"So it was the painter."
"It looks like it was. You go along now."
"It’s still pretty cold in here, Mother. You better let me get you your shawl."
“I ain’t none too warm at that," the mother admitted. "Maybe you could bring me my coat; I ain’t just sure where that shawl’s got to. And fetch me my Bible too, while you’re about it, would you?"
"You couldn’t eat a little something?”
"I can’t even stand to think about it. I could do with more coffee, though."
Gwen wasn’t in the kitchen now. He filled the mug himself, and left it standing on the water tank of the stove while he went over to get the coat. The father heard his boots on the floor, and pushed himself slowly upright and looked at him, squinting to see beyond the light.
"Is she going to stay in there all night?" he asked.
Harold found the old black dress coat of the father’s that she wore in cold weather. It was faded nearly green now, and the velvet collar was worn down to nothing at the edges. He took it down and folded it across his arm.
"I guess she is," he said.
"There’s no sense in her wearing herself out like that. You could sit for her yourself, if you’d think of somebody else for one minute."
Harold went across and got the Bible from the big chair and took it in his arm with the coat. Then he could speak evenly. "I tried to take over, Dad, but she wouldn’t let me."
"So she’s going to leave me to sleep by myself," the father said angrily. "She thinks more of the dead than she does of the living, that woman; her and her getting into heaven."
Harold went back to the stove and picked up the mug of coffee.
"Well, I won’t," the father declared loudly. "I’ll stay right here and get drunk, that’s what I’ll do, good and goddam drunk. Won’t freeze to death, then, anyway," he muttered.
Harold went back into the bedroom and set the mug of coffee on the table and laid the Bible beside it.
"Here’s your coat, Mother."
"Oh, yes," she said, coming back from wherever she’d been in her mind. She stood up and held her arms back so he could put the coat on her. "It was all that fool reading that done it," she said.
"Did what?"
"Give him such outlandish notions."
"I guess so,” Harold said, pulling the coat up. And he learned more about God from the most heathen Greek of the bunch of them, he thought, letting the anger go that he’d held onto in the kitchen, than you. . . but then, seeing her standing there, thin and tired in the big, worn-out coat, couldn’t finish it that way. Than all your hell-fire, camp-meeting preachers could find in a million Bibles, he thought instead.
Through the white light in the bedroom and the yellow light in the kitchen, he saw the bunk-room door open, and Gwen come out and close it softly behind her. The mother saw too.
"How’s Grace now?" she asked.
"She’s asleep, Mother. Don’t you worry about her. Gwen’s keeping an eye on her."
"Curt ain’t come in yet?"
"He couldn’t try to, in this snow, Mother. He’s holed up somewhere till daylight."
"He must of got a long ways out," the mother said. She folded the slack of the big coat around her, and let herself down into the rocker again.
"Anything else you want, Mother?"
"Nothing else now, thanks."
When he came out, Gwen was putting meat and potato on a plate for Joe Sam.
"How is she doing now?" she asked in a low voice.
"Pretty good, I guess," he said. "She got to talking about him some; quite a lot for her."
"Well, that’ll do her good."
"It ought to, I guess. Only she can’t seem to let it be. She keeps remembering things..." But then he stopped, and stood there thinking. "Well," he said finally, "I better take Joe Sam his supper, I guess."
He put on his coat and cap and lit the lantern, and came back for the plate.
"Maybe I’d better go with you," Gwen said. "There’s the coffee too, and you’ll need a free hand."
Harold glanced at the father. The old man’s elbows were spread wide on the table, and he was holding the whisky glass between his two hands, with his face down close to it. Harold looked back at Gwen and smiled and touched her face with the tips of his fingers.
"Since when did you start making excuses to go some place with me?"
Gwen moved closer to him and looked up into his face, smiling a little. "I never did," she whispered. "And don’t you get to thinking I ever wi1l," she added, with mock severity. But then her mouth trembled, and the tears started up in her eyes. She turned away quickly, saying, "Grace is still asleep, but I don’t dare leave her alone too long."
