Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (49 page)

Then, all at once, he really was seeing the
panther. This wasn't because the wall had been broken in, though. He
was terribly alarmed for an instant, because he thought the wall had
vanished, and the Cat could see him too. Then he realized, with great
relief, that the wall was still there and that, although he had
developed the ability to see through it, the cat had not. It was
crouched just the other side of the wall, with its sniffing,
snuffling nose down to the lowest cracks. It came to him only slowly,
like the growth of a horror too vast to be comprehended all at once,
that the beast, in order to loom up as far as it did out there, in
order to stand on the top of the slope of snow and crouch down to
snuff at that crack, must be enormous. All his previous notions, the
lost dream of pleasure, everything, vanished frog; his mind at the
overwhelming impression of the cat’s size and nearness. He held his
breath, no longer able to trust the wall between them at all.

Then he understood also, that in his complete
absorption in the presence of the cat, he had overlooked another
danger. Joe Sam was out there too. He was helping the cat in its
hunt, and it was his mind and his unrelenting purpose which had all
this time made the cat seem so humanly dangerous. He had come up the
canyon silently from the east, from the ranch, and joined the cat in
its waiting on the delta of snow. Curt could see him too now, and was
shaken to think that he had lain there so long, blind to the very
most dangerous quality of his enemy. Joe Sam was dressed only in a
breach clout, but he did not seem to notice the bitter cold at all.
He had a knife in one hand, an ancient, chipped flint knife, and with
the other hand, he was feeling over the uncovered rocks at the head
of the cave. The great cat lifted its head eagerly, its tongue
lolling out one corner of its mouth as it panted, to watch Joe Sam’s
hand trying the loose rocks. There was no question that the two were
working together. The panther was only waiting for Joe Sam to select
the best slabs of the shale, and silently, one at a time, remove them
until it could reach in.

Joe Sam took hold of the top rock, and a queer,
whimpering noise occurred in the little cave. It sounded very loud to
Curt. Joe Sam and the cat heard it too. Joe Sam became motionless,
with his hand on the rock. The cat lowered its head again, and
tightened its shoulders. Joe Sam was looking down where the cat was
looking. They were both looking right at him. Curt could see the
thin, wicked, restrained pleasure in Joe Sam’s face, with its
narrowed eyes, one of them half lidded, and looking away dead, but
the other looking right at him with its wicked joke. Then he saw that
the cat had only one good eye too. The one eye was fixed upon him,
and it winked very slowly without ever closing, as if the fire inside
the cat rose and fell in response to some slow pulsing of its strong
and unpleasant desire.

The courage-breaking whimper occurred again in the
cave, so that the cat settled its
shoulders
down further, working them a little in preparation for a leap, and
Curt realized that he was making the whimper himself, and probably
couldn’t help making it again. A sudden, tangible fear ran out all
through him, but especially up his spine to spread among the roots of
his hair. At the same time, he saw Joe Sam spring back, grinning, and
vanish at the head of the niche, and the cat sink down still farther,
till only its one burning eye was visible against the darkness of the
canyon. They knew he had come to the end of bearing his confinement,
and they were preparing for his break. The whimper broke out of him
again, more loudly.

There was a change in his situation which he couldn’t
explain for a moment. Finally he understood that the wall had become
solid again. It closed him in, almost as if it pressed upon him, and
he was unable to see out into the pass at all. He could see only one
thing still, the cat’s attentive, slowly blinking, single eye. It
was actually inside the little cave with him now. He raised an arm to
shield himself from the expected blow, and knew that something else
had changed. The arm rose quite freely. He was still lying like a
cold child, with his knees drawn up, but he believed that he could
stretch out if he chose to, and that there was some space between the
shelving rock roof and his shoulder. It was a great relief to know
that he had that much freedom of action.

