High Country : A Novel (21 page)

Rain came in that night. By morning it wasn’t draining away from the tents anymore. Ty found other places for them, higher, where the runoff was good. No more neat lines of tents, but no water in them either. The men began looking to Ty for direction, and he got them to help him set up a big fly where he could rebalance the pack loads. He worked all that day and into the night, balancing, explaining, rearranging.

The rain didn’t stop until the morning before the march. Ty caught up the mules and put them on the picket lines. He had them brushed and saddled by the time Walker came with his maps.

Walker said. “Can we do it?”
“Hooves have more purchase than tires. And mules don’t break
down,” Ty said. “But it’s awful wet. I wish we had a bell mare.” The colonel walked out ahead with his staff, all in combat gear. Ty
put the mules in short strings, a few men assigned to stay with each.
But the entire troop had to get to the ridge and deploy their equipment.
The other men fell in behind, all knowing it was going to be a long
night, only a few thinking they’d make the ridge by dawn, if at all. The rain had stopped but the footing was bad, the men struggling
through mud churned up by the mules. After two miles most had
dropped out of sight, and Ty’s mules had overtaken the colonel’s staff.
He stopped, gave his mules a breather as he untied the short strings,
setting each mule free, telling the men still with him not to worry if
they couldn’t keep up.
There was moonlight, but it didn’t help—the trail was like grease.
Soon they slid into a dark swale and ran into Jeb Walker. “Can’t get my
men up the other side of this,” Walker said. “Too slick.”
“Mules might make it.” Ty’s mules were sliding down into each
other. “But they’ll be stopped soon. We need to get off this trail to
where no one’s been.” He looked at the map under Walker’s flashlight.
“Maybe we can travel up the ridges. Stay out of these runoffs.” On the map they located a shoulder angling out above them, steep
in places but showing a route all the way up to the ridge.
“If we can get onto it through this brush,” Ty was already turning,
pulling his lead mule back out of the draw, “we might follow it to the
top. Bound to be better than this.”

There was a hint of light in the east as Jeb Walker came out onto the fire break that ran along the ridge’s spine. His uniform was torn. He was caked with mud. But he was there. He watched Ty rig a picket line and start unpacking, taken by the soldier’s steadiness, surprised to see him produce a feed bag and grain each mule.

“Didn’t have to repack a one.” He looked at Ty, satisfied. “We were lucky. Had good mules.”
“Damned if that one didn’t pull me up here. If you hadn’t told me

to grab his tail, I’d be down there with the rest.” Walker looked at the picketed mules. “Why the hell didn’t he kick me back down the mountain?”

“Had other things to think about,” Ty said. “Like not gettin’ in a bind himself. Mules know. They pull a lot of folks out of a tight.”
“You like these mules, don’t you?” The colonel enjoyed the tall soldier. “They made it. It’s my troops that can’t get up the damn mountain.”
“These are fine mules,” Ty said. “And those are good men. But in this country four legs do better than two.”
“ Yo u’re here, aren’t you?”
“Someone had to bring the mules.”
They looked out over the steep country, the ravines dark with wet.
“Sure isn’t the way I thought I’d be fighting this war.” Ty turned to the colonel. “Pulling mules up a ridge they got no reason to climb.”
“ Yo u’ll have your war. Maybe even with these mules.”
Then they heard the whine of motors lifting and falling, then lifting again.
“They got here.”Walker looked at Ty. “How the hell did they do that?”
They saw the lights coming along the ridge, stopping down the firebreak, the men climbing out, looking at the mules. The captain in the lead jeep double-timed up to Jeb Walker and saluted, as surprised to see the mules standing there as Walker was to see the trucks.
“You got here, sir.” The captain looked at the colonel’s torn uniform. “Looks as though you fought your way.”
“We did. This soldier brought these mules where my men couldn’t go.” He looked tired to Ty, still in charge but no longer so determined. “Damned if I know how he did it.”
They learned that the trucks had been driven through the night, going two hundred miles around the designated ridge to find a graveled road that approached from the back. They had fixed flats and made repairs as they went and still arrived at dawn, their men fresh, their equipment dry.

On the train back the colonel sought Ty out. “You beat them, Hardin. But those bastards won. They’ve decided there isn’t anything over there we can’t get to with those trucks and jeeps—and those damn tanks.”