She went quickly over to the pegs and took down her cloak and swung it over her shoulders. She was drawing the hood up as she came back. It was a dark woolen cloak with a red silk lining. When the hood was up, her forehead and eyes were in shadow, and all Harold could see clearly was her mouth, still smiling for him.
Curt’d call her a priestess now, he thought. Or medicine woman. And she is, too, he thought. She wants what Arthur wanted. She couldn’t say it in words, the way he could, maybe, but it’s the same thing. She doesn’t like the God that’s in there with Mother now any more than he did. It’s a God for the dead. Dad was right about that much, anyway. And hers is for life, he thought, looking down at the blue hood. It’s the God of Life against the God of Death, that’s what it is, he thought, and for a moment felt that he was almost into the big secret, the secret that was quiet in the middle of everything, and that if it only wouldn’t go too fast, he’d really see what Arthur had meant. He was tremendously hopeful. Everything seemed to be getting more beautiful and more important around him, and for the first time since Kentuck had come in, the despair was letting go of him.
But his mind said, with its old, stubborn resentment, That God in there wants us all dead. He’s a mean old clerk of a God; He’d rather have us dead, so there’d be nothing more coming in, so He could add it all up and put his book away for keeps. That’s what she’s doing in there now, going over Arthur’s bills with Him, counting the pennies.
The big feeling was gone then, and the despair came back even tighter than before. The wonder that had been in everything for a moment, wasn’t in anything now, but just hanging in the air and getting fainter all the time, and he couldn’t stop it. It was like waking from a dream in which he’d worked his way out of a bad trouble, and finding the trouble was still there, and bad as ever.
Gwen was standing close beside him, pouring coffee for Joe Sam. All he could see out from under the cloak was her two thin brown hands holding the mug and tilting the coffee pot. They were enough, though. He suddenly felt that if he took her in his arms now, he’d get back into the bigness he’d lost by quarreling with the mother’s God, and have it so he’d never lose it again. It was as if something had come out of Gwen to him and made the big moment in the first place. He put out his hand to touch the small shoulder under the blue cloak, but then he thought of the old man at the table, and the open bedroom door behind him. He didn’t touch Gwen, but just reached past her and picked up Joe Sam’s plate. Then he turned back to the table and picked up the lantern. He felt that he had been defeated twice. No, it was worse than that. He had defeated himself twice. The whole weight of what was in the house came down on him again while he stood there waiting for Gwen to put sugar into the coffee and get a knife and fork and spoon. He let her go ahead of him to the door.
At the sound of the two of them walking together, the father roused himself again and peered slowly around through half open eyes until he found them.
"Where you going this tima night?" he asked thickly.
"Just taking Joe Sam’s supper up, Dad."
"Let him come and get it, the old fool," the father said, and his head swung back and down again by its own weight. At the sound of the door opening, though, he drew a deep, sighing breath, pushed himself slowly upright in his chair, and
peered around at them again.
"That fool Curt gonna stay out there all night?" he asked. "Hasn’t even had his supper. Tell him come in, get his supper."
His head drooped back toward the table. "Didn’ even eat his supper," he said drowsily.
Harold motioned to Gwen to go on out. He followed her and closed the door, and they went around the house and slowly up to the bunk-house, side by side and bowed against the thickening snow.
Joe Sam was sitting huddled on a box next to the stove. The lantern coming in made his shadow move hugely behind him. His moccasins were set side by side under the edge of the stove, and his broad bare feet were smooth as a young man’s. They didn’t seem to belong to the same body as the old hands that were clutching his elbows. His head was turned to look at the two coming in, and the lantern made his good eye gleam like metal.
"Here’s your supper, Joe Sam," Harold said, and held the plate out and waited until Joe Sam had to take it. "And coffee," he said, and took the cup from Gwen and set it on the floor beside the box. Then he went to the far end of the room, took the lamp down from its high shelf and set it beside the wash basin. Gwen moved closer to Joe Sam and said, "Here’s your knife and fork."
