High Country : A Novel

by Willard Wyman

  “But you come back.You can’t stay away.”

  “Hard to stay away from a beautiful woman too. It might mean trouble, but it don’t matter. Moth and a flame.You keep coming back.” Sugar dropped back again. “ Yo u’ll see. This country ain’t so different.”

  They camped in the first timber, wind-battered trees edging their way up into a tilting meadow. Ty saw they had crossed the crest even above a great bank of snow that melted to start the first rivulets on their run west, becoming the stream they camped on before cascading down to join the Kings. Across the meadow his horses moved higher with the sun. He marked the place as darkness fell, wanting tracks in the morning.

  The girl was busy before light. Ty and Sugar crossed the frost to follow the tracks high, then higher still to the horses—quiet as rocks, waiting for the sun. Ty was warm from the climb, winded. But he was ready for the morning, pleased with the slanting light of the new day.

  He led Smoky in, the rest following, bells clanging as Sugar clucked and whistled them in behind. Ty picked his way down shallow cliffs, seeing now why Sugar so often chose to walk. The country seemed to come up through his legs as he skirted granite slabs, chose sandy fissures widened by winters into grassy steps. Sky pilot and rock fringe hugged boulders, purple-blue heads opening to the sun. It was as though a gardener had readied it: rocks perfectly placed, flowers lifting, a scrim of dew from the frost melt, the stream rippling past.

  They were moving by seven, Ty so busy looking over the country he could hardly keep track of the trace. They merged with a main route, and he gave Smoky her head. He couldn’t get over the way they threaded through it. The mules lined out behind Cottontail as they climbed north, up past lakes and tarns into raw rock, a line of quartz halving it as they closed on another divide, this one dropping them into the north fork of the Kings.

  The mules crossed over with no hesitation, the trail carved through talus that left nowhere to go but forward. Wind blowing hard until they reached the quiet of switchbacks, a snowfield, the crunch of hooves the only sound—and Smoky blowing as she nosed across.

  Ty was even more taken by this country: the canyons seemed deeper, the peaks higher, the cliffs more sheer. Down and down Smoky took him, the slender trail threading across cliffs golden in the late light, down into a canyon where Sugar moved ahead, looking for something, finally turning back to say:

  “Been watching that Smoky mare. The old sayin’ don’t hold for her.”

  “What saying?”

  “This trail jackassable; for horses impassable.” Sugar smiled at Ty’s confusion. “I think your mare can go where my burros go.”

  Without another word he was off Apple, leading her through willows and onto a slanting game trail climbing the timbered canyon wall. Ty was thankful his mules were separated, the trail steep enough to scare a deer. He heard Sugar laugh as he dismounted onto ground higher than Smoky. He led her then, the packless mules scrambling, Smoky sometimes lunging but willing, going where Ty took her.

  And then they were up, crossing the lip of a tidy U-shaped valley, the middle of it a sparkling meadow. Sugar made his way across, fording a stream and disappearing. Ty followed him into the timber only to find him on a perfect flat, too hidden for anyone to come on by chance.

  “I’ll show you all over these mountains, Hardin.” Sugar tied Apple to a tree and began catching up mules. “They like you.”

  “More the other way around.” Ty pulled the saddle from Smoky, checked to see if she’d cut her legs on the rocks.

  “That too.” Sugar stacked saddles on a barkless deadfall. “Nina and me seen it when you come over Goat Pass.” He spread a manty over the saddles, tucked it against the wind.

  “What is it you saw?” Ty was already freeing the animals.

  “That you was smitten.” Sugar shooed the mules out of camp, watched them nosing the sand for a warm roll. “Seen it happen before.” Sugar spoke matter-of-factly. “Mostly to Basque.”

  They sat with coffee, looking east over the deep canyon they’d left, shadows creeping up the soaring peaks.

  “The Palisades.” Sugar watched the sun linger on them. “Used to take our sheep into the basins below. Now it’s just climbers.”

  “Have you gone back? With your burros?”

  “Too rocky. Not like this.” Sugar looked around, taking in the girl, composed across the fire, the kitchen put away, beds laid out, everything in its place. The only sounds were the busy stream, the bells of the mares out in the meadow.

