by Betsy Byars
At last there came a log with an extra limb that jutted off the bottom and steadied it like a keel. Rama clutched at this log and it did not roll. He clung to it, his claws piercing the wood, and then, when the log drifted sideways in an eddy of the current, Rama pulled himself up and crouched in precarious safety.
He was a pathetic sight. His gray fur clung to him like wet cloth, and his legs appeared too thin to support his body. He was motionless on the log, too frightened to move, and he crouched as low as possible, blending in with the wood as completely as if he were part of it.
The log turned in the water, bumped another log, and then went on, rushing down the river with such speed that Rama had no time to look about him. He had no time to wonder. He knew only that the river was the most dangerous enemy he had ever faced and that none of his weapons would be of any use here. He knew, too, that his life depended on his remaining on this log. Rama clung.
For hours the log continued down the river, and in all this time Rama did not move. His legs ached from the cold and the effort of clinging to the log, but he dared not ease them even for a moment. The log would dip and a wave would wash over Rama. The log would spin and Rama would grow sick and dizzy. The log would hit another object and Rama would be almost jarred into the icy water.
At dusk the log was borne by a whim of the current closer to the shore. Now Rama glanced longingly at the trees and the banks that were slipping past so quickly. It seemed to him that there, only yards away, was a different world, a world he had known just this morning and that he feared he would never know again.
The log gained speed and then slowed. Rama looked again to the bank. He could see rocks covered with gray vines and trees partly covered by the swift water. There was a bank, bare and brown, and a grassy slope that led into a forest. Dead berry vines hung over the water and trailed in it, pulled along with the force of the water. He watched as the log moved closer to the shore.
With his eyes, Rama measured the distance to safety. He was terribly afraid. The current was unpredictable, and at the very moment he was ready to leap, the log might turn again toward the center of the river and he might fall into the water and be lost. Or the distance might be greater than it seemed and he would fall into the water. The water was a fearful thing and Rama wanted only to feel the earth firm and steady beneath him again.
The log approached a curve in the river. With quickening speed it rushed for the bank. As Rama crouched, his body stiff, the log rammed directly into the bank. It paused a moment, held there by the force of the water, and then slowly it began to turn.
In the moment that the log was still, Rama leaped for his life. His claws grabbed at the bank, slipped, then held. He pulled himself up the bank and into the thick grass.
Behind him, the log completed its turn in the water and then continued down the river, its speed increasing with the current.
Rama ran. He did not stop to look back at the river. He did not stop to lick his fur. He ran to put as much distance as possible between himself and the fearful river. Not until he was deep in the forest and could no longer hear the sound of the water did he stop.
There was no one to hear him here in the dark of the forest, but Rama opened his mouth and mewed loudly. He mewed again, protesting the terrible thing that had happened to him. His voice rose and in his mewing was the unhappiness of riding a log down a flooding river, of finding himself in a strange and unknown forest, of wanting his lost home.
Then he looked about him. Beyond the trees to the left he could see an overhang of rocks and he walked toward it slowly, cautiously. Seeing that the shelter was unoccupied, Rama moved back beneath the rocks, sheltered from the wind by a rhododendron bush.
Carefully he began to lick himself. His legs were sore and painful, and his body ached from the cold. He licked himself for a long time, ending with his long tail, which was now as thin as rope. Then, not much drier than when he had begun, he curled up beneath the rock to sleep.
ALONE
WHEN RAMA AWOKE IT was morning. He rose slowly, for his muscles were still tight. He stretched, his back arching high in the air, and then he continued to stretch, extending each leg as he stepped from the shelter. He yawned, stretched again, and looked about him.
His thoughts now were not of the river and his terrible experience yesterday, but of today. Rama was hungry.
He moved with great care through the unfamiliar forest. The slightest sound caused him to freeze, for he knew instinctively that a still object was more difficult to see than a moving one. He would wait without moving until he located the sound and the cause of it, and then he would move on. He was looking for the most advantageous spot for hunting.
This could be a stream, Rama knew, for all animals sooner or later came for water. It could be a rotted log that hid the entrance to a chipmunk’s burrow. Or it could be a thick clump of weeds where he could hide and watch for birds.
When he found a good sheltered spot, he moved toward it. It was a place where the dry bentgrass was thick. Overhead he could hear the birds chattering occasionally or calling to one another. Rama crouched in the grass, his face upturned to the trees.
He saw a bird fly past. It landed on a bare bush not ten feet away. The branch bobbed with its weight, and the bird flew away.
An hour passed while Rama waited. Suddenly he looked up again to the trees. Overhead he could see a tree sparrow. He waited. The bird sang and then was still. It ruffled its feathers and then dropped to a lower branch of the tree. It ducked its head and pecked at its white breast.
With a long graceful glide, the bird flew down to a low bush and paused with its head cocked to the side. Then it began to peck at a dried pod on the bush, trying with sharp thrusts of its beak to dislodge the seeds that were still inside.
Rama was tempted to strike, but he waited. His claws opened and closed with eagerness. The bird ate the contents of the pod and flew to another bush. This was directly beside Rama’s hiding place, and as the bird settled on the low branch, Rama sprang.