Never looking away from the blinking eye, holding it
with his own gaze, as if he could thus keep the cat from pouncing, he
began to calculate his chances. It felt good to be able to calculate
them, to be able to think, to be able to make his mind test this and
that possibility as he directed, after his will had been so long
extinct in terror. The impulse to whimper grew weaker. He lay silent,
watchful, and tense for action, while he thought.

A second hopeful impulse, one that approached
triumph, so little does it require once despair is broken, took place
in him when his liberated mind informed him, at the joining of a
number of faint, encouraging doubts, that the winking, which observed
him from so near he could have touched it, wasn’t an eye at all,
but only a coal of his fire, in the last stages of burning itself
out.

He was sure, then, that he was awake, although he
couldn’t be sure at just what point in the events he had awakened,
or what, of all that had happened, was dream and what reality. The
lambent eye or coal was still there; it had existed on both sides of
a border he was unable to locate. The big dinner, the warmth, the
glittering light, and the contest with Gwen, had receded to an
unquestionable and regrettable unreality, but this was not true of
Joe Sam and the panther, waiting outside. He believed that their
actual presence there, particularly Joe Sam’s, was to be doubted,
but at the same time a more credulous and forceful part of his being
insisted that he consider them real, and act accordingly, that only a
fool would do otherwise.

He lay very still, listening intently all the time,
and thought about how to get out. There was no wind out there now; he
was quickly sure of that. Instead there was a thick, oppressive
silence of snow. His breath stopped occasionally, as he believed he
heard the soft snuffling against the stones, but it was very faint,
perhaps not there at all, perhaps just vagrant movements of the
canyon air.

He made up his mind definitely about three things: he
must wait for daylight; he must trust to the carbine, not the knife,
despite the dangerously crowded quarters; and he must make a rush for
it, prepare in complete silence, and then move all of a sudden. That
was his only chance to catch the huge cat off guard, perhaps to
frighten it into a momentary retreat, at least to get time for a
shot, maybe even two shots, before it could jump him. There was no
possible way to get out by stealth. He was enclosed, as if by a dozen
enemies, by his conception of the cat’s superior senses and powers.

Despite this desperate conclusion, he felt much
better when he had thought the problem out to a decision. The process
restored his strength and his will considerably, as if A it were a
kind of act itself. He settled himself, almost with a secure
tactician’s enjoyment, to watch in the cracks among the stones for
daylight, and to plan the rush that was forced upon him. At the same
time, in order that he shouldn’t betray himself by clumsiness when
the moment came, he began to work against the cold which stiffened
him now, continuously flexing and relaxing all the parts of his body
he could without making a sound, his feet and the calves of his legs
with them, his thighs separately, his buttocks and his belly, his
chest and shoulder muscles together, his biceps, his forearms, his
hands, even his neck, turning his head cautiously within the hood. It
worked well enough to help. His whole body was stiff and sore and
slow to begin with, and so rigid from cold that he had trouble
commencing the exercises, but as he persisted, he gained noticeably
in warmth and flexibility, and his confidence grew in proportion. The
discipline interrupted his planning at times, but by jerks and single
conclusions, he got ahead with it too.

By the time there was surely daylight between the
stones, enough of it filtering through in pale, narrow beams to let
him see dimly what he was doing, his plan and his body were ready. He
had even reached the point of looking forward to the break, and had
to divert a portion of his will to restraining himself, so that he
wouldn’t move carelessly and give himself away.

Very slowly, an inch at a time, he rolled over and
got hold of the carbine, and rolled back with it. He drew off 
his right mitten and laid it down as if it were fragile and of great
value, and felt lightly of the trigger of the carbine, to make sure
it was set. He picked up the knife and took it, pirate style, between
his teeth, in case something went wrong and he had no choice but
in-fighting. Then, with the greatest care yet, taking minutes to
accomplish the small change, he worked himself down into the narrower
end of the cave as far as he could and still assume the position
necessary to the surprise. The cat, naturally, would be giving its
attention to the other end of the cave, where the smell of the man
and his belongings, and the last little smoke of his fire, came out.

