Free High Country : A Novel by Willard Wyman Page A

and darkened his pants everywhere.
“Guess I oiled too much. Wanted to protect the saddle.”
“That oil’s done its work,” Fenton said. “You have too. Come in here and get you some coffee.”
“Gotta unsaddle. Then I’ll slip back for Loco.”
Spec put his slicker on and went out to help. Fenton held his cup out to Jasper, who was waiting with a steaming cup for Ty. Jasper poured it into Fenton’s cup instead.
“Jasper,” Fenton said, sipping the hot coffee. “I believe we’ve found us a packer.”

Fenton (1927)
There are some who still say Fenton Pardee is where Ty Hardin really started.
7

The Packer
Fenton Pardee and Cody Jo Taylor were married in 1927. Fenton was fifty-five years old, Cody Jo twenty-six. But their union aroused people’s interest for larger reasons. Fenton had enjoyed being single for so many years it was hard to predict what would happen when he wasn’t. The mountains always seemed to answer his spiritual needs, The Bar of Justice his physical ones. Though it was clear the tall schoolteacher with the wonderful smile could make even Fenton change his priorities, none predicted she would be the one who did the convincing, not the other way around. Half the bachelors in the valley had vied for her hand. It shocked them to see Fenton wind up with it, looking a little shocked himself.
    But it wasn’t such a shock to the others. They’d enjoyed watching Cody Jo find such humor in Fenton’s doubts, find humor in her efforts to dispel them too. She seemed to take pleasure in his apprehension. They would shake their heads, puzzled over why a man like Fenton Pardee would be skeptical about such a sparkling woman. Some thought it his age, some his general contrariness, others his deep wariness. None saw it had less to do with what they could see than with what they couldn’t: Fenton’s love of his mountains, his fear that this wonderful girl would keep him from them.
    What was clear to all of them from the day Cody Jo arrived was that she made things better, bringing more life to the Swan Valley schoolhouse than it had ever known. Children liked her, mothers believed in her, cowboys and lumberjacks lined up to dance with her at the schoolhouse socials. There wasn’t a man not pleased to tip his hat to her, a woman who didn’t like to visit with her: the women liking her because she got things done with so little fuss, the men because she kept them so off-balance they couldn’t tell whether she was laughing at them or with them. All they knew was that when she was happy, things were livelier. They were thankful for whatever triggered it.
    And Fenton made her happy. It was a mystery that only added to one already alive in the Swan: how Fenton Pardee could be the shrewdest, most relentless trader in the country when he was out of the mountains; the most selfless and charitable packer in the range when in them.
    But all talk of how frugal Fenton could be, how unconventional the courtship, was put aside for the important day. No banter was exchanged, no jokes delivered by forsaken suitors. And if someone smiled because for once they were seeing Fenton manipulated, no one minded. What interested them most as they drank and laughed at the big wedding on the edge of Fenton’s pasture was that they had never seen Fenton Pardee as happy—or as grateful. At least not when he was out of his mountains.
    They all knew about Fenton, but only Fenton knew about Cody Jo. She had told him everything, looking at him steadily, going through it carefully—as though their future depended on his seeing all of it. As she talked he became so full of admiration for her she could have told him anything. Her candor left him queasy and dry-mouthed, every doubt he had vanishing. It was like jumping off a cliff into a South Fork pool. After you stepped off, you left behind everything that had held you back.
    He had met Cody Jo at the fall dance in the schoolhouse. “The tall one,” she’d said. “White on top,