Out on the bottom, and nearly up to the aspens, Curt drew rein and turned back in the saddle, holding the nervous red to half-wheeling within a small circle. He didn’t wait for Arthur to come all the way, but when he was closer, pointed into the snow near the willows, and led on up along the track.
Coming past the spot he had pointed at, Arthur saw the snow churned and mud spattered over it, and bits of torn sod with the yellow grass still rooted in them. There were many clearcut prints of hoofs, like split hearts, most of them pointing down along the willows toward the little bunch that was on guard down there, or out toward the south wall and then down. A few, however, four, he thought, singling them out, led on up into the rock canyon, and among these, when he was past the torn-up patch where nothing was clear, he saw the other track, the one like an incomplete flower, its four petals only half enclosing the center. All the tracks were dusted over lightly with new snow.
A cat after all, and one that makes tracks too, he thought, smiling. And big, he thought, leaning down from the saddle to look at the prints. Not so big as a horse, though, after all .... Curt can use his noisy toy.
He straightened up and looked ahead along the trail of flower prints. They came close together in irregular clusters of four, with several feet of unmarked snow between the clusters.
Moving fast, he thought.
He peered across the snow toward the south wall, which was drawing in closer now, but saw no tracks.
And he’s up there still.
The little mustang lifted her head, and would have stopped if he hadn’t pressed her forward. She went on up, then, but half dancing and making a soft nickering protest.
"You think so too, girl, don’t you?" Arthur said, and patted her shoulder in front of the saddle.
A cat in a box, he thought, and only this way out. Keep your eyes open up there, Curt. A bold butcher, too, to jump a bunch like that, and run half of them. The god’s had about enough of us, he thought, and smiled in the darkness of the hood, but at the same time kept watch ahead, from side to side of the ravine, as much as the aspens would let him.
In the loose rock under the platform, Curt’s horse reared, trying to turn. He smells it fresh now, poor brute, Arthur thought, and felt his breath tighten, and something in him dance quickly, like the leaves of the aspens beside him.
Steadying the gray, holding her up-canyon, he watched Curt wrench the red back again and try to drive it up onto the loose rock with his heels. It half-spun and reared again, refusing, its hoofs stumbling and clattering in the rock. Arthur heard Curt cursing it, and saw him swing down and put his weight on the reins, nearly at the bit, to stop the plunging, and make a heavy, upward signal with the carbine for Arthur to hurry.
No cat by now, he thought, if there’s any way out of the trap. There’ll be tracking to do, and not on a horse either, or I miss my guess.
He urged the gray up, but then the red plunged again, dragging Curt, and trumpeted wildly, a shrill sound that flew back and forth between the rock walls of the ravine above, and Smudge reared and spun too, and Arthur let himself down into the snow and dragged her on up by the reins.
"The goddam horses," Curt said, when he wouldn’t have to shout. He drew the red down toward Arthur, and held the reins out to him. "Hold ’em," he said, "and by God, hold ’em. I don’t want to walk six miles in these goddam boots."
Arthur took both horses again, standing between them and checking their tossing with the drag of his weight only, and making a low, slow patter of talk for them. Curt started up into the tumbled rock, the carbine held ready in both hands. After two or three steps, he stopped and turned, though.
"Did you see those tracks?" he asked quietly, exulting. "It’s as big as a horse, at that: twice as big as the bastard got my dogs; but you won’t see through the cat that made those tracks." He turned and went on up warily, scanning the width of the canyon ahead of him, and working back and forth to find sure footing. Toward the top of the rocks, fifty or sixty yards above, he let himself down and crept up, a small, moving red patch on the jumble of dark rock faced with snow. The black walls of the canyon rose high above him on each side and at the back. Above the back wall, there was a patch of open snow in the timber, with the black line of the creek coming crookedly down it into the ice-bearded chimney. At the top of the shale Curt lay still, but only for a moment. Then he stood up and climbed over the edge and disappeared back onto the platform. After perhaps a minute, he returned to the edge and called down, his voice enormous and unclear in the hollow.