Drawing his legs up against his chest as closely as
he could, he worked himself around sideways in the cave, and lay
back, hunched against the sloping roof and held the carbine aimed at
the point on the wall toward which he was slowly raising his feet. In
the final position, his feet directly before the portion of the wall
he intended to kick out, his legs and his body coiled back like a
spring before release, he lay still again, and made a last check and
a last exhortation to his courage. He had forgotten nothing that
could be of any use. He listened intently, and believed that twice he
heard the faint snuffling at the unsealed end. He grinned tightly.

Distinctly, and in a cheerfully encouraging tone,
though only in his head, he said, All set, Bridges, and then, very
quickly, Here goes.

His legs shot out so that he grunted with the effort.
His heels, hitting the stones through the soft pacs, were bruised,
and the blow jarred him all up his spine, but he didn’t notice. In
an instant a wide gap appeared almost soundlessly in the wall before
him, and he caught a darkly framed glimpse of huge, white flakes
falling softly and thickly, and through them, dimly, of the opposite
wall of the canyon, astonishingly close. In the same instant that the
opening appeared, and in exact accord with his plan, he drew his legs
back again against his chest, bowed himself over them, rolled forward
onto his knees, and thrust himself, carbine lifting, into the break,
with his back toward tthe shallow end, in order to aim toward the
deep end, outside.

So complete was his preparation that only the slight
reservations he had maintained as to the exact position of the
panther, and a sudden and tremendous effort of will, enabled him to
check his eager forefinger. There was nothing out there; nothing at
all. He could see the whole sloping buttress of snow up to the
uncovered rocks, and there was nothing on it but the new, light,
perfectly untracked whiteness, except, right below him, the short
sliding trenches and wells made by the shale he had kicked out, and
the scattering pock marks of the snow that had fallen with it.

The absolute silence and the perfect motionlessness
of everything in sight save the slowly falling snow were shocking to
him, so completely had he prepared for a roaring report and a scream,
and some wild, confused fury of action. He was stunned, for a moment.
It was as if he had been smothered, mind and body, in a thick blanket
of white. Then it came to him, desperately, because of the delay,
that he was the one who had been tricked, that they had heard and
understood his every cautious movement in there, and were leaping at
him from behind. He swung violently around in the aperture, striking
his head and scraping one knee and one shoulder, and, with sickening
clumsiness, managed to get the carbine around and aimed again.

There was nothing there either, only the slow, thick,
sifting down through silence of snow onto unbroken snow. Slowly he
relaxed, and as he relaxed, an unthinking, still faintly incredulous
dreaminess settled upon him. Finally he leaned forward and thrust his
head and shoulders through the opening. He could see along that whole
side of the canyon then, as far as the falling snow would let him,
and there was still nothing, not even the faintest trace of a dark
movement or a track on the whole tranquil, derisive whiteness. It
wasn’t like waking from a dream. It was like entering one.

Finally, moving slowly, with a faint, chagrined smile
upon his face, and a feeling that he had been observed by a multitude
while behaving like a frightened fool, he pushed more of the wall out
and let himself down into the snow. He sank into it almost to his
hips, and stood there, with the carbine cradled in his arm, staring
across at the other wall, which was much too near, and then one way
along the canyon, and then the other. Without knowing it, he still
held the knife between his teeth.

26

It occurred to him finally that he couldn’t stand
there indefinitely, staring into the falling snow. He must get
started for home. It would be uncomfortable to face Gwen without a
panther skin, and to face Harold and Joe Sam when the cat had been
black after all, and he had been compelled to run from it. But by now
such considerations of pride had no power over him as compared with
his desire to get home, to be safe, to eat hot food and enough of it,
to sleep Warm, and to reassure his mind and steady his will with
real, limited and familiar problems. The desire to get home, in fact,
was the only positive force left in him. In all other matters, the
strong, unanchored logic of the cave continued more powerful than
white reality.