With one blow of his paw, he stunned the bird, and then his teeth made the kill.
Rama ate quickly. There were other hungry creatures in the forest, and Rama did not want to share his meal. As he ate, his eyes searched the surrounding bushes and thickets for approaching animals. All the while his mouth and claws worked until the bird had been devoured.
Then Rama straightened casually and began to lick his paws and to clean his face. His fur was still covered with silt from the river, and he licked his coat carefully.
Then he stepped over the scattered feathers of the bird and slowly began to retrace his steps to the river. It was higher today and swifter, and Rama stayed well back from its eager currents. He wanted only to get his direction. Then he started walking northward among the trees some distance from the riverbank. He knew that the cabin was up the river, and he felt instinctively that if he continued to walk up the riverbank long enough, he would reach it again.
He did not know that, during his perilous voyage down the river, he had crossed from one bank to the other. And he did not know that, although the cabin did lie some fifty miles to the north, he could never reach it by walking.
He walked evenly, unhurriedly, throughout the day, and when night came again, he stopped to sleep by a mound of rocks. Although the night was mild, he slept only a few hours and then he rose and continued his walk through the forest.
He stopped in the gray morning to catch a chipmunk—this feat took him three hours—and when he had eaten it, he walked again.
By nightfall, his tender feet were painfully sore. They had been cut by rocks and bruised by twenty-eight hours of almost constant walking. He licked his paws carefully, pulling with his teeth at the mud that had hardened between the cushions.
He stopped long enough to lick his fur and attempt to loosen some of the burrs that had worked into it during the day. Then he returned to licking his paws. But even the touch of his tongue was painful, and he lay on his side with h
is tender feet stretched out before him, and then he fell asleep.
A NEW FRIEND
FOR THREE DAYS RAMA had not been able to catch anything to eat. On Monday he had found a mouse, an unusually tiny one, it seemed to Rama, because he was still ravenous when he had eaten it. Now it was Thursday and he was unbearably hungry.
The worst of it was that the hunger made him so anxious that he pounced even when he knew it was too soon and thereby missed several meals. The long unrewarding hours of hunting took more and more of his time, and so every day he made less progress in the direction of the cabin.
On the fourth day he was barely able to walk, his paws were so sore, but when, at dusk, he saw a rabbit motionless in the grass ahead, he ran with all his strength, abandoning his tricks of hunting and using means that were sure to fail. Speed would never catch a rabbit. The rabbit leaped easily away, bounding high over the field in three tremendous jumps, leaving Rama far behind, encumbered by the weeds and handicapped by his sore feet.
Rama watched the rabbit’s departure with slitted eyes. Then he paused to lick his feet. The wild chase had opened a cut that his persistent licking had begun to heal, and his feet now pained him so severely that he lay down where he was—in the weeds—and licked his paws as tenderly as he could.
The wind bent the weeds over Rama, and he lay there, licking his wounded feet. Suddenly he stopped and stiffened. He smelled something that brought back memories of the cabin, of the gypsy woman, too. Rama smelled the smoke of a fire.
Slowly he got to his feet and limped in the direction of the smoke. He worked his way through a thicket of pines and paused. Ahead, in a clearing, a man sat before a fire.
Rama made no move to join the man, but sat in the shelter of the trees and watched.
“Too-rah-lie-ooooh!” the man sang lustily. He unbuttoned his jacket, which was of a heavy woolen material, neatly patched at the elbows, and bent closer to the fire.
He jiggled a frying pan over the fire, and Rama smelled the odor of ham and eggs. He mewed loudly, unable to control the cry of hunger.
The man did not hear him. “Too-rah-lie-oooooh,” he sang.
Rama mewed again, a long, demanding cry. This time the man glanced over in Rama’s direction. He looked puzzled and his heavy brows drew together. Then he continued jiggling his frying pan, and a faint smile crossed his face.
“So it’s supper you’re wanting,” he said after a moment, straightening and stirring the eggs around in the pan with a fork.
“Miaow,” said Rama from where he sat.
“And I suppose you’re thinking that my supper looks inviting.”
“Miaow,” said Rama, recalling how the boy had always waited for an answer.
“And you’d like a bite of egg?”
“Miaow.”
“And some ham, too, I suppose.”
“Miaow.” This was a long, loud cry, and Rama’s mouth remained open even after the sound had faded, as if to impress on the man that he was hungry, really hungry.
The man spooned a portion of the eggs onto a nearby rock, along with a thin sliver of ham, and then he himself began to eat carefully from the frying pan.
“Well, there it is, friend,” the man said. “Take it or leave it.”
Rama approached slowly, cautiously. His days in the forest had made him wary. But when he came at last to the food, he ate with abandon, not even pausing to glance at the man. When he had finished, he looked up, waited until he caught the man’s attention, and mewed again. Then again, louder.
“So it’s not enough, is it?” the man asked. With his fork he deposited another smaller portion of egg on the rock and then sat back to watch the cat.
Rama finished eating and sat looking at the man, but when the man put out his hand, Rama withdrew.
“So—that’s how it is. You don’t want to be petted. Well, that is quite all right with me, friend. Only I was just noticing that there’s the slightest bit of ham left, see? And I was thinking that perhaps you’d like it.”
