Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (14 page)

After a moment he looked down at Gwen again, grinned
and said, "If it turns out to be just an ordinary-sized, yellow
cat, though, one I could skin with this," and he picked up a
bone-handled hunting knife in its sheath from the table and danced it
on his hand to make her Watch it, "it won’t hardly do for a
blanket. It would be all my present, too. Arthur, he won’t have
anything to do with ordinary yellow cats. You know what I think
then?" he asked, slipping the knife into the left pocket of the
red coat, and then the oil-skin packet, and the little metal
container full of matches that had stood on the table beside the
knife.

"No. What?" Gwen asked, but not as if she
cared whether he told her or not.

"We’1l make you a costume out of it. You
know," and he outlined the shape of the costume on himself with
his hands.

"One of those Hercules kind of rigs, like the
Greeks wore, only for a lady, of course, higher in front, and maybe
with black lace on it. And then you can give us a special wedding
dance."

This time, when Gwen looked down, it wasn’t because
his eyes were unsteady. The red flush rising on her throat showed
even under her brown skin. Curt’s grin widened and became easier.

"l’m not much of a dancer," Gwen said.

Curt laughed. "I’ll teach you," he said.
"I’ll give you as many lessons as you want, free of charge,
and do the catching while you practice, too. You know, one of those
dances where you come running across the stage and jump and land
right in my arms on one knee.”

He held his arms out in a circle, to show how he
would catch her, and then drew them slowly toward his body, at the
same time making a mocking show of breathless tenderness.

"You’d learn in no time," he said,
straightening up and grinning at her again.

"Hal’s got him all saddled," Grace said
sharply. "He’s bringing him over."

Curt was feeling better. "You don’t say. The
times that kid can be fast and the times he can’t is a puzzle.
Arthur, now," he said, crossing to the gun rack and taking
another handful of cartridges for the carbine, "you can depend
on him. He just don’t ever move."

He dropped the cartridges into the right pocket of
his coat and picked up the bear-paw snow-shoes he had strapped
together and set against the wall, and the coiled lariat that lay
against them. He started toward the outside door, but stopped
opposite the table and looked at Gwen again.

"Darned if I don’t hope it’s just an
ordinary yellow one, at that. Not much of a prize, maybe, nothing
like a black one the size of a horse’s, but it would really go good
with your complexion."

But Gwen stood up and pushed in her chair and looked
back at him easily now. "Thank you," she said. "It’s
not much in my style. I’d a lot rather have the black one."
 
Curt laughed. "Don’t tell me
you’re going to be like all the rest of them around here," he
said, "a—scared to try anything new. Now I’d of thought, to
look at you, you’d have more spirit than that."

He laughed again, and went to the door and opened it,
not waiting to give her time to answer him.

The mother marked her place with her finger and
looked up for the first time.

"Don’t you go playing the fool, Curtis,"
she said. "If it starts snowing again, you get yourself back
here as fast as you can."

Curt stepped outside, grinning now to see the trouble
Harold was having bringing Kentuck across. The black stallion hadn’t
been used for nearly a week, and he was dancing and sidling and
tossing all the way. Joe Sam was coming across too, by himself, and
safely behind Harold and the stallion. Curt looked up at the pale
shroud of snow mist on the mountain. It was lifting some, he was
sure. The newly frosted pines showed farther up than they had when he
came in. He believed it was thinning out overhead, too. There was
even a little color of sunlight spreading in it.

"It’l1 hold off some time yet," he said,
loudly enough for the mother to hear him inside. He thought that
really the storm was breaking up, and even the snow on the ground
would be gone in a few hours. The sun was still warm this time of
year, if it got a chance. He wouldn’t say anything as definite as
that, though, not with weather to deal with. It was too much like
making a dare.

The father had lifted his head and blinked suddenly,
at the sound of the mother’s voice. Now he rose and moved with
heavy, dignified care to the door, and stepped down carefully into
the snow beside Curt. He stood there, with his left arm behind him,
his right hand fingering the lodge emblem on his watch chain, and
squinted up at the snow mist too.

"I should judge it might even clear up," he
said, as if that were the result of a long, careful consideration.

Curt was angry that the old man had made the foolish
dare after all, but there wasn’t anything he could say about it.
The old bastard, he thought fiercely, always blabbing about something
is none of his business. Sure, all he’s got to do is sit on his big
behind in the kitchen and guzzle. What does he care if it snows? He
probably even wants it to. Then he can have everybody in there and
play cards all afternoon and make eyes at the little Welshy like he
could still do something about it.

He moved forward a step, as if, being right there
beside him, the old man could guess this thoughts, but then waited
and made Harold come the rest of the way.

When he stopped, still being jerked about by the big
stallion’s tossing, Curt asked sharply, "Did you soap his
hoofs?"

Harold stared back at him for a moment, but finally
only said, "They’re soaped," but wouldn’t look away
from him.

The mother called from inside, "Close that door,
Curt, will you? Do we have to lose all our heat, just because you got
a notion to chase your own shadow?"

Grinning inside, Curt thought, The kid’s mad enough
to chew nails.

"Little frisky, was he?" he asked, and
turned back, but then saw Grace and Gwen coming out, and stopped, and
grinned at them openly, thinking, No wonder the kid’s mad, with her
watching him. Well, it’s not the only stallion you got to look out
for, kid.

Gwen closed the door, and she and Grace stood there
together in front of it, a little apart from the old man, and
watching the stallion dancing. Curt turned and came alongside the
animal, but still left Harold holding it while he tied the lariat on
at the bow of the saddle, and then hung the bear-paws over it by
their carry-strap around the horn. Across the saddle he saw Joe Sam
standing there alone, safely beyond Harold, his face turned to the
stallion, but that intent look of not seeing in his good eye, and he
grinned and looked at Harold.

