High Country : A Novel (35 page)

It wasn’t that it was over so fast that confused people. It was that what happened was so different from what usually happened when there was a fight in the Deerlodge. There were no threats, hardly any talk at all. It was a Friday night—some people dancing, some gathered around the bowling machine watching a cowboy have a good run. Most of them didn’t even know there was a problem until the jukebox went over, the music becoming a screech before the crash. At first everyone thought it was Buck and Ty having the disagreement, not Ty and Knots Malloy. Knots, big as he was, was partly out of sight behind the overturned jukebox, records spilled across him like cards.

It started innocently enough. Ty and Buck had brought a late trip out over Taboose Pass in the big October storm, fighting high drifts to reach the pass then dropping and dropping along the rocky trail until the snow turned to hail, then rain—not letting up until they unpacked. Looking back, they were thankful they’d made it at all, a purple and scarlet sky bleeding into black on the Sierra crest. The blizzard still howling on the pass, six thousand feet above them and under four feet of snow.

They took care of Jasper first, Jasper cold and sore from all that downhill. Everyone knew he was getting too old to be taking trips, but he still found reasons to go. This time he regretted it, his hands so stiff and cold he couldn’t unpack his kitchen. They took him to Opie Kittle’s with the first load of mules, firing up the stove so he could warm. Ty had taken it over entirely since Opie died, using the barns to store the gear, the pastures to winter the stock.

They hauled the rest back through the night, making three runs— and then still another, the last to get Sugar’s burros. Sugar had brought his family out over Goat Pass in the same storm and they knew he was having a harder time than they were—the rain there turning to sleet in the night. Ty went for him as soon as he got word, more worried about Maria than the children, all of them big and strong now and as much help as Sugar could want.

By three in the morning Ty had them all at Opie’s. He gave Sugar and Maria his bed and let them settle the kids in the house. He was happy to throw down some saddle pads and sleep out in the barn with Jasper and Buck, happy to let the tension drain away. He knew how lucky they’d been to get everyone out—no frozen fingers or toes; no frostbitten ears.

That morning a foot had already fallen by the time they wrangled the horses. They packed under a high tarp set up to keep off the snow. It was coming hard and getting worse, and they all knew the South Fork of the Kings was no place to be when the snows fell. No way down the canyon at all; the only way out the high passes.

Ty was afraid even the broad saddle of Taboose would be closed when he finally got everything moving, thinking he might have to turn back right there, drop down into the timber, make camp and hope for a melt. The drifts were already deeper than he liked, but the snow was dry, no weight to it. When he hit the first big drift he went right at it, wishing he had Smoky Girl under him again.

Smoky Girl had been long retired by then, the rocky passes too much for her legs. He’d put her into the pastures back of Opie’s barns, using different horses until he’d found the black filly—escaped from somewhere to run loose on the desert. It was easy to see she had good blood—easy to see she was wilder than the mustangs she ran with too—until Ty began to work with her, ducking her hooves and naming her Nightmare and running her with his mules until they made her theirs. Calming her until he made her his, his and no one else’s—at least according to Buck and Jasper.

She was tough enough, Ty knew that, but he was never sure how desert horses would handle big drifts like these. He was still missing Smoky Girl when Nightmare pushed her way into the drift, hardly hesitating, going at it with such force she almost swam through it, touching down now and then to kick up and plunge ahead, lifting herself above the drift again and then again—finally all the way through it, her legs trembling as she regained the rocky trail, the wind blowing everything off into the drifts still ahead. They came down like that, the mules following Nightmare through, the first few struggling but soon providing passage for the rest. And then they just fought the cold, the trail barely visible, the wind gusting snow into smaller and smaller drifts. And lower down, the hail. The wet.

“Thought we might become a Blue Plate Special up there.” Buck closed the lantern down. “You got any of those Donner Party recipes, Jasper?” He laughed as he got into his sleeping bag. “Hell, you’re so skinny I doubt you’d be tasty.”

“Wish you hadn’t drank up all that sherry,” Jasper said. “My bones could stand a warm.”
“We made it.” Ty turned over to get comfortable. “I don’t want to try that again. We pushed our luck.”
“Might have,” Buck said. “But we come through. We’re here.”
Ty was going to answer, but he heard Buck’s breathing even out.
Buck had never complained, Ty thought. Neither had Jasper. But Ty knew how close he’d taken them, how much they’d counted on him. He lay there thinking about that until he couldn’t think at all, everything in him folding into his own exhaustion.

