High Country : A Novel (32 page)

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.

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

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 wedded 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.
“Jasper here has sure been good for you, Lars,” Opie said approvingly. “We’ll bring him around more often.”
“For Mr. Kittle, I buy two.” Lars put a second bottle in front of Opie. He even made a toast, everyone enjoying his roundabout delivery.
They’d hardly put their bottles down when Maria Zumaldi came in, serene and gracious and as lovely a woman as Ty could imagine. Sugar put her in a seat next to Jasper and pulled over another for himself, Jasper so warmed by Maria’s smile that he decided to buy the next round himself.
It took a few minutes for Ty to realize Maria spoke no English, that Sugar and Nina were filling in what she was saying: that a flat tire had delayed her, changed by her sons, who had talked all the while about going into the mountains with their father. They hardly noticed when Jasper’s beer appeared, hardly noticed when Knots Malloy came in either, big as he was. When Ty looked up and saw him, the man looked even bigger than he’d looked in the mountains—as though the room couldn’t quite contain him.
“I see your boys has left the horses in the sun while they butter you up with beer,” Knots said to Opie, as though Ty and Sugar weren’t there. “Ain’t the way the famous Mr. Kittle usually handles his stock.”
“I’m the one left them out there, my friend.” Opie was as calm as could be. “Watered and fed; not a sore on a damn one.”
Knots grunted and joined some cowboys at the bar who were enjoying Jasper’s stories as they watched him sip whiskey.
The Texas Playboys were on again. Angie and Buck started dancing. Sugar and Maria decided to dance too, and Ty asked Nina if she wanted to try again. It was a fast number, and with the others out on the floor Nina relaxed to the music, let Ty move her around in his easy way. When it was over they were all a little out of breath, wanting to dance again but knowing they had to get going. Even Jasper could tell that Opie was getting responsible again.
Knots Malloy had put on a Gene Autry record and was ready to do a little dancing himself.
“Mind if I dance with this here little lady?” he said to no one in particular, taking Nina’s hand.
“Oh,” Nina said. “I’m sorry. I’m just learning.”
“She has to make tracks,” Ty said. “Got a foot out the door.”
“How ’bout that pretty mother of hers? She looked awful good dancin’ with the ass-packer.”
Maria, not understanding a word Knots said, smiled and kept walking. Knots reached for her but Ty stepped in the way.
“She’s about to trot along too.”
Knots was surprised. “Who named you the rescue party?”
“I did.” Ty realized again how big the man was. “I guess.”
Malloy looked at him then looked over at Sugar. “You know,” Knots said, “I hear the only thing dumber than a sheep is a sheepherder.”
They were all at the door now. Lars Swenson was about to say good-bye when the quiet came. Lars and the others looked from Knots to Ty then back again at Knots. Ty was quiet too.
“I heard different,” Ty said finally, his voice level. “Heard it’s a guy who can’t untie his knots.”
Everyone knew where Knots had got his name, but nobody had ever said a word about it to Knots. Hearing Ty say it took them by surprise, the cowboys at the bar turning to watch. Knots, not sure he’d heard what he’d heard, was as quiet as the rest, his mouth a little open.
Opie didn’t waste a minute. He herded everyone out and waved Sugar on his way to Goat Creek. Deciding a drunk young driver was better than a drunk old one, he pushed Buck behind the wheel of one rig, crammed Jasper in behind him. He told Angie to drive the pickup and hopped into the other rig with Ty.
As they left they saw Knots still in the door of the Deerlodge, his mouth still a little open.
“You did tell that big turd what’s what.” Opie looked at Ty. “He’ll start lookin’ for a way to tell you the same.”
“Maybe.” Ty was sorting out what he had to do. He figured they had three hours of light left. He had to water and feed again. Getting in before dark would help. “Didn’t take to the way he treated Sugar.”
“Me neither. But I’m too old to straighten them things out anymore.”
They were quiet then, neither wanting to talk about it. Opie was looking out at the sagey floor of the Owens Valley.
“This country was all green once,” he said. “Then they took our water and run it down to that Los Angeles.”
“I guess a lot of what was in the mountains has gone off to the cities,” Ty said. “Or the other way around.”
The distinction hardly bothered Opie. He was asleep, leaving Ty alone with his thoughts. Ty looked forward to this trip with the Haslams, with Jeb Walker too. It would be good to have Buck and Angie and Jasper with them. He was anxious to see Mount Whitney too, and the Kern, the camps Sugar had told him about.
He tried not to think about Knots Malloy, though he was pretty sure Opie was right. It was one of those things he’d need to settle.
Knots would be a hard man to ignore.