  “It’s beautiful,” Ty said finally.

  “Men die climbing into it. Too many.”

  “Have you climbed over there?”

  “Some.”

  “He’s climbed most of them,” Nina said, hugging her knees against the cold. “With that man Clyde. Grandfather thought they were crazy. ‘Is there grass up there?’ he would ask. ‘Water? What is up there that you need?’”

  “He was right.” Sugar held Ty with his dark eyes. “I thought I’d be able to see more. Saw farther. Not more.”

  He stood, threw away the last of his coffee. “ Yo u’ll see what I mean. Norman Clyde, he’s still smote. Like you. But you’ll learn. See everything you need from a place like this.”

  “That’s what grandfather always said.” The girl stood too. “ Yo u’ve made it your saying now.”

  “Yes. And if we do right it’ll be Ty’s too.”

  Ty stayed by the fire, wishing Spec were there to listen to Sugar Zumaldi.

  A coyote called. Another answered, clear and haunting. Ty knew they were calling from those rocky basins Sugar used before his climbs into the Palisades.

  After that Sugar rode in front with Ty, or walked—leading Apple as he told Ty about the country. It was clear Opie Kittle was right: No one else could know as much—where there was water and grass, where cliffs would stop you, how to get around them when they did.

  Sugar was like a cat, burying everything he did, sometimes even walking the rocks beside the trail to leave no sign. He would use no fire rings, scooping out a place and taking the ashes away in the morning, kicking away droppings, sweeping away tracks.

  They rode north, leaving the Kings drainage to cross a pass wild and high. They rode for miles along treeless lakes and meadows before dropping through broken rock to reclaim the forest in a canyon rich with the names of philosophers and wise men: Huxley and Darwin and Lamarck. Sugar seemed even wiser, pointing out this hidden route and that. Each night he would pull out a map, point to a hidden place where some prospector had made a scratchy start, mark the map to show Ty places no one thought stock could reach, pools you could dive into from warm granite: hidden places where water and feed and wood were as plentiful as the glade was secret.

  They rode down the canyon of the philosophers, camping in lush meadows before dropping from its lip to meet another stream, follow it west toward its source to camp high, the grass sweet enough to hold the horses while Sugar told Ty more, helped him bring the country into his bones.

  The next morning Sugar took them up the canyon wall along a trace sometimes invisible, climbing along shelf after shelf of grassy ledges, some narrowing to granite as they worked their way up and up the steepening canyon wall until Smoky seemed to be going straight up, just a chute ahead of them, rocky and forbidding—a danger Ty didn’t like.

  “Hell for sure on the animals.” Ty stopped to give Smoky a breather before pushing her up it.

  “That’s what they call it.” Sugar had led Apple up.

  “Call what?” Ty looked back to see if his mules were rested.

  “This pass,” Sugar said. “It’s hell for the stock and hell for the people. But it don’t seem like ‘Hell for Sure’ to me. Seems like God fixed it. Made all them shelves to help us climb.”

  “You must have a different God. Mine’s not that generous.”

  Sugar shook his head. It bothered him that Ty smiled that tight smile whenever Sugar talked of God.

  Smoky went up the chute like a goat, the
mules pitching and scrambling behind. Just across the pass stood a lone tree, its bark torn away by fierce winters, leaving a strip that spiraled up and brought life to a second trunk flourishing high above them.

  “Foxtail,” Sugar said. “Toughest tree we got. You had a strip of bark like that, you might survive the winters up here yourself.”

  “Must be thousands of years old.” Ty was stopped by so much health emerging from such a narrow band of life.

  “Been through some times.” Sugar started down, this side not so steep.

  “Might be older than that God of yours,” Ty said.

  But Sugar didn’t answer. He was too busy negotiating his way down from Hell for Sure Pass.

  A day later they met their party, businessmen from Fresno. They were pleased to be above the heat, pleased with the packers and the horses; pleased with the pretty girl who fed them and spoke about becoming a lawyer, a doctor, saying there were new opportunities for Basque women, ones she intended to know.

