"I’ll take less luck, if it’ll make less stink," the mother said. "If you bring anything back you haven’t just imagined, you’ll spread it on the shed, not the house, and on the back side too.
"All right, all right," Curt said, grinning, and took another large mouthful of egg and potato. "Anyway," he said thickly, "the way it’s been growin’ lately, if we was to get the black one, his hide would cover the whole house. We’ll have to peg it out on the meadows, eh, preacher?"
"There’s nothing to worry about there," Arthur said. "If we ever get that one, it won’t be with bullets."
"Nonsense," the father said. "Utter nonsense. If. . ."
Curt pointed the fork at him now. "No, by God. For once I agree with old whiskers, absolutely. If we ever get that one, it won’t be with bullets." Bending his head toward the plate again, he looked at the mother, grinning. "Which is why I have to take old whiskers a1ong."
"This whole performance is ridiculous," said the father angrily. "In such weather as this. If there was a grain of sense in the pair of you, you’d stay in the house and make use of this opportunity for a little sociable . . ."
"But," Curt said, still grinning at the mother, "I’ll take a gun along too, just in case it turns out to be my kind of a cat. You know, an ordinary, yellow cattle-thief."
He scraped together the rest of the food on his plate, but then raised only a small forkful of it to his mouth. Chewing on it, he peered through the shadow of the lamp at the door of the north bedroom. The father was staring angrily, but Curt paid no attention, and after a moment the old man muttered something no one could understand, drank off the rest of the whisky in his glass in two swallows, set the glass down again, and once more filled it a third of the way with the same slow, ceremonious defiance.
Arthur began to put the parka on. From the north bedroom there came another little chorus
of the two laughters.
"By golly," Curt said, "you’d think it was a party in there, or something. Here I am, just waiting around to pay my respects, and they go on gabbling in there like they had all the affairs of the world to settle. What on earth do women find to talk so much about, Ma?"
Harold stirred restlessly against the door, and then stood away from it. The mother looked at him, and then back at Curt.
"They’re still on Gwen’s trip to San Francisco, I expect," she said. She smiled a little, a tight, downward grimace, and looked sideways at the father, not moving her head, but only her eyes. "They didn’t much more than get started on it last night."
The father’s jowls grew red again, but he pretended not to understand, and fixed his attention on relighting his cigar, which had gone out while he listened to Curt’s teasing.
"You’d think," Curt said, "they could get all about frills and bustles that was any use to ’em in this place settled pretty quick."
"Frills and bustles is a long subject," the mother said dryly. "I wouldn’t figure on waitin’ it out, if I was you."
Arthur came beside Curt, and picked up the unfinished lion, and the knife, and put the lion in the pocket of his parka, with the other two pieces, and closed the knife and slipped it into his pants pocket.
“Well, now," Curt said, grinning again, "I just don’t like to go off without even a good mornin’. We gotta be real careful nothin’ slips up just on account of bad manners. Weddin’s are pretty rare things in this family."
Arthur moved off toward the gun rack made of deer legs bent up and fastened to a long panel that hung beside the bunk-room door.
"And Harold himself bein’ just a mite green at this sort of thing," Curt went on. "I thought that. . ."
"Which gun do you want to take?" Arthur asked him.
“Everbody’s rushin’ me all of a sudden," Curt said, and laughed. He looked around at Arthur. "My Winchester,” he said. "The carbine. And you better borrow Hal’s. That old Sharp’s of yours is about as much use as throwin’ rocks."
"You forget," Arthur said. "There’s no use taking a gun for my kind of cat."
He lifted down the topmost of the five guns that lay across the deer legs and took a handful of cartridges out of the open box on the shelf under the rack.
"How about the snowshoes and some grub?" he asked.
"I’ll fix you something right away," the mother said, putting her hand on the table to help herself up.
Curt had the last of his food in his mouth, and waved his hand at her to sit still, and after a moment swallowed and said, "Never mind. We won’t be out long enough to need it."