They camped the first night under tall lodgepoles, grazing the mules in a big meadow above them. The climb had been hot and dusty, long switchbacks through a sagey, sandy country so steep the trail barely held. The sage gave way to timber as soon as they entered the basin, which was cool and inviting—trees spaced and stately, meadows lush, icy water spilling from cirques carved under the Sierra crest. From the camp they could see it: high, imposing, snow glinting from the crevices, cliffs dark and sheer—all of it seeming to lean toward them, as foreboding as it was seductive.

Just after coming into the timber they had overtaken a shaggy whitehaired man with a huge pack, the man moving slowly but his pace steady. He didn’t step aside until Ty was almost upon him.

“Nice lookin’ mules.” He took off a sweat-stained campaign hat and swabbed at his forehead. “Packed tidy.”
“Helps when there’s a climb like that one.” Ty was surprised a man so old could carry anything so big, move so steadily. “This country sure tests you.” He moved on, wanting to make camp so everyone could wash off the dust. Behind him Thomas Haslam pulled up and begin talking with the man, taking off his hat as he said hello.

“Know who that was?” Haslam helped Buck and Ty unsaddle. “Norman Clyde. They call him ‘The Mountain That Moves.’ He’s climbed more of these peaks than anybody.”

“Goes alone,” Sugar had told Ty. “Climbs anything, as though he’s just warmin’ up to climb somethin’ else.” Sugar told him how Norman Clyde had left his wife in her grave—his studies unfinished—retreated into the Sierra. He’d told him about Clyde’s solitary ways too. Ty hadn’t liked the way Sugar watched him as he described Clyde.

Just then the man himself trudged by, his pace the same. “Ask him for dinner,” Alice said. “We have plenty.”
“We do.” Jasper warmed to the idea. “With Angie stayin’ back to

help Mr. Kittle, we got extra.” He liked this new country. Better still he liked having Jeb Walker along, a major general now, with an aide doing whatever Jeb Walker wanted and the aide’s pretty wife as anxious to help Jasper as the aide was to help the general. And they were headed for Army Pass. The general enjoyed talking about that. Jasper looked forward to good evenings talking about Army Pass, sipping the general’s bourbon.

They caught Clyde not far up the trail, his pace not a jot faster, as though wherever he found himself at sunset would do for camp.
“We’ve come to invite you.” Jasper still held the knife he’d been using. “I’ve cut some nice steaks.”
“He’s right,” Ty said. “We’d be pleased if you’d join us.”
Norman Clyde watched to make sure they meant it.
“I could use a bite.” He looked around. “Good camping here. Flat ground. Water.”
He sat on a boulder and shucked his arms from the pack. Ty lifted it free, startled by its weight.
“Got enough for a mule here,” he said.
Norman Clyde was impressed that such a slender man could handle all that weight so easily. “Why the hell use a mule?” he said. “When I can carry as much. Go higher too.” He began pulling things out: a tool kit, extra boots, cans of food, moccasins. He found a pair of pants wadded down under things, shook them out.
“Ought to spruce up for the dinner,” he said.
“Well.” Jasper saw he was serious. “We’ll make it nice. I’ll just slip on back, get things ready.”
He hurried off, leaving Ty to watch. Ty was astonished by the things that came out of the pack, how quickly they were arranged: two fishing rods, a ball of wire, nails, a skillet, a pistol, two cameras, an axe, climbing rope, a bedroll, books in different languages, a tarp. Finally Clyde pulled out a shirt, just as balled up as the pants had been. He shook it out and changed into it too. To Ty he looked the same as he’d looked coming up the trail, only more wrinkled.
Ty explained his plans for camps, describing some of Sugar’s out-ofthe-way places.
Norman Clyde listened, offering a suggestion here and there, but mostly he listened. Finally he settled himself on a rock and looked at Ty.
“You been talking to a man named Sugar Zumaldi?”
“I have.” To Ty the question was a relief. He’d wanted to bring up Sugar’s name but felt awkward about it. “He told me about this country. Said I should go up the Old Army Pass....He even told me about you.” Ty picked up one of the books. “Said you know as much about the Greeks as you do about these mountains.”
Ty surprised himself, being so forthright. Something about the way the man watched him seemed to draw it out. “He’s planning to meet me in a few weeks. In a place called Milestone.”
“I know more about up here than about those Greeks.” Norman Clyde kept looking at Ty. “The interesting history’s here. And Sugar might be the best guide to it, if you can find his camps.”
He studied Ty as he took a cup from his belt, poured water into it, dabbing himself here and there to clean off the dust. He rehooked the cup on his belt and settled his campaign hat.
“Must have faith in you if he said go up Old Army. His burros go up. None of these others even try. Mostly it’s slid back to nature. You can try. Just send your friends up the new one. It’s designed for people. Bad to take people where they can’t go.”

