was careful: spotted fever, he explained. The medicine not soon enough. The fever high. Blood pressure low. Lungs filling.

  Will thought Ty should come home, that they should talk.

  “It’s okay,” Ty said. “You got things to do. I’ll go back to school. We can talk at the service.”

  But they didn’t talk at the service. Will seemed to have forgotten, looking forlorn as the minister spoke. They lowered Mary into the grave and gave him some dirt to throw in. Then he left to finish up with the funeral people. Ty waited with the others under the weak spring sun.

  “I’ll go back to Missoula,” Ty said to them. “He’ll be all right. I’ve got that work in the mountains. I’ll help if you need me.”

  “Oh, Ty.” Jennifer was rocking her baby. “Ty ...”

  “It’s all right. “I like it up there.”

  Will came back, still holding his hat in front of him, turning it.

  “You coming, Ty? Jennifer will fix a supper.”

  “I got school. And that work in the mountains.”

  “Well,” Will said, his mind someplace else. “Don’t have no accidents.”

  In June Ty was back with Fenton, shoeing, bringing in hay—getting things right for the season ahead. He liked it, doing well from the first the work he would do for the rest of his life. He liked the mules and the horses; better still he liked the mountains, the way they provided food and comfort. The way watching his animals there taught him to make it a home.

  Bob Ring watched Ty ease his mules into the clearing, the lumber extending well beyond each but Ty moving the string so carefully there was no trouble, even on the switchbacks. It was Ring’s job to build the lookout shelter. He’d packed in his own tools, but bringing lumber in was another matter. He was impressed to see Ty manage it alone.

  Limping with a hitch he would have always, he went to help unload, surprised by how quickly it all happened. In no time the mules were belled and turned out, Ring hardly helping at all but admiring Ty’s efficiency.

  After dinner they climbed to the lookout site, sat on a ledge in the late sun. To the north, parallel to the broad valley of the South Fork, was the China Wall, where the waters started their long run east. The sun gave life to the ridges, deepened the greens of the forest below.

  “Not much more than a year ago you pulled me out with my leg broke,” Bob Ring said. “They had a time making the repairs.”

  “I won’t forget. I was pretty scared.”

  “Fenton did what he could. Not many could do more.”

  The sun was almost gone, its light holding on the highest peaks.

  “They tell me you came to be a fine player for those Spartans,” Ring said. “Willie and I would like to see a game sometime.”

  “It’s fun.” Ty looked to make sure Ring wasn’t kidding him. “It’s just not serious.” The sun had left a blush of color on the cliffs, as though within them they held some light of their own. “Like this.”

  18

  Honeymoon

  “Like a cow pissin’ on a flat rock.” Buck looked gloomily out at the summer downpour. It was Ty’s third year of packing. They were camped with Miss Wright and her new husband at Danaher Meadows, which looked more like Danaher pond as the runoff filled it with pools, the trail now a stream.

  “Bet the fishing’s good.” Ty came around from behind the cook tent with his shovel, his slicker dripping water. “Get that last tent ditched, I might turn Doc into a fisherman. Warm rain like this, they jump right in your creel.”

  “I’ll ditch the damn tent. Angie’s so keen on bakin’ camp bread she don’t even know I’m here.” Buck put on his slicker and went out into the rain with Ty. “Come down like this once at White River. After I squashed my nose. Can’t recollect if it was this steady.”

  “From what Fenton told me about that time, this is just a sprinkle.”

  Ty had placed them in a stand of timber well above the meadow. There was almost perfect drainage for the tents, but it was Ty’s way to make sure. He felt even more responsible on this trip. Miss Wright had married the young doctor who’d seen Angie through the scarlet fever quarantine, and what she’d wanted more than anything else was a honeymoon in Ty’s mountains—with Ty’s friends. Her reasons mystified Ty, but he was more than willing. She’d come to mean a lot to him; he wanted to give her the best trip possible.