"Bring ’em up. Make the bastards come up."
Arthur, smiling, shook his head a very little within the hood, and moved up tugging the lines gently and steadily, and talking aloud to the horses. With Curt standing in sight, to show the place had been looked at, they let themselves be led now, though with the reins stretched tight and their necks reaching. A narrow trail made by the cattle went to the south corner of the platform, against the cliff, and Arthur coaxed them up there. They scrambled on the last steep pitch to the ledge, dragging him this way and that between them. Curt went back from the edge ahead of them. On the platform, however, before Arthur had seen more than Curt’s red coat down beside a darkness on the snow farther in, the red pony reared and plunged again. Smudge nickered tremulously and swung away on the other side, and they stretched Arthur between them. Curt stood up quickly, dropping the carbine against the fallen steer, and came running. He caught the red down with both hands, cursing him, and then held him close at the bit with his bare fist and struck him over the nose twice with his mittened hand. Then Arthur had to wrestle the mare down again too.
When both horses stood, though trembling, and Curt’s rolling his eyes so the whites showed, Curt cried, "Gone, goddam him. But his trail’s as clear as print on a page. And look what the bastard’s done, will you?"
"Did you see him?"
"N0. Bring her in," Curt ordered, dragging the red across the snow-covered rock shelf toward the steer. Arthur followed him, coaxing the gray. Half way to the steer, the red refused again, plunging, and then the gray lifted a little too, and spun.
"It’s the steer," Arthur said. "They don’t like the blood."
"The steer," Curt cried. "The steer; the son-of-a-bitch. Take a look," and jerked his head toward the dark bulge of the south wall. Across the platform the snow was trampled and marked by jets of blood, and another steer lay there, its head bent up queerly onto the fallen rock at the base of the cliff.
"And another hurt," Curt said, jerking his head again, and Arthur saw the third, a young bull, backed into a niche beyond, its front legs spread stiffly to brace it and its head still lowered, on guard against nothing. Its eyes were dull and staring, and blood dripped slowly from the cup of one nostril.
"Killing for fun, the bastard," Curt said. "And running them like he was a wolf. He’s a devil or crazy. And he picks ’em, too," he said bitterly. "Three of my best; two year olds and the cross, and one the bull I’d been counting on. And finished, by the look of him.
Arthur, seeing the dark coat with red glowing under it, like a banked fire of coals, of the steer on the platform, and the short up-curve of the horn, and then the curly, white foreheads of the two against the wall, nodded. He knew how Curt had figured ahead on the Hereford strain he was breeding into the lanky range cattle.
"He can’t have gone far," Curt said. "His stink’s in the air still, that’s a cinch. Here, take this idiot again, will you? He’ll stand now."
Arthur took the red’s lines again, but said, "You can’t track in those boots, Curt. And it’s going to snow again before long."
"Won’t have to track," Curt said. "Not far enough to matter. His trail’s fresh as a daisy. There’s no new snow in it at all. We must have just scared him off coming up here."
He went back to the fallen steer and picked up the carbine from against it, saying, "There’s blood in it too. One of them got to him; the bull, chances are. And he’s fed,” he said, pointing with the carbine at the s
houlder of the steer on the platform. The hide was ripped back, and a shallow hole gouged out with the white of bone and tendon glistening in it, and new blood still welling out.
"If he’s that bold, he’ll be too bold. His trail goes down the other side of the creek, and money says he’s holed up in the willows."
He turned across the platform toward the creek.
"It’s a big cat," Arthur said slowly, staring at the gouged steer. "He didn’t more than get started on that. He must have had a long scrap with the bull, or been licking his wounds before he fed. He’ll be plenty cranky, if he’s waited. And it’s no ordinary cat," he added, looking at the bull, and the steer fallen against the wall, "to break a bunch like that, and run three of them. They’re no calves."
Curt stopped and turned. He was grinning, but his eyes were narrowed. "I could half believe your black devil myself, medicine man," he said. "Only it makes track, and it bleeds. So I’ll took a look, I think."
