Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (48 page)

"Ah," he said. "Now you’re talking."

He made another cigarette and lay smoking it and
admiring his new fire. It made more light than the twig fire had, and
gave off more heat. The low, closed cave became really warm, and his
drowsiness returned upon him heavily. He dropped the second cigarette
into the fire before it was even finished, rolled up the food packet
and stuffed it into the crevice above his head where the panther and
the Indian had stood, and pulled up the hood of the parka. Thus
prepared, he lay propped on his elbow and considered his fire once
more. Despite weariness and drowsiness, he was reluctant to go as
completely off guard as sleep would put him. Also, he wished to savor
every moment of the light and warmth.

At last, however, he drew on the mittens and
carefully pushed the fre together and back against the wall, and,
when it was settled and burning steadily again, stretched out and
pillowed his head on his left arm. He continued to watch the fire for
a while, but each time he blinked, his eyes stayed closed a little
longer. The fire was all right. The mahogany was  urning now
too, with tiny, insecure red flames along its sides and, in one place
underneath, a glow beginning, like that of burning coal.

"Dandy fire," Curt murmured. "Lucky I
had ’em."

At this expression of satisfaction, something within
him again made a propitiatory gesture toward Arthur.

"He’d of said so, himself," Curt
protested. "In the same fix, he’d of burned them himself."

Nevertheless, he opened his eyes wide again, and
looked at the wall of brown shale, with the firelight moving on it,
and listened to the breathing of the dark ravine into the cracks.
After a moment, he felt behind him, to make sure the carbine was
there, and then picked up the knife, drew it out of its sheath, and
laid it handy between him and the wall. Then he closed his eyes, and
began to recite softly.

"Turn right out of the cave, left at the end of
the pass, north half a day, right, and go till you see it," he
murmured, and repeated the incantation five times, and sighed and
began to breathe deeply and slowly.

There were actually two winds blowing outside. One of
them was very big, and made a continual, hollow roaring high above
the pass. That wind belonged to the realm of immeasurable mountain
chains and the whole advancing storm, and did not, at present,
concern him. The other was the little, occasional wind that came
sniffing and snuffling at the chinks in the wall beside his head, and
his ears continued to listen to that one a long time after he was
asleep.

25

He was sitting at the table in the warm, brightly
lighted kitchen of the ranch house; at least the room appeared to be
the ranch-house kitchen. The table, the stove and all the doors were
where they should be. At the same time he was reminded of other
rooms, though not entirely of any one he could remember. There were
five big chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, chandeliers of the
kind he had seen in the bars and hotels in Virginia City and San
Francisco, made up of circular tiers of gas flames and reflectors,
and all hung about with glittering crystal pendants. The walls
increased the light. They were white, like the kitchen walls, and had
a stairway up the north side, too, but they were made in panels
instead of wide, rough-hewn boards, and they were painted with a
shining lacquer instead of the powdery whitewash. The stairway was
also different. It was carpeted in crimson with brass edges and had a
turned mahogany rail. There was a crimson carpet with a big, leafy,
black pattern on the floor, a thick carpet, that made the room quiet.
In spite of these differences, however, he continued to feel that he
was in the kitchen of the ranch house, and that the ranch house was
standing under a timbered mountain in the south end of the Aspen
Creek Valley. Part of his pleasure in being there came from the
certainty that he was in the ranch-house kitchen.

On the table in front of him was a thick,
elliptical white platter, on which lay the bone and fat scraps
remaining from a huge steak. He was still holding in his right fist
the very sharp knife which had made it as easy to cut the steak as to
Cut butter. For that matter, the steak had been almost as tender as
butter. He could still feel the way each piece had melted in his
mouth, filling it with savory, hot, salty juice. There were also so
many side dishes that they almost covered the table, and there was a
big, silver coffee pot at his right hand, which was vaguely familiar,
but had certainly never been in the ranch house before. The spout of
the silver cofee pot was sending up a delicate tendril of steam.

