High Country : A Novel

by Willard Wyman

  But it was good work, and there were surprises that made it better. It was a surprise to have so much business from the Forest Service. It was a surprise to have Buck and Angie become such a part of everything, Angie organizing matters in the front country even better than Ty could in the back. The biggest surprise was when she showed up with two extra guests for the Haslams’ trip.

  “That man looks pretty damned official to me,” Horace said. “Says he knows you.” Angie had brought the Haslams and the Adamses to the Crippled Elk corrals. It was Horace and Etta’s last trip, one they wouldn’t be taking at all if the Haslams hadn’t been so persuasive. They’d made their decision to go at Christmas and hadn’t stopped planning since. Or worrying.

  “The doc knows him. Met him at the Presidio back there.” Horace was looking at the saddle Ty had put on Turkey, who—despite his willfulness—was the mildest horse Ty had in his string. “You gonna make me sit in this saddle for two days and nights the way Fenton done?”

  “You sound like Jasper,” Ty said. “You rode all one day and into the night. Not through it.”

  “Seemed longer.” Horace stepped back, looked at Turkey. “This ain’t no bronc, is it?”

  “Hardly,” Ty said, watching Turkey doze in the sun. “When are Doc’s friends getting here?”

  “They’ll be along,” Horace said. “Might be more your friend than the doc’s.... Think we’ll get rain?”

  “Who?” Ty wasn’t sure Horace knew what he was talking about.

  “That man there.” Horace shook out his rain gear and pointed at a military sedan pulling up. Jeb Walker got out, smiling at Ty.

  “Hardin . . . guess I’ll finally get to see you pack something besides machine guns and ammunition.”

  “Colonel Walker?” Ty was having a hard time believing Jeb Walker could be in anything but a uniform.

  “General now,” a voice Ty would never forget said. “It’s General Walker.” Otis Johnson was standing there, his smile as wide as the South Fork. “Thought you might reenlist.”

  The Haslams introduced them all around, explaining they’d met Jeb Walker in San Francisco, talked to him there about Ty. The surprise was their idea. Otis Johnson was Jeb Walker’s.

  “Two of my best soldiers.” Jeb Walker was shaking hands with Horace. “Though Hardin didn’t want to be.”

  Ty had trouble swallowing. There they all were—no uniforms or orders or big guns firing overhead. All of them safe in the morning sun at the Crippled Elk corrals. He turned away, picked out horses, collected himself.

  When he was sure he could talk again, he got them mounted and sent them ahead, seeing right away how naturally Jeb Walker and Otis Johnson sat their horses. He was thankful he’d set time aside for this trip. And it didn’t take him long to realize how thankful he was Angie had decided to come, Alice and Angie calming Etta, keeping Jasper in line, doing things with the food that made dinners the highlight of each day.

  It was one of the best trips Ty would know in a lifetime of packing— and with some of the best people he would know in that lifetime. He took them to waterfalls, the best pools, led them high above the China Wall to see the breathtaking drop east, look back across the South Fork.

  “You were right, Hardin,” Jeb Walker said one evening at sunset. “It was our dream. But it was your reality.You’d left all this.”

  Ty wasn’t sure what he’d been right about. He didn’t remember talking with Walker at all about the country, just about mules. But he didn’t pursue it. Jeb Walker might act less military in the mountains, but he was still Jeb Walker. His voice still made Ty stand straighter, move a little faster. But Ty saw he was different, saw that he spent a lot of time alone by the river, sometimes fishing, sometimes just standing in it, watching.

  Otis Johnson took to it too, liking the little things: the way the bear grass took over, the rapids picked up, the wildflowers flourished. He liked Ty’s way with animals best, learning about packing, going out with him to bring in the horses, squatting with him to look at tracks— elk, deer, bear.

  Angie and Alice managed to improve Jasper’s food so much Thomas Haslam claimed they’d topped “The Top of the Mark.” Etta would sip a drink with them, laughing, forgetting how worried she could get about bears and weather and the language Horace used in the mountains.

  “It’s never been so civilized up here.” She watched Angie put napkins and silverware out on a big log she’d fashioned into a buffet table.