  “Should we read a book each day?” he’d asked. “Study up for dinner?” “None of that.” She liked it that he could tease her. “No grammar.” Her eyes grew earnest behind her lenses. “Just show me your mountains.” By 1941 everyone knew Ty was Fenton’s best packer, some said the best in all the Swan. And Alice Wright had grown more than fond of his quiet ways. He read every book she gave him, talked with her about them in his direct way. But she always sensed things withheld, unsaid. She’d even taken to going to his football games, surprised by the satisfaction he found in a sport so violent. It made her wonder about him, why he lost himself in some things so completely: being around his horses, working on his saddles, certain books. He had a way of disappearing into whatever he liked, making her think there was much to learn from that country that took him in so completely as soon as the snows melted.

  She wanted her doctor to know Ty better too, hear how Ty put things, talked about his pack animals, his mountains. She wanted to see if Thomas found the same odd promise in this boy that she did.

  “He likes Sherwood Anderson,” she said on one of their walks. “Who would think some packer would like Sherwood Anderson?”

  “Who is Sherwood Anderson?” Alice Wright had linked her arm through Thomas Haslam’s, touching him so lightly yet completely it made him dizzy.

  “He writes about people most of us hardly notice.” She watched him watching her, needing her. “Pinched people. People with odd troubles.”

  She thought how both Ty and her doctor were drawn to people others overlooked. They just came at them from different directions. She wanted Ty to know Thomas too, understand all the good in him. She squeezed her doctor’s arm, knowing that wasn’t going to be easy, not with him as lost in her as he was. She turned to him now, taking pleasure in the way he looked at her, and told him about the people in Anderson’s stories.

  Thomas Haslam was so smitten with Alice Wright his mind wouldn’t leave her, despite how bewildered she made him. He still wasn’t convinced she’d like a honeymoon of long hours in a saddle and cold nights in a tent. And he already knew the young packer—and liked him, had ever since the time Angie had knocked Buck through their bedroom window. He and Ty had sat on the steps long into that night considering what would have happened if Angie had cut Buck up with all those broken bottles.

  “He’ll bring Buck and Angie to help.” Alice had seemed pleased just saying their names. “It will be so beautiful up there. Romantic. So . . . western.”

  “Western is right here in Missoula,” Thomas told her. “And in Indian town, where we haven’t money enough for inoculations. The people drunk half the time....Eating the wrong things.”

  “The best of it may be up in those mountains.” She took his hand. “Maybe not lettin
g them stay in their mountains is where we went wrong.”

  “Maybe.” The doctor felt himself surrendering. “It’s just not the best place for what I have in mind.”

  “Oh, my.” She put her hand to his face. “We’ll have plenty of time for that.” She touched his lips. “I’ll make sure. We’ll want lots of time for that.”

  He felt his need for her wash through him. “I just wish we didn’t have to go into the mountains to find the time,” he said.

  Thomas Haslam had a hard time making sense of what Alice Wright did to him. She was a model of decorum at her school. Bull Trout was devoted to her, had her pour tea at school gatherings, serve cookies. At the faculty meetings she would pass bread warm from her oven, keep minutes in her perfect handwriting. Older teachers chose her for their special committees and studies. She volunteered for the most difficult tasks, deferring to her colleagues, offering her own ideas only when asked.

  But all that propriety dropped away when she was alone with Thomas—on picnics, or in the car, or when she snuck into his room. Then she would touch him everywhere. Kiss him. Mock him. Swim naked with him in cold mountain streams.

  “Wait until you can go inside me,” she would say when they were back on their blanket, kissing and holding one another. “Just wait.”

  And she did make him wait, telling him she wanted to save only that one thing. He would feel sick with his need, wanting her so he would turn away, angry with himself, with her, with the wantonness that filled him.

  He was a scientist to the bone. But he found nothing instructive about what she did to him, his obsession baffling him as much as the heartbreaking restraint that came over her just when they wanted one another more than life itself.

  “We mustn’t,” she would say, her hair wild, her breathing heavy, pushing him away, reaching for her glasses. “We can’t. Not yet.”