Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (46 page)

He was about to risk making a complete right turn, to
go straight at the north cliff, when the falling snow was twisted by
the wind, and opened before him, and he saw the white wall looming up
there, and the dark band of cliff under it, close ahead of him. In
the moment he was allowed to stare at them, he was sure that he’d
seen that shape of whiteness before, that, from far north, in the
afternoon, he had seen that tiny dark movement across it and against
the wind. The uneasy needles of his compasses spun wildly against
each other, and he stood still, and the white slope that looked like
a wall in the darkness was closed away from him again. He waited,
feeling every least turn of the wind now, as something he must judge,
and staring at the place where the wall had vanished. Finally there
came another gust that was strong enough, and from the proper
quarter, and he saw the white wall again, or enough of it to make him
feel that its top might rise through the storm, and into the clear
darkness and the light of stars.

Until then, he had most nearly believed himself to be
going west, but now it became evident that he must already have got
turned either north or south, unless he was in a box canyon, instead
of a pass, and this was the end of it, and that didn’t seem likely
so high in the mountains and with the storm sucking through the way
it was. He brooded half-attentively upon the problem until his mind
stirred resentfully against the waste of time.

You know damn well it’s no box canyon, and north
cliff or south cliff, the thing now is to get to it and find a hole
of some sort in it, before you fall asleep or fall over. He began to
move forward again, more quickly than before, though he didn’t know
it.

Now that he’d actually seen the white wall, seen
something with a real direction to it, instead
of
just snow and trees, his inner compass steadied, but it insisted,
perversely, that he was still going west and that couldn’t be
right. The needle of his reason, because of the memory of the white
wall he had seen from afar, began to swing to a north behind him. He
had gone to the right around each tree, but that didn’t matter,
because it was most likely between trees, or on this empty canyon
floor beyond them, that he’d started to circle. The way a man
always turned was the way any animal would turn when it was blind
lost, away from the wind. Well, he knew that the true direction of
the wind, whatever the pass and the shapes of the mountains did to
it, was from the northwest, but mostly north, didn’t he? And it had
seemed to him that the wind was working around to come mostly from
behind him, hadn’t it? So, if this was a pass he was in, it was
most likely the south wall of the pass he was heading for.

The dark band of the cliff appeared before him again,
and through the falling snow this time. It had been farther away than
he’d thought when he’d seen it before, but now it was really
close. It became a visible confirmation of his reasoning. His inner
compass swung the quarter circle to put north behind him too, and for
the first time since he’d entered the cut, the two needles lay
exactly and steadily together.

This time the coincidence brought him no peace,
however, for in the instant it assured him that this was the south
wall looming above him, he remembered also that he’d seen the cat
on the south wall, and going the same way along it that he’d been
going along the floor of the pass. And surely it wouldn’t have gone
all the way through the pass against a blizzard like this. It must
have been caught by the snow, and holed up, pretty close to where he
was now. And cats could see in the dark. His fear of the cat became
for the first time as constant as his fear of the storm, and almost
as strong. Even as the joining of the compasses made him one man, he
was divided again by his fears.

He turned left under the wall, which would be east,
the way he wanted to go out in the morning, and slogged along,
breathing hard and shakily, and peering around him constantly, but
also glancing up often at the dark band of the cliff above the steep
snow that covered the talus slope.

He hadn’t gone more than a hundred steps along the
cliff, when he believed he saw what he wanted, a narrow, elliptical
rift of gloom, right at the top of the snowbank. He went up sidewards
toward it, knocking steps in the snow with the edge of his right web.
When he was close enough under it to be sure that it was a cave, and
not an illusion, he stopped suddenly. It came over him that the cat
might be curled up in that very niche. Then he could imagine it not
curled up at all, but crouched at the edge, peering down at him. The
wish to weep returned upon him strongly.

"Oh, Jesus," he whispered despairingly.

After a long minute of standing there listening, he
slowly took off his right mitten and stuffed it into his pocket, and
moved along the snow bank toward the east end of the cave, watching
the black opening unwinkingly, and holding the carbine ready. Nothing
stirred in there that he could be sure of. At the end of the cave, he
faced about and climbed up until he was at the top of the slope. He
squatted there, still peering into the rift, and dug into the snow
beside him
with his bare hand, and brought up a
big piece of the fallen shale. He held it poised at arm’s length
for a moment, and then hurled it into the cave, and at once brought
the carbine up, with his finger on the trigger. The shale struck much
sooner than he’d expected, and made only the briefest of small, dry
echoes. Nothing else happened. He threw two more pieces, one into
each end of the little cave. Each time there was only the prompt,
shallow echo, and then the silence in which nothing moved but the
falling snow. He thought of reaching in with the carbine and
prodding, to make completely sure, but realized at once that such a
process would put him much too close, if there was really anything in
there.

He thought of lighting a match. The idea alarmed him.
The cat probably wasn’t in here, and if he just crawled in, daring
the darkness, it wouldn’t even know he was in the pass. The flame
of the match would show up like a railroad headlight. If the cat
didn’t know where he was now, it certainly would after that. Again
the wish to weep swelled terribly within him. No effort of his will,
however, could bring him to crawl into that cave without seeing in
first. At last he got the match container out of his pocket, and took
one match from it, and closed the container and returned it to the
pocket. He took a deep breath, and held the carbine in his left hand
ready to lift it quickly, and then, with an effort so desperate as to
blind him for an instant, scratched the match at the edge of the
cave, and held it in just under the corner of the roof. He more than
half expected to see the two yellow eyes staring back at him like
lights themselves. The match made a small, shadowy, moving light, but
it was enough to show him, after a moment, that there was no cat in
there, and no opening at the back big enough to let anything through
that mattered. It was a very low, shallow cave, almost
crescent-shaped, and he could see mostly because of the shadows they
made, the three pieces of shale he’d thrown, and the rough,
down-shelving roof and back, and the litter of twigs and small bones
and tiny droppings on the sand. He took only one good look, and then
shook the match out and drew a deep breath of relief in the dark. It
was a poor shelter, hardly more than big enough to let him lie down,
but it was dry and it was his, and it could be easily defended, with
that steep, snow-covered slope coming up to it. It would get him in
out of the wind and the snow, too, and that was the most important
thing.