  “That’s ’cause we always had Buck along.” Angie tidied the silverware. “When Buck rides in, the whole camp starts downhill.”

  “Be fair,” Alice said. “Buck has his charm.”

  “The trick,” Angie said, “is to keep him from usin’ it.”

  Jasper enjoyed hearing them talk, enjoyed even more the way they took over his cooking, giving him plenty of time to socialize. He just wished the general would offer him some of the bourbon he’d brought along. Angie had cut off the cooking sherry, which made no sense to him. He’d snuck in three extra bottles. No recipe required that much, not even these fancy ones. But the third night Jeb Walker spoke up and won Jasper’s heart once and for all. He was impressed by the general already, but being impressed hadn’t meant being comfortable around him.

  “All right to offer your men a drink up here, Hardin?” Jeb Walker asked. “A cup or two might agree with this cook of yours.” Thomas Haslam and Horace had joined Walker, Ty and Otis staying with their coffee.

  “Jasper enjoys a drink.” Ty’s face revealed nothing. “And he’s got time. They’ve all but fenced off his kitchen.”

  Jasper wasn’t shy about accepting. After that he and the general shared a few drinks each evening. “Treats me like a guest,” Jasper would tell Ty, sipping the bourbon and enjoying the fire. And he would tell his bear tales, tell stories about Ty and Fenton that Ty couldn’t remember himself.

  It rained only one day, a day they spent gathered in the kitchen tent around Jeb Walker’s bourbon, Jasper embellishing on his adventures with the red bear—who loomed ever larger in his imagination.

  One story led to another, and after awhile Haslam started talking about the Sierra Nevada, describing waterfalls dropping from high granite rims and packers claiming it never rains there at night. Walker knew those mountains too. When he was a lieutenant they’d asked him to ride across them on a rerun of a Pony Express route.

  “Spectacular range,” he told them. “Forgiving from the west; hard as the devil’s teeth on the east.” He looked at Ty. “Tough country for horses. Rock and more rock. You could pack it. Most shouldn’t try. We lost a good remount not respecting it enough.”

  Ty listened for awhile, then he got his slicker and went to see which direction his horses had headed. Otis Johnson went with him, liking his talks with Ty. “My boy has taken to playing football,” he said, as they picked up tracks. “I believe up here would do him better.”

  “You played football. I sure remember that. I did too, in school. Played end.”

  “He don’t play like you and me,” Otis said. “He’s like smoke. Hard to catch hold of.”

  “Wish I’d been that way.You knocked me silly.”

  “Be good if he got knocked some too. Football’s no game to float around in.” Otis looked at Ty. “Life ain’t either.”

  Ty was amused to hear Otis fret about how his boy would bend and twist, go out of bounds before they could bring him down. But he took it as Otis’s humor. On the last day, when Otis asked again if Ty might have work for the boy, he realized it wasn’t. It wasn’t a hard question to answer, not if the boy was anything like Otis. Ty said yes. And that seemed to satisfy Otis.

  A letter from Willie was waiting for Ty at the corrals. Buck had brought it out and left it on the dashboard of Walker’s car.

  “If it’s from that librarian we met,” Jeb Walker said, passing it on to Ty, “I’d answer ‘yes’—no matter what the question.”

  Ty was more surprised by Jeb Walker’s easy warmth than with th
e letter.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “I alway paid attention to your advice.”

  “Forget ‘Sir.’ That’s over,” Walker said seriously. “ Yo u’ve given me a trip I’ll never forget.” No “general” in his voice at all now. “I’ll come back, Ty. Where you pack, I’ll go.”

  “And don’t you forget my boy,” Otis said, smiling at him. “He might could learn from you even after I finish with him.” He cuffed Ty with his hand, knocking him off balance.

  Ty waved good-bye, rubbing his arm and wondering if affection like Otis’s wasn’t what taught the boy to be elusive.

  Willie’s letter was brief, but attached were pages of neat columns.

  “It looks like you can do it,” she wrote. “I’ve gone over Angie’s records twice and have a firm promise from the bank. If business stays healthy, you can make the pack station yours.”

