High Country : A Novel

by Willard Wyman

  “He did look tired. But that don’t mean he can ignore regulations.”

  Ty saw Bernard’s mind was set. He let it go. The sun was warm, the air pleasant, and he could see far out across the country.

  “Working for Fenton regular now?” Bernard asked.

  “If I can keep up.”

  “Heard you got some medals in the war.”

  “They give some out if you get hurt.”

  “Maybe I’ll bring Wilma in to your camp when she comes up. She was asking around about your wound.”

  Ty got up and tightened Smoky’s cinch. “Tell Willie Cody Jo says I can still manage a dance or two.” He mounted. The thought of Cody Jo dancing made him smile.

  “Wilma dances mostly with me these days.” Bernard spoke so earnestly Ty was amused.

  “That makes you a lucky man. Do I get a ticket if I cut in?”

  Bernard saw no humor in that, so Ty said his good-bye and headed for camp.

  In four days they had the camp more than ready. Ty and Gus rode out to pick up the first hunting party, Ty taking his mules out for supplies, Gus deadheading saddle horses out for the hunters to use. Ty was anxious to see Fenton, find out how he was and tell him about the camp. He liked talking about the country with Fenton. And he was still learning packing tricks from him—tail-tying, tucking a manty just so, different ways to top-pack. He even learned when Fenton drifted far from the subject. “That’s why you can’t beat a tight rope,” Fenton would conclude, which might have nothing to do with what he was saying but everything to do with what he meant.

  They’d been so efficient at getting out of camp they were on the pass early—Ty’s need to see Fenton so strong he hardly slowed as they crossed and started down the switchbacks on the other side. A halfmile above the waterfall ford he saw horses below them, and from the way the first rider sat his horse, he was pretty sure it was Bernard. He’d forded and pulled well off the trail by the time they met, Bernard leading a pack horse, another rider behind him.

  “You came out over that pass awful early, Ty,” Bernard said. “We might have had a wreck.”

  “ Yo u’re safe as water in a bar,” Ty said. “Saw you coming and made sure.”

  “Ty Hardin!” Wilma Ring turned out to be the second rider. She pushed by Bernard and rode up to Ty, leaning off her horse to give him a kiss. “You could have said hello before you disappeared into your mountains.” She straightened her hat, smiling. How blue her eyes were came back to Ty in a rush. “After I sent you all those brownies.”

  “They must of been censored too,” Ty said. “Never did reach me.”

  “ Yo u’re getting worry lines, Ty. Around your eyes.”

  “We were going in to check out your camp,” Bernard said, still not sure whether or not to be official. “Thought you were coming out tomorrow.”

  “You check it out, Bernard. If you can find it. And offer a drink to Jasper. He’d enjoy some social life.”

  “You just dodged a ticket,” Bernard said. “Wilma’s here and we got a long ride ahead.”

  “Hope that’s not the last time you rescue me, Willie.” Ty tipped his hat. “I sure enjoy it.”

  Gus was headed back to his sawmill to check on his brothers, their fighting a constant worry. He helped unsaddle first.

  “Reminds me of Cody Jo,” he told Ty.

  “Willie does?”

  “When Cody Jo come here we all tripped over ourselves to get close.”

  “They seem different to me,” Ty said.

  “Watch.” Gus stacked the last saddle, his scar looking pale against his sunburned face. “ Yo u’ll see.”

  Ty was puzzling over that when he saw Fenton’s Buick coming, a cloud of dust behind it. It was almost to the corrals before he saw it was Thomas Haslam driving.

  “I told Fenton I’d come pick you up,” the doctor said. “We need to run more tests.”

  “What tests?”

  “Routine. Though there’s nothing routine about your friend Fenton.” “What’ll they show?”

  “We aren’t sure. Things don’t look that good.”

  “What things?”

  Thomas Haslam looked at Ty. “Let’s go see Cody Jo.You two should hear it together.”

  26

  A Last Trip

  Ty was back on the trails before he could digest it. Nothing Haslam had said made him optimistic. There was a cancer. They weren’t sure where, but that hardly mattered. It was into the lymph nodes. They would try to arrest it while they searched, cut it out when they found it—if they did.

