Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (17 page)

Grace stood up and pushed her chair in. "Harold’s
seen that before," she said.

"Now where are you going?" the father asked
quickly. "I thought we were going to have our little game of
cards now."

Grace sighed and made a thin mouth of patience. "When
the dishes are done, Father."

"You get on with your card game," the
mother said. "I’ll take care of the dishes."

The father was excited by the idea of the card game.
He pushed himself to his feet hurriedly, almost falling.

"You just sit down, Grace. I’ll get the
cards," he said quickly and cheerfully.

He shuffled over to the bookcase in the corner and
bent down and began to fumble in a black box at the end of the lowest
shelf. He kept talking cheerfully while he hunted in the box, and
didn’t hear Grace, who went to the outside door and opened it, and
stepped out into the snow, and stood there with her hands together in
front of her, looking north. From his place at the table, Harold
could see her out there, with the long, low sheds of gray sapling
poles across the yard behind her, with the dark entrance to the
corral between them, like a tunnel, and beyond the sheds the tall
black V of the hay derrick against the lowering mist of the snow.

The old man, still hunting in the corner, was saying
cheerfully, "A good lively game is just what we all need to
cheer us up. Gwendolyn, you sit in Mrs. Bridges’ place there.
You’re my partner. I wouldn’t want you to have any but the best.
Those two think they’re a pair of pretty smart hands with the
cardboards. Vanity of youth, that’s all; vanity of youth. We’l1
show them a thing or two about how it’s done, you and I." He
chuckled. "Confound it," he muttered, "how all this
trash—ah, here they are."

He straightened up, helping himself with one hand on
a bookshelf, and half turned toward the table again, and stood there
counting the cards, slipping them rapidly off the top of the deck
from one hand into the other, and wetting his thumb every few cards,
to draw them.

Finally he said happily, "Disgraceful condition,
disgraceful. But they’re all here, and you can read the spots
still."

He hunted out a piece of paper and a stub of pencil
from among the litter on the lower shelves, and came back to the
table. He saw Gwen still sitting in her own place, and nodded across
at the mother’s chair.

"Over there, right across from me," he
said, "and not too far around, either," he added chuckling.
"Leave a good safe place between you and Harold. Holding each
other’s hands is one thing; looking at them’s another."

He watched her until she was seated across from him,
and then nodded his approval and laid
the cards
and paper and pencil down at his own place, and went across to the
sideboard in that same busy, slightly stooping walk, and came back
with his bottle and a glass. He sat down and drew out a cigar,
clipped it carefully with the silver knife, and lit it.

Then he poured himself a third of a glass of whisky,
corked the bottle and set it aside. After taking a sip of the whisky,
he sat back and drew deeply at the cigar, and blew the cloud of smoke
slowly up around the lamp. Then he was ready. He laid the cigar
carefully on the edge of the table, picked up the cards, and began to
shuffle them. They bent limply under the pressure of his big thumbs
and knuckles, and made a soft, cushiony fluttering as they fell
together.

He winked at Harold, and asked in a loud, serious
voice, "Well, what shall we play, Black-Jack or poker?"

The mother was rattling the plates in the dishpan in
the sink, but without looking around or stopping her work, she said,
"Not in my house, you won’t. Neither of ’em."

The father chuckled, and winked at Gwen this time.

"Well, it’ll have to be just Hearts, then, I
guess," he said mournfully. "It’s a poor, female kind of
a game, but still, it’s cards, and better than nothing. Where did
Grace get to now?" he asked, holding the cards ready to deal. He
looked around, and couldn’t find Grace, and muttering, "Where
on earth did she get to now?" he turned in his chair, and saw
the door open, and Grace standing outside in the snow.

"Grace," he called. "Come on. We’re
waiting for you."

Grace came back in and closed the door. She went
around behind the father, and sat down opposite Harold.

"For goodness’ sakes, girl, stop your
fidgeting," the father said. "Arthur knows this valley like
the back of his hand, and he always takes his time. And if he didn’t,
Curt would bring him back. Maybe he’s gone with Curt. Besides,"
he added, "he is without a doubt the world’s worst card
player.

The sky’s the limit," he said happily to all
of them, and began to deal the cards.

He kept on talking while they played, but it was easy
to talk with him now. There were no old stories, and no
self-importance to be careful of. Gwen began to laugh when he did,
and to joke back at him. Even Harold grinned at him, and defended
himself sharply when the old man belittled him as an opponent. They
quarreled cheerfully and loudly about the score, and accused each
other of cheating. Only Grace didn’t seem to be really in the game.
Each time the father  thumped a losing heart down on a trick,
with a loud, triumphant, "Ha," she started and looked at
him. Often she was slow to play her card, so that he became impatient
and rebuked her, though always making a joke of it. When the cards
were being dealt, or the old man was laboriously calculating the
score and writing it down with the stub of pencil, she
would
look around to see what the mother was doing, or stare out the window
behind him at the deepening gray pall of the snow clouds in the
valley, and he would have to call her back to pick up her cards.

The mother paid no attention to the game. When the
dishes were done, she sat down in the platform rocker with her big
Bible, but read in it for only a few minutes. Then she rose and laid
it in the chair, took a dust cloth, a broom and a dustpan and went
upstairs into the big bedroom. They could hear her up there, moving
the bureau and the bed, and opening and closing drawers, and
advancing slowly and heavily across the floor with her broom. When
she came down again, she went into the bunk-room. After a while she
came out and put more wood into the kitchen stove, and then carried
wood and paper back into the bunk-room. They could hear the sounds of
her laying a fresh fire in there too.
 
