Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (59 page)

"Dad," he yelled again, and once more,
"Dad," as loudly as he could, not warning the old man now,
but begging for his help. He didn’t yell a third time, though he
was about to, because he suddenly realized that it wasn’t his
father down there at all, and that it never had been. It was Joe Sam
down there, ahead of him and just to his right, in the edge of
timber. Joe Sam had
called in the father’s
voice to fool him, to get him to start running, or to jump up, as he
had, and yell. He had done it to make the cat leap. He was waiting
down there with that knife in his hand in order to finish the job
himself in case the cat should miss.

He veered in his flight to avoid the place where Joe
Sam was waiting, and went straight down the white strip of the
clearing. He knew now that the cat wasn’t about to jump him. It
wasn’t in that much of a hurry; it was only Joe Sam, really, who
was in such a terrible hurry. He could feel how easily the cat was
loping down behind him. He could hear it panting and making little
nervous, whining noises closer and closer to him. He fell again, and
rolled to one side to escape the cat’s leap, and continued without
a pause to scramble down on all fours through a yard of the drift
before he could get to his feet.

He could see the pale, open highway of the snow
reaching far down ahead, perhaps all the way into the valley, and
even in his terror he knew that he was lost, really lost, and just
hadn’t known it before. There was no such long, open strip down any
mountain all the way around the Aspen Creek Valley. He’d been wrong
about everything. He was in entirely strange mountains; they might as
well have been the Andes or the Himalayas or the mountains on the
moon. The cat whimpered louder than ever behind him.

He stepped down unexpectedly again and fell. For a
small portion of an instant he tried to scramble back onto his feet,
because he could feel the cat breathing on him now. Then he knew,
because he couldn’t find even the loose snow with either hand or
either foot, that this fall was not the same as the others. He felt
himself helplessly turning a cartwheel he didn’t want to turn in
nothing at all. Something sharp, and set in the whole weight of
earth, struck his back and threw him over faster and farther out and
almost at the same instant struck his right ankle and turned him over
so that he was falling head down, and then, as if it had been started
by the first blow, but had been a little delayed by the shock, there
was a wild, long scream going down with him.

It grew around him. It multiplied and became as
twenty despairing voices through whose wailing chorus he fell
headlong.

PART 4

31

The hand continued to move Harold’s shoulder
gently, and now he was sure it was Gwen’s hand, because it couldn’t
be Arthur’s, and Curt wasn’t even there, whatever Arthur had
said. He realized suddenly that Arthur wasn’t there either, now,
and he was frightened.

“
Harold," Gwen said, softly, but with the
utmost urgency.

"Arthur’s gone," he told her.
"Arthur’s lost in there. We've got to find him."

His voice sounded too loud, dangerously loud, now
that the blue jungle had stopped moving and there was no waterfall.
He knew that he shouldn’t have spoken, and that there hadn’t been
any need of speaking, because that was what Gwen had been trying to
tell him. She
already knew.

"Darling, wake up," Gwen said, which was
ridiculous, because he wasn’t asleep, and he hadn’t been asleep.
Perhaps she only meant his confusion. He was certainly confused. He
didn’t know what to do. He must answer her. She had known the truth
all the time, and perhaps she could tell him what to do. That was why
she wanted him to listen to her.

"Yes?" he said, sitting up and turning his
head quickly to look at her. "What is it? What’s the matter?"

It was Gwen beside him, all right, but everything
became more confused than ever for a moment, because she didn’t
have on the blue cloak, with the hood up over her head. She was
wearing the yellow blouse, and her head was uncovered. That blue
darkness wasn’t around her, either. A melancholy, far-away sunlight
was shining on her braided hair, showing the little gold and copper
glints in it.

“
It’s no use," he told her sadly, and when
he spoke, and heard his own voice quite distinctly, he realized at
once why it was no use.

"It was just that bedspread," he explained.
"The blue one we put around Arthur."

"What was?" Gwen asked, and he was confused
again.

He was going to say, "Arthur’s dead. It was
just the bedspread, the blue one with the unicorn in the middle,"
when Gwen took his face in her hands and kissed him.

"Darling, wake up," she said. "You’re
still dreaming."

He knew then that she was rea1ly there, and the blue
jungle wasn’t, and Arthur hadn’t been with them, because he was
dead, and they had buried him up by the pines. It wasn’t sunlight
on her hair, either, but the light from the kitchen lamp.

"Yes," he said, "I guess I was just
dreaming."

The roaring of the waterfall became a new fire in the
stove behind him, and the cold wind was blowing because the outside
door was standing wide open. He saw that it was still dark outside.
Through the open door, he could see the stars over the shed, and the
soft, colored flickering of the fire on the snow in the yard. He was
afraid something more had happened because the door had been left
open like that.

"What’s the door doing open?" he asked.

He started to get up and go and look out the door,
but Gwen came back from the stove and put a cup of coffee down beside
him.

"Your father had to go out," she said.

He saw the cards still spread out across the table
from him, and the glass and whisky bottle and saucer full of cigar
butts and ash. He must have been asleep a long time, because there
were many more cigar butts in the saucer than there had been when
he’d last seen it. At first he’d thought he’d only been asleep
a few minutes, because the fire was still throwing its light so far
out there. Even with the door open, the cigar smoke was still strong
in the kitchen.

"I left it open to get some of the smoke out,"
Gwen said. She had her arm around his head, and was stroking his
forehead gently with her hard, warm hand.

"Drink your coffee, darling," she said. "I
had to wake you up. I didn’t want to, but you were having a
nightmare. You were talking in your sleep, and you sounded terribly
unhappy-"

"Yes, I guess it was a kind of nightmare,"
Harold said. "It was all right at first, but then it changed."