  “Are there cancers where you can’t operate?” Cody Jo had asked, her voice steady. “Places you can’t reach?”

  “Yes,” Thomas Haslam said. “The pancreas. The small intestine. But there are places we can. There’s a clinic in San Francisco. We’ll use whatever they have.”

  It had come at Ty too fast: lymphoma, metastasize, sarcoma. He’d felt lost. But he’d seen Cody Jo would find out in her way as much as the doctor would in his. “If it is bad,” she’d asked, “how long do we have?”

  “Not a year. Maybe a year, for Fenton. No more.”

  Cody Jo had looked out at the willows, turning golden as winter came in. “Better get started for the clinic,” she’d said.

  Ty took the news back in to Jasper, with some cooking sherry. Jasper didn’t touch it until after dinner, then he talked late about Fenton.

  “If Fenton goes,” Jasper said, “he’ll take a lot of what opened up this country with him.”

  “Only wants it open so far.” Ty watched the fire. “Likes it this way.”

  The hunters he’d brought in were experienced. Ty told them where to hunt, and when they got something he’d get it with Cottontail and Loco, working quickly, gutting and quartering and bringing the meat back for Jasper to hang.

  When he took that party out there was another, more social, winning Jasper over with toasts and special dinners. They would gather each night to tell their stories—deferring to Ty as he came and went— quiet, competent, showing them the meadows and waterfalls, not telling them about the country so much as helping them see it.

  It grew colder, the elk moving lower for feed. There was time before the last party came in, and Ty moved the camp to Fenton’s old spot in Lost Bird Canyon, just above where the canyon narrowed, flattened— where the big bog began.

  “They can hunt for goats on the cliffs, go below for elk on the South Fork flats,” he told Jasper, using the lodgepole rails he’d hidden with Spec, setting up the camp as though returning home.

  In the morning he left Jasper to make a food run for the trail crew. He was gone for four days. When he returned with Buck, Jasper was wild with worry about a bear—although he’d seen none.

  “One hasn’t been around, Jasper,” Ty reported. “No tracks at all.” “May not have left any sign.” Jasper was testing the sherry Ty had brought in. “But he’s out there. Fenton told me one hangs around here. Spies on us.” He sipped his sherry. “Scary bastard.”

  “Might be that red one that chased Sugar out of the bog,” Buck said. “That was after I squashed my nose.” He drank, thinking about it. “Only reason Angie married me.” He laughed. “That bear’s all right. I never would of thought to break my nose.”

  “Spec told me some live to thirty years,” Ty said. “Maybe more.”

  “This one’s considered me his main course for so long I’ll bet he’s got longevity.” Jasper looked at Ty. “It was bad for you to leave me here, Ty.You know my hearin’s thin.”

  “Buck’ll stay when I go out next time. You’ll be fine. Hasn’t been a bear around here anyway. That I can tell.”

  Ty worried about that as he rode out for the last party, his string rustling through aspen leaves and climbing through bear grass toward timberline. Maybe a bear hadn’t been hanging around camp, but that morning he’d realized one wasn’t far away.

  He’d tracked his horses up a slide just after dawn, moving slowly on his game leg, finding them sunning high
above camp. He’d found a big pile of bear scat too, only two or three days old. He couldn’t tell what drew the bear so high: no berry patches, no pine nuts. He’d rested, looking down on the camp and thinking of his last time in Lost Bird Canyon, just after they’d let Spec out of Deerlodge. Spec had shown him tracks near the bog, not a day old—big and toed in, the tracks a big bear leaves when it has a full belly and time to spare. Later they’d picked up tracks of a sow and her cubs.

  “He won’t be with her. That ain’t a bear’s style.” Spec had remounted and looked at Ty. “But she’ll have an affection for them cubs that’ll make her more unpleasant. Ain’t that the way? Those gals down at The Bar of Justice change when they foal too. Nature passed us by on that one, Ty.”

  “On what?”

  “Carryin’ our own,” Spec had said seriously. “Bringin’ in a life.”

  Ty pulled up to rest his mules, thinking Spec had always been that way in the mountains, finding value in things the rest hardly considered. He’d just had few ways to say it. When he was in Missoula it was different. Whatever made him see so much up here seemed to disappear down there. He wondered what Spec would make of Jasper’s fear of the bear. He doubted he would dismiss it. And he knew Tommy wouldn’t, not after seeing that big pile of scat.