“We might work mules to death to keep up that pace,” Ty said. “I’d rather risk the vehicles.”
“Maybe you’re right.” The colonel sounded resigned. “Maybe we’re all finished with horses and mules. Except for show. For little girls and rich men. If we can feed and equip our troops better with those goddamned vehicles, that’s what we’ll use.”
The train was winding its way back through a deep gorge in the Rockies. Ty looked at the canyon dropping below them, cliffs climbing up to high peaks on the other side.
“I don’t believe we’re through with them.” Ty looked back at Walker. “Give them enough time and they can get you into a different kind of country . . . up where you can see.”
Walker was gone before he finished. Ty watched him move down the car, talking to his sergeants, encouraging his men, giving his troops what he knew he had to give them. Ty figured if they had to fight a war, it wasn’t a bad thing to have a man like Jeb Walker in charge—a man willing to try something new, if something new was best for his men.

They made Ty a sergeant before the division went overseas. He had his own squad now, and he’d watched Jeb Walker enough to know how important it was to keep his men cheerful. That wasn’t easy on the troopship. He hated to go below to do his inspections, the men sleeping on canvas racks, duffel-bags jammed around them or thrown in the aisles. Each night he checked on them before making his way up to the partial shelter of an anti-aircraft station. It was cold and miserable, but there was air. He would wrap himself in his blanket and sit, wondering if the passes were open, if Fenton had the mules shod, if Cody Jo was listening to the same music they heard on the ship’s radio. He got little sleep, nodding off only now and then but at least free of the crowding, the complaining. He got sick only once, throwing up all night before forcing himself below for morning inspection.

He tried not to think about the mountains, but he craved openness so much it was hard not to. The men, edgy as bears, grumbled and snapped at one another. The smells of bodies and Cosmoline and tobacco, the creaking of the ship, the clamminess of the hold and the constant wet of the winds made it a kind of hell. He wondered if the other men, taken up by their poker games and pinups and stories of weekend passes, had the same yearning for quiet that he had.

The men came to him for things, liking his quiet ways. They would choose him for different contests with the ship’s crew, tests his years of packing helped him win without much fuss. He knew knots, could tie them quickly; he understood balance and was able to hold the course longer with his surprising strength. One day the big Greek bosun’s mate was testing the soldiers, standing face to face with one after the other, a broom handle held high above his head. They would twist at it, straining for only a moment before the big man would turn it on them, laughing, his height and great strength too much for them. They came for Ty, bragging away their boredom, placing bets, dismissing his reluctance.

Ty took the handle and was startled by the power of the smiling Greek, the man’s bulk massive against Ty’s leanness—the two equal in height but that, and hands hardened by ropes, the only things the same. Ty stopped the twist before the bosun could start his turn. Now it was the sailor who was surprised, Ty’s spare frame carrying no suggestion of such strength.

The mess call came and went. Still the two held one another off, the men leaving and returning to watch and, high on the bridge, Jeb Walker watching too. Ty thought he could hold on no longer when the bosun, suddenly weary, gave way, the handle turning at last and Ty locked to it so completely he found it hard to loosen his hold.