He wasn’t alone, either, and the attitude of his
company encouraged him to believe that the enormous dinner wouldn’t
be the last of his pleasures that evening. The door of the north
bedroom was open. The room beyond it was dark, and Gwen Williams was
leaning against the doorframe in a pose of deliberate and interested
indolence, with one hip high and her hand upon it, and the other hand
playing with a locket which hung down between her breasts. She was
smiling at him, and watching him with an amused curiosity which had
only a small remnant in it of her former guarded withdrawal. She was
wearing a gown made of the same shiny, yellow stuff as the blouse she
had worn before, but it was trimmed with black lace, and it didn’t
cover her arms or her shoulders or the round bases of her breasts. He
noticed this particularly, because her warm, brown skin, like a
Mexican’s or an Indian’s, was amusingly wrong, rising out of that
dress, so that he felt a comfortable sense of superiority in her
presence, and at the same time believed that he would benefit from
the freshness of her body and the wiry independence, even slight
antagonism, of her spirit. There was no one else in the ranch house
with them. The place was perfectly silent, and he could feel the
emptiness of the other rooms. In such freedom, the idea of a slight
hostility, of chase and resistance, intrigued him. He’d take his
time about this game, make the most of the preliminaries too.

Yet, in the midst of all this comfort and promise,
he wasn’t wholly at ease. He felt that he had to play the part of
being at ease, in order not to lose his useful superiority over Gwen,
but at
the same time he kept listening to
the roaring wind outside, and for something else, perhaps inside
after all, that the wind made it hard to hear, and that might shorten
his time, and even rob him of this desirable conquest.

He tilted back in his chair slowly, steadily
returning Gwen’s look, fencing masterfully with it, and set down
the glass of liqueur which had appeared in his hand instead of the
steak knife, and drew long and deliberately upon the cigar which was
between his thumb and fingers the instant he let go of the glass, and
hooked the thumb of his left hand into the arm-hole of his brocaded
vest, which was exactly like the father’s. He blew out a long, slow
cloud of smoke at Gwen, and continued to stare at her through it,
hoping to make her look down, or in some other way be the first to
lower her guard.

Gwen surprised him, however, by refusing to
continue the contest. It appeared to him that behind the curtain of
smoke she became a much larger woman, tall even in that doorway,
which was much; higher than any in the ranch house. She had much
heavier, rounder, arms and shoulders and breasts than Gwen had, too.
She was still Gwen, however, with the same thick wreath of hair and
brown skin and wide-apart, slanting eyes. In one way she was even
more like Gwen than before. The withdrawn, appraising look was back
full strength in her eyes, and her smile, increasing slightly behind
the thinning smoke, became entirely a smile of amusement. He felt at
once that in some way he had played into her hands, and his 
pprehensions concerning time and the sound he couldn’t hear became
much stronger.

Gwen turned and walked out of sight into the
bedroom. He jumped to his feet, but then stood there, because the
instant she disappeared, the bedroom became as brilliantly lighted as
the kitchen. The bed, and the table and lamp by the window, were all
he could see from where he stood, but they weren’t the bed and lamp
and table that belonged in the north bedroom. The table was an
ornate, gilded one, with a marble top, and the lamp on it had a big,
glass shade, painted with roses and hung about the edge with
tear-drop pendants of crystal. The bed was a vast, brass bed, as wide
as it was long, and there were two big, yellow satin pillows, trimmed
with black lace, propped up against the head of it. The only thing he
recognized in the bedroom was the cover on the bed, and he liked that
even less than the unfamiliar objects. He was afraid when he saw it.
lt was the rough, blue bedspread the mother was so fond of, the one
with all the twisting vines and tropical birds and fruits and beasts
on it, and in the center, the horse with a horn on his forehead, the
one Arthur had studied over so much when he was a kid. Well, he would
go in there now, I and remove that bedspread first thing, and put it
out of sight. The moment he decided to do that, he saw that it had
already been done. There was a yellow spread like the pillow slips on
the bed now. Yet he wasn’t relieved. Instead he became suspicious
as well as apprehensive. Gwen, or the big woman who was so much like
Gwen, wanted to lure him into that room, and not for what he wanted,
either. He didn’t want to go into the bedroom at all now, yet he
couldn’t stop himself from advancing toward it. The best he could
do was to go cautiously, being careful that the floor didn’t creak
under his feet, and listening all the time.

