High Country : A Novel (20 page)

They let Spec out for hunting season. Fenton knew the judge, who worked it out so that Fenton and Tommy Yellowtail were the parole officers. The stipulations were that Spec keep working for Fenton—and stay away from The Bar of Justice. The judge couldn’t say that; The Bar of Justice wasn’t supposed to be. But everyone understood. Tommy Yellowtail brought Spec directly to the pack station, not even stopping at the Seeley Lake Bar. Fenton gave him a horse and a pack mule. Two days later Spec was in Lost Bird Canyon with Ty and Jasper, setting up the hunting camp, listening to Jasper’s stories, finding out what Ty had come to know about the woods.

Ty saw he was quieter, but he saw too how much pleasure Spec took in the mountains. He would be gone before dawn, checking the meadows, the game trails—reading the country. Then he would be back, helping Ty set up wall tents or lashing the lodgepoles into a corral, liking it that Ty didn’t want to use nails anymore, if he could help it. Ty had decided to be like mules crossing frozen ground: he’d leave no tracks. Spec liked that—Ty wanting the country to stay the way he found it.

And Spec liked the camp, the same one his father and Fenton had found years ago when they’d forced their way through the canyon below. That was the one time his father had considered leaving Fenton, afraid Fenton was so smitten with Cody Jo he’d lost his judgment. It wasn’t that Tommy didn’t understand. The young braves were always doing hare-brained things when they were moonstruck. He just didn’t like the prospect of getting out of all the trouble a moonstruck Fenton could cause.

Spec didn’t dwell on those old stories, but Ty saw he took to the camp as much as his father had. He would slip away each evening after Jasper fed them, sometimes not coming back until dark and then staying late by the fire, letting the flames tell their story. Only once did he say anything about the government man he’d almost killed—or the big bouncer he’d waited for outside. And what he said, he said only to Ty.

“Wish I’d hit him harder.” Spec’s voice startled him. Ty was graining his mules in the hidden glade above camp. He didn’t think anyone else knew it was there, yet here Spec was, coming to them so silently the animals didn’t stir—until his voice broke the stillness.

“Which one?” Ty went back to his feeding. “I heard you came close to doing them both in, though they say that bouncer came out worse.”
Spec rubbed Loco’s neck, pleased the mule had begun to trust him.
“Both ...I guess.”
Ty was surprised. There was no anger at all. Just matter of fact. He moved the nose bag to Loco, feeding him while Spec rubbed.
“See any sign? Fenton says a big grizzly hangs out below.”
“Watched him. Red-coated. He watched me too.... There’s others above. We’ll hunt there, leave that roan bear be.”
They left the mules and worked their way down to the camp together, Spec talking about getting someone to take care of his father after he enlisted. It seemed to Ty that Tommy Yellowtail was the only thing outside the mountains Spec cared about about when he was in the mountains.
It was different when he was out of them.

They moved the camp three times before hunting season was over, Ty cleaning everything up before moving on, storing his trimmed lodgepoles where even Spec would have a hard time finding them. Spec and Jasper looked to Ty now for what to do, when to do it, the two of them staying in the back-country the whole of hunting season, not leaving the woods at all until Ty pulled everything out. But each time Ty went out to get a party or to move a fire crew or to resupply, they were anxious to hear the news.