Cody Jo had written saying she would meet them after Ty’s last trip. But he was surprised to find Cody Jo and Angie already there, making breakfast, helping them find clean clothes, deciding with all of them to have a big dinner that night at the Deerlodge.

By late afternoon they had things organized: the tack under cover and feed out for the stock. They were all excited about going to the Deerlodge, excited about Jasper teaming up with Lars to do the cooking. Ty and Sugar were looking forward to a good drink and a chance to compare notes. They counted on that each year after the weather closed down the country they both loved so much.

Lars couldn’t have been happier to see them, the big storm being all the news. “Lucky you got down safe, Ty. You deserve a drink. I’ll sure buy the first.” He pulled tables together and went off to cook with Jasper, liking Jasper’s stories about Montana—about Ty’s friends, Spec and Fenton; about things that happened at a place called The Bar of Justice.

Everyone was having such a good time Ty hadn’t even noticed that Knots Malloy was in the bar, hadn’t noticed until Knots came over and put a big boot in the chair they were saving for Jasper.

He leaned on his outsized leg and looked down at Ty. “Doubt old man Kittle would appreciate his mules gettin’ in a tight like that.”
“Didn’t want to come out till I had to. That’s pretty country.”
“Under snow it ain’t.Your ass-man could tell you that.”
“Sugar’s pretty handy about weather.” Ty looked up at Knots. “I believe he’s struck an arrangement with whoever makes it.”
“Hear you like to get caught up there too,” Knots said to Sugar. “Don’t sound like such a good arrangement to me.”
“My burros got other ways out from where I was,” Sugar said. “A little snow’s no problem.”
Buck and Angie got up to put some music on the jukebox. Sugar and Maria joined them.
“Ain’t you askin’ me to sit?” Knots said. “Got all them chairs here.”
“Taken,” Ty said. “When the music stops and everyone comes back.”
“I could turn a step or two myself.” Knots looked out at the dancers. “With one of your lively ones.”
But he didn’t do anything about it, walking over to get another beer instead, joining the others to watch the cowboy play the bowling game.

Ty was glad Nina wasn’t with them. He didn’t want her anywhere around Knots. She had grown up to be as pretty as her mother and so in bloom when she went off to the university that she’d hardly had a chance to think about law school. Ty had trouble keeping up with all the college boys who courted her, both he and Sugar relieved when she finally married a rancher’s son from Marysville. The boy had studied ranch management, but Ty doubted he needed to. The family place was so perfectly managed it was hard for Ty to understand how it worked. He’d left the others and looked it all over with Nina the day before the wedding, thinking how little it had to do with the scratchy place he’d known. The Bitterroot seemed another world as he walked through the clean barns, the tidy corrals, liking everything he saw but liking most of all Nina, who’d hardly changed.

“First a family, Ty Hardin. Then law school,” she’d said in her serious way as they looked at the machinery. It seemed to Ty there was more machinery around than horses, and no mules at all. Nina watched him, smiling. “And even when I’m in law school,” she’d said, “we can still dance. They dance differently now. I like the way you taught me best.”

Ty was thinking about what a beautiful bride Nina had been when someone put still another beer in front of him. He didn’t know how much he’d had to drink that night, the music too good to keep track. But Buck always claimed he’d been sober, that it was Knots Malloy who had too much to drink. Knots Malloy who had started everything....Ty wasn’t clear on that either.

He did remember Knots dancing once with Angie, remembered Buck keeping Angie pretty much to himself after that. And he remembered Maria smiling at Knots and shaking her head to say no, Knots saying something back that rubbed them all the wrong way. But he’d been having such a good time dancing with Cody Jo he couldn’t be sure what set things off. All he knew was that Lars had some of Cody Jo’s favorites in his jukebox. It was like old times hearing that music, dancing with Cody Jo again.

Cody Jo was nearly sixty then, but she was still Cody Jo, feeling the music, knowing steps that surprised Ty, never missing a beat when she came back into the circle of his arms.