  They brought a letter from Opie Kittle saying Opie would meet them at Tuolumne Meadows, that they had to haul the stock south to take the next party into the Whitney country. “Lucky it’s the Haslams,” Opie wrote. “They won’t mind when you’re lost. Better learn all you can from Sugar about where to go. The man dogtrots up cliffs that would lame a goat. Keep up. Ask questions.You’ll need answers.”

  At the end he said Buck had called saying he was coming. Then he’d added a P.S.: “Hope your friends work out. Don’t want to be up shit creek again this year.”

  Ty smiled, tucking the letter away and thinking that was exactly where Buck would think he was when he went over his first Sierra pass.

  They took a main trail north, the guests riding ahead with Nina as Sugar told Ty about the country. Each day they would pass one or two hikers, but they saw only one packer, a huge man with a high-crowned hat and a gaudy kerchief, his pants tucked into high boots. He looked too big for his horse to Ty.

  “You Kittle’s new man?” He spit, wiped his mouth with the bright kerchief. “You must like that ass-packer as much as Old Man Kittle.”

  “Sugar sure knows the country.” Ty moved his mules off the trail so the man could pass. “I learn from him.”

  “That girl’s about ready.” The man watched Nina as she rode on. “The ass-man done good.”

  Ty pulled his string back on the trail, knowing that Sugar didn’t like the remark any more than he had. Nina registered nothing, but Ty thought she’d heard. He liked that even less.

  “Call him Knots Malloy,” Sugar said. “Tightened his knots so absolute once they had to cut rope.” He looked at Ty. “Too strong to get things right, if you ask me.”

  “I did ask you. Anything that big I need to know about.”

  They were bathing in a tarn just above Thousand Island Lake. Ty was lying out on a slab of granite, drying in the sun.

  “Something about that man,” Sugar dried himself with his shirt, “runs against the grain.”

  Ty knew Knots Malloy troubled Sugar. Knew Sugar didn’t want to give Knots any importance by admitting it. That was all right with Ty, but he knew it was hard to ignore people like Knots. He’d seen men try in the army—seen bad things happen when they failed.

  A day later they crossed Donohue Pass and saw the big glacier filling the north cirque of Mount Lyell. Below them the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne wound through broad meadows, stands of timber spotted in them as though placed by the gods.

  “That Josiah Whitney said the glaciers had nothin’ to do with all this,” Sugar said. “I doubt he looked.”

  “Fenton would have seen it right off.” Ty seemed to be talking to the country itself. “He’d enjoy this. How it opens up. No rain at night.”

  Sugar laughed, his spirits back. “Don’t you count on that, Ty Hardin. We been lucky.You wait. It can be like God pissed.”

  That night they made do with a camp that had been used often. A fat bear came sniffing along as Nina got dinner ready. He rose, sniffed the air, came down and began pacing, working his way closer. Sugar banged some pots and shouted, but the bear paid no attention, pacing still closer, his fur loose over his big body like clothes that didn’t fit. Sugar hit him with a rock. The bear hardly noticed, pacing still closer.

  Ty had never seen a bear so bold. He had his Colt in his saddlebag, but he knew you weren’t supposed to shoot these bears. And there was something comical about Sugar and Nina shouting and the bear paying no attention. He went to the fire and got a burning log, waved it. The bear ignored him, moving so close to the kitchen Ty had to throw the log, the flaming end hitting the bear in the side. He grunted, rose up and turned toward Ty, who was ready with still another log. They considered each other for a long minute before the bear came down and trotted away, stopping once to lick where the log had hit him.

  “Persistent bastard.” Sugar turned to Ty. “But you knew. Looks like you’ve had trouble with bears before.”

  “A different kind.” Ty retrieved the log, put it back on the fire. “Wouldn’t have bothered us like that.” He sat on a rock by the fire. “Wouldn’t have left us like that either.”

  “You mean grizzlies? Ain’t they a whole different matter?”

  “Yes, but I believe we’re the ones cause them the trouble.”

  “We’ve ruined these. Find a road and they want a handout.”

  “Handouts aren’t what interests my bears.”

  “What does? What do they want?”

  “What you want, I guess.” Ty felt awkward saying it. “A place to be alone.” He got the buckets and started for the stream. “What we all want.”

  Sugar watched him go, thinking a place to be alone wasn’t what everyone wanted. But it was what Ty wanted, wanted more than any man he knew. Even Nina saw it....It was a worry to them both.