He peered all around below him, over the snow shimmer
under the darkness, and then laid the carbine on the edge of the cave
floor and crawled up and sat beside it. There he took off his other
mitten, and slowly, with difficulty, unlaced the webs and laid them
in together against the back of the cave. All the time he kept
peering down into the populous darkness he had stirred up with the
match. At last, still watching, he lay over on his elbow, with his
head to the west end, and drew his legs up into the other, more
tapered end, and took the carbine into his hands. Many dark
shapesformed and dissolved below, but none of them ventured onto the
snowy slope, and gradually he became indifferent to them. It no
longer seemed so important that he had lighted a match. He must keep
watch, of course, but he needn’t torture himself to do it. He held
the carbine then only with his left hand, and pillowed his head upon
his right arm. After a little while, his eyes closed.

He started up abruptly, striking his head on the low
roof of the cave, but paid no attention to the blow. It seemed to him
he’d been dozing for some time, a half hour at least, exposed in
his cave as upon a shelf. He glanced swiftly down over the white
slope, and then more slowly studied the darkness below it. When he
had reassured himself, only wondering a little what
might
have climbed up out of his sight beyond the ends of the cave, he
realized that there was another reason why he didn’t dare sleep. He
was shaking ridiculously from the cold, and there was no feeling at
all in the hand that held the carbine. He lay there, working the hand
until the pin jabs began in it and working his toes inside the pacs
too, and slowly, laboriously, considered his position.

Finally he pushed back the hood, rolled out of the
cave, looking quickly to each side as his head emerged, and let
himself down onto the snow, and began to dig through it. He worked
quickly, pulling up slabs of shale from under the snow and laying
them, layer by layer, to make a front wall for the cave, and pausing
frequently to peer around below him. He walled the lower end of the
cave clear to the top, and then began to pack snow over it. He
constructed a regular buttress of the snow, till finally it became
like the top of the slope. Then, after thinking for a moment, he drew
the carbine out through the open end and stood it against the cliff,
just beyond the head of the cave, and within easy reach, and restuned
his building, He was working very rapidly by now, breathing quickly
and jerkily, and pausing briefly, each time he lifted a stone, to
examine the moving but uncommunicative darkness of the pass. He left
only a narrow opening at the head of the cave. Through this he tossed
slabs of shale down toward the lower end, until he believed he had
enough material inside to finish the job. He banked snow against the
outside until only the opening remained dark, and then, after a last
inspection of the regions below, worked into the little cave feet
first, and drew the carbine in after him. At once he felt happier,
less exposed and much better able to defend himself. Despite this new
confidence, and his extreme weariness, however, he set to work
promptly to complete the wall from the inside. The loose stone of
this last portion of the defenses, without any snow packed over it,
would let in all the air he needed. When every stone inside,
including the three he’d thrown in when he first came up, had been
set in place, there remained only a narrow gap at the top, no wider
than his hand.

Then, the most important matter taken care of, he
entered into the condition of careful attention to detail. He felt of
the snowshoes, back under the ledge, to make sure they were in place,
and laid the carbine upon them. He searched back under the ledges
with his hand, in order to know everything that was in there with
him. He found no openings of any sort, but in one place, far under,
he came upon a whole stock of twigs and small bits of dry wood and
clips of stone. Must of been a pack rat in here some time, he
thought.

Didn’t know the little bastards ever got up this
high. Or do those little chitterers, chipmunks, or whatever they are,
collect stuff too?

While he was still searching out the bits of wood
with his hand, he remembered the litter of stuff the match had shown
him on the floor, and it occurred to him, like a stroke of genius,
that he could make a little fire. It would give him light to eat by,
and it would warm him up before he went to sleep. After that his body
should do well enough in that small, closed space. At once he felt an
even greater appetite for fire, for light and warmth, than he did for
food, or even sleep. If the light was seen in the cracks of his wall,
what of it? Nothing could get at him now until he chose to come out.

He scooped out the sticks and twigs, and also
gathered everything he could feel on the sand
under
him and around him, even the little bones. Lying back against the
ledges as far as he could get, he assembled all his findings into a
pile between him and the front wall, and then chose from them to make
a little pyramid on the sand, a miniature Indian fire. He lay still
for some time, debating how to light the twigs without wasting too
many matches. At last he grunted with satisfaction, and even chuckled
a little, and drew the carbine out from behind him. He rubbed two
fingers over the oily metal of the carbine, and then rubbed the oil
off on a twig. When he had three oiled twigs, he laid the carbine
back of him again, and fished out the matches, and lit one, and set
the flame to the oiled twigs. They caught fire almost at once, even
making a tiny, preliminary wisp of black smoke. He enjoyed another
brief thrill of self-congratulation.

Very carefully, so as not to smother out the flame,
he inserted the burning twigs and match into the base of the little
cone of scraps. When the flame shrank, the beautiful light in his
cell diminishing with it, he leaned his face down close to the cone
and breathed gently upon it. The flame rose again inside it. It
finally rose between two twigs, and danced naked, single and lovely
above them, and the little cave was lighted once more. He rubbed his
hands together in glee.