  He looked back down the long drainage of Lost Bird Canyon, their camp lost somewhere in the hazy gold of fall aspens. Beyond them he could make out the thick stand of timber that sheltered the bog, the stream drifting there in lazy bends that turned back almost into themselves as they flooded the canyon floor.

  Bog today, meadow tomorrow, he thought. Smaller timber moving in, making soil for bigger trees, the forest taking over until some heat deep in the earth heaves everything up, tilts it to make new streams and lakes, the spring melts washing down to start it all again. The country lifting and falling, changing, a place where humans can make do sometimes, sometimes not—but a home always for animals. He could see why the bears took such comfort in it, as much a part of it as the streams and the seasons, the great jumble of it their home.

  He wondered if the big bear was watching the camp now, studying all the commotion. Tommy Yellowtail would look for some sign in that. But Spec would probably find some balance. “Hell, it ain’t breeding time,” he might say. “No reason for him to tear around. By now he’s likely eatin’ more for fun than need. Got time to puzzle over us—tents, corrals, smoke. Wonder why we ain’t as efficient as he is.”

  Ty made a trail camp that night, watching the fire as he chewed jerky and thought about Jasper and Buck. He doubted they were considering the bear at all now, sneaking down another bottle of sherry and taking comfort in one another as people did. His animals did it too, Loco and Cottontail looking to Smoky Girl for comfort, all of them sticking together. Bears were different, breeding early and going their solitary ways. The sows accepting the boars for their need, but having their cubs alone, getting them going even if it took a few years, then leaving them too, going their lonely way, readying themselves for the long winters.

  It takes something more to get humans through the winters, he thought; they need to do some caring, be cared for. He fed wood to the fire and thought of Horace and Etta, Angie and Buck—even the girls at The Bar of Justice. Jasper too. Jasper needed people as much as the rest, maybe more. And it was hard to imagine Fenton without Cody Jo, or at least Fenton not thinking about Cody Jo. Hard to imagine it the other way around too, Cody Jo without Fenton to fill some hollow place in her life.

  He looked out from his little ring of light, heard a bell across the meadow, a coyote far down the canyon. He thought bears must have something too. Know how to find a snug place in the high country, a place to watch the seasons, be a part of where it all begins.

  He caught up his horses before dawn. When he got out he found Cody Jo waiting at the corrals, Thomas Haslam with her. The hunting party had canceled, she told him, which Fenton saw as an opportunity: the camp set up; supplies ready; Ty bringing out the mules. Fenton wanted to go in, wanted them all in Lost Bird Canyon again.

  “It’s all right, Ty.” Thomas Haslam spoke quietly. “We can treat him when we get back. He wants to be in his mountains—one more time.”

  “Ty’s got most all his strength back.” Fenton watched Ty walk a log closer for him. He sat, hunching toward the flames, elbows on his knees.

  “If he hasn’t, he soon will.” Cody Jo poured whiskey into Fenton’s cup. “All that work to get us here.”

  “He knows to tight a rope.” Fenton looked at Ty. “Haven’t packed a mule since we started.You done it all.”

  “Wish I’d top-packed a folding chair.You could use some comfort.”

  “No goddamned chairs,” Fenton said. “Just clutter things up. Stove and tent is luxury enough. Half the time I resent them.”

  “I’ll admit I’m partial to Jasper’s stove,” Ty said. He looked around to see what else he could do. He wanted Fenton free of the pain. Whiskey helped, but morphine helped more. And Thomas Haslam was fishing.

  “We camped here,” Fenton said. “Bog down below like to do little Sugar in. That’s where she rearranged Buck’s nose.”

  “My first trip.” Cody Jo looked at him. “Brown as an Indian, you were. I think you got us into all that trouble just to prove you could get us out of it.”

  “Truth is,” Fenton said to Ty, “I was so muddle-headed over her I didn’t know up from down. It was wrong to try it. Tommy, he knew it.”

  “You won my heart,” Cody Jo said. “You always do.”

  She went into the kitchen to help Alice and Angie get dinner, all of them wanting Buck to bring Thomas back so he could give Fenton the morphine. They chased Jasper out, which was fine with him. It gave him a chance to sip Fenton’s whiskey.

