Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (38 page)

“
That’ll hold for a while'," he said.

He waited until she had turned and gone ahead of him
into the path, and then he followed her slowly.

The mother wasn’t in the kitchen when they came in,
but the Testament she’d carried in the afternoon was lying open at
her place at the table, with an empty coffee mug beside it. Harold
set the lantern on the table, and took off his cap and stuffed it
into his pocket. Then he slowly turned the lantern down until it went
out. The warmth of the room closed on him like first sleep, and he
stood there staring at the Testament and thinking, as if he were
reading a title page, The words of Christ are printed in red.

Gwen’s voice said, "You’d better take your
coat off, Haro1d," and he obeyed like one in a trance. He hung
the coat over the back of Arthur’s chair, and sat down in the
chair. After a minute he put his elbows on the table and rested his
head in his hands.

Gwen set a mug of coffee beside him, and went around
and sat down across from him with hers. She began to sip at her
coffee, but Harold couldn’t bring himself to move. After a few
sips, Gwen set her mug down again.

"The fire. Do you have to keep it going all
night?" she asked. She spoke very quietly, because of the three
open doors, and because the Testament and the empty coffee mug
between them made a kind of bodiless deputy there.

"What?" he asked, and lifted his head to
look at her.

"The fire. Do you have to keep it going all
night?"

He nodded. "I guess so."

Gwen was silent, looking at him, and thinking
something she wouldn’t say. Then she said, smiling a little, "You’d
better drink your coffee, then, hadn’t you?"

"I guess so," he said again, but didn’t
move to pick it up. After a minute, Gwen said, "I’d better go
see how Grace is, I guess. I’ll be right back."

Harold smiled at her faintly, and nodded, and she got
up and went quietly into the bunk-room. Harold sat there staring in
front of him until he began to hear the clock. Then he pushed the mug
of coffee aside and laid his head down on his arms on the table.

21

It was morning in the kitchen, and Harold was very
happy, because Arthur was sitting there across from him, whittling at
one of the wooden cats, and getting ready to make another of the
little jokes you had to think about too. But just when he looked up
to speak, someone far away began screaming. Then Arthur wasn’t
smiling at all. He was leaning across the table, staring with
terrible eyes that had only pupils and no irises. He was looking
right through Harold at something where the stairs were. "Hal,"
he cried softly, "Hal." He reached across under the lamp
and took hold of Harold’s shoulder. "Hal," he said again,
no louder, but even more urgently, and began to shake him gently.

Then suddenly there was only an empty coffee cup in
his place, and the barred chair-back showing above the table. The
kitchen was much smaller and darker too, and the stairs were behind
the empty chair, not behind Harold, where they should have been. The
shaking went on, though, and he heard his name again. He looked up,
and it was Gwen standing beside him, with her hand still on his
shoulder. She was saying something quick and frightened to him, but
he couldn’t understand it yet. Grace was there too, standing by the
stove and hugging the old bathrobe around her. She was staring at him
almost the way Arthur had been staring at him. He was frightened, and
he didn’t know what was wrong, except that Arthur had been
frightened, and now he was gone.

"What?" he asked Gwen.

"Something’s at the horses."

"The horses?" He struggled to his feet and
looked around at the front window. Then he saw that it wasn’t
morning at all. The window was full of darkness, with only a faint,
red light wavering across the little Alps of plowed snow outside.

"Yes, the horses," Gwen said sharply.

The mother’s voice behind them said, "Harold,
don’t you go out there now. There’s been enough . . ."

"Harold, wake up," Gwen cried.

"I’m awake," he said, "only I don't.
. ."

"It’s black as pitch out there," the
mother said angrily, and he could tell she was coming toward them
from the bedroom.

The scream came again. It was the same one he’d
heard while Arthur was there. It trailed away in a long, shuddering,
high cry, and then he was sure that it came from outside, and
understood what Gwen had been trying to tell him. He started toward
the door.