Arthur shook his head slowly. "But for all that, I don’t think he’d wait that close. If he’s gone down-creek, it’ll only be till he can get up and over the side of the canyon. Then he’ll head for high places. We made too much racket. You’d better let him go, Curt. Or wait for him here. He might circle back. You can’t go a mile in those boots."
"Is he a friend of yours, mister?" Curt asked. "Sorry, then, but I’m still gonna look."
"Well, drag a deep track, in case it starts to snow again, or the wind comes up. I’ll go back and fetch the stuff you need, and pick you up."
"You’d like that, wouldn’t you?" Curt asked, still grinning. " ‘I told you so,’ " he said in a high, whining voice. "To say nothing of Hal’s girl to play the loving priest with," he saidin his own voice, and chuckled. "No, you wait here. I want to see, anyway. Then, if there’s any going home to do, I’ll do it myself. So I’ll get what I need, and get it some time this week. And don’t get dreaming about her there," he added, and chuckled again. "I still don’t want to walk home."
Arthur stared at him soberly out of the shadow of the hood. Finally, when Curt’s grin was gone, he said, "I’ll watch them, don’t worry. Get along, if you have to."
For a moment Curt stared back at him, with the little flicker beginning in his eyes, but then he made the one-sided grin.
"Just see you do," he said, and turned and went to the edge above the creek, and let himself down. He crossed the creek carefully, rock to rock, breaking the ice armor with his heel before each step, and went down on the other side out of sight behind the aspens.
Arthur turned the horses and led them to the edge of the platform so he could watch below, and stood there, talking to them softly, and sometimes looking among the aspens or along the north wall farther down, and sometimes out through the huge V of the canyon onto the white meadows. There was no snow falling in the canyon now, but the mist still hung over the valley, hiding the hills on the other side, so the part of the meadow he could see was like the beginning of a plain. The long, thin trace of the creek went onto it, bending south, and at last in the edge of the snow mist, spread into the dark, map-shapes of the tule marshes. Tiny black cattle were drifting slowly southward in small clusters on the plain. Slow clouds of white, like steam, blew across them sometimes, dimming them out, and then fell away and let them show dark again. There was still some wind out there then, though it was quiet in the canyon.
The horses waited easily now, making only little motions of impatience, but he kept himself ready to wrestle them down. The report of the carbine would be loud between those high walls.
The minutes passed, and no report came, though. There was only the soft blowing and shaking of the horses, and, when they were quiet, the faint, continuous talk of the creek under the ice and the even softer whispering of the aspens. Finally he heard the sound of Curt’s boots. It grew louder, and then Curt’s head and shoulders came up from below.
He saw Arthur standing at the edge, watching him, and called from the other side of the creek, "Well, you were right for once, whiskers; the son-of-a-bitch is gone."
He clambered up onto the platform, breathing hard, his eyes challenging against what Arthur didn’t say. "You can see where he got out, without going all the way down to it. He just cleared the rim-rock and went up the north side."
Arthur nodded. "He’ll be back, sooner or later," he said. "We could take the horses over on the side toward the ranch, where he wouldn’t get wind of them, and come back up and wait for him."
"You could sit till the end of time, couldn’t you?" Curt said. "He won’t come back before dark now, if he ever does, and it’l1 snow again before then. Not for me, thanks. It’s early yet. It can’t be much more than six o’clock. I’m gonna track him."
Arthur opened his mouth to speak, and Curt said quickly, with the hard grin, "And you’ll hold the trail till I get back with my stuff."
That yellow blouse is strong magic, to take you off the trail yourself, Arthur thought, studying Curt from the shadow of the hood, and said, "Either way."
"No," Curt said sharply, "not either way; that way," and fished the loose cartridges out of his pocket and gave them to Arthur. He took the red’s bridle, and handed Arthur the carbine, saying, "It’s loaded now," and hoisted himself into the saddle. Staring down at Arthur, he said, "And don’t get to mooning, for God’s sake. He won’t run far, I tell you, and you’d better see him first."