The old man took them without a word, and sat holding them upright in one hand, with the plate on his knees.
"Are you warm enough?" Gwen asked.
"Warm. Good."
"Please. You eat something this time. And drink your coffee. That’ll really warm you up."
"Warm. Good," Joe Sam said again.
Gwen leaned over and put the spoon into his coffee mug, and stirred three or four times around before she left it there.
Harold set the lighted lamp back up on its shelf, making the piece of broken mirror, that was fastened to the wall over the wash basin, flash its shape in light across Gwen and Joe Sam and the pile of stove wood behind them. Then he saw by the lamp that one of the whisky bottles he had set on the shelf with it was gone. He turned back, and finally saw the bottle on the floor in the shadow behind Joe Sam. The seal was torn off and the cork was out. Harold came over and stood beside Gwen and looked down at the old man.
"Joe Sam," he said.
After a moment Joe Sam looked at him, but at his shoulder, not at his face.
"Did you get any sleep at all?"
"Sleep," the old man said finally.
Harold sighed. "Well, eat now, anyway. You have to eat something."
"Eat," Joe Sam said. He looked down at the plate, and after a moment poked gently at the potato with his fork. Harold waited until he had taken the first mouthful, and then said, "I’ll be right back. We got to get some sleep, you and me. The way it’s snowing now, we’ll have to take the drag out tomorrow.”
"Much snow," Joe Sam said.
When Gwen and Harold were at the door with the lantern, he began to speak again, and they stopped.
"All time much snow," he said slowly. "Have much brother one time. All go now. Have much friend. They go now. My woman go, my boy, my girl. All go now. Much old." He said something soft and unhappy in Piute, letting it trail off faintly at the end.
"I’ll be right back, Joe Sam," Harold said again. "I’m going to sleep up here too."
Joe Sam didn’t answer. He sat there looking through them and out the open door at something they couldn’t see.
When he and Gwen were half way down to the house again, Harold said, "He’s gone and got drunk now, on top of the rest. I’ll have to get right back up there."
"Yes," Gwen said, and he felt her hand fumbling for the belt of his coat. When she found it, she hooked two fingers over it and gave it a little tug, and then just left her hand there to be touching him. He stopped and put his arm around her shoulder and drew her close against him. She pressed her cheek to his coat and held him tightly with both arms. He could feel her shoulders beginning to shake, and held her even closer, with his head down against the hood of the blue cloak. He held her that way for a long time, until her shoulders stopped shaking and loosened in his arm, and they began to feel the snow coming down on them. Then he turned her face up to him with a knuckle under her chin and kissed her wet mouth softly, twice.
When he lifted his head again, and was just looking down at her, she said, "Would it make things any better if I went home, Hal? Do you want me to go home?"
"I don’t ever want you to go," he said softly. "You know that. But this is Bridges’ trouble, honey, not yours. Don’t you want to go?"
She shook her head quickly, three or four times, and then held her face up to him again, with her eyes closed. This time, after a moment, their bodies began to hunt for each other through the thick winter clothes. Yet even then the light the lantern cast around them made it seem all the time that they were being watched from the darkness beyond, or from the lighted north window below. Gwen turned her mouth from under his, and he let go of her, just holding one of her hands.
"You couldn’t send me home now anyway" she said quickly. "Not in all this snow."
"No," he said, and smiled a little and kept watching her. "I’ll come down with you," he said at last.
She shook her head at him. "You better not," she said, and hugged him hard once more, and then pushed him away.
"Well, take the lantern away," he said, and gave it to her. He waited there, feeling the soft pelting of the snow he couldn’t see, until the lantern and the small, hooded shadow it made in its circle of light had disappeared around the corner of the house. Then he turned and climbed back up to the bunkhouse and went in.