It was a happy evening. Alice helped Jasper lay things out in her special way, and Jasper’s steaks had never been better. Jeb Walker got out his bourbon and found out Clyde enjoyed it as much as Jasper and Buck. They laughed and told stories as though they’d known each other for years. Alice and the pretty aide’s wife—looking as crisp after their baths as Norman Clyde looked rumpled after his—a perfect audience. Doc Haslam watched Ty, who was pleased himself by all the life in his camp. That pleased Thomas Haslam.

Jeb Walker knew all about Army Pass, at least the old one. “Otis Johnson told me about it,” he said. “Built by black troopers, from Georgia, back at the turn of the century. Good men. Inexhaustible. No one thought they could do it.”

“They could do most anything—if you paid them a wage.” Clyde’s blue eyes stilled them. “Trouble is they had to build where it let them. Where the snow holds. Some years it never melts free. When it came time to reroute, they had the new tools. Could cut right through the rock, find the sun.... But that old one, that’s the Sierra.”

“Sugar Zumaldi,” Norman Clyde said as Ty walked him back to his little camp, “knows another way across this crest. His people took sheep up it.”

“He didn’t tell me about that.”
“Didn’t tell you what a climber he was either. We went up the Palisades together. Tough climbs. The man gifted.” He stopped and looked at Ty in the moonlight, his face craggy and strong.
“Then he just quit. Didn’t like to rope up. ‘A man can climb anything with all those ropes and hooks,’ he told me. ‘I don’t need to get there that bad.’” Clyde walked on, shaking his head.
“Maybe that was right, for Sugar. Not for me. I just kept climbing. Not sure Sugar understands it.”
They heard bells in the meadow, clear and reassuring in the cold air.
“More than one reason to bring them up here.” Clyde cocked his head and looked at Ty. “Right pleasant company.”
“Mules and mountains. Seems to me they go together.”
“Mules are what those explorers Brewer and King used.” Clyde looked toward the crest, inky blue in the night. “Rode them places Zumaldi opened up. Climbed some peaks. Put them on their maps. But I doubt they were first. Sheepmen probably been up before, getting high to look for meadows.”
“Think they were up there?” Ty looked at the highest peak on the escarpment, massive in the moonlight.
“Likely. They used to call it Sheep Peak. Now it’s Langley. That Clarence King climbed it. By mistake. Almost killed himself too. Found the hardest way. Thought it was Whitney. For a while everybody said ‘Hurrah.You’ve done it.You’re the best.’” He laughed.
“Wasn’t he?” Ty knew Clarence King had discovered Whitney. Norman Clyde seemed to know something different.
“Hell, no. The best wouldn’t miss a whole goddamned mountain.” Clyde hunched deeper into his jacket. “The best is probably some Zumaldi we’ve never heard of. Those people had the mountains in them. Never hurried. Opened this country along deer trails, cracks in the rocks that started before we got upright.”
“Did they find out he missed Whitney? The Basque?”
“If they did, they wouldn’t have cared. A fisherman did. Rode his mule up from the other side.” He smiled. “That fisherman cared. ‘No wonder Clarence King had so much trouble,’ he said. ‘Found the wrong way up the wrong mountain and wouldn’t admit it.’”
Norman Clyde looked at Ty, his voice serious.
“That can break your heart, you know.”
“What can?”
“Making your wrongs look right.” Clyde pulled his collar up against the cold. “To yourself. Rips your heart right out.” He turned into the shadows to find his his bed, his voice disembodied. “This country helps with that. Helps you tolerate yourself.”

Ty tried to make sense of Norman Clyde as he walked back through the moonlight: his solitary ways, the odd focus he had on things. He was wondering what wrong the man was trying to make right when he decided he’d pick up Clyde’s pack in the morning and top-pack it right up Old Army Pass. That way he’d learn the way and maybe learn more about Clyde. Why he kept climbing these peaks. Alone.

