The Track of the Cat

by Walter van Tilburg Clark

  He grinned and stared into Gwen’s eyes with the hawk look that made her defend what he ridiculed. It didn’t work any better now than it had from the start. Gwen just sat there across from him, with her chin in her hands, smiled a little, and looked at him out of her dark eyes, with their slight, Oriental tilt, and said, "That would be fine," without showing anything she really thought.

  Because she repulsed him so easily, and because there wasn’t much time left, he was suddenly angry. He stopped kneading the greasy pac, and stared at her, and the little fluttering of rage was in his eyes, so she had to look away from them, but by now he knew this didn’t mean a gain. When the fury in his mind thinned enough to let him think words, he looked down at the pac and rubbed the grease twice more into the creases of the instep and tossed the bit that was left over into the wood-box.

  Goddam, superior bitch, he thought. He began to work the pac fiercely between his hands to seem busy and in control of himself. A black mucker’s daughter, for Christ’s sake, he thought, playing the superior bitch with me. A whore, ten to one. They all are, at heart. And play-acting a dumb virgin. Saving herself for her puppy love. By God, just let a man get hold of her once, and...

  Grace came out of the storeroom under the landing, closed the door, came across to the table and put on it an oilskin packet that bulged with what it held.

  "There’s your lunch," she said. "I put in just what you asked for, but I still think you ought to take more."

  "Thanks, that’ll be plenty," he said, not looking up.

  He pulled on the pacs and began lacing them over the blue woolen pants he’d put on instead of his jeans and chaps. Or if this Grace would quit poking her long nose in, he thought. If I could just get the little bitch alone for an hour once. What the hell can you do in here, with Grace always poking her nose in, and the old man falling asleep over his liquor already, and the old lady there . . .

  Grace said, from the front window, where she stood looking out into the yard, "Hal’s bringing Kentuck out now."

  Such a hell of a hurry to get me out of here, Curt thought, like I was going to ruin her right here in front of ’em, or something. Does she think Mother’s ever going to let her baby marry the little tart? What does she think the old lady’s been sitting there all this time for then, and not even paying any attention to things I been saying she’d jump down my throat for most times? And did, before they come out, for that matter.

  He jerked the laces of the second pac tight and wound them twice around the ankle and knotted them.

  "He’s been long enough at it. Let him wait," he said. He stood up and began working his feet forward into the toes of the pacs, to loosen them.

  After a moment he looked down at Gwen again, grinned and said, "If it turns out to be just an ordinary-sized, yellow cat, though, one I could skin with this," and he picked up a bone-handled hunting knife in its sheath from the table and danced it on his hand to make her Watch it, "it won’t hardly do for a blanket. It would be all my present, too. Arthur, he won’t have anything to do with ordinary yellow cats. You know what I think then?" he asked, slipping the knife into the left pocket of the red coat, and then the oil-skin packet, and the little metal container full of matches that had stood on the table beside the knife.

  "No. What?" Gwen asked, but not as if she cared whether he told her or not.

  "We’1l make you a costume out of it. You know," and he outlined the shape of the costume on himself with his hands.

  "One of those Hercules kind of rigs, like the Greeks wore, only for a lady, of course, higher in front, and maybe with black lace on it. And then you can give us a special wedding dance."

  This time, when Gwen looked down, it wasn’t because his eyes were unsteady. The red flush rising on her throat showed even under her brown skin. Curt’s grin widened and became easier.

  "l’m not much of a dancer," Gwen said.

  Curt laughed. "I’ll teach you," he said. "I’ll give you as many lessons as you want, free of charge, and do the catching while you practice, too. You know, one of those dances where you come running across the stage and jump and land right in my arms on one knee.”

  He held his arms out in a circle, to show how he would catch her, and then drew them slowly toward his body, at the same time making a mocking show of breathless tenderness.

  "You’d learn in no time," he said, straightening up and grinning at her again.

  "Hal’s got him all saddled," Grace said sharply. "He’s bringing him over."

  Curt was feeling better. "You don’t say. The times that kid can be fast and the times he can’t is a puzzle. Arthur, now," he said, crossing to the gun rack and taking another handful of cartridges for the carbine, "you can depend on him. He just don’t ever move."

