High Country : A Novel (33 page)

That wasn’t the last Ty would see of Norman Clyde, the two crossing paths with one another for the next twenty years. Mostly in the mountains, best in the mountains, Ty learning more about Norman Clyde each time he saw him—but never everything. It was different for Norman Clyde. He seemed to know everything he needed to know about Ty.

They came to know things about one another’s life in the valley too, where things weren’t always as good: Norman Clyde writing to describe his climbs—and getting so impatient with pestering teenagers he’d frighten them off with pistol shots. Ty drinking too much at the Deerlodge—finding himself in the morning with some dancer who knew the songs but not what they meant. But what they came to know about one another outside their mountains never interfered with what drew them together in them: Ty liking to learn from Norman Clyde; Norman Clyde liking to teach Ty the things he thought he’d left forever at the university.

Only a few days after Old Army Pass, Ty saw the mountaineer again. They were behind Mount Whitney now, camped in a hidden meadow below Crabtree Lakes. Ty was watching Thomas Haslam and Jeb Walker fish the upper lake when he saw that pack moving again, working its way along the boulder-riddled crest that met the trail to Whitney’s summit. He used his glasses to make sure. There was Norman Clyde, headed for the highest peak of all. Not on the trail that made it possible and safe and predictable but getting there his own way—in his own time, for his own reasons.

A day later he was in their camp. “When I hit the trail, I left my pack and went on up without it.” Clyde accepted another helping from Alice. “Didn’t stay long. Too many people up there.”
“How many?” Jeb Walker asked.
“Three. All talkers too. Came back and slept where I’d left my pack.”

He was pleased he’d found them, and it was as pleasant as he’d remembered. More pleasant, he thought, accepting an after-dinner drink from the general. And it had been very pleasant the first time.

He took his drink out onto the rock where Ty was watching his horses far across the lower meadow.
“Think I know why you’re so interested in those two.”
“King and Cotter?” Ty pulled himself away from his view.
“What else you been askin’ about?” The mountaineer’s blue eyes were on Ty. “It’s because they came along so recently. Began opening up a country we’re still opening ourselves.”
“Eighty years ago?” Ty looked at him. “That’s not yesterday.”
“Hell it isn’t.” Norman Clyde snapped his fingers. “Like that.” He cocked his head. “That’s not even right. That’s about how long we’ve been upright. The history those boys started is about as long ago as a snap inside that snap.” He snapped his fingers again, liking the comparison.
“Not very long,” Ty said, watching the gray creep up Whitney, the sun dropping.
“Fact is human history’s so new up here we’re part of it.” Clyde liked it that Ty gave him plenty of time to make his points. “That’s why everyone wants to know how the hell I climb these peaks.”

In the morning Clyde was gone. Ty half-expected it, picturing him off along some high route known only to him. But it was no matter. When he met Norman Clyde again, they’d pick up where they’d left off. He felt lucky to have learned what he had, looked forward to seeing the country Clyde had described: the deep Kern trough, the power of the river; the Kaweahs and that shelf Sugar talked about; the Chagoopa Plateau; the Big Arroyo crashing down to join the Kern.

They rode north along a high meadow, deer watching them and twitching muley ears. Above them, across the deep fault of the Kern, the Kaweahs jutted out from the Western Divide: higher, closer, more impossible than the divide itself. The snow-choked bowls beneath them fanned out into an airy shelf of timber and grassland and lakes tilting down into cliffs dropping to the Kern. That was the Kaweah shelf. And Sugar was right—it was as alluring to look at as it was impossible to reach.

“Dropped into it once with Norman Clyde,” Sugar had told him. “But we didn’t stay. Climbers don’t. They climb down the Kaweahs to get in, turn around and climb up them to get out. No reason to stay. Nothin’ to climb.”

Ty saw right away why Sugar was so taken with it—the meadows green, the lakes sparkling. He watched it as their route started them down into the Kern, the trail following a fast flowing creek, down and down toward the big river. The Kaweahs hung above them across the canyon, the Kaweah shelf going out of sight as they dropped—just as tempting to Ty at the end of the day as it was at its beginning.