He realized how cold it had gotten and hurried back to camp, pleased to find Buck and Jasper still by the fire. “Your job,” he told Buck, going to the water bucket and breaking a skim of ice to get a drink, “is to take everyone up that new trail. I’ll take the mules up the old.” He warmed at the fire. “We’ll meet on top. If that pass lets me up it.”

But in the morning Norman Clyde was gone, the only sign the pressed earth where he’d slept. Ty rode with the others until they turned south to the new pass on the sunny side of the huge shoulder that shaded the old one. Then he rode toward Old Army, the route barely visible as he moved through meadows and along lakes, looking for Norman Clyde.

When he saw the pass at last, he took out the binoculars Alice Haslam had sent him that Christmas. “To see the good things ahead,” she’d written. There was nothing good about what he saw now. The headwall looked impossible. And the old mountaineer was nowhere to be found. Ty scanned the huge bowl that steepened into cliffs, the apron of snow spilling from the high saddle. Nothing.

And there was no trail either. Not that Ty could see. He turned the glasses to the north, to the impossible-looking cliffs that led up to the still higher shoulder where the Zumaldis had taken their sheep. They must have crossed the crest along the top of those cliffs, coming from the north along a way only they knew, crossing a thousand feet above Ty’s pass. He scanned the boulder-strewn chute below the cliffs and saw something was wrong, different. He focused on it and saw it inch higher—realized then that he was watching Norman Clyde’s pack, the man seeking his own way to that high shoulder so few had known.

Ty turned back to what was before him, remembering what Clyde had told him the night before: “It’ll surprise you,” he’d said. “Can’t tell where you’re going till you’re there. Sugar knows. Sugar should be with you.”

“Or Norman Clyde,” Ty thought, deciding there was nothing for it but to see for himself. He set his mules free and gave Smoky her head, moving along the lake below the headwall. To his surprise a trace appeared at its upper end. They were on it, then it was gone, then they were on it again, the route twisting and turning and taking them up between boulders and above cliffs and through chutes, the mules spread in a ragged line, but all of them on the course, all with their packs low and balanced, handling their impossible task as though it were not impossible at all, their noses to the faint trace as if knowing it would lead them to water and grass, a country good to be in.

He was so impressed with what they were doing that he scarcely looked at where Smoky was taking him, trusting her as she scrambled up and up, angling away from the high saddle, away from the big snowfield as she climbed high on the side of the bowl, almost as high as that snowfield, when suddenly she turned back, going along a natural ledge that had looked impossible from below. It proved to be a long traverse leading directly into the saddle. He rode along it, the ledge sandy, tilting down into the cliffs that fashioned the bowl, snow hugging their ledges. Sometimes there was snow above him too. But his route was clear, clear even as he came to the big snowfield where the sun-warmed rocks had slid the snow away to offer him a cool corridor above the vast white. They emerged into a wind so strong he had to grab for his hat, Smoky bracing herself as she crossed the final steepness to the broad pass.

It was wider and wilder than Ty could have imagined. Beyond the pass the country was serrated and vast, mountains opening to more mountains, a forested country dropping away in between, distant ridges rising into the sky like the teeth of some crazy saw.

He rode onto the pass, trying to place things in his mind as Sugar had placed them on his maps, as Clyde had described them. It was a moonscape where they were, so windswept that what little life there was had to hug the ground to survive, edging the rocks in pale greens and blues, as fragile as it was exquisite.
Ty was surprised by how quickly he’d come up the impossiblelooking bowl, immediately finding the main trail where Buck would join him.

What was ahead—dropping into the Kern—seemed easy compared to what he’d done.
He dismounted, caught up his mules and tied them into their places, vowing never again to try something like that without exploring it first. He even walked back into the wind, peered down into the bowl to recapture his route. But it was too wild to tell where he’d been, everything fell off so. It was as though they’d been lifted on a cloud.
To the north he could see the high summit of Langley, even see the passable route King had missed in his haste. But he could see the cliffs on Langley’s face too, understand how King might think it was Whitney.
And on those cliffs was that speck of dark again, moving ever-soslowly upward. He used Alice’s binoculars, and there it was—a pack with legs, a pack that could swing itself out and around boulders, inch its way up cliffs, find a purpose in going higher, always higher.
He looked back to the south and saw Buck appearing, the others strung out behind. Buck’s eyes wide as he huddled in his coat, fighting off the wind.
“What crazy bastard put California way up here?” he shouted, shaking his head at the thought of it.
Ty was so pleased he had to laugh. He lined his string out, looking forward to the lush meadows far below.