Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (61 page)

She propped her elbows on her knees and buried her
face in her hands.

"Sometimes I think it’s worst of all for
Grace, maybe. A woman’s made to have a man and children. Without
she’s got ’em, she ain’t able to come to herself rightly. But
it was me made her quit her teachin’ and come home here because she
was talkin’ too much about that assayer fellow, talkin’ just like
him, and him a foreigner and full of queer notions. But she’s just
got so she talks like Arthur all the time instead, only she’s so
wild about it. Arthur was never wild about it. And with Arthur gone.
. ." She didn’t finish but sat there silently, still with her
face buried in her hands.

Harold waited uneasily, shifting his weight from foot
to foot. This was worse than the time before, and worse trying to
think of something to say to her.

Finally the mother went on. "Seems to me like I
been talkin’ to Arthur all the blessed night long, rememberin’
things he said I didn’t give no mind to then, no more than if they
was the wind in the chimney. It was like he was settin’ right here
in the dark, sayin’ ’em all over again. I could hear just the way
he used to say ’em, like it was his own voice speakin’, and I
could of reached out and touched him settin’ there, and most likely
whittlin’ away while he talked. Only now it seems like everything
he said kind of come together in the middle somewhere, like he was
talkin’ about God all the time, in his own way, and I’d never
knowed it. Like I’d been so set in my own judgment I’d never
rightly even heard what he was sayin’ before. Most attention I’d
ever give it was to tell him to stop his foolishness."

She lifted her head and peered up at Harold,
searching his face in the shadows for something she needed to know.

"But he wasn’t hardly ever meanin’ to mock,
was he?"

"No,” Harold said uueasily. “N0, I don’t
think he ever was."

"No," the mother said, and then, "Seems
like I might of seen that before . . ."

The father raised his voice angrily out of the
conversation that had been going on in the kitchen, and she stopped.

"Why don’t he get out there, then?" the
father demanded. "His own brother lost, and he sleeps all night
on the table, like some drunk in a back room. I’m the only one
cares enough even to stay awake for him. My God, what did I ever do
to deserve such children? Curt’s the only child of mine in the lot
of ’em, I tell you. If anything happens to Curt, this place will go
to pieces like a house of cards; like a house of cards, I tell you."
They heard his fist thump on the table, making the dishes leap and
rattle, and then the heavy voice died away into a thick and ominous
mumbling.

The mother buried her face in her hands again, and
cried softly, "Oh, my God, my God, why have you deserted me in
this hour?" and even in those words, the lament pierced Harold.
His grudging pity for the strong woman knowing her first doubt
swelled into a great and personal pity. He put out one hand,
awkwardly, to take her shoulder, but then couldn’t. The old habit
of being apart from her, even with his mind, was still too strong.

"Don’t you take it on yourself so, Mother,"
he said.

"You’ve done all anybody could. We’re a
pig-headed lot, all of us."

The mother didn’t move or make any reply for a long
time. He could feel how she was struggling against the tears of
weakness that wanted to come, and against the long, falling despair
he was getting to know so well himself.

When at last she spoke, her voice was not steady, but
the words her mind had decided on were dry and selfmocking. "Well,
it ain’t helpin’ anything much for you to stand here listenin’
to an old fool cry in her bib, that’s one sure thing. You get your
girl there to feed you your breakfast, and then you get on up to the
creek. I’ll see your father don’t keep at her.”

She stood up slowly, helping herself with her hands,
but then bent her head, and after a moment let herself down again,
saying with a little, shaking laugh, a very strange sound, coming
from her, "Only I guess I’ll have to rest me a while first.
I’m a fine one, I am. First time there’s real trouble on us, I’m
no more use than if I was at the bottle too, and not even able to
tell the day of the week."

She lay back on the bed on her side, and let her head
down into the pillow slowly, and closed her eyes. "Don’t you
dally here frettin’ about me," she murmured. "You get on
out there."

Harold drew the blanket up over her with unsteady
hands. For years there had been nothing in her strength that was any
use to him, but he was frightened, just the same, to see it so far
gone.