“Cody Jo and Fenton don’t think we can stay out of it,” he told them. “They about flattened London. And they’ve sunk another ship.”
“Them army people will likely object to an Indian with a record.” Spec poked at the fire. “But that judge said he’d fix it. If I wanted. Maybe we’ll be settin’ up one of them military tents next year.”
“Quit that talk.” Jasper, sipping his cooking sherry, didn’t want to hear it. “You sure as hell don’t want to be in no war.”
But to Spec and Ty they were as good as in it already. They didn’t so much talk about what they would do as about what was happening— reading the magazines Fenton and Cody Jo sent in, looking at the pictures in
Life.
And Cody Jo made it all too real: families pushed from their homes, ships sunk and sailors drowned, tanks rolling through the cities.
It was a late fall, and with no football to worry about Ty didn’t move them out of the mountains until November. He went right to work, pulling shoes, patching, oiling leather. Spec made sure his cousins would look after Tommy then headed for town to join.
“Think I’ll become one of them marines,” he said, stopping to see Ty on his way. “That judge says they go at things more direct.”
“ Yo u’ll be good in whatever you join. They’ll see what you can do when they give you a rifle.”
“Maybe. Hope there’s not too much paradin’ around.”
Ty felt blue as he watched Spec drive away. He wasn’t as sure of things as Spec was. And he’d heard the marines took a lot of chances. Spec didn’t need to be encouraged in that department.
Two weeks later Ty signed up, with the army. Fenton tried to convince him to take over the Forest Service packing, saying it would make him draft-exempt, that he could go to the university and play football just like Bull Trout wanted him to. But he could see that Ty was going to join. And there was a part of him that thought he should.
Not all of him, though. He knew it would be a different Ty who came back. If he came back at all. And he liked this one, liked his strength and judgment and gentle way with animals—with everyone, except on the football field. He liked the way Ty took to the mountains, moved through the roughest country with no fuss, making decisions each step of the way but never fretting, just doing it—finding feed for his animals and shelter for his people, letting them ease into the country he’d come to love.

Ty signed up on a Wednesday and was scheduled to leave the next Monday. A band was at the Elkhorn, and Fenton decided they’d have a farewell dinner. Cody Jo got Etta and Horace to come along, and at the last minute Angie and Buck showed up.

It was a good time. They danced and ate and drank and danced some more. After awhile it seemed to Ty everyone he knew was there. He saw the cheerleader dancing with the man she’d been dating at the university. And Bernard Strait was at a table with Bob Ring and Wilma. Bernard was high enough up in the Forest Service to be draftexempt. He danced all the slow numbers with Wilma, Wilma waving to Ty and Fenton from the dance floor and not looking at all like a young girl anymore.

Ty felt light-headed from all the beer, but the music was so good and he was dancing so much that he just kept on drinking. He danced to “Sing Sing Sing” with Angie, who bounced around until they were both out of breath. He danced to “Blueberry Hill” with Etta, who got embarrassed, saying that music was for Cody Jo, not for her.

He finished it with Cody Jo, and they stayed on the floor to dance to “Sunrise Serenade.” Ty thought he might be dancing with air, even though Cody Jo was right there in his arms. After awhile he quit thinking about the dancing, just let the music move them.

When they got back to the table Bob Ring was there, and Wilma, stopping to say hello before they left.
“Ty’s joined,” Fenton said. “Better give him a good-bye dance,Willie.”
“ Yo u’ve been drinking,” she said, as they started to dance.
“I have ...I just may do some more.”
Then they were dancing to “Indian Summer,” and instead of saying what she was about to say, Wilma put her head on Ty’s shoulder and gave in to the music. For a minute Ty thought he was dancing with Cody Jo, but Wilma was even slimmer, and for the first few steps she seemed a little tentative. Cody Jo was never tentative.
“You don’t look like you did when you were leading Apple over that snow,” he said.
She leaned back, looking at him, her eyes pools of blue in the smoky light. “No.” Her face came back against his shoulder. “I guess I don’t.”
They danced again, and then again, Ty seeing that Bernard was watching, and then that Bernard had gone over to join Buck and the others.
When they came back to the table, Fenton had a woman with a camera there. She had a shiny dress, her hair piled up on her head.
“Let’s get a picture,” Fenton said. “Be awhile before we’re together like this again.”

The next day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Everyone gathered at Etta and Horace’s to hear the radio reports, listening through the day and into the night. Ty finally gave up and went to bed, but no sleep came. Everything he’d imagined about joining had suddenly changed. He supposed he’d changed too.

He still felt that way as they called out his name at the loading dock. Cody Jo, not looking so certain about things now, gave Ty a long hug. She swallowed back tears as Fenton gave Ty a razor that came apart and fit perfectly into a small leather case. Miss Wright showed up too, gave him a gift-wrapped package. He put it in his grandfather’s kit bag with the razor and some sandwiches Etta had made.

Fenton stayed with him on the train even as it began to move. “Don’t let them make you do something foolish.” He looked at Ty and for the briefest moment hugged him. “Don’t go gettin’ yourself killed.”

It was awkward—Ty was almost as tall as Fenton now. But Fenton was gone before Ty had time to realize he was embarrassed. He watched Fenton swing off the train, jogging with it a few steps before dropping back. He leaned out to wave good-bye, but Fenton had already turned back toward Cody Jo, looking tired to Ty. But then he’d looked more and more tired each time Spec and Ty had talked about enlisting.