12
He was in a deep ravine, and Gwen was with him. They were standing still, listening and not touching each other, because they had just heard a faint, excited cry from far above. The ravine was familiar, but Harold couldn’t think where it was now, the voice troubled him so. It was the voice of someone they knew and loved, and it was either trying to warn them, or calling for help. There was nothing to do but wait, though, until they knew what he wanted. They were in a bad place themselves, out in the middle of a small clearing part way up the north slope. There was a foot or more of new snow down around them, so that even with the gray light in the ravine, they stood out like a bull’s-eye on the white. When he realized that, Harold was sure that the enemy, whether he was hidden behind one of the big pines above, or among the aspens or the willows along the creek below, had a heavy rifle and was a very good shot. For a moment he was even convinced that there were enemies all around them, so that his knees became weak, a cold sweat broke out on his forehead, and his mind leapt from one useless notion to another like an encircled rabbit darting from bush to bush. He got over that, though, when he realized that nobody would try to call a warning about an encirclement. lt would be no use, and it might start things all the quicker. lt had to be a single enemy then. That was better, but not much better, unless they could discover where he was. Neither he nor Gwen had a gun, and if the enemy gave himself away by shooting one of them, the other one still wouldn’t be able to do anything but wait for his turn.
There was something else that troubled him too, though it was only a kind of puzzle on the edge of his fear. They were standing in the center of the clearing, but there weren’t any tracks in the snow to show how they’d got there. Gradually, as they kept on just standing there, and nothing happened, this puzzle of the trackless snow distracted him. It was then, while his attention was divided, that he recognized the ravine. It was the Aspen Creek Canyon. He could look down along the serpent of leafless aspens and willows and see its last turns, far out and narrow as a thread, and then the black shapes of the tule marshes. Yet it wasn’t quite right for the Aspen Creek Canyon either. Having discovered this, he saw, almost at once, what the difference was. The sides of the canyon were much higher than he remembered. The rim-rock was so far above them that its top was lost in the gray sky. Also it was much farther down out of this canyon than it was out of the Aspen Creek. The black marshes out there in the snow fields looked no farther away than the valley marshes, but when
he glanced down along the gigantic cliffs, he saw that this was because they were actually very big lakes lying miles out on a plain too wide to see across. He still knew the canyon perfectly well, but now it was such a huge trap that it would take hours to get out of it, and they didn’t have hours.
There was another difference too. He should have noticed this difference at once, and it worried him than he hadn’t. The sides of the gigantic canyon were thickly timbered clear up to the base of the rim-rock. The real Aspen Creek Canyon had only a few stunted pines standing up out of the sand. It was the trees, of course, that made it so easy for the enemy to move around without being seen. He knew where they were, and they didn’t know where he was, and he could keep it that way if he wanted to. If they started down the canyon, and that was the only way out now, he could trail along beside them as far as he liked, and never be seen. Maybe that was why he was waiting. Maybe he liked playing cat and mouse. Once he had thought of it, it became a fact that the invisible enemy liked to play cat and mouse.
He understood all this very quickly, and once he did, the first paralysis of his will passed off. At once he touched Gwen, and motioned to her to throw herself down into the snow. She didn't look at him, but she understood when he touched her, and obeyed him promptly. He threw himself down beside her. Even as they dropped, as if their falling had started it, they head the voice again. Because they were moving then, and not really listening, they still didn't know who it was, but they were relieved about their own situation anyway. Whoever was calling was much farther away this time than when he’d first called. If he was calling to them at all, he was certainly calling for help. It no longer seemed that the enemy was a man, either. No one trying to get away from a man with a rifle would keep yelling like that. He’d yell only if he thought it might frighten the enemy off.
"It's the black painter," Harold cried.
Gwen didn't answer him, but he knew she thought so too.
Then he was on his feet and running heavily, laboring to run faster, toward the place farther into the canyon and up the north side, from which he believed the voice had last cried out. He became desperate because he was running so slowly. His legs weighed like stone, yet he floated a little at each stride and could never take the next step soon enough. The snow, which had appeared dry and light on the clearing, turned out to be heavy and wet and slippery, and that made it even worse trying to hurry. When he did reach ground firmly, he always slipped back, and the harder he tried, the more he slipped.
The Track of the Cat Page 15