“ Yo u’re a skinny bastard.” The big sailor wiped sweat from his face. “We’ll try it when I’m fresh.”
He was a peacetime stevedore from the Jersey docks, his strength a part of the ship’s lore. Word went out, and with more days still at sea Ty took to avoiding him, staying clear of them all. It wasn’t so much that he feared reprisal, he just didn’t want any more of it, even if his hands were working again—and they were bad, the calluses torn from the flesh.
But his men wanted more, liking the betting; the sailors wanted more too, wanted their money back. It gave them things to talk about. Ty liked that even less. It seemed the wrong way to keep the men from getting blue.
To Jeb Walker it was another matter. “See you surprised that big sailor.” He stopped to talk with Ty as Ty waited in the long mess line that wound up and down the ship’s ladders.
“He was already tired, Colonel. I was lucky.”
“Lucky? Maybe. Maybe not.You won. Good for the troops.”
But Ty understood how lucky he’d been. The man’s strength had come as a shock. He doubted Fenton ever had such power. He needed a week for his hands to heal. He figured the bosun’s mate just needed a few hours’ rest.
Only later did it come to him that Jeb Walker knew more about it than any of them. At least he knew what to do. He filled their last days with so many inspections and drills there was little time for anything except getting ready. The work kept Ty from feeling so lonely, and it ruled out a rematch. For that Ty was thankful.
They arrived to find Le Havre reduced to rubble, beaten down by the Allies coming in, the Germans falling back. The people looked as worn as their city, as though something deep within them was gone. But there was no time to linger over that; Walker moved them too quickly out into the pock-marked countryside. What they saw wasn’t good: farmhouses shelled, dead horses bloating, tank routes churned deep through abandoned fields.
Their days filled with moving and bivouacking and moving again, the big guns firing over them. Walker pushed them hard toward the oily smoke that rose always from somewhere out of sight. They moved in behind the pounding, rarely seeing Germans until suddenly they were their prisoners, their youth showing through dirt, deep weariness, fear. To Ty they looked more like scared boys than the fighting men in the training films. He was troubled to see anyone in such a state. His men were surprised by his patience, which broke only once, with German officers making demands, insistent and haughty in their fear. He turned away, let his men prod them in with the rest, curse them more than the rest.
He had three squads now, the responsibility heavy. Day after day they would move on, sometimes deployed to move down lanes and across torn fields. But mostly they moved by truck, even by rail, until they reached another front and moved into position, the men counting on Ty for their safety, for finding them cover, shelter. They went north of Paris and then dropped south again. Always working east, always toward the Rhine.
The shelling from their big guns was constant, and when the return fire came in, they took their own casualties, Ty’s squads staying intact but having to bring others out, patching the torn bodies themselves until the corpsmen arrived. They began to take more prisoners—boys, frightened and wary even when Ty’s men gave them food from their own rations.
In December the German tanks came at them hard. They pulled back and dug in, holding on until their own tanks came up to give them relief, Walker coming in behind them, pleased with Ty’s men, where Ty had placed them, that he’d had no wounded.
“Think about taking on more men, Hardin.” He pulled Ty aside. “We keep losing these damn ninety-day wonders.”
They were having coffee in their bulky canteen cups, the colonel’s driver keeping it warm with lines from his jeep’s radiator.
“It’s enough keeping mine alive.” Ty shook his head.
“Don’t cave in on me, Hardin.” Walker looked at him. “We need you.”
Ty watched the colonel move off to the next entrenchment, thinking how much the man gave of himself. He supposed he should be thankful, but most of all he just yearned for an end to it. He wanted to see the late sun on a Montana peak, wanted his men back in their homes. He even wished it would end for the colonel, though he had a hard time thinking what he would be like without these men to worry about—without this war to fight.

By January the Germans began pulling back again, but seemed to begrudge every foot. Walker’s troops kept pressing, moving through the winter and into early spring to cross the Rhine at last. They were joined there by a battalion of black tankers, men trained to move fast and glad to have the colonel’s troops riding on their big tanks. The men camped together in the barns and taverns and little stores that were still standing, then moved on again, the big guns preparing the way as they pushed on, weary beyond considering but buoyed up by the farmers and timid children and townspeople who dared to welcome them.

They turned farther south, getting rest in a village hardly marked by the war, glad to settle in and get clean as they waited for the mess tents and supply trucks that would give them hot food and fresh clothing. Mail. News. They wanted to know what was happening at home, in Washington, in the Pacific—even where they were. They’d long ago learned that news from the rear was more accurate than anything they could learn right there in the middle of it.

Ty got two letters from Cody Jo and one from Wilma. Cody Jo included one Special Hands had sent, asking her to forward it. It was from out in the Pacific, but it was too cut up by censors to know where. “We’ve been gone for ____ days,” it said. “It looks like it’ll be ____ before we get to ____.” And then there were some things about hot weather and how he missed The Bar of Justice. That was all. Short as it was, it was a long letter for Spec.

Cody Jo wrote that there was too much to do at the pack station for her to go with the Red Cross, though she was still training the others. She told him about Buck and Angie and Smoky Girl. She wrote about everything she could think of—telling a funny story about the Adamses, even filling him in on the squabbles the Wilson brothers were having. She said some things about politics too, but the censor had cut most of that out.

Fenton had added a P.S. to her letter. “Don’t get your ass in a sling,” he wrote. “Miserable to pack with your ass in a sling.”
Wilma wrote about the university, the courses she was taking, how the football team had done badly since most of the players enlisted. She wrote about the “Hit Parade” and the songs they were playing. She liked “Do Nothin’ Till You Hear from Me” and “I’ll Be Seeing You,” but her favorite was “I’ll Get By.” She said she was sending a box of brownies and they all missed him and she hoped he’d write. The censor had hardly touched her letter. Ty guessed she’d written it so there wouldn’t be much to worry about.
He read all the letters a second time. And then he read them again, thinking about all the things Spec had taught him about the woods, how pretty Wilma had looked that night in Missoula. Each time he read them he felt more blue. It wasn’t so much because he missed them as because the letters reminded him of what it was like to be free of noise and commotion and fear—the worry that one of your men might stick his neck out where he shouldn’t.
He wanted to know what the weather was like in the high country, whether Fenton had put shoes on the mules, how soon it would be before they could get over the passes. He missed going over the passes, going into a country so untouched it had its own way of keeping you alive.