He showed Rama the ham and Rama approached quickly and took it from his hand. This time he did not move away when the man scratched behind his ears. The man removed a burr from Rama’s neck and then scratched again behind his ears.
This was a pleasure Rama had not known for some time, and he leaned forward, rubbing his head against the man’s hand so he would not stop. The man’s fingers found the earring and again he looked puzzled.
“Gypsy,” the man said and smiled again. “Too-rah-lie-oh—you’re a gypsy.” He lay back and put his head on a rolled blanket and stroked the cat. “A gypsy,” he said again, smiling.
The warmth of the fire soothed Rama, and he fell asleep while the man stroked his ears. It was the first untroubled sleep Rama had known in days, but when the man awoke, Rama was gone.
He had got up during the night, refreshed from his sleep, and gone into the woods. Now that his need was not so great, the hunting was more successful and Rama caught a small bird. True, the creature’s wing had been damaged, but it restored Rama’s confidence in himself.
The man renewed his fire, made his breakfast, all the while watching for the cat. There was no sign of Rama, however, and the man hitched his horse to his wagon and moved over the field.
The man was a peddler. He had traveled this way many times, knew all the families nearby, and had intended to take the cat with him, for he was certain Rama belonged to one of them, certain, too, that the cat would be missed.
Rama was not far away, and when he heard the wagon moving he came quickly, drawn by the sound that reminded him of the gypsy man. How often he had heard the sound of a creaking wagon! What pleasant memories it evoked! He followed the wagon even though the walking was more painful with each step.
Two hours later the peddler arrived at his first house.
“Hello—oo,” he called as he drove up to the cabin. He jumped down from his seat, and then, before he had a chance to greet the family who came out of the house, he noticed Rama behind the wagon.
“I see you got yourself a cat, Peddler,” the woman said gaily.
“It looks that way, Ma’am. I have surely picked myself up a cat.”
Then before the peddler moved on, he piled an old coat in one corner of his wagon, picked Rama up, and set him on it. Rama rose and looked at the man. Then he abruptly began kneading the coat with his paws, rearranged it to his satisfaction, curled up, and went to sleep.
THE PEDDLER
THE PEDDLER’S WAGON WAS quite different from the gypsy woman’s. Her wagon had been filled with a hodgepodge of things collected through the years. When she wanted to find something, she often had to search the whole wagon, tossing garments from the trunk, muttering to herself: “Where? Where? Where?”
When her search was rewarded, she was as joyous as a prospector with newly found gold. “Ah, at last!” she would cry. “My red beads! See, Rama, see how they sparkle! They are more beautiful than I remembered.” And without bothering to put any of the displaced objects away, she would go out to share her find with the other gypsies: “Remember the red beads I searched for? Look! I have found them.” And she would take a turn about the fire, dancing like a girl while the others laughed.
The peddler’s wagon was a marvel of orderliness. When a housewife asked for a spool of yellow thread, he knew exactly where it could be found, and although he had maybe two calls a year for a china-head doll, he knew that the tiny dolls were wrapped in browning tissue paper in the bottom drawer of a small pine chest. In all his years he had never been unable to find something he wanted. His clothes, his whole appearance reflected the same orderly habits as his wagon did.
Rama now fell into a new routine. During the day he remained in the wagon, sleeping on the coat. And during the night, while the peddler slept beside his wagon or in a barn if one were available, Rama cautiously roamed the countryside. His feet healed, and because the peddler was generous, Rama grew fat and sleek again.
The peddler’s wagon zigzagged back
and forth across the country from one house to another, and at each stop the peddler asked, “Anybody around here lost a cat?” And each time he felt a certain relief when the answer came back, “No.”
Several times families offered to give the cat a home, but always the peddler refused. “No,” he would say, “that cat belongs to someone, and more than likely I’ll find out who it is.” As the days passed, he found himself hoping he would not find the cat’s owner. Rama was company on his long rides.
Once, in his earlier days, the peddler had had a large gray dog that ran beside his wagon wherever he went. He called him Wolf, and the dog had become a favorite with his customers, even allowing the children to roll and climb over him as he slept.
Wolf had died five years ago this spring. The peddler remembered it well. One moment Wolf had been trotting by the wagon and the next he had dropped to the ground with a moan. By the time the peddler got to him—and he had leaped from his seat at once—Wolf was dead.
The peddler had missed Wolf in the years that followed, and although he had been offered other dogs, he always shook his head. “There’s no dog could take Wolf’s place,” he said. And, indeed, the fat puppies offered him seemed poor substitutes for a fine manly dog like Wolf, who could trot as well as a horse, could sit quietly for as long as he was bidden, and would come, when the peddler was low in spirits, and put his nose in the peddler’s hand.
But a cat was different, the peddler told himself. The cat would never be a companion in the way that Wolf had been. No strong bonds of loyalty would tie them together. Their arrangement was almost one of convenience. Even so, the peddler began to find more and more pleasure in the cat’s presence.
“Whatever do you want with a cat?” the Widow Bowman asked the peddler when he stopped at her cabin one evening.