"You let me get you something to eat first,"
he said.

She rolled her head a little in the pillow to mean
no, and murmured, "I ain’t hungry yet. You just ask your girl
to bring me a cup of coffee after you’ve had your breakfast."

"You’ll have to try to eat something, Mother,
or . . ."

"I will, I will. Now you go along and let me
be."

He stood there, trying to think of a way to get at
her that would help, but couldn’t, and finally turned toward the
kitchen door.

"You better get Dad up to bed, out of her way,"
the mother said.

Harold turned back, and saw that her eyes were open
again and looking at him. He nodded.

"And then you get on out there," she said
again.

He nodded. "As quick as the chores are done."

"The chores can wait," she said. "Don’t
you waste good daylight on chores."

"A1l right," he said.

When he was in the doorway, she spoke again, and he
waited.

"You better take that old fool Indian with you,"
she said.

Harold turned. "He’ll be more’n half dead,
Mother. You know how he is after one of these spel1s."

"You take him along, just the same," she
said, "if he knows what he’s doin’. He can read signs where
nobody else would see a thing. I’l1 say that for him. You take him,
Harold."

She doesn’t want him around while I’m gone, he
thought, and answered, "All right. I’ll take him."

"I’ll rest quieter in my mind if you will,"
the mother apologized. "A man shouldn’t be out on such work
alone. And you take some extra rations with you."

Harold nodded, and started to turn again, but she
stopped him once more.

"And Harold.”

"Yes."

"You start yourself back with daylight to get
here. Don’t you get led on past sense. lf you ain’t done no good
by noon, you head on back here. There’s no good to risk yourself
for. . ." She hesitated. "For what can’t be helped,"
she concluded.

"I’ll watch it"

"No, you promise me. If you ain’t come on a
good sure
sign by noon, you head back. Will
you?"

"All right,” he said.

He waited because he heard himself how faint a
promise that answer made, and believed she would press for more. She
didn’t speak again though, and when the silence had lasted long
enough, he felt the promise bind on him after all, and turned and
went on into the kitchen.

The father had fallen asleep slumped down in his
chair, with part of his breakfast still on the plate, and the cards
pushed aside into a heap beside the bottle and glass and saucer full
of butts and ash. His chin was down on his breast, and he was snoring
softly, with a little bubbling at the lips on every outbreath. Grace
was sitting there at the table too now, in Arthur’s chair, with a
mug of coffee in front of her. She was staring at the coffee, but not
touching it. Her hands were out of sight in her lap.

Gwen stood up from the table when he came in, but he
said, "I better go wake Joe Sam up first. I’m taking him
along, if he’s fit to move, and he’ll want some breakfast too."

"A11 right," Gwen said. "I’ll get
something on for both of you. Will your mother eat anything yet?"

He shook his head. "You could take her a cup of
coffee pretty quick. Then maybe you could try her again, after we get
started."

He could tell by the way Gwen looked at him that she
wanted to ask something more, but then she just nodded and sat down
again.

"If we don’t pick up something to go on by
noon, we’ll start back," he told her, hoping that was what she
wanted him to say.

She started to nod again, as if that was all right,
but didn’t matter, but then her eyes filled with tears, and she
looked down at her plate to hide them, and kept nodding too quickly.
He pressed her shoulder with his hand, and she reached up quickly and
put her hand over his, hard, and then laid it back on the edge of the
table again.

Harold saw that Grace was watching them. He wasn’t
sure at first that she really saw them, but then knew she did,
because she glanced up at his eyes, and then down again, and brought
her hands up out of her lap and looked at something she was holding
in them. He saw that it was the same carving of Arthur’s, the old
sheepherder with a long, thin beard and a partly bald head with long
hair at the sides, carrying a lamb over the back of his neck, holding
two of its legs in each hand. The wood was dark and smooth with long
handling. Grace felt of it with her thumb, and then stood it out on
the table and picked up her mug of coffee and began to sip at it. She
kept looking at the stocky old sheepherder and the shadow the lamp
gave him, over the rim of her mug, and her eyes were quiet, and
really seeing him.