He had his hand on the doorframe when the light in
the bedroom went out as suddenly as it had gone on. In almost the
same instant, he realized that the lights were out in the kitchen
too, and. then he believed that the room was shrinking around him,
that it meant to crush
him. Also, he heard
what he had been listening for under the loud wind all this time. It
was a sound of heavy breathing, of sniffing. It was going on in the
bedroom. The loud wind was still blowing over the roof of the house,
but he could hear the breathing sound in the bedroom as if the place
were perfectly quiet. Then he knew that it wasn’t Gwen waiting for
him in the dark in there, or any other woman either. His fear became
a paralyzing terror. He was  standing in an open doorway, where
he couldn’t see anything, and that heavy, snuffling breathing was
coming closer and closer to him from the other side.

He was lying perfectly still, on his side, facing the
wall. He couldn’t see the wall in the absolute darkness which had
closed in when the lights went out in the bedroom and the kitchen,
but he knew it was there, so close he could have reached out and
touched it. He didn’t, though. He had to lie perfectly still. Not
only his ears, but his entire body, was concerned with detecting
every least whisper of that breathing and snuffling in the cracks of
the wall. He knew now that it was the panther out there, and that it
had been out there for a long time already, that it had gained over
him a considerable advantage of preparation while he’d sat in there
letting Gwen make a fool of him. Even in his present predicament, he
felt extremely bitter that Gwen had betrayed him to such a terrible
extent as this. He couldn’t afford to think about that now, though.
He had to know exactly what the cat was doing outside, and the
sniffing was all he had to guess by.

The cave was smaller than he remembered. He had to
lie with his legs drawn up, like those of a child sleeping cold,
because there wasn't room for him to stretch them out, and the
shelving roof pressed down on his shoulder. When he imagined the cat
breaking in through the loose stones in front of him, he was
terrified anew because he was so tightly trapped. He felt that his
position would be much improved if he could only get the carbine over
in front of him, but that would be impossible without a good deal of
contortion, and he didn’t dare try. If he made the least sound for
those attentive ears out there to pick up, the delicate balance of
doubt that was preserving him would be broken. That cat was cleverer
than any man about all the signs of fear and helplessness, and it
would know at once how he was fixed. He could only lie perfectly
still and curse himself inwardly for having gone to sleep with the
carbine behind him. He even had to control his fretfulness about
that, for he knew that if he were to let himself go only a little, he
would be swept by brainless panic, and that would be even worse than
trying to reach the carbine. It would give him away at once. Even if
he managed to hold himself absolutely quiet, not a single muscle
moving, not the faintest whimper escaping him—and that whimpering
could begin only too easily—even then the cat would know. Those
busy, intelligent black nostrils couldn’t possibly miss the scent
of such an overwhelming fear, and the smell of fear would set it off
even more promptly than the sound of struggle. No, there was nothing
to do but lie perfectly still and concentrate upon keeping his fear
imprisoned in that small, round cell in his middle where it was now
huddled, waiting like a dangerous internal ally of the enemy outside.

The worst of it was that he could think of no good
end to this cornered-rabbit strategy. His fire had gone out some time
since; just when, he didn’t know, and the cave was getting cold. He
was almost as much afraid of jerking from the cold as of jerking
because the fear broke out of his middle. And time meant nothing to
the panther out there, warm in its thick, black coat, and free to
move about, and fascinated by the man smell it breathed in at every
crack of
the loose stone wall. Time was as
much in its favor as position was, and that was another thought which
couldn’t be allowed to repeat itself too often or dig in too
deeply. He couldn’t help imagining the panther, suddenly moved by
some failure in secrecy inside, rearing against the loose stones
beside his head, and pushing them in. He could see, as if it were
happening, the huge, flat, whiskered head thrust into the breach, the
mouth slightly open to pant, and the great yellow eyes shining at him
as if there were a fire inside the cat that showed out through them.
He could feel its hot breath on his face, and even smell the
carnivorous reek of it.