  A day later they met Opie Kittle at the Tuolumne Meadows corrals. He had his two big ten-horse trailers, Ty’s trailer too. Standing by it were Angie and Buck. Jasper Finn was with them.

  “Jasper?” Ty could hardly believe Jasper was right there in the

  Sierra, looking a little worried but chipper nevertheless. “Jasper Finn.” “Got some years left,” Jasper said. “If you want mountain grub.” “Yours I do.” Ty thought of the persistent bear. “And you’ll sure like

  these bears. They’ll take to you too.”

  Ty laughed at how nervous that made Jasper. He was surprised more than anything else: surprised by how glad he was to see them. He was almost shy as he introduced them around, worried that Angie might get too affectionate. It turned out Sugar and Nina were the ones who seemed affectionate.

  “Glad you have these people, Ty.” Sugar shook Buck’s hand. “Me and Nina want for you to have your own people.” Nina looked up at Ty from where she was showing the kitchen to Angie and Jasper. Angie could tell by her look how lonely Ty had been.

  “Wouldn’t hurt to stop for a beer,” Buck said when they turned the trucks south for Owens Valley. “I get thirsty just watchin’ you drive this thing.”

  “Kittle’s the boss. I just follow along.” Ty thought of the hot drive ahead. “But Jasper’s with him. They might hatch up a plan.”

  Opie considered things as he led them south, only part of him listening to Jasper’s theories about bears. Before dark they had to meet Jeb Walker, the punctual general who would be with the Haslams at the corrals south of Lone Pine. But he knew Ty and the others needed something to eat. He settled on the Deerlodge as the best bet. Maria Zumaldi was planning to meet Sugar there. And he could talk with Ty about the Whitney country. He knew Sugar had shown him things on the maps, but he had more faith in himself than in maps. They might show where the trails were, but not the grass—which was what mattered.

  “Bout time.” Buck perked up the minute they pulled off the road. “It’s gettin’ so I got to prime up to spit.”

  “Lars’ll fix that,” Ty said. “Never met a thirst he didn’t wet.”

  Lars Swenson was in his thirties and still w
edded to old country ways and old country sayings, and he was honored whenever Opie Kittle stopped in. And Lars had liked Ty from the first. He’d heard about him from Opie, and he knew Ty must be a good packer just by the looks of him, his height and his quiet ways. When they walked in there wasn’t enough he could do for them.

  “I got sandwiches,” he said. “It’s a hot drive.You need beer.”

  “Two for me,” Buck said. “For starters. And I’ll buy Mr. Kittle’s. Had he not stopped I’d of shriveled.” He turned to Sugar. “Does everybody in California shrivel? I near become a raisin in that truck.”

  “Up there you won’t.” Sugar gestured toward the mountains. “Up there it’s good. Cept for storms. Winter.” He was wondering where Maria was, but the beer tasted so good he relaxed. He liked how much Ty enjoyed his friends.

  Jasper went off to help Lars make sandwiches, and Angie went over to the jukebox and played “Tuxedo Junction” and “String of Pearls.” She even got Ty to dance a little, Nina and Sugar pleased to watch them.

  Sugar got his maps and spread them out on the table, showing Opie the places he’d pointed out to Ty. Opie was astonished.

  “The hell you say.You never showed me them places.”

  “You couldn’t get into them,” Sugar said. “Ty can.”

  Ty smiled, enjoying them. Nina went to the jukebox and played a song by the Texas Playboys. She came over to Ty, shy but determined, asking if he would teach her to dance the way Angie did.

  While they were dancing, Ty trying to get her to relax with the music, he saw Jasper and Lars were sipping whiskey while they worked, Lars fascinated by whatever Jasper was saying. When they brought over the food and Lars started asking Ty questions, it was clear Jasper had been into his stories about bears. It was also clear that getting to the corrals early was less and less important to Opie Kittle. It wasn’t even that important to Ty anymore. The beer was good, and there was music. He’d watered and fed the horses before they loaded, and both Angie and Nina wanted to dance again.

  When they finished their sandwiches, Lars—still trying to get Ty to talk about bears—decided the Deerlodge should buy a round of beer.