Buck smiled as he watched them. It seemed like old times to him too. Cody Jo was still tall and slender, even if she’d spread a little around the middle. He thought the gray in her hair made her look even prettier. And Ty looked almost the same as he had looked when he came back from the war. Still lean as a rail, still moving to the music in that quiet way, just enough to stay with it, letting Cody Jo do most of the moving for both of them.

“Ain’t havin’ too much luck with them others.” There was a beery grin on Knot’s face. “Let’s have a spin with your grannie here.”
He reached for Cody Jo’s hand and was startled to find himself going backward, his weight tipped back so far from the jolt Ty gave him that only the jukebox saved him. And not for long.
“That’s Cody Jo.” Ty watched Knots stumbling backward, trying to keep his legs under him. “And lay off Sugar.” Knots hit the jukebox hard. There was the lifting and falling sound of a needle crossing a record, then the crash—lights popping and smoking, the music stopping altogether.
The screech of the needle, the records spilling out across Knots, Cody Jo standing there beside him—all of it seemed to snap something in Ty. Buck had never seen him look that way. He was afraid Ty was going to kick Knots to death right there behind the jukebox. Before he had time to think he’d jumped on Ty and tried to hold him back. It didn’t seem to slow Ty down at all. He kept moving toward Knots, his eyes wild.
Jasper, who’d crouched down beside the bar when the jukebox went, was startled to see Buck up there on Ty’s back. Then he saw Knots get up from behind the jukebox, looking desperate as Ty came at him. Knots grabbed a chair and brought it down as hard as he could, the chair splintering over Buck’s head as Ty moved in under it and brought the butt of his hand up under Knots’s nose so hard blood squirted away as though he’d squashed a tomato.
There was blood coming from Buck’s head too, the chair opening a long chunk of his scalp. But he kept clinging to Ty, helped now by the cowboy who’d left his bowling machine and grabbed one of Ty’s arms. Lars got hold of the other, the three of them knowing they had to calm Ty before he killed Knots outright.
Years of lifting packs had given Ty a strength even greater than when he’d turned the broom handle on the troop ship. He flung Lars and the cowboy away, shucking Buck like a coat as he drove the butt of his hand into Knots’s Adam’s apple, cramming it back so far the big man’s eyes popped. He drove his hand into Knots again, the noise dense as all the wind left the big body. Knots, clawing at his windpipe, staggered back and fell across the bowling table, drawing his knees up as he fought for air. The bowling table splintered and he rolled away, struggling for the door, going out in a crouch, blood and mucus spewing from him.
The cowboy and Lars had Ty again. It took him a moment to shake free and follow. But only Harvey Kittle was there, his white shirt bluish in the stark light Lars had rigged above the door.
“What’s up?” he asked. “Heard you beat that storm . . .”
He saw what was in Ty’s face and pointed at the outhouse Lars used when the well-pump wasn’t working. “In there,” he said. “Crippled some by the looks of him.”
The outhouse was framed with four-by-fours and weighted down with boulders. Ty hit it so hard some boulders came free. It went up, rocked back down, and Ty hit it with his shoulder again. It went all the way over and there Knots was, curled at the base of the two seater, bubbles of orangey mucus lifting from his face, eyes bulging. Blood covered his shirt and ran down into his pants. Ty looked at him and felt his anger draining away.
“Shouldn’t talk to her that way.” He sounded almost thoughtful. “Sugar either. They don’t like it.”
Harvey Kittle was still trying to make out what had happened. Buck and Lars joined him, Buck holding paper napkins to his head to staunch the blood. Others came out of the bar too.
“Never did put a lock on that door,” Lars finally said. “Why’d he have to knock the whole thing over?”

The next morning Ty stopped by to ask Lars about damages. Lars gave him coffee and made up a figure. Ty paid up right there, surprised it wasn’t more but too embarrassed to talk about it.

A few days later Lars learned that wouldn’t begin to cover the new jukebox, never mind the bowling machine. But he didn’t worry. He put a jar out for donations. People dropped a little in when they stopped by to hear about the fight—or to tell their version of it. In less than a month Lars had more than enough to pay for everything.

After Ty left that first morning, Lars got four men to tip the outhouse up so he could get a rope around it. They pulled it upright with a pickup and walked it into place. It was put together so solidly Lars only had to tack a few boards on to keep things straight. They anchored it again with the rocks.