Arthur smiled up at him, the smile widening slowly until his teeth showed white in the dark beard, and nodded, but didn’t say anything. Curt swung the red and put him to the lower edge of the platform, heeled him over, and, below the rock fall, lashed him into a scurrying run. For some time after he was out of sight the running still went on in the cliffs, and then it blurred and faded there too, and the aspens and the creek were the voice of the canyon again, and overhead, for a moment, a soft, hollow beating of wind.
6
For a minute Arthur continued to stand there gazing down the canyon at the place where Curt and the red had disappeared. Then he slowly turned the little mare so she could watch what he was doing, and dropped the reins into the snow, saying, "You wait here, Smudge. It’s all right now. There’s nothing can hurt you. It’s all right," and crossed to the torn steer and bent over it, leaning on the carbine.
The steer lay on its side, with its neck too far extended, and twisted over so the lower jaw was half in the snow. A little blood, clotted by the cold, lay in the black cup of the upper nostril and the eye he could see stared up, open and already dry. A few flakes of snow lay unmelted on the long, winter pelt. Arthur looked at the great wound on the shoulder, and then at the neck. There were deep tooth marks over the ridge of the neck, and long parallel talon rips up the side of it. Yes, a very big cat, by the spacing, and a heavy one, to make a killing attack from the ground against a full-grown steer.
He drew off his left mitten and laid his bare hand on the bulge of the steer’s belly. He smiled a little then, remembering the dream of himself on the edge of the cliff, and mocked softly, "So this is where I left it." Under the hair, the steer was not hard or even quite cold yet. A dew of melted flakes among the roots of the hair wet his hand.
He stood up again slowly, and slowly worked his mitten down into the pocket of his parka, on top of the unfinished carvings. His fingers touched the whittled edges, and he was faintly pleased by the feel of the wood and the thought of the whittling that remained to be done, and then troubled that he hadn’t finished the cat for Joe Sam.
Finally he turned and walked across to the fallen steer under the south cliff, and stood looking down at it. Its neck was broken, too. The painful angle of the head, turning both horns down into the rock, showed that. The neck wasn’t marked though. There were no marks of claws or teeth anywhere on the steer.
Broke its own neck, he thought, running blind, and in the dark, most likely.
He looked up and across the big body at the bull, standing spread-legged in his shallow refuge. The bull hadn’t moved, unless the wide he
ad had drooped a little nearer to the snow. It didn’t see him. Its stupid, round, innocent eyes were half-lidded and dull. All its slackening consciousness was centered on staying on its feet and keeping its horns turned out against the danger that wasn’t there any longer. Walking carefully, his boot-heels making him slip and stumble among the tumbled rocks masked with snow, Arthur went around the steer and approached the bull. The bull swung its head a little more toward him, very slowly and without lifting it at all, but otherwise didn’t move. When he was close enough to have touched it with the carbine, Arthur stopped and stood looking at it. He felt the creature’s weakness and dull fear as in himself, and for a moment he couldn’t see it, his eyes glazing over, turning their vision inward, as his mind shied from what he had to do. Then he saw again.
"Well, friend?" he asked, hardly knowing he spoke.
At the sound of his voice the bull shifted a little in the rock, nearly falling. Then it braced itself again, and the dripping of blood from its nostrils freshened for a moment into a thin stream. The blood was thick and dark, almost purple on the snow. The snow around it was flecked with a brighter blood also. Outside the shelter of the niche, where the snow was trampled in a wide semi-circle, the scarlet streaks were dimmed by new snow. The bull’s thick shoulder was torn as if by three heavy-bladed knives that had ripped together, and in one place four. Its throat was deeply torn too, and the blood was still welling out there, running in a thin, faintly shining trickle down over the bulging red shoulder and spreading like arteries on the white brisket. There were even long, open wounds, dug in deeply at the ends, like dagger thrusts, down the slowly heaving barrel. The polished white of ribs showed in two of them.
The Track of the Cat Page 8