"If we have to track him," Arthur began.
"We’ll get him there, if we get him at all. If he’s up in the creek canyon, it’s a regular box, and if you don’t start singin’ hymns to warn him, we’l1 have him in there like in a trap."
The mother moved her hand over onto her Bible, as if she hadn’t meant to rise at all, and said, "First you’re certain sure it’s a painter, though how you can tell by the way a cow bellers five miles off, what’s at it, passes me, and now you’re just as set it’s the creek canyon."
"It can’t be any place else," Curt said. "The bellerin’ come from the north; wind’s that way. And it was from a good ways off. It’s all open this side of the creek, no windbreak for ’em to head for, and if it was the other side, we couldn’t hear it. North side of the canyon’s too high. There’s always some of ’em head up in there in a blow, and the echo off that north wall would carry good. It’s gotta be in there. They water up in there a lot," he added.
“Well," the mother said, "if it’s in there, there’ll be tracks too. I’ll just fix you up a snack to take along."
She started to rise again, but then Grace laughed, and the door of the north bedroom opened, letting her laughter into the kitchen clearly, and a small, dark woman in a yellow, satiny blouse and a black skirt came in with the laughter behind her. The mother sat back, looking at her. They were all looking at her, as if she were making an entrance onto a stage, and she stopped a few feet inside the door, still smiling about the joke, and looked at the waiting group. Her smile changed a little, and she said, "Good morning."
Grace came out right behind her, still laughing, though softly now, as if the joke mustn’t be brought in where the others were. Then, when she saw over Gwen’s shoulder her brothers with their coats on, and Harold by the door with a the lighted lantern, and Arthur with the carbine in his hands, she stopped laughing suddenly and her white face at once looked much older and thinner.
The mother and Arthur said good morning where they were, but the father rose hurriedly and made a little bow and gestured sweepingly at the empty chair opposite Curt. "Good morning, my dear, good morning," he said loudly. "Sit here, won’t you? There’ll be some breakfast for you in no time at all. And a cup of coffee. It’s a pity we’ve got you up at such an hour. Hardly the way to treat one’s guest, and the very first morning, at that. But since its done,
the coffee will help."
"Thank you," Gwen said, just glancing at him, and then away, and came slowly toward the chair.
He moved around to draw the chair for her. The mother watched him attentively for an instant, but then looked away as Gwen had, and stood up and went to the stove.
Curt sat where he was and watched Gwen come into the circle of the lamplight. He was half grinning all the while, and he looked first at her high, full breasts pressing up the yellow cloth of the blouse, and then at the brown, round throat where the blouse opened, and at last at her brown face with the eyes set wide apart and the low, wide forehead with the crown of heavy braid above it. Then he slowly stood up too, still watching her.
"Well, well," he said. "The sleeping beauty. You must have pretty near too good a conscience, to sleep through all that’s been goin’ on in here." He spoke more slowly and deeply than he’d been speaking before, making his words with a drawl almost as long as the mother’s.
Gwen came behind the chair and stood there, because everybody else was standing, and the father had to wait beside her. Gwen s
miled at Curt, but no more than she had been, not really meeting his look or accepting his opening.
"I sure hate to break up the party just when it’s gettin' good," Curt said. "But we got a little call to make, Arthur and me."
"A call?" Gwen asked politely.
"Well, it’s more like we gotta receive a call. Only it’s a kind of bashful guest, and we gotta go out and make sure he don’t run off on us. It’s an old friend of Arthur’s, a black one." He chuckled.
Gwen looked at him and waited, not understanding, and too shy, with everyone watching her, to guess.
"It’s only a foolish joke of his, my dear," the father said. "And a worn-out one, at that."
"You haven’t heard about it yet?" Curt asked her.
Gwen shook her head. "I heard the cattle," she said.
"Well, we’re in a kind of a hurry," Curt said, "so I guess we’ll just have to leave Hal to explain it the best he can.”