  He dropped the cartridges into the right pocket of his coat and picked up the bear-paw snow-shoes he had strapped together and set against the wall, and the coiled lariat that lay against them. He started toward the outside door, but stopped opposite the table and looked at Gwen again.

  "Darned if I don’t hope it’s just an ordinary yellow one, at that. Not much of a prize, maybe, nothing like a black one the size of a horse’s, but it would really go good with your complexion."

  But Gwen stood up and pushed in her chair and looked back at him easily now. "Thank you," she said. "It’s not much in my style. I’d a lot rather have the black one."

  Curt laughed. "Don’t tell me you’re going to be like all the rest of them around here," he said, "a—scared to try anything new. Now I’d of thought, to look at you, you’d have more spirit than that."

  He laughed again, and went to the door and opened it, not waiting to give her time to answer him.

  The mother marked her place with her finger and looked up for the first time.

  "Don’t you go playing the fool, Curtis," she said. "If it starts snowing again, you get yourself back here as fast as you can."

  Curt stepped outside, grinning now to see the trouble Harold was having bringing Kentuck across. The black stallion hadn’t been used for nearly a week, and he was dancing and sidling and tossing all the way. Joe Sam was coming across too, by himself, and safely behind Harold and the stallion. Curt looked up at the pale shroud of snow mist on the mountain. It was lifting some, he was sure. The newly frosted pines showed farther up than they had when he came in. He believed it was thinning out overhead, too. There was even a little color of sunlight spreading in it.

  "It’l1 hold off some time yet," he said, loudly enough for the mother to hear him inside. He thought that really the storm was breaking up, and even the snow on the ground would be gone in a few hours. The sun was still warm this time of year, if it got a chance. He wouldn’t say anything as definite as that, though, not with weather to deal with. It was too much like making a dare.

  The father had lifted his head and blinked suddenly, at the sound of the mother’s voice. Now he rose and moved with heavy, dignified care to the door, and stepped down carefully into the snow beside Curt. He stood there, with his left arm behind him, his right hand fingering the lodge emblem on his watch chain, and squinted up at the snow mist too.

  "I should judge it might even clear up," he said, as if that were the result of a long, careful consideration.

  Curt was angry that the old man had made the foolish dare after all, but there wasn’t anything he could say about it. The old bastard, he thought fiercely, always blabbing about something is none of his business. Sure, all he’s got to do is sit on his big behind in the kitchen and guzzle. What does he care if it snows? He probably even wants it to. Then he can have everybody in there and play cards all afternoon and make eyes at the little Welshy like he could still do something about it.

  He moved forward a step, as if, being right there beside him, the old man could guess this thoughts, but then waited and made Harold come the rest of the way.

  When he stopped, still being jerked about by the big stallion’s tossing, Curt asked sharply, "Did you soap his hoofs?"

>   Harold stared back at him for a moment, but finally only said, "They’re soaped," but wouldn’t look away from him.

  The mother called from inside, "Close that door, Curt, will you? Do we have to lose all our heat, just because you got a notion to chase your own shadow?"

  Grinning inside, Curt thought, The kid’s mad enough to chew nails.

  "Little frisky, was he?" he asked, and turned back, but then saw Grace and Gwen coming out, and stopped, and grinned at them openly, thinking, No wonder the kid’s mad, with her watching him. Well, it’s not the only stallion you got to look out for, kid.

  Gwen closed the door, and she and Grace stood there together in front of it, a little apart from the old man, and watching the stallion dancing. Curt turned and came alongside the animal, but still left Harold holding it while he tied the lariat on at the bow of the saddle, and then hung the bear-paws over it by their carry-strap around the horn. Across the saddle he saw Joe Sam standing there alone, safely beyond Harold, his face turned to the stallion, but that intent look of not seeing in his good eye, and he grinned and looked at Harold.

  "You tell our old medicine man there what I found?"

  "Yes," Harold said. "He asked me."

  Curt took the reins from Harold, and with the same hand took hold of the saddle horn. "And what did he say?" he asked.

  This time Harold grinned back at him a little too. "All he wanted to know was why Arthur didn’t come back with you."