“I’ve ‘liberated’ us some kegs of beer,” one of the sergeants announced, saying no one was to drink too much. The tankers and Walker’s men were enjoying it on the playing field of the village school. A football turned up and a game started, the players tackling each other happily before taking themselves out for more drink. Ty’s men were trying to get something going against the tankers, who were fast and flamboyant, pleased with the beer and the smell of food cooking.

Ty drank some beer as he watched the game. He saw no one was bothering to keep score and soon found himself in it, enjoying it just the way he had back in Missoula. He scored one touchdown, catching a pass thrown across the field and surprising them with his speed. They got the ball again, Ty running with a short pass when he ran into something so solid he thought he’d hit a boulder in the South Fork.

A tanker helped him up. “That was Otis Johnson.”The man watched Ty try to clear his head. “He’s regular army. Shouldn’t fuck with that man.”
Otis Johnson brought two canteen cups of beer over to where Ty was sitting. He gave one to Ty and they drank together. Ty was afraid all his men were a little drunk. He thought he might be too. But he knew he felt safe here, safer than he’d felt since Le Havre—and more relaxed.
Otis Johnson didn’t seem drunk at all.
“Hit you a little hard.” He looked at Ty somberly. “Didn’t want my men lettin’ you run around so quick. I make it a point for them to be quicker.”
“Gave me a thunk.” Ty was enjoying his drink. “Haven’t been hit like that since the hay bales landed on me.” He took a long swallow of beer. “It was fun playing again.” He laughed a little. “You reminded me you don’t always get to run where you want.”
Otis Johnson broke into a smile. “I try to teach my son that.” He shook his head. “But I don’t think he learns so good.”
Jeb Walker’s jeep pulled up and the colonel got out, looking around at the soldiers gathered in groups as they drank the beer, the football game diminished now to a few men throwing the ball around.
The sergeant who had found the kegs stepped up, saluting smartly.
“We uncovered rations in the town brewery,” he said, his arm snapping back to his side. Ty enjoyed how serious they were when reporting to the colonel. “It was provide some here or risk getting it requisitioned, sir.”
Jeb Walker returned the salute. “See you solved that problem.” He looked at the men, who were smoking, laughing as they drank and waited for the big dinner. He looked back at the sergeant, his face showing nothing.
“Just take it slow,” he said finally. “Don’t want them too sentimental.”
He turned and saw Otis Johnson, who had left Ty and was saluting the colonel himself.
“Is there anything the colonel needs?” Otis Johnson’s voice was so soft Ty could barely hear him.
“Otis Johnson!” Ty had never seen the colonel so pleased. “Sergeant Otis Johnson.” He was shaking Johnson’s hand now, smiling, Otis Johnson smiling too.
“Hardin,” the colonel said. “This man is the best horse soldier in the United States Cavalry.” He turned back, looking at Otis Johnson. “Hardin knows horses. Mules too. Might know more about mules than you.”
“It’s tanks now, Colonel,” Otis Johnson said. “Tanks at Riley.”
“Yes. And it’s infantry for Hardin. But what you two know best is shod and has four feet. Never forget that.”
Four days later Ty saw Johnson again. He was giving his rations to the half-dead skeletons reaching out to him at Gunskirchen Lager. Ty’s men had moved in on the camp fast, trying to feed and clothe what was left of the stick-figures who clutched at them. But Johnson’s tank was there first, Johnson speaking to them, telling them things were all right now, his voice gentle, his eyes unbelieving. The smell of the camp was everywhere—human waste and rot and death lifting from the ground, the buildings. Ty covered his nose and mouth with a hand and watched Johnson surrender himself to the clutching forms—his face tortured, baffled.
Two days later there was Johnson again. Ty’s men—the smell of Gunskirchen Lager still with them—were calling in their own artillery to disable a lone German tank fleeing the Russians and panicked into firing as Ty’s men blocked its retreat. But it was to the Americans the Germans wanted to surrender. Ty knew it, understood it. He was moving to call off the strike even as the round came in. He saw the German’s head poke up from the hatch, arms raised, saw him disappear in the blast as Johnson’s tanks rumbled in to capture what was left. Only then did Ty realize he was no longer standing, no longer could stand, the wet soaking his pants and running into his boot was his own blood—realize that he was not hurt so much as sick, sweating, and cold all at once.
And then Johnson was there, tightening a tourniquet across his thigh, swearing in a singsong, soothing voice as he pulled Ty free from the rubble around him. Johnson twisted the tourniquet still tighter, pressing on the ooze below it, pulling something away. Ty felt nothing, just the suck and the release of something coming free.
“Ours.” Johnson had it in his hand, the soft swearing stopping as he studied it, wiped away the blood. “I thought so.”