"Harold," the mother cried, to stop him,
and Gwen was coming after him, crying, "Here, Harold, take the
gun. If it’s that painter again . . ."

Even Grace’s voice cried shrilly now, "Harold,
don’t be a fool," and then the loud, heavy voice called down
from above, "What in hel1’s going on down there?" He was
already at the door, and had it partly open, but this voice was so
different from the women’s voices flocking after him like beaked
birds that he stopped and looked up. The father was up there,
enormous and faceless in the shadow. He leaned over the rail so that
part of his face and one eye came
out of the
shadow of the platform, and said angrily, "What’s going on? I
asked you."

He wasn’t real either, though. Arthur, with the
knife and the carving in his hands and that horror beginning to come
on his face was still what was real, and the rest of this was a bad
dream he’d fallen asleep into. But Arthur had heard the screaming
too, and tried to tell him something about it. He went on out the
door, with someone catching at his sleeve, and saying something he
didn’t understand because the father’s big voice was saying,
"What’s burning out there? Damned fire woke me up. Are you all
. . ." but then he was outside and couldn’t hear the rest, but
only the rumbling of the voice in the house.

Still heavy with sleep, so that the fear was alive in
him by itself, but he wasn’t alive around it yet, he heard the
horse make the shrill, sudden screams twice more, close together. The
sound was much louder now, and it made something go swiftly and
coldly up his back, raising the hairs on his neck. He began to run
heavily in the snow, with voices still calling behind him. When he
got out of the light from the doorway, he missed the path somewhere.
He floundered on across through the deep snow with the far-away
firelight moving the shadows on it, and came into the tunnel between
the sheds with snow on him up to the waist. Between the dark bars of
the corral gate at the other end of the tunnel, he could see the
horses all running in a shadowy bunch along the far fence. The
wildest pounding was separate from them, though, and nearer, and then
the terrible, sudden cry of the horse came again, and it was very
near. It shook him like a blow. A horse in the bunch on the other
side nickered like a whimper, and then another and another took up
the sound of fear, and suddenly, piercing as a steam whistle, the
scream came again. It came suddenly each time, as if struck from the
lungs by sharp pain.

Harold came to the gate and crouched there, holding
onto the center pole. He was Hlled with a murderous rage now, and at
the same time he wanted to run back into the greater darkness of the
tunnel and watch from there, with the wall behind him, ready to
defend himself. This straining balance held him motionless at the
gate through three quick screams. Then the cold man’s mind said,
There’s no black painter. You’re sunk in two dreams, that’s
all, Joe Sam’s and the one you had in there. You fell asleep on the
table. He climbed onto the gate, not wanting to be caught between the
poles if it was a cat in there after all. He knew that Gwen had
somehow got there right after him, but he hardly felt her clutching
at his shirt, and didn’t understand anything of what she was saying
so rapidly. He wished he had the lantern, though. He wanted light.
From his high post astride the top bar, he could see only the great,
unclear shadow of the horse plunging and turning in the darkness by
the shed. He couldn’t make out at all what was at it, but only a
thickening and blurring of its forelegs and shoulders. The horse
suddenly screamed and leaped again, and in spite of himself, a belief
in the black panther took hold of him for a moment. He felt how
helpless he was against it too, against any kind of a cat, without a
weapon that would keep it from reaching him.

"Gwen, get back," he said fiercely, but all
the time watching the dark plunging by the shed, no clearer than a
cloud moving on a night sky. "Get away from here, out of the
tunnel." He felt her hand leave him, but she was still talking
at him. "Did you hear me?” he said. "Get out. If it
breaks. . ." Then he didn’t hear her voice any longer either.
He watched the plunging, waiting, and when it came toward the gate,
cried out as loudly as he could, "Hi-ya, hi-ya, hi-ya," in
the high, piercing tone he used to harry the cattle, or turn a steer
that threatened him. With his second yelp, the tortured horse
screamed again, and the rest of his cry was small and lost, but this
time the pattern of the battle was broken anyhow. The horse reared
and crashed against the shed, its weight cracking the poles, its
hoofs rattling down them, and spun suddenly back along the wall, and
out free in a long curve into the center of the corral. The nervous
bunch swung and streamed away along the far rail with dull, numerous
thunder, leaving it in lone silhouette against the starlit snow, and
Harold guessed it was Kentuck. Then the enemy came out into the
starlight after it, gliding quickly and soundlessly, like a
soft-footed dancer, stooping, and maneuvering to keep the big
stallion from getting in with the bunch.

