High Country : A Novel (23 page)

Ty threw himself into his work until his hands blistered. He got gloves from Jasper and kept on, Gus surprised by how determined he was not to bruise the country. They built the three-bar catch corral in the lodgepole grove, used deadfall for rails lashing them to standing trees. They dug a fire pit rather than use rocks for a ring. They set up a small wall tent for their gear and two bigger ones with stoves for the hunters, putting them where the ground drained to avoid ditching. And at the end of each day Ty would explore the country on Smoky, thinking where Spec would send hunters, how he would handle it if they asked him to do their hunting.

He wasn’t looking forward to the hunting, but he liked getting ready: looking high for game, listening to elk bugle at sunset, the coyotes’ wild calls—spotting bears as they foraged.

Jasper took pleasure in feeding Ty, watching his appetite return. Gus watched Ty too, saw he didn’t like to talk about the war, about Fenton. Gus figured, in his country-wise way, that hard work was good medicine. Sleep would heal. The harder the work the deeper the sleep for Ty.

He was right. Ty made his bed under the makeshift saddle rack. The manties thrown across them offered all the shelter he needed— and a place to look out at the stars, listen for the night noises. He would lie there with his leg throbbing, the throb slowing to an ache as sleep washed through him. He barely stirred one night when a deer rummaged around looking for salt, only half-woke when the belled horses drifted close. The safety of his woods was so comforting, his weariness so absolute, Gus wondered if even a grizzly roaring through camp would unsettle him.

Fenton was his worry—one he tempered by knowing Fenton was seeing Thomas Haslam. Gus had decided to talk less about Fenton’s well-being and more about the work he’d left them to do, but he’d seen the look on Ty’s face when he came down from the pass, Ty’s eyes on something else as he unsaddled and turned Smoky out. He thought Fenton must have said something, though there was no way to guess what. Fenton was too unpredictable. And they’d run into Bernard Strait up there. Gus thought Bernard had grown even more touchy during the war years. It was hard to tell what he might have said, seeing Fenton in that condition, Ty looking not so much older as different—as though he’d traveled an uncommon amount of country during the war, none of it pretty.

And Bernard
had
behaved strangely up on the pass, at least Ty thought he had. He was putting in a benchmark, dressed in his olive ranger pants and his brown ranger shirt, the brim of his hat straight across his brow.

“Well, you’re back.” He looked more ready to talk than Ty expected. “This is the Bob Marshall Wilderness now. I got charge of the South Fork District. I believe you’re startin’ down those switchbacks a little early.”

“Can’t get started too early in the mountains,” Fenton said. “That’s true, Bernard,” Ty said, knowing Fenton was hurting. “Fenton always said an hour in the morning’s worth two at night. Missed hearing it these last years.”
“Hell, this was the Bob Marshall before Ty signed up.” Fenton looked around. “Doesn’t hurt the country, I guess. But I think the man was crazy.”
Bernard looked at Fenton as though Fenton might be crazy himself. “He was a famous conservationist.What’s the matter with you?”
“Only thing he wanted to conserve was some country to test himself in.” Fenton shifted to find comfort. “I seen him come into camp and see he hadn’t made his fifty miles and go right back out to make it up. Wind up so sick he couldn’t watch the sun set or hear elk bugle.”
“Maybe that’s why they dedicated this country to him.” Bernard couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Count yourself lucky he dropped dead back east. Never would of heard the end of it if he’d died in one of them blizzards he always got caught in.” Fenton started Easter down toward the switchbacks.
“Got to wait an hour before you go down.” Bernard was cleaning his glasses. “Stock might be coming up.”
“Would you tell me what in hell you’re talking about, Bernard? If someone’s coming up, I’ll get out of the way. Or they will.”
“It’s the regulation now.” Bernard put his glasses back on. “Stock goes up in the morning. Down in the afternoon.”
“You think we would of got your Bob Ring and his broke leg out if we listened to them paper pushers?” Fenton sounded so weary Ty was sure Bernard would see he was sick. But Bernard stepped in front of Easter, looking determined.
“It’s an official government regulation. That’s all I know.”
Fenton’s face was gray, but what he said was clear. “And you are an official government asshole.” He moved Easter forward until Bernard had to step back to let him pass. Ty followed, watching Bernard’s face go tight.
The pass was broad before dropping into steepening switchbacks. Ty rode up to be with Fenton. “Loosen him up, Ty,” Fenton said. “Maybe he’ll see even old Bob Marshall couldn’t regulate where a horse shits or what a bear eats or when a man finds himself sick on a goddamned pass.”
“Guess Bob Marshall wasn’t so good at regulating himself.”
“He wasn’t. But he wanted to regulate us. I think the man was from another world, one where you don’t have to learn from the country.You just use it for your excitement. Tommy thought so too. Thought too many of us were like him. And Tommy has a point.” He leaned from the saddle and spit. “Before you’re through they’ll be makin’ heroes out of folks
because
they get themselves killed. Used to be the opposite. If you got killed you were dumb; got caught with your britches down.”
“I been dumb a few times.” Ty remembered the big snow.
“Not dumb enough to cash in.” Fenton wiped his mouth. “Somethin’ tells me this may be my time. Thought it’d be different.”
“See Doc Haslam.” Ty didn’t like hearing it. “He’ll know what to do.”
“Hell, he’ll just tell me official what I know unofficial already . . . But I promised Cody Jo. I’ll go.”
Ty reined in, watched as Easter took Fenton down the switchbacks.

Bernard was having his lunch when Ty got back. He got out some jerked elk and they sat, warming in the high sun.
“I could give him a ticket for that,” Bernard said. “I might yet.”
“Ticket?” Ty was surprised to hear such a word. “They’re for parking. Or speeding. Not for up here.”
“We write them up when people don’t follow the regulations. It doesn’t work out to have everyone do what they want.”
Ty looked at him. “Seems to me this country tells you what you can and can’t do all by itself.You could see Fenton needed to go out.”
“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.”

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.”

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.

“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 whiskey, 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.”

“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.
He squatted, knowing it looked bigger because of the mud but also knowing it was the biggest track he would ever see. It was clear this bear was more than just big: he was seasoned and smart, comfortable in his solitude. Ty counted back to that first trip of Cody Jo’s. Not so many years had gone by that this couldn’t be the same bear, in the same country, with the same habits. And there was Jasper too—Jasper sensing this presence, knowing something was out there no matter Ty’s denial. He worked his way back, wondering what Fenton would say.
But he didn’t have a chance to ask. Fenton’s pain had come back. Haslam was giving him morphine as Cody Jo held him.

The next day he took Fenton and Cody Jo all the way to White River. Haslam came with them, his doctor’s things in his saddlebags. Fenton almost seemed his old self as he told them how Tommy and Gus had carved their way through the canyon, how Sugar had smashed Buck’s nose, how they had given up on Sugar and almost lost Goose in the South Fork.