  Curt’s grin became hard to keep.

  "Poor old Arthur," he said. "Doesn’t anybody think he can take care of himself? Even the half-wit worrying."

  He swung up into the saddle, carefully making it an easy-looking mount, slowly and all in one move, his back very straight and his right leg, bent at the knee, just sliding over the cantle.

  "What you think now, Joe Sam?" he called, reining the stallion to dance sideways. "Still a black painter?"

  The old Indian appeared to be looking up at him, but didn’t answer, only stood there very straight, with his arms down straight at his sides.

  Curt stopped grinning and prodded Kentuck with his heels and danced him on a tight rein, sidling a little, toward Joe Sam.

  "You hear me?" he asked.

  Joe Sam looked up at his face, seeing him for the first time.

  "What say?" he asked quickly.

  Curt kept pressing Kentuck forward slowly until the old man was compelled to take three or four steps backward and to the side, away from the lifting forehoofs, and to raise one arm as far as his waist in spite of his wish not to.

  Then Curt checked the stallion, pulling him across the old man and letting him rear a little before him, but not wheel or move away. Looking down, making the small, tight smile, he said easily, almost indifferently, “That’s better. Speak up quick when you’re spoke to. Now, what do you say?"

  Harold started toward them, calling, "Let him be now, will you, Curt? He don’t know what you're talking about."

  "What, another squaw-man?" Curt said. "He will," he promised. "Now what do you say, Joe Sam?"

  "What say?" the old man asked, trying to smile.

  "I asked you do you still think your painter’s black? Do you still think it’s no good to hunt it, after what we found out there?"

  "No good hunt," Joe Sam said seriously, and shook his head slowly and just once.

  Curt laughed, and Harold stopped a few feet from him, watching, not any surer now than Joe Sam was where the bullying would stop, and not wanting to make trouble about it if Curt was done.

  "Why not, Joe Sam?" Curt asked, chuckling like a man humoring a not very bright child.

  "Snow," the old man said. "Much snow." His good eye remained watchful.

  Curt laughed again. "You hear that, young one?" he called over his shoulder to Harold. "It’s just plain, ordinary snow now. There’s sense in the old fool yet. You just have to know how to get it out of him, that’s all."

  He swung Kentuck and took him back, dancing again, in front of the father and Grace and Gwen. Going by slowly that way, straight in the saddle, with one arm loose at his side, he grinned down at Gwen, and said, "I’ll hold you to it," as if she’d made the promise to match his. "And I’ll shoot him through the eye, too, so there won’t even be a hole to spoil it."

  He let Kentuck out and heeled him up to a jumping start, but quickly eased him off to a lope and rode north into the plowed tracks the red and Arthur’s mustang had made before daylight. He didn’t look back. The five stood there silently, watching him grow smaller on the snow, Harold and Joe Sam together out on the trampled yard, and the old man and Grace and Gwen in a row in front of the door.

  8

  They were almost out to the whaleback again, when Kentuck stumbled twice and dropped out of his run. Curt, angry in his mind because he couldn’t get rid of the feeling that he’d been foolish in his little sport in the yard, yanked him up and drummed savagely with his heels. Kentuck leaped forward, but at once stumbled again, nearly falling. Curt swore and pulled him in, and let himself down into the snow, growling. "What the hell now?"

  He found the stallion’s right forefoot balled with snow and sand.

  "The lazy son-of-a-bitch," he muttered. "Too damn busy working on his little tart to even soap a hoof."

  He lifted the clogged hoof onto his knees and pulled off a mitten and tugged at the ball, but could only scrape shallow, white grooves into the surface of it. He let the hoof down and straightened up and looked around, but couldn’t find anything handy to pry with. After a moment he thought of the skinning knife, and drew it out of his pocket and then out of its sheath. The rough bone haft felt good in his hand.

  He set his jaw and narrowed his eyes, made two grunting stabs in the air with it, and then stood there, holding the knife easily, a smile of contempt on his mouth, and said, "Try to shove me around, will you?"

  Then, as if a quieter self stood watching him, he thought how he would look if anyone saw him, standing there in the snow, with only a horse and the sagebrush to watch him taking revenge on the air.