Harold said softly, "The damn little bastard,"
and let him self down into the corral. He felt a hand clutch at his
shirt again, and heard Gwen’s voice saying, "Hal, don’t go
in there. Hal, take the gun; here’s the gun," and then again,
when she lost her hold as he moved away, "Harold, take the gun,
you fool."

He said angrily, over his shoulder, "Quit
yelling, will you? It’s all right. It’s only Joe Sam."

"Joe Sam," he called sharply.

The little figure still danced on the snow, cutting
off the stallion that moved slowly now, trying to run, but stumbling
each time, and only turning away in a limping trot. "Joe Sam,"
he yelled again. The little figure straightened up in the center of
the corral and stood waiting.

"Harold," Gwen said, "don’t go out
there. He’s crazy."

"He’ll be all right now," Harold said.
"He heard me, and he knows who it is."

He went out slowly, just the same, watching the old
Indian for any sudden move, stopping beyond his reach and peering,
trying to see him better. The old man was naked again, even in this
cold that was already shortening Harold’s breath, but there was
something about the shape he made against the snow that wasn’t
right.

Behind him the horses were running again, to keep
away from the black. When he slowed to a walk and turned across the
open at them, they waited, moving restlessly in a small space and
only nickering a little, until he was within two or three lengths of
them. Then they milled suddenly, several of them rearing like a
shadowy surf, and lined out again, streaming back around the fence.
Kentuck stood then, blowing heavily, only turning his head to watch
them. Joe Sam turned a little too, at the sound of the running, and
Harold saw it was his hair that was wrong. It hung down tentwise over
his shoulders and back, so his head had no shape except in profile.
The second braid must have come all undone too.

He looks like a Digger, Harold thought. Like a damn
cave man. Well, no bottle neck, anyway. But he’s got something, he
thought suddenly. He didn’t make the stud scream like that with his
hands.

“
What have you got there, Joe Sam‘?" he
asked. "In your hand?"

"No got," Joe Sam muttered.

Still playing possum, Harold thought. He isn’t
giving up yet.

"What’s in your hand? I asked you."

After a moment, Joe Sam said, "Arthur give.
Arthur my friend."

"Drop it," Harold said.

Still the old man kept his hands in the dark by his
sides. It was hard to wait against this stubbornness, and with no way
to guess, in the dark, what he was thinking, but Harold waited, only
holding himself ready to move quickly, in case the old habit of his
authority were broken now by some older vision, or some thwarted
remnant of the strange fury. The waiting and the cold won for him.
When the old Indian spoke at last, he was pleading.

"Arthur give. My friend give. —Please, I
keep."

"All right," Harold_said. "You can
keep it, but give it to me now." He held out his hand.

Joe Sam made some small movement with the object, in
the dark against his side, and then slowly reached out and laid it on
Harold’s hand. Harold felt the corrugated bone of the handle
through the slippery, still warm wetness of it.

"Kill black painter," Joe Sam said.

Black painter, hell, Harold thought. You can’t
dream that hard, and felt with his forefinger along the base of the
blade, where the blood was already cool and thickened. The blade was
worn narrow as a dagger’s with long use and much sharpening. It was
Arthur’s knife, all right, however Joe Sam had come by it. When
they carried him out of the tunnel? No, or why all that trickery with
the clumsy bottle neck? It must have been when he put his gifts into
the coffin, then. The mother, knowing it was Arthur’s treasure,
must have put it in the black suit when she changed his clothes.