He began to sip the hot coffee. The whole place is
getting full of dreams, he thought. Half our life is dreams, and they
all keep turning bad. I wonder if Arthur’s dreams kept turning bad
on him too. That last one did, anyway, from what he said.

Gwen went over to the door, and made a fan of it
between her two hands, to get more of the cigar smoke out, and then
closed it and came back.
 
"It’s
nearly moming, anyway," she said. "Your mother wants to see
you. She heard you talking in your sleep, I guess, and thought you
were awake. You better finish your coffee first, though."

There was something else she wasn’t saying. She
wanted to say it, but she thought maybe she shouldn’t. He could
guess that from the factual way she spoke, and went back to her work
at the stove, holding herself apart from him again, after she’d
been so gentle about waking him up. He couldn’t ask her what it
was, though, with the bedroom door open. Probably that was why she
wouldn’t tell him. It was probably something about why the mother
wanted to talk
to him.

He began to sip slowly at the very hot coffee. The
dream still wouldn’t let go of him. It was funny how a dream as
impossible as that could go on seeming real when you were awake.
Probably that was just because Arthur had been in it. Gwen returned
to the table with a cup of coffee, and sat down where he usually sat
himself, with her back to the stairs. She sipped her coffee and
watched him over the top of her mug. When she let the mug down, she
was smiling at him a little, and not the quick, polite smile, either.
She looked very tired, and the smile which was slow and gentle, the
kind she didn’t give anybody else, seemed ready to turn into crying
any time. He reached out his hand and touched her hand that was
holding the coffee mug on the table.

"Didn’t you get any sleep at all, honey?"

Gwen let go of the coffee mug and took hold of his
hand quickly and pressed it hard, and the
tears
he’d thought were so close to coming, really came, and blurred her
eyes and made drops on her lashes. She blinked them away hard, and
they fell onto her cheeks. She let go of his hand and took a
handkerchief out of the cuff of her blouse and rubbed at the tears
almost angrily.

"Certainly I did," she said. "Never
mind me. I’m just all mushy and leaky this morning."

He wanted very much then to say right out that he
loved her, and to beg her pardon for all the things he felt guilty
about, but it was difficult to talk of himself, and while he was
fumbling for a way to begin, Gwen spoke again, smiling at him in the
same slow, gentle way, but trying to speak lightly, and speaking at
all, mostly so he wouldn’t, he thought.

"What on earth were you dreaming about, darling,
that was so bad?"

"Oh, nothing much."

"Yes, you were. You frightened me, you sounded
so scared. I was so glad you were getting a little rest, even if it
was only sitting up at the table, and then you began to talk, and you
sounded so unhappy."

"Did I say something I shouldn’t have?"
he asked, trying to grin.

"No" Gwen said. "There was nothing
bad. I just had to wake you up because you were in some kind of awful
trouble."

"What did I say?"

"Mostly you were just sort of mumbling. It was
more the way you sounded. You said something about Arthur, like you
were going to cry, and something about a jungle, too. And you spoke
to me, like you wanted me to help you. You said, ‘Gwen, he’s
gone,’ and then you just said my name, like you were really talking
to me, only you were scared. I couldn’t let you stay scared when
you wanted me to help you."

Harold smiled at her a little. "Poor Gwen, you
can’t get away from it, can you? Even in my sleep, you have to take
care of me."

She shook her head at him. "You can’t get
around me like that. I was in your dream, and I want to know what I
was doing. Or was it really so bad you don’t dare tell me?"

Harold hushed. "It wasn’t anything like that.
It just doesn’t make much sense, that’s all."

"You were still talking about it after you woke
up,"

Gwen said. "You told me it was just the blue
bedspread. What was just the blue bedspread?"

"Wel1," Harold said, "I was dreaming
we were up there looking at this valley together, you and Arthur and
me."

"You’re getting me all mixed up," Gwen
said, shaking her head at him. "What valley?"

"I’m kind of mixed up myself now."

He sipped at his coffee, and then Gwen began to sip
at hers too, and watch him, so he had to go on.

"We1l," he said, setting his mug down
again, "it seemed kind of like a valley in the mountains here,
only way up somewhere, and I’d never seen it before. It was this
kind of country, though."

He thought about it for a minute.

"I tell you," he said. "Did you ever
see Yosemite?"

Gwen shook her head.

"Well, neither did I, but Arthur used to have a
big photograph of it, and I guess I made up this valley for that. It
looked a lot like it, with high cliffs all around, and big mountains
with snow on them going up at one end, and a big waterfall coming
over the cliff from them. We were on a cliff a mile or so down the
side of the valley, so the waterfall hardly made a sound you could
tell from the wind in the trees. There were trees, big pines, down in
the valley, and a kind of open meadow place right below us, with the
river going through it."

"It sounds like a wonderful place," Gwen
said.

Harold sat looking at his coffee and trying to
remember.

"Yes, it was," he said finally. "That’s
why Arthur took us up there to see it. I know I felt pretty happy
just looking at it, and because you and Arthur were there too."

It was Gwen who looked down at her coffee cup now.

"Arthur took us up there because it was so
peaceful," Harold said. "There hadn’t ever been anything
in there but the animals that lived there. No people had ever been in
there. I was sure about that in the dream. Arthur told us so, I
guess. I knew some way, anyhow. And I was kind of all excited because
Arthur was going to tell us something about it that would mean a lot
to us. I don’t know just what, because he never got a chance to
tell us, but it seemed as if I was pretty sure it would fix
everything up for us. You know, as if we could live there, and
there’d never be any trouble."