Ty ate one of the sandwiches and opened the package Miss Wright had given him. It was a leather box, not much bigger than a pocket bible, with a little drawer. “T.H.” was stamped in the leather, and when he opened the drawer a music box played a few bars of “Red River Valley.” On a card in the drawer, in her perfect hand, she had written “For important things.” Ty dug around in his kit bag and found Fenton’s razor. He put it in the drawer, listening to the music box one more time before he put it away.

They changed trains in Denver, then stopped and started through the night, reaching the training camp at dawn. A big sergeant lined them up and said things about turning chicken shit into chicken salad. “Play ball with me,” he barked, “I play ball with you. Don’t play ball with me, I stick it up your ass and break it off.”

It was like that all the way through basic. When Cody Jo sent the picture, Ty had to go into the bathroom after taps to look at it. It was a good picture, but it seemed to Ty it had been taken in another life. He was smiling at the camera, looking silly, he thought. On one side of him was Cody Jo, laugh wrinkles showing even though she was hardly smiling at all. On the other side was Wilma, serious and pretty and a little sad. Horace was next to her. On the other side, next to Cody Jo, were Bob Ring and Bernard, who was looking at Wilma. In back were Fenton and Etta and Angie and Buck, Angie mugging for the camera, Buck’s arm across her shoulders. Fenton was next to Etta, looking even taller than usual, more sober than the rest.

They kept them so busy through basic training Ty was surprised he learned anything. But he did, winding up in charge of one of the squads. After basic they made him a corporal, and after he filled out a questionnaire they shipped him to Colorado to work with the mules of a mountain-combat division.

Everyone was surprised the army had sent them a man who knew about mules, but they put him to work right away. He tried to teach the men to be quiet around the animals, not to yell and swear and frighten them. But it wasn’t easy. Most of the men were from cities. They wanted to drive the mules like cars. And to Ty the army manuals for packing had the loads too high, sometimes with the heaviest piece of equipment highest. Ty wanted to lay it all out and pack again, his way. But the lieutenants said to follow the manuals. So Ty did, but it seemed to him like rolling a rock uphill.

The mules were good though, big and leggy. After walking them around on level ground for a few weeks, the soldiers led them up a railroad bed to Pikes Peak, two men for each mule—one leading, another behind, Ty ranging up and down the line trying to keep everything balanced.

A colonel waited at the summit. “Think we can do that in combat, soldier? Get ammunition through the mountains like that?”
“Maybe. If you got a railroad bed to walk up and time to rebalance these packs,”Ty said. “Wouldn’t make any bets along a mountain trail.”
The colonel was surprised. “What the hell did you do before this war?”
“Packed mules,” Ty said.
Ty learned that the colonel was the cavalryman, Jeb Walker. His mule regiment was being called the last chance for the horse cavalry. The rest of the cavalry was still at Fort Riley, using tanks and halftracks and little jeeps instead of horses.
Ty didn’t know any of that that morning on Pikes Peak, though it wouldn’t have changed a thing. It was easy to see they were using too many men to pack too few mules. And packing them wrong.
But the army wasn’t ready to give up on their mountain-combat experiment yet. Ty’s battalion boarded trains and headed for the Hunter Liggett maneuvers in California. Jeb Walker had convinced them to test his mules against the new vehicles they claimed could climb anything a mule could.
As soon as they had their tents lined up and the encampment established, he called Ty in. “Look.” He showed Ty a picture of a Cossack firing at a German tank across his fallen horse, snow everywhere. “Horses and that miserable Russian winter turned the Germans back.”
“Take a lot of trucks to bring feed enough to get us through a winter like that.” Ty didn’t like the picture. The horse was frozen.
“Listen, Hardin.” Suddenly Walker was all business. “Three nights from now we’ll get an objective. Those motorized troops will have the same one. Do whatever you want with your mules. Pack how you want. Just get there first.” He looked out at the coastal range lifting behind the rows of tents. “I believe mules can do what those vehicles can’t.”

That night Ty let the mules off the picket lines to graze. The young officers didn’t like it, but the word was out. Jeb Walker had made up his mind. This man Hardin could do it his way.