  “Think that red-headed one still camps in here, Fenton?” Jasper swirled his whiskey and took a taste. “Spec said them rascals live a long life. Buck seen one down in there. Seen a big track too.”

  “Buck might of seen a black bear.” Ty didn’t want Jasper to talk himself into a worry. “He’s not that reliable at distinguishing.”

  “Might be that roan bear.” Fenton looked into the fire, thinking. “Might not. Could be his reputation is what’s got the longevity.”

  “This one’s a slippery bastard.” Jasper warmed to the idea. “Been interested in me and Ty since before the war.”

  Ty poured more whiskey for Fenton. “I think Jasper jumbles his stories together just to keep our interest up.”

  “That happens too,” Fenton said suddenly. “The damn stories grow. But bears do come back. That’s a truth.” He began to sound like the old Fenton, coming at things from a direction no one expected. “There was that bear up around the forks. Raised hell with every Indian party that camped in there. Indians claimed it was medicine. Said it was a tough Gros Ventre warrior come back to play hell with the Flathead and the Blackfoot.” Fenton looked at Jasper. “Told that story down through generations, longer than any damn bear could live. I thought it was foolishness, but Tommy claimed near every time they camped up in there, they got hit by a grizzly.”

  “Hear that story enough,” Ty said, “imagination provides the bear.”

  “That’s what I told Tommy. Tommy wanted to know what kind of imagination it is that kills dogs and horses and rips the shit out of tepees.”

  “That’s different. Maybe coincidence. Different bears. It happens one year in five and imagination fills in the rest.”

  Jasper listened. As far as he was concerned the bear watching him had nothing to do with his imagination.

  “It’s more than that, Ty,” Fenton said. “There’s things you can’t explain. The night after that big rain, when I’d plumb give up on Sugar, I heard a mule.” Fenton leaned forward, cradled his whiskey in his big hands. “Even if Sugar had called, we’d of never heard her. River loud as a train.”

  “Could have come from Loco, one you’d turned out.”

  “But it didn’t.” Fenton finished his whis
key, his voice quiet, no argument in it at all. “It didn’t come from our mules,” he said again, as though speaking to himself.

  Jasper didn’t like being in the camp alone. “My hearin’ is so irregular,” he told Haslam, “a belled mare could sneak up and steal my lunch.”

  They all saw how much the bear worried him. He was sure something was out there. And though Ty made light of things, he’d seen what he’d seen. He couldn’t ignore Jasper’s worries.

  That’s why he left Buck in camp with a rifle when he took Fenton and Cody Jo down the canyon. They wanted to see where Sugar had bogged down so many years ago. Thomas Haslam came with them, just in case, which was fine with Ty. He needed to ask him some questions.

  “The cancer’s holding off. For now,” the doctor answered. “And he knew where you were camped. I doubt we could have kept him out.”

  “How long will it hold off?”

  “Never know. We’re lucky to have the time we do.”

  “Can’t that treatment fix it?”

  “May arrest it. There’s no cure . . . except some miracle.”

  “What does Fenton think?”

  “Fenton? He accepts it....A lot better than you do.”

  They ate lunch at the ford: cheese and jerky and apples. The air crisp.

  “In those willows is where I saw that roan bear.” Fenton settled on a root of the big fir. “Had darker hair down along his backbone.”

  “This place still gives me a chill.” Cody Jo looked around. “He’d been watching me. I ...I thought I was going to get sick.”

  “Just curious. And not scared.” Fenton looked at Cody Jo. “The way I was that night you tricked me into going to your school recital.”

  “You wanted to go.” She smiled, almost shy as she looked at Fenton. “You were hungry for some culture. For my cookies.”

  “The cookies weren’t what hungered me.”

  “Buck said he found that track near here,” Ty said suddenly. “Bet it’s just a black bear.”

  He left, hiding what was in his face. He hadn’t gone a hundred yards up the stream before he saw it, in some mud the stream had left as it dropped. Buck was right; it was a grizzly, the claws extended far beyond the pad. He’d been right about the size too. Ty saw that no matter how he put his boot down in the pad, there would be plenty of track left over.