When
she returned to the kitchen after that, the father said, "In the
name of sanity, woman, rest yourself for a while."

"I got all rested out this morning," she
said sharply. "You stick to your game, and let me please
myself." She carried the broom and cloth and dustpan into the
north bedroom, where Grace and Gwen had slept, and closed the door.
The door was still closed a dozen hands later, and Grace stood up
while the father was recording the score.

"She’ll freeze to death in there, with the
door closed," she said.

"Now, don’t you get to popping around too,"
the father said. "You might light the lamp while you’re up,
though. It’s getting so dark in here I can’t tell the black lady
when I have her."

"It needs filling," Grace said.

Harold got up, brought the kerosene can from its
place beside the woodbox, and drew the lamp down. Grace held it for
him while he filled the bowl, and then he held it while she removed
the chimney and trimmed the wick and lit it. When the flame was
around the wick, she set the chimney back on, adjusted the wick to an
even burning height, and Harold let the lamp back up.

Gwen began to deal the cards out of the rim of light
and across the shadow of the bowl. Harold returned the kerosene can
to its corner and came back and sat down again, but Grace went to the
door of the north bedroom and opened it. Harold, pulling his cards to
him one by one, looked past her into the bedroom, and saw the mother
standing at the north window, looking out.

"You’l1 freeze, Mother," Grace said. "Are
you done in here?"

The mother turned. "Yes, I’m all done, I
guess," she said. She picked up the broom and pan and cloth, and
came back into the kitchen. Grace stood there for a moment still,
looking out the north window herself, and then closed the door.

"It’s snowing again," the mother said.

The others looked at the east window, even the father
turning in his chair to look too, and saw the big flakes coming down
slowly but steadily in the gray light outside. The father turned
back, shaded his eyes from the lamp with the hand that held his
cards, and peered at the clock. Two of the moth shadows made by the
roses on the lamp shade were fluttering on the face of the clock, and
a streak of light shone across the glass between them, but at last he
found the hands.

"It’s only four-thirty, Mother," he said.
"There’s a good hour of daylight still; hour and a half, more
likely."

"I know," the mother said.

She put away her cleaning things, and came over and
sat down in the big chair again with the Bible on her lap. She didn’t
open the Bible, though, but only sat holding it with both hands.

"What in the name of God do you suppose those
two fools are doing out there so long?" the father asked
suddenly and angrily.

"I’m sure I don’t know," the mother
said.

The father took a drink of his whisky, set the glass
down, and answered himself. "Curt found a trail he could follow,
I expect," he said, "and he must have taken Arthur with
him."

"I suppose so," the mother said.

"Wel1, don’t sound so like they were lost
forever. They’re both grown men."

"I know."

The father muttered something, and then said clearly,
"Whose lead is it?"

After a few tricks had been played, he was as
cheerful as ever. The others kept looking out through the window,
though, at the snow coming down softly and slowly onto the yard and
the sheds, and after a little while, when she thought no one would
notice, the mother turned her chair  so that she could watch
through the window all the time.

At five-thirty it was too dark to see the snow from
the lighted room, except for the flakes that drifted down right next
to the window. The father gave Grace the queen of spades on the last
trick of a hand, and he slapped it down with a triumphant roar. His
voice was deep and resonant now, as it was after he had been talking
for some time about politics or stock manipulation.

"Gwen," he declared, loudly and happily,
beginning to add the score, "Gwen, there’s no use their even
trying against us, what with you having all the luck, and me all the
skill." He laughed uproariously. "They’re so far in the
hole now, it would take them a lifetime to pay it off."

Grace suddenly stood up and turned her back to the
table.

"What’s this? What’s this?" the old man
asked, looking up from the score. "Giving up already?"

"We’re letting the fire go out," Grace
said.

She went to the stove and put wood in, and poked it
about to let the flames up through.

"I’ll be back in a moment. Go ahead and deal,"
she said.

The father began to shuffle the cards. "She
wants more, Gwen," he said happily. "She thinks they can
turn the tables. Some people never learn."

Grace set the lids back on the stove, moved across
the room to the outside door, and opened it. At the sound of the
latch, the mother looked around from the window, and watched her.

The father began to deal. While he flipped the cards
out, he said to Harold, "You’d better get up and walk around
your chair, or spit and make a cross."

After each four cards, he licked his thumb.

He was still chuckling, and had his thumb to his
tongue when Grace said, "Harold." She spoke quietly, but
with the suddenness and intensity of a cry. The mother glanced out
the window, and then stood up, forgetting her Bible, so that it fell
heavily to the floor.

"No, Mother," Grace cried, and then, again,
"Harold," and disappeared from the room.

Harold jumped up and ran heavily after her. Gwen
stood up too, and put her hands to her cheeks without knowing it.

The mother said, half moaning, "Oh, I knew it; I
knew it."

"What’s all this? What’s the matter?"
the father asked.

Harold had stopped in the doorway, and was peering
across the yard. "No, Mother," he said quickly and sharply.

"You stay here. Gwen, you stay with her, will
you, please? Maybe it isn’t anything," he said thickly,
peering out again.

“
This light. You can’t really tell."

He went out after Grace.

Gwen came around the table to the door.

"What is it? What the devil’s the matter?"
the old man asked loudly. He was struggling to rise, hoisting himself
up between the table and the chair.

In the gray light, in the even, almost straight
falling of snow, Gwen saw Harold running toward the sheds, and Grace
running ahead of him, and stumbling weakly as she ran. Then, beyond
them, she saw the horse, a dark, blurred silhouette against the poles
of the shed, with no one riding him, but queerly bulky where the
saddle should have been, and in spite of herself cried softly, "Oh,
no, no."