"You tell our old medicine man there what I
found?"

"Yes," Harold said. "He asked me."

Curt took the reins from Harold, and with the same
hand took hold of the saddle horn. "And what did he say?"
he asked.

This time Harold grinned back at him a little too.
"All he wanted to know was why Arthur didn’t come back with
you."

Curt’s grin became hard to keep.

"Poor old Arthur," he said. "Doesn’t
anybody think he can take care of himself? Even the half-wit
worrying."

He swung up into the saddle, carefully making it an
easy-looking mount, slowly and all in one move, his back very
straight and his right leg, bent at the knee, just sliding over the
cantle.

"What you think now, Joe Sam?" he called,
reining the stallion to dance sideways. "Still a
black
painter?"

The old Indian appeared to be looking up at him, but
didn’t answer, only stood there very straight, with his arms down
straight at his sides.

Curt stopped grinning and prodded Kentuck with his
heels and danced him on a tight rein, sidling a little, toward Joe
Sam.

"You hear me?" he asked.

Joe Sam looked up at his face, seeing him for the
first time.

"What say?" he asked quickly.
 
Curt kept pressing Kentuck forward slowly until the
old man was compelled to take three or four steps backward and to the
side, away from the lifting forehoofs, and to raise one arm as far as
his waist in spite of his wish not to.

Then Curt checked the stallion, pulling him across
the old man and letting him rear a little before him, but not wheel
or move away. Looking down, making the small, tight smile, he said
easily, almost indifferently, “That’s better. Speak up quick when
you’re spoke to. Now, what do you say?"

Harold started toward them, calling, "Let him be
now, will you, Curt? He don’t know what you're talking about."

"What, another squaw-man?" Curt said. "He
will," he promised. "Now what do you say, Joe Sam?"

"What say?" the old man asked, trying to
smile.

"I asked you do you still think your painter’s
black? Do you still think it’s no good to hunt it, after what we
found out there?"

"No good hunt," Joe Sam said seriously, and
shook his head slowly and just once.

Curt laughed, and Harold stopped a few feet from him,
watching, not any surer now than Joe Sam was where the bullying would
stop, and not wanting to make trouble about it if Curt was done.

"Why not, Joe Sam?" Curt asked, chuckling
like a man humoring a not very bright child.

"Snow," the old man said. "Much snow."
His good eye remained watchful.

Curt laughed again. "You hear that, young one?"
he called over his shoulder to Harold. "It’s just plain,
ordinary snow now. There’s sense in the old fool yet. You just have
to know how to get it out of him, that’s all."

He swung Kentuck and took him back, dancing again, in
front of the father and Grace and Gwen. Going by slowly that way,
straight in the saddle, with one arm loose at his side, he grinned
down at Gwen, and said, "I’ll hold you to it," as if
she’d made the promise to match his. "And I’ll shoot him
through the eye, too, so there won’t even be a hole to spoil it."

He let Kentuck out and heeled him up to a jumping
start, but quickly eased him off to a lope and rode north into the
plowed tracks the red and Arthur’s mustang had made before
daylight. He didn’t look back. The five stood there silently,
watching him grow smaller on the snow, Harold and Joe Sam together
out on the trampled yard, and the old man and Grace and Gwen in a row
in front of the door.

8

They were almost out to the whaleback again, when
Kentuck stumbled twice and dropped out of his run. Curt, angry in his
mind because he couldn’t get rid of the feeling that he’d been
foolish in his little sport in the yard, yanked him up and drummed
savagely with his heels. Kentuck leaped forward, but at once stumbled
again, nearly falling. Curt swore and pulled him in, and let himself
down into the snow, growling. "What the hell now?"

He found the stallion’s right forefoot balled with
snow and sand.

"The lazy son-of-a-bitch," he muttered.
"Too damn busy working on his little tart to even soap a hoof."

He lifted the clogged hoof onto his knees and pulled
off a mitten and tugged at the ball, but could only scrape shallow,
white grooves into the surface of it. He let the hoof down and
straightened up and looked around, but couldn’t find anything handy
to pry with. After a moment he thought of the skinning knife, and
drew it out of his pocket and then out of its sheath. The rough bone
haft felt good in his hand.

He set his jaw and narrowed his eyes, made two
grunting stabs in the air with it, and then stood there, holding the
knife easily, a smile of contempt on his mouth, and said, "Try
to shove me around, will you?"

Then, as if a quieter self stood watching him, he
thought how he would look if anyone saw him, standing there in the
snow, with only a horse and the sagebrush to watch him taking revenge
on the air.

He laughed a little and let the knife down, and said
aloud, "You’ll be crazy yourself, if you keep that up. Save it
for the black painter. It won’t get you anywhere with the kind that
makes tracks."

He was eased by the stabbing, though, and having made
it all right by the short joke after it, was quieted. He slipped the
sheath into his pocket, and lifted the clogged hoof onto his lap
again and began to dig and pry carefully with the point of the knife,
trying to spring the pack out in one lump. The ball was only
beginning to stir, though, when Kentuck nickered over him and swung
away, making him drop his hold and stagger aside to keep from
falling. The
stallion nickered again, and then
blew shrilly. The sound was shocking as a trumpet blast in the
silence, and after an instant came back in a high, whining echo from
the mountain. Curt straightened and leaped and caught the reins. Half
circling him, with raised head, Kentuck trumpeted again, and again
the mountain answered, but also there was a second, fainter reply, as
if the valley echoed too. Clinging high under the bit, Curt looked
down where Kentuck was looking, and saw the horse far out on the
white meadow and standing to watch them. For a moment he only
wondered to see a horse out there, but then, as it began to turn,
half minded
to start up toward them, he saw
the swing of the tiny, empty stirrup, and knew the horse too.