Harold took his hand from Gwen’s shoulder, and
brushed the knuckles of it gently along her cheek. Then he went
around to the pegs and took down his coat. He stood for a moment
looking at the father, and went out. When he had the door closed, he
could see the first faint
light in the east,
giving the mountains shape. He put on his coat and went around the
comer of the house, through the failing reach of the signal fire. Up
ahead, over the mountain behind the bunk—house, the stars were
still as bright as they had been at midnight. From down behind the
sheds, though, thin, but clear and prolonged and wakeful, sounded the
shrill crowing of the little bantam cock.

32

The sun was up clear of the eastern hills when Harold
came onto the crest of the reach that hid the Aspen Creek. He drew
rein to let the buckskin blow and steady its legs, saying, “Easy,
Kit; easy boy," and patting the sweating shoulder twice under
the stock of the carbine he held against the horn. He turned and
squinted back across the glare of the snow to watch Joe Sam coming up
behind him on Smudge. The little mare was making hard work of it,
even in the wake Kit had left. Joe Sam sat huddled down in his
saddle, moving only as the mare moved, as if his body were still
asleep, but the old Sharps buffalo rifle lay straight across his
thighs.

Harold looked out over the valley. It shone
blindingly, with the sun coming across it, and it was only here and
there that the eye could rest in the blue shadows of drifts. Out
beyond the brush-line of the creek, even the familiar, dark map of
the marshes had vanished, frozen over and then covered with snow.
Their shapes could only be guessed at by the curves and mounds of
shadow, and little patches of black hairlines where the tules stood
out of the snow. A light, broken wind had come up with the sun, and
snow ghosts ran on brief, aimless excursions over the level, rising
from nowhere and vanishing into nothing. One of the ghosts came
glittering down about him from the ridge, and then swung away behind
him and back onto the slope.

Joe Sam came up, and drew out into the unmarked snow
beside him. The horses nosed at each other, mouthing their bits with
a gentle clinking and blowing the steam of their breathing into one
cloud, and making the girths creak. Harold looked at the old man’s
face, turned up to him. It was very tired, aged by the short sleep
with the vision gone out of him, but the good eye was seeing things
as they were, all right, and he was resting even while he sat in the
saddle. He was slack as a cat in the sun.

"Hard going for the horses," Harold said.

"Much snow," the old man agreed. He looked
down, and moved his leg to make Harold see the snow on it where it
had dragged through the drifts. Harold grinned, because that lively,
private joke was in Joe Sam’s eye again, something he was keeping
to himself, something quite sane and malicious, and then nodded and
looked up the spine of the ridge above them.

"Should we take a look first?" he asked,
motioning up with his mittened hand.

Joe Sam lifted his shoulders a very little, to show
he wou1dn’t make a choice. "Much time go," he said, and
motioned to the east and up to show how long the sun had been up.

Harold studied his face. "You think that
painter’s in there, don’t you?"

"Snow not come now," Joe Sam said. "Maybe
come back. Sleep all snow. Hungry now." The
good
eye was twinkling, the joke growing in it.

He means more than that, Harold thought, but knew
better than to ask what.

"He could be, at that," he admitted. "It
would be something to get him anyhow," he said grirnly. "We’ll
go up by the creek then," and he pressed Kit to start down. They
came around into the canyon mouth with the glare at their backs and
the shadow of the big cut ahead of them, and could look with open
eyes. The snow deepened rapidly as they climbed and the sides of the
ravine drew in. The horses warned them before Harold had any other
sign, by beginning to snort and try to turn against the reins, first
to one side and then to the other. Harold read the snow before them
quickly, and then looked along the willows on their right for
anything moving, but saw nothing, and looked at Joe Sam. The old man,
letting Smudge wheel a little to ease her, but never as much as half
way, pointed up to the north wall, above the dazzle of the sloping
shoulder, at a deep line where something had come down, heading up
canyon and floundering. He nodded.