High Country : A Novel (28 page)

He got in bed, but sleep wouldn’t come. He turned on the bedside light and got out the manila envelope, starting in to read Cody Jo’s letters again.

Looking back, Ty would find a certain symmetry about the year: marriages at the beginning and the end—no way to see either one coming. It was as though he’d stumbled onto some trail he had to follow because there was no other way. And no way to turn back.

Two letters from Cody Jo should have warned him. “We have been joined by my aunt’s colleagues,” she wrote. “One of them is Bliss Holliwell. He has written four books. Very distinguished.” She went on to say that her aunt’s friends didn’t know about packers but that she was trying to explain, and learning much about the Victorians while she tried.

The next letter was from England. “They call this the Lake Country,” she wrote. “There are mountains, but not like yours. They are open and safe, even when it rains.” She told him she was learning about people who had time and incomes and snug houses, people who wrote about each other—what they were thinking, doing for society, how they spent their days. “It’s a life packers might not understand.You are such men of action.”

It clouded Ty’s days to see the distance between them grow. Cody Jo still put time aside just for him. He knew he was with her, somehow. But he wasn’t sure how. He
was
sure how she was with him: along every trail he rode, in the fires he watched and the music he loved. But he knew too that it was changing—as sunrises do when winter comes.

It confused him that she’d once needed him so much and now was so sure they should be apart—though he did his best to make sense of it. Cody cared more about people than anyone he’d ever known. She was always sure of what to do, could explain it in that compelling way she had—direct, knowing just what needed to be said.

She was certainly direct when she told him of her marriage. “I have married Bliss Holliwell,” she wrote. “But my love for you is so strong you were somehow there, wanting what’s right for me. For us.” She went on to say that she knew Bliss Holliwell was not the best man in her life, but he was the right man for her now—and in a way for Ty too. “He knows about you, Ty. He understands us. He is gentle, kind—a safe harbor for what will always be ours.”

She ended saying, “You and Fenton remain the men of my life. But Fenton is gone.You are the dangerous one. My love for you is dangerous. With my declaration to Bliss we will be safe. It makes sense of us.”

Sense was not what it made to Ty. It was as though she had torn away his insides. He got drunk the first day. And the second, the fire blazing, too lost and empty to find his bed. Then a storm came in and he had to fight it to feed the stock. That sobered him. He took to working on his saddles, making repairs in the barn—doing anything he could to keep from thinking, facing a world that seemed upside down.

It was Willie who put him back together. It wasn’t that she said anything; she just accepted it, took it in as though it were a book read and put aside until it was absorbed. You could go back to it, read the words again, but the story was told.You lived with that.

“Cody Jo has gotten married,” he’d said to her, standing at her desk in the library with some books she’d given him. It was early February, two weeks after he’d read Cody Jo’s letter. He looked a little surprised himself, still bundled against the cold in one of Fenton’s ragged old coats. He hadn’t meant to say anything at all. It just came out of him.

“Stay for dinner. I’m making a roast.”
“No time. Things to do.”
The thought of sitting over a meal and talking to Bob Ring and

Willie was too much for him. He’d talked to no one since he’d read the letter, which was why the news burst out of him so unexpectedly. A bottle so full can’t stay corked forever.

“Librarians need coffee breaks too.” Willie checked to make sure no one needed her. “Especially when a well-dressed cowboy makes an offer.”
Ty didn’t remember saying anything at all about coffee, but it was nice to walk through the cold with her to the student cafeteria.
“Why is it such a surprise?” Willie watched him over her coffee. “She loves literature. Suddenly there’s this great teacher. A worthy man to care for. She’s wonderful at that. She loved taking care of Fenton.”
“There’s others she could look after.” Ty never did know if Willie understood how he felt about Cody Jo. That day was the only time she even hinted at knowing.
“Some men don’t want to be taken care of.” She sipped her coffee. “You don’t.You like to take care of others. Up there. In your mountains.”
“I might tolerate being cared for. If she’s so good at it.”
“Maybe she tried, in her way.” Willie’s blue eyes were on him. “Maybe you wouldn’t let her. Couldn’t let her.”
Ty took the books she offered him and headed back. There was no wind, but it was deep cold. He drove with the heater on high, but the chill leaked in everywhere. When he got home, he fired up the stove and drank some milk. Then he got out a pad and a pencil and sat down at the kitchen table to write Cody Jo.
Years later Cody Jo would tell him that was the best letter he’d ever written. It didn’t seem that way to Ty, not that night. He just wrote what he had to write, wishing her his best, which he did; wanting the best for her, which he always had. He told her that he would take care of the pack station just as she wanted him to, but that he didn’t see how he could take it over from the bank. He was holding his own with them. That was enough. And then he told her that he wanted very much to see her, that he loved her still. That was the hardest part, saying it so it wasn’t wrong, didn’t ask anything of her.
The next day he drove through the snow to Murphy’s to meet the mail run. There was nothing more he could think of to say.

The rest of the winter was a blur. He replaced all the worn rigging on the pack saddles, oiled and repaired the riding saddles, putting longer tie strings on each. He took on as much leather work as he could. And when the Conner boys got sick, he took over their feeding chores, quieting the half-broken team as he did. Old man Conner had a hard time believing it.

“Them boys should stay sick longer,” he said, watching Ty work the team through high drifts to put out the feed. “You got things goin’ so slick I forget to complain about this shitty weather.”

Ty even filled in for Gus’s brothers at the sawmill. They’d gotten into trouble in Great Falls and the judge kept them to work it off. Ty didn’t like the sawmill, but he stuck it out. He’d had a soft spot for Gus since the first day he met him.

He didn’t go to Missoula much, but when he did he’d stop and have coffee with Willie. She even got him dancing again, Ty surprised to realize he was the one who had to get relaxed—not Willie. But they had fun, Willie kidding him because he was no longer finishing the books she gave him. And when he told her Cody Jo wanted him to take over the pack station she got out a pen and asked him lots of questions, writing down the answers as though she were a bookkeeper.

“We’ll see what we shall see.” She put away her pen and stood. “But now,” she led him onto the floor, “there’s music.”
The band was playing “How High the Moon,” and with Willie so alive in his arms, it hardly seemed a chore to get relaxed.

The melt came fast that spring. Ty was in the back-country by June, supplying all the ranger stations and trail crews up and down the South Fork. Then an early fishing party came in and then another. And there were trail crews to move and Forest Service training sessions to supply and still more fishing parties. It went on like that, Ty sometimes having two or three parties in the woods at the same time—shuttling between them with his mules, moving camps, resupplying, tacking shoes back on, doctoring, keeping people comfortable.

There was so much work Ty had to keep Buck and Jasper busy all summer. Angie too. The work seemed endless, Buck getting Bump to help sometimes, Ty prying Gus loose from his sawmill when he had to.

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 the 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.