  He laughed a little and let the knife down, and said aloud, "You’ll be crazy yourself, if you keep that up. Save it for the black painter. It won’t get you anywhere with the kind that makes tracks."

  He was eased by the stabbing, though, and having made it all right by the short joke after it, was quieted. He slipped the sheath into his pocket, and lifted the clogged hoof onto his lap again and began to dig and pry carefully with the point of the knife, trying to spring the pack out in one lump. The ball was only beginning to stir, though, when Kentuck nickered over him and swung away, making him drop his hold and stagger aside to keep from falling. The stallion nickered again, and then blew shrilly. The sound was shocking as a trumpet blast in the silence, and after an instant came back in a high, whining echo from the mountain. Curt straightened and leaped and caught the reins. Half circling him, with raised head, Kentuck trumpeted again, and again the mountain answered, but also there was a second, fainter reply, as if the valley echoed too. Clinging high under the bit, Curt looked down where Kentuck was looking, and saw the horse far out on the white meadow and standing to watch them. For a moment he only wondered to see a horse out there, but then, as it began to turn, half minded

  to start up toward them, he saw the swing of the tiny, empty stirrup, and knew the horse too.

  "By God, the little broomtail," he said aloud.

  A score of quick tales of doom went unfinished across his mind. There were familiar phantoms in some of them that sprang up out of recesses where he’d buried them, as Indians were sometimes buried, with stones piled on the graves, partly to keep the coyotes out, but partly to hold the dead down too. He turned on the ghosts.

  "For Christ’s sake," he said aloud, "the damn fool’s gone to sleep again. Whittling again while his horse runs home."

  He thought of riding down and catching the mare and looking her over to see if there were marks on her that would tell him anything. But the spoken contempt had not
wholly cured his fear. The ghosts kept stirring, though small and one at a time now. He felt hurried. The mare could wait. He’d find the tracks, and follow them out and they’d tell him what he had to know. He lifted Kentuck’s hoof again, dragging his head down by the bridle and twisting the lines around the raised leg, and slashed off the ball of snow flush with the hoof and began to dig with the point of the knife again. Kentuck blew for the mare twice more while he worked, but he only cursed him softly and put his weight more heavily against the leg. At the fifth careful try, the pack in the frog stirred in one piece. He pried deeper and slowly and it sprang out, making a little thud on the ground snow. Dropping the knife into his pocket as it was,he freed the reins, spun Kentuck half way round, and mounted. When Kentuck turned, even against his pull, rearing a little, and crying once more at the mare, he put him down hard, cursing, reined him hard around to the north, and drummed and lashed him up into a run. Looking back as they swung onto the reach, he saw the mare trip on her dragging reins and stand, looking after them. Turning again, as they topped the crest, he saw her moving away toward the ranch, very small at that distance, and carrying her head to the side to drag the reins free.

  He turned back and looked down into the creek canyon as Kentuck started the descent. At first he saw only the thin column of willows filing down onto the meadows, but then, distinct from that height, once he saw what it was, the big arrow Arthur had made to point at the crossing.

  "Not asleep up to here, anyway," he said aloud, and for a moment the fears were many and quick in him again. He pulled Kentuck off the sloping track they had made at daybreak, and put him straight down at the arrow, so that often his haunches buckled under him and he slid. Thinking the cat might be in the canyon again, Curt raged that he hadn’t brought a second rifle. When he imagined accidentally flushing the lion in the willows with nothing but the knife for a weapon, it seemed no better than being empty-handed. He followed the muddled arrow across the strip of meadow, and put the black slowly down and through the creek, splashing and rattling. Coming up out of the water, he searched the north wing of the canyon and found where the mare had gone out on the long slant, and pressed Kentuck straight up the slope and turned him into her track. At the crest, he drew rein and looked along the trail on the north side as far as he could see it, and then quickly over the wide hollow, among the pines. He saw nothing moving anywhere, and started Kentuck down. The trail was distinct, even far up and across among the shadows of the trees, because Arthur’s mare had tossed red needles and black mould up onto the snow. The phantoms quickened again when the cat’s track came in, making a V with the hoof marks and then running with them.