Above Junction Meadows, where waters spilling from the Kaweahs join the Kern, the river spread into a ford. They crossed, camped by the faint trace leading up the Kern-Kaweah, a route that skirted the high cliffs guarding the Kaweah shelf to climb the other side of the canyon, crossing the divide and dropping into the Kings River country.

From their camp Ty could see the Kern arcing through a wooded meadow, the water deep enough to look peaceful. He freed his horses and went to watch the river gather its power to send its waters thundering across big boulders into slicks that rose in bubbling pools of white and green. He could see why they needed bridges below, the river funneling, straight as a plumb for ten miles, before widening into shoals that might provide a rocky crossing—in late summer, the water low.

In the morning they recrossed, took the trail down the river’s east side to reach the hot springs, where a log bridge crossed the river once again. Sugar had told him to go downriver from the bridge, close to the springs but away from the trail. They camped there under ponderosas, the women returning crisp and clean after their baths to chase Buck and Jasper away. The two were happy to go, the hot springs all theirs.

“Smart of you to grab that sherry.” Buck, clean and scrubbed, sunned himself. “It’s hardly tolerable in the valley. Improves considerable up here.”

“It is tasty with this warm.” Jasper passed the bottle to Buck and lay flat in the hot water, studying the towering canyon walls. “Haven’t felt this clean since Ty married Willie.”

The thought of Willie quieted them. They passed the sherry back and forth.
“Ty’s gettin’ more spirited,” Jasper observed. “He sure likes that man with the pack.”
“Hope he doesn’t take up backpackin’.He’s too good with mules.”
A voice broke in on them so suddenly Buck almost dropped the bottle. “You sure as hell won’t do! I was lookin’ for them pretty women you’re supposed to be packin’ around with Kittle’s mules.”
They saw that Knots Malloy, big as the big horse he was riding, had led his mules off the trail to look them over.
“Count yourself lucky you got a peek,” Buck said. “We took first in several beauty contests last winter.”
Knots was moving before Buck finished. They couldn’t make out his answer, just heard something about jackasses.
“Hope Ty’s up to beatin’ the shit out of that man when the time comes.” Buck relaxed again, passed the bottle to Jasper.
“Why?” Jasper settled back into the hot water. “Ain’t we still workin’ on gettin’ Ty happy?”
“Someone’s got to do it. I’m not up to anything that big.”
“Maybe I’ll take him on.” Jasper lifted a skinny arm from the water and took a long pull. “This makes me right perky.”
Buck reached for the bottle and took some himself.
“ Yo u’ll need more perk than what’s in here,” he said.

Ty’s camp was so hidden that Knots Malloy saw not a sign of it as he crossed the log bridge and headed down the river. He was thinking of the swinging bridge still ahead. He knew they’d pulled the cables as tight as they could, but the bridge still rattled and swayed. Once he’d had to beat a mule so hard to get her across he’d pulled something in his shoulder. The mule always fought him after that, and his shoulder still wasn’t right. He had bad memories of that time. In fact he couldn’t think of any good memories involving that bridge. He was working so hard on not thinking about it he didn’t even notice Ty’s tracks leaving the trail.

Jasper was glad Knots had missed them. The general was so polite he might have offered him a drink, a waste of the bourbon Jasper was enjoying as Alice got them singing. She and the aide’s wife knew all kinds of songs. They got everyone singing around the fire each night— no one but Ty worrying about the horses or the bears or anything else.

The next day they crossed the bridge and rode under Chagoopa Falls, the water a mare’s tail as it spilled from the canyon wall. Then they climbed the wall itself, their trail following another plunging creek, switching and turning so steeply across cliffs Jasper was afraid to look back, the canyon floor fifteen hundred feet below. He felt better when they climbed into the big timber of the Chagoopa Plateau. But that didn’t last long either.

Ty trusted Sugar’s directions completely now, which was a worry to Jasper. They crossed the plateau, skirted a huge meadow and left the trail to go through untracked woods to the opposite rim of the plateau. Ty rode along it, looking down into the Big Arroyo until he found his route. He set his mules free and took an angle down the bluffs, sliding and slipping over little short switchbacks until there was no way to switchback at all, Smoky leading the mules straight down the timberless arroyo wall. Jasper, too frightened to dismount, rode it out, eyes closed, his body leaning so far back his head touched his horse’s rump. Then, miraculously, they were down—safe on the floor of the Big Arroyo itself.