  Ty shuffled through the papers, shaking his head at Willie’s efficiency. He knew the figures would be accurate and he knew he might be able to do all the things she asked.

  But he also knew he wasn’t likely to do them. Willie didn’t understand that owning a pack station wasn’t why he was a packer.

  And then that fall it happened. Not in the mountains, where you can drop off a cliff or run into a grizzly at any moment, but in Missoula, where there aren’t those dangers. Ty never was sure he had the story straight, but he never talked about it as anything but an accident. That much he could do for Willie.

  He’d heard from Beth what happened down at The Bar of Justice. It was so out of keeping with anything she would make up that he knew it had to be true, or close to true—as true as Beth could see it.

  There had been a lot to put away after the passes closed, the season so busy Ty had to buy what was left after a packer out of Ovando rolled his string and cashed in. That got them through the season, but it all needed rerigging, which kept Buck busy until Angie left to tend to her mother in the Whitefish hospital. That’s when Buck moved into town to be with the kids, doing some work for Horace but mostly rattling around as lonely as an old bear.

  “And just about as touchy,” Beth told Ty after the fight. “At least that’s the way he got when he saw Bernard. The man had never come in here once, but he come in like he owned the place, drunk as his Forest Service buddies and mean enough to start a war.”

  Ty pieced it together. Bob Ring’s retirement was a big one. Forty years in the Forest Service meant a lot to all of them; Bob Ring did too. They liked to have him limp into one of their stations and cheer everyone up. He knew the packers, and he knew the rules, and he had a way of bringing them together so no one got rubbed the wrong way. Except Bernard now and then. Bernard was probably the hardest working ranger in the Forest Service, and the least bendable too.

  Bob Ring had tried to put a little more bend in him at the goingaway party the men gave him, saying that he was likely to be the last of an old school of rangers and Bernard was likely to be the first of a new one, that if he could leave a little of the old around it might make life a lot easier for the new.

  The rest of them picked up on that, toasting Bob Ring and Bernard with such good humor they became as drunk on what was said as on what they drank. And they drank plenty, Bob Ring thinking he could sleep his off on the train to San Francisco, Bernard hardly thinking, just happy to be appreciated. Happy at first, that is, before he felt the numbness come over him. But the toasts went on, Bernard’s numbness disappearing into a haze of fellowship and wild promises as they sent Ring on his way, waving at the train before going off to the Elkhorn for more.

  It was there, Ty figured, that they hit on the idea of taking Bernard to The Bar of Justice, thinking the drinking had done him so much good they might as well take him the whole way and do him even better.

  They didn’t know that Buck would be there, lonely and sober. They didn’t know what went on deep in Bernard either—things Bernard couldn’t see himself. They just knew that it was fun, that they were laughing, that they had Bernard swearing and vowing crazy things and that for once he wasn’t looking disgusted when they mentioned The Bar of Justice.

  Buck was having a beer and talking with Beth when they came in, rowdy and swearing and full of liquor. Beth didn’t like it from the outset, which made Buck try to calm things down.

  “You boys better settle,” he said, “or Leonard’ll read you the riot act.” A Sun River ranger wasn’t too drunk to understand the warning.

  “If you’ll hold your horses,” he told them, “I’ll buy a round.” That quieted everyone but Bernard.

  “I see you’re down here where you belong,” Bernard said to Buck. And the way he said it wasn’t so much drunk as mean.

  “You come down here more often, you might improve too.” Buck seemed to enjoy how angry Bernard was getting.

  “I got no need to come down here,” Bernard said. And then it just popped out of him, as though it had been waiting there to be challenged.

  “I’m marryin’ Wilma Ring.”

  Hearing something like that about Bob Ring’s pretty daughter quieted them all. Buck’s voice broke through, nothing amused in it now.

  “You asshole.You couldn’t fuck Willie with Ty’s cock.”

  Bernard came at Buck so fiercely his own momentum did most of the damage. But the moment Buck landed the blow, he knew he couldn’t have done better.

  “Shit.” The Sun River ranger looked at Bernard, sprawled across a collapsed table, blood flowing from his nose. “No need. He would have fallen if you’d stepped aside.”