He picked up his coffee cup, and emptied it, and set the cup down again, and said, "Which is kind of too bad, in a way, because only Arthur here can really explain it. He talks to the thing."
"Come on, Curt," Arthur said.
Curt grinned but didn’t look at him. He jerked his head back a little at Arthur and spoke to Gwen, still in that slow, fixing drawl that wouldn’t let her break away from his look. "He’s bashful with strange women, but just the same, he’s the only one can really give you the fine points of this business. You’ll have to work on him a little when he gets back."
Grace came up to the table beside Gwen. "You’re going out there now?" she asked. "In this snow?"
"Take it easy," Curt said, turning the grin at her.
"You’re not going, Arthur?" Grace asked.
"Here we go again," Curt said, shaking his head, and making the sad face of a man pleading for reason without much hope of getting it. "What could I do with a black painter all by myself?" he asked. "An ordinary yellow one, maybe, but . . ."
"Oh, stop it," Grace said sharply. "You make me sick." She went around the table quickly, and past him, not even looking at him. She stopped in front of Arthur, and stood staring up into his face.
"You don’t have to go," she told him, speaking quickly, her voice rising a little. "There’s no sense in it. It’s dark out there, and it’s snowing. What on earth could you do? If he’s so set on going, let him go alone. Does it take two men to shoot a shadow?"
The mother was cracking more eggs over the edge of the pan and spreading the shells to let the insides drop into the hissing grease.
"You’re gettin’ yourself all worked up, Grace," she said, without looking around. "Set down, now, you and Gwen, and I’ll have some breakfast for you in a minute."
Grace clutched a fold of the cowhide parka in each hand and stared up at Arthur.
"You don’t have to go," she said. "You don’t. Why do you let him make you? Why do you always let him make you? That’s all he does it for. Don’t you know that?"
"It’s all right," Arthur said, smiling down at her, turning awkward before the others watching. "The storm’s letting up now."
Grace felt the others watching her too, then, the stiff silence in the room around her excitement. She let go of the coat and turned away abruptly.
"It’s not that," she said. "lt’s foolish, that’s all. It’s so foolish—Let him do his own foolish showing off."
Curt, half turned to watch her, said, "I’ll bring your darling Arthur back safe and sound, Gracie."
Grace had started to pass him, coming back to the table, but now she turned swiftly to face him, her eyes very bright and her hands clenched into fists at her sides.
"If it was only you, I’d wish it was a black panther. You and your cheap sneering, and your self-importance, and your always judging others by yourself."
"Grace," the mother said sharply.
"He does," Grace cried. "He always does. A cheap dirty-mouthed bully, always . . ."
"Grace, did you hear me" the mother said more loudly, and moved toward her from the stove. But Grace’s voice broke, and not even seeing the mother, she turned and half ran toward the open bedroom door, crying out through her tears. "Oh, you fool, you fool," though not saying who she meant, and ran into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her.
Gwen looked at the mother and turned as if to go in after Grace.
"No, let her be," the mother said. She went back to the stove and picked up a peeled potato and began to cut it into the pan with the eggs, saying, "She’ll be all right. Just give her time."
Gwen stopped, and stood undecided, halfway between the table and the closed door.
The father cleared his throat. "Grace is a high-strung girl. All this excitement at this hour has upset her."
Curt laughed, but before he could say what he meant to, the mother said, "Now you get along, you that’s in such a lather to be out there."
"We’ll be back before too long," Curt said to Gwen, saying more with his grinning stare. "Then Art here can explain it all to you. He’s good at talk, Art is. He gets it out of all them books he’s always readin’."
Harold spoke from the door. "Joe Sam will freeze out there, waiting for you to finish your joking."
Curt turned a little and looked at him, and he wasn’t grinning now. "Any time you catch me rushin’ myself for that old bastard," he said. "Let him freeze. Spookin’ the horses with his crazy antics."
“They were spooky enough already," Harold said. "And how long had he been out there in the middle of ’em? Half the night, for all we know. If . . .”