“There’s a ride that would give the cavalry pause.” Jeb Walker looked up at the impossible descent they’d made, exhilarated. He watched his aide, who’d abandoned his horse, cling to shrubs and roots as he made his way down.

“Haven’t had so much fun since my aunt had her accident,” Buck said, watching the aide.
“What accident?” Walker asked.
“Time she caught her tit in that wringer,” Buck said, his laugh breaking out so richly the general had to laugh too.
They camped right there on the river, Buck telling more stories, liking the camp, liking it that there was no trail at all here, liking how much all of them were coming to like each other.
He told about the winter Fenton packed the frozen Chinese from the mine, sawing the bodies in half to balance the packs and enraging the families when he couldn’t match the halves up.
He told about the buffalo calves his grandfather trained to plow, only to learn they’d only plow north in the spring, south in the fall.
“So he decided to plant narrow,” Buck said. “But it got so it took two days to trot in for lunch. That’s when he broke them to milk.”
“That’s the only time his granddaddy didn’t get done what he said he would.” Jasper had hardly known Old Man Conner, but Buck had told him so many stories he felt like family. “When he died his wake was so good they postponed the funeral.”
The Haslams listened happily. And Jeb Walker had a way of getting one story to lead into another. Everyone enjoyed them so much the storytelling caught on with the rest of them, the stories and singing making each night better than the last. They even told stories about Ty, waiting until he left to check on his horses and talking quietly, seriously—about how Fenton and Cody Jo took him in, the time he rode through the blizzard, killed the red bear because he had no choice. Only when Willie’s name came up was there quiet, all if them looking into the fire.

They eased their way up the Big Arroyo, fishing the river and taking side trips to the lakes above. Then in a swooping day they turned west, crossed the divide at Kaweah Gap to enter the Kaweah drainage, the headwaters a bottomless lake, cliffs plummeting into it.

After the lake the country seemed to stand on end, snowmelt feeding shelves of green, bursts of paintbrush and shooting star and lupine. A lake below seemed unreachable until the trail took them into the cliff itself, tunneled through a buttress to wind its way through talus and juniper, meeting the lake at last. Then more than two miles along a cliff, the trail following ledges, barely going up or down as it clung to the sheer wall, Ty’s mules loose behind him, moving easily. But nothing about it easy for Jasper—his eyes closed, knuckles white on his saddle horn, dizzy with the thought of the chasm dropping to the Kaweah River far below.

“Like a stairway to heaven,” he told Buck, still shaking. “Cliffy and steep?” Buck unsaddled. “Hard on the stock?” “No, goddamn it,” Jasper said. “Impossible.”

They were nearing Wolverton, the other side of the Sierra where the road from the Central Valley wound its way up into the big trees. At Wolverton Jeb Walker’s people would leave them; the Haslams would stay, other friends joining them for the trip back across the Sierra. Ty was looking forward to it, to recrossing the Western Divide, this time at Colby Pass, completing a full circle around the Kaweahs to ride back under that Kaweah shelf and rejoin the Kern. They would camp again at the Kern ford, then follow the big river north to its source, turning off at its headwaters to meet Sugar in Milestone Basin.

Ty was anxious to see Sugar, talk about the places he’d been, where he’d camped, his meeting with Norman Clyde. He hadn’t thought there could be anything in the world like this country. He knew Sugar had seen it coming.

The last night Alice put on a skit about a packer who fell in love with his mule, convincing Buck to play the lead with Cottontail as the love interest. After that they sang songs, Ty watching and thinking of Fenton’s theory about warming from the inside. It seemed to him these people knew all about that, letting the fire take care of the outside, counting on each other for things that ran deeper. He considered trying to tell them about Fenton’s theory but decided against it, not sure he could make it make sense.

The next day he sent the rest out early so they could ride through the sequoias in Giant Forest. He would take the cutoff and meet them at Wolverton, where their trails converged. Ty hadn’t expected to see any big trees himself and was startled when his trail dropped into a sequoia grove, the trees huge, some with their cores burned away by ancient fires but still healthy. His string went silently through the deep duff. All he could hear were birds, the blowing of his mules, the creak of leather. The rest was still, sunlight filtering through, ferns barely moving in the soft air.