  “I wanted to,” Buck said. “It done me good.”

  Leonard came in, his big assistant looking ugly while Leonard shooed them out the backdoor, helping the last two pick Bernard up and giving them a rag to sop up the blood. “And good riddance.” He looked at Buck. “You too. You’re trouble drunk or sober. Oughta make you and the ranger boy pay for the fuckin’ table too. It ain’t fixable.”

  “No need to hit him like that, Buck.” Beth was mopping at the bar. “Drunk as he was.” She threw the rag at him. “Quit smilin’ and get the hell out. If they come lookin’, they ain’t gonna find you here.”

  Ty had heard the first speeches at Ring’s party before he went up to the university to join Willie for the lecture about Lewis and Clark. He was always impressed by how much they’d done, knowing so little about what was ahead. His guess was that in the early days few could see very far ahead, and even when they got to where they could, they were probably so far along the road that got them there it was too late to turn back.

  He talked with Willie about that, eating ice cream after the talk, saying he guessed everyone’s life was like that—a little.

  “Only some people start out on rockier roads than others,” Willie said. “Like one of those trails you use that no one else can find.”

  “I just steer clear of your ranger friends. They’re gettin’ so they want to do all your seein’ ahead for you.”

  “I think you want to steer clear of everyone,” Willie said. “Angie told me you’ve got little trails in there a goat couldn’t find.”

  “I just go where the mountains let me,” Ty said. He enjoyed the way she mocked him, pointing her spoon at him. “Let them do the choosing.”

  Ty was getting into his pickup to start the long drive back when a sheriff’s car pulled alongside.

  “Your buddy got himself into a scrape tonight,” the officer said.

  “Buck? Where?” Ty knew how restless Buck had been and what trouble he could get into if he put his mind to it.

  “Down there,” the officer said. “I’m not supposed to know.”

  That’s when Ty went to see Beth, learning all he could before going off to look for Buck. But Buck wasn’t in any of his usual places, and hadn’t been—though most everyone knew something had happened.

  Ty finally found him asleep at home, not nearly as worried as everyone else seemed to be. He got up and had a beer with Ty.

  “Caught him right, Ty. Don’t th
ink you—or Fenton—could of done better.” He took a long pull at his beer. “Sure made me feel good.”

  “No need to hit a drunk. Doesn’t prove a thing.”

  “He was right drunk,” Buck said. “Nice to have two good things happen to Bernard on the same night.”

  Ty slept there that night. In the morning he walked over to see Willie, buying her a paper on the way and hoping he could talk her into one of her Sunday breakfasts before he headed back for the pack station.

  It was all over when he got there. And not long ago from what he could tell. She didn’t answer his knock. He went in to find her collapsed on the floor in her own vomit. When she saw him she retched again, nothing left to come up now—just the retching, the fighting for air.

  He lifted her onto a kitchen chair, wiped the vomit from her face, her blouse, found a towel and mopped at the floor. She tried to speak but couldn’t. He brought her water, wiped at her face again. Waited.

  It came slowly. But he got it. Bernard had been there, his face bruised and swollen, wanting her to marry him. She’d laughed, kidded him. Told him not to be silly. It was a beautiful day. He should enjoy it.

  Then he’d left. And she’d heard it. Gone out. Seen it. She reached out to hold Ty, her face tortured.

  Ty cleaned her. Took off the soaked blouse and put her in one of Bob Ring’s old ones. Mopped the floor and wiped the cabinets. Then he went out.

  Bernard’s truck was backed into the drive. He could see it before he got there—hair and bone, the orange-red of drying blood smeared across the rear window. Bernard’s body was over the steering wheel. His hand was under the collapsed torso, the Colt still in it.

  Ty went back in.

  “It wasn’t that,” he said. “He was cleaning it. It was an accident.”

  He went to the phone and called. “There’s been an accident,” he told them. “ Yo u’d better come.”

  Then he took a bucket of water and more towels and went out.

  He’d cleaned most of it when they arrived. One of them the same one who’d told him about Buck the night before. They made him stop, told him he shouldn’t have started. They asked Willie questions, but it was no good. They had to turn back to him.