He stopped because' Arthur brushed against him going past to the door. Harold stood aside to let him by, but didn’t look away from Curt.
"He’s only got that shirt on," he said.
Arthur opened the door and went out, carrying the Winchester.
“Hey,” Curt called, and strode after him. "Better let me have that, padré, before you hurt yourself."
After that they could hear, through the open door, his pleased voice saying loudly, "Just the same, you old heathen, I bet you a pint of the old man’s best it’s yellow."
"I’ll be back in a minute," Harold told Gwen, and went out with the lantern and closed the door. The lamp steadied again, and gradually the warmth of the stove came back where the cold had drawn in along the floor. Outside they could hear Curt’s voice still baiting the old Indian.
"Sit down, my dear, Sit down," the father said once more, and, when Gwen moved aside, drew out the chair for her. Gwen sat down, smiling up quickly at him, but then looking away quickly too, keeping herself secret against the admiration in his voice and eyes.
Outside there was a muffled, turning trample of hoofs in the snow. Harold’s voice called, "Well, get him, whatever color he is," and Curt’s voice made some short and laughing answer. The hoofbeats quickened suddenly into a multiple drumming, and then were lost at once, without fading, as the wind turned and roared down across the trees on the mountain. The door opened, letting in another serpent of snow along the floor. Harold entered, carrying the lantern, waited for Joe Sam to pass him, and closed the door.
4
The old Indian stood there, trying to hide his shivering, and squinting against the light in the white kitchen. Harold, standing behind him, took off his cap, so his fine, bright hair shone like gold in the light. The cold had brought high color under the tan of his face too, and the old man looked dark and wooden and slight as a young boy, standing in front of him. His body was so flat there seemed to be nothing under his blue work shirt, and the black canvas pants he wore were as flat behind as they were in front. Gwen thought, looking curiously at his face and hands, and two short, tight braids with strips of red-and-blue cloth woven into them that hung down before his shoulders, He’s like one of those dolls with only the head and hands and feet made to look real and all the rest just cloth to hold them together.
Joe Sam turned his head and looked at her then, as if he had heard her thinking, and after a moment she had to look down. Hi
s face didn’t change.
It really is like a face carved out of wood, she thought. It can’t change. It’s like Arthur had made it with his whittling Harold’s always talking about; deep wrinkles, like Mrs. Bridges, only all broken up with little ones too, like dried-out earth or old leather, on his forehead and cheeks and chin, and by the puckering at the corners of his eyes and around his mouth.
She wanted to look at the face for a long time, but she couldn’t because of the eyes. It wasn’t that he looked at her, but rather that he didn’t look at her, although his eyes were turned at her face, and that only his right eye seemed to be watching whatever it was he saw behind her. His right eye was surprisingly young and liquid and alive in the old, dry face, but the left eye was turned a very little out and up from it, so they didn’t appear to be looking together. The lid drooped over it more too, as if from an old injury that had made him unable to lift it.
Harold said, "It’s all right, Joe Sam. Go on in," and the mother turned from the stove with Gwen’s plate in her hand and saw the old Indian standing there. Even the father stopped watching Gwen and, turning his glass on the table between his thumb and fingers, looked around too.
"Go ahead, Joe Sam, go ahead," he said impatiently.
The mother brought Gwen’s plate to the table and set it down in front of her as if there were no one sitting there yet.
"Get over by the stove and warm yourself," she said.
"It’s a wonder you don’t take your death of cold, wandering around in your shirt sleeves."
Joe Sam didn’t answer, or even show in his face that he’d heard her. Appearing to start only by his own wish, he walked slowly, very upright and very softly in his buckskin moccasins, dark and shiny with use, over to the wood box in the shadow by the stove. He turned around in front of the wood box and crossed his ankles and let himself down slowly and without a sound and then sat there, as upright as he’d walked, his hands lying limp and palms up in his lap. His face almost disappeared in the shadow, only tiny points of reflected light showing where his eyes were.
The Track of the Cat Page 5