The Track of the Cat

by Walter van Tilburg Clark

  The next thing he knew, Gwen ran past him. He couldn’t understand how she could run so fast and easily, and he was frightened to see her rushing toward the danger ahead of him. He tried to call to her to wait for him, but he had no voice. He wasn't breathless or choked; he just didn't have any voice. He kept trying to shout, but he couldn’t make a sound. Gwen got farther and farther ahead of him up the slope. He could still see her plainly, because they had come into a long climbing avenue through the trees. It was free of growth of any sort, and perfectly straight, like a road through a park. Far up this avenue she continued to move away with amazing speed and ease, and he saw that she was leaving no tracks behind her. Her cloak, flapping as she ran, made her look like a small, fluttering bird, and then like a tiny insect on a white wall, barely moving its wings, perhaps just cleaning them. At any moment she would arrive at the place where the black painter was waiting, but he couldn’t do a thing about it. He still couldn’t run any faster, or make a sound. He stopped trying to call.

  At once, when he stopped trying to call, he wasn’t running either. He was just standing there staring up the long avenue ahead of him. The black figure of the cat was creeping out of the woods on the left side, and Gwen, as if she didn’t see it at all, was rushing right toward it. Harold wanted to cover his eyes, but he couldn’t; he had to watch. The sweat broke out on him again, as it had during the first moment in the clearing. He heard a voice mumbling in fear or in crazy monologue. Either it was his own voice, or the cat up there was mumbling. Maybe the cat was purring. He became sure that the cat was purring, and then he was much closer, only a few yards behind Gwen, and could see that the crawling creature wasn’t a cat at all, but a man. It was Curt, in the red mackinaw with the black stripe around it. But there was something terrible the matter with him. He was crawling on his hands and knees, and mumbling continuously, without sense. Every few feet, he stopped crawling and mumbling, and retched, and then vomited a great gush of blood. It seemed impossible that he could still be alive after even one such outpouring, yet every time he would begin to mumble again, and then to crawl ahead. He wasn’t attacking Gwen, and he wasn’t going to. He was only trying to get across the avenue and into the woods on the other side before the enemy caught up with him again.

  Suddenly another figure appeared at the very top of the avenue. He was tiny up there, but Harold could see that he was wearing the red and white parka, and that he was taking aim down the avenue with a rifle. Probably he was aiming at Curt in his red coat. It was impossible to be sure at that distance, and it didn’t matter anyway. The tiny, mocking figure up there, taking such slow and deliberate aim, meant to kill all three of them, and he’d have time to do it, too.

  All at once the whole situation became clear to Harold. He found his voice and cried out a loud warning to the figure in the red coat. It turned its face at him, and he was right. It was Arthur’s face, bearded, and very thin, white grid quiet. The eyes were closed too, and the big lids were blue.

  Harold wasn’t standing in the avenue through the trees at all; he was standing in the north bedroom. The lamp on the table was making great shadows of the eagle that perched on the bed and of the mother on the white wall. The mother was looking down at the white, bearded face on the pillow, at the face with the closed, blue-lidded eyes, and she was smiling grimly. Harold had his arm around Gwen now, and they were both staring at the mother. He was trying to draw Gwen away, because he believed that the mother was crazy. But then he saw that the mother had on a handsome, new, black overcoat with a velvet collar, and realized that he had been mistaken. The gloating figure was the father, and his satisfaction wasn’t nearly as evil, because he was so drunk he couldn’t really know what he was looking at. He was the one who was making that sound now. He was talking to himself. When Harold heard the sound, he remembered, or perhaps saw through the wall at the head of the bed, the tiny figure taking aim from the top of the white avenue through the trees. He was still aiming at Arthur, too, although Arthur was already quite dead. Harold was going to cry out, but before he could make a sound there appeared, as silently as if it had come out from inside, a neat, dark, round hole, perhaps large enough to put the end of a little finger into, right between the eyebrows of Arthur's face on the pillow. The report came long after the hole had appeared, but it was much too loud, stunningly loud, as if the rifle had been fired inside the room. But it would be impossible, if the rifle were fired inside the room, for the hole to appear so long before the report was heard. The entire time and order of events became terribly confused, and Gwen vanished. She wasn’t in his arm, and he couldn’t see her anywhere. It was as if the shot had carried her off too.

  He was up on his elbow, staring and breathing hard. He saw that he wasn’t in the north bedroom, and for a moment everything was more mixed up than ever. Then he came slowly over to the waking side and was greatly relieved. Everything in the dream receded and became a little less than real, except the report of the rifle. He remained convinced of the report.

  He saw Joe Sam by the light that flickered through the little window in the door of the stove, and faintly by the first glimmer of daylight in the bunk-house window. The two lights made him two colors where he showed, red up his back, and pale, almost blue in front. He was standing close in front of the stove, but facing the door. He was naked, and he was shaking both fists above his head in fierce triumph. He was talking constantly in Piute too, a low,

  excited chattering.

  That’s the purring anyway, Harold thought. That’s the noise Arthur was making, and then the old man in the bedroom. This didn’t set the dream back farther, though. It made it more real again instead. It made it seem as if the dream was alive in the room again, and Joe Sam had

  something to do with it.

  There was a strong smell of whisky in the room. There was something in Joe Sam’s right fist that gleamed in the stove light when he moved it just right, too.

  That bottle again, Harold thought angrily. The old fool must have got that bottle again in the night. However much he’s got in him, he must have spilled a lot of it to make it stink so. He must have been up all night, he thought. He’s kept the fire going.

  “Joe Sam," he said sharply.

  At once the old Indian stopped chattering, and then he slowly let his arms down. Finally he turned to face Harold’s bunk, so he was standing with his side to the stove, and what he was holding in his right hand showed clearly. It wasn’t the whole whisky bottle, but just the neck, with long, jagged points of the shoulders still on it. Joe Sam wasn’t threatening anything, though. He just stood there by the stove, silent, and with all the excitement gone out of him, and held the bottle neck loosely in his hand. He looked very tired, and older than ever.

  "What’s the matter, Joe Sam?" Harold asked.

  "Bottle break," Joe Sam said. He was very sad. He was lamenting an accident.

  I’ll bet it did, Harold thought. No bottle ever broke that way by accident. You broke it, you old faker.

  The wind came down heavily against the bunk-house, making it creak and tremble, and then fell away again along the mountain. The fire it had beaten down leapt up again roaring, and Harold saw the glittering fragments of the bottle on the floor.

  "Stand still, Joe Sam," he said, "or you’ll cut your feet."

  Joe Sam looked down slowly and curiously, as if just remembering that he had feet, but stood where he was. Harold rolled up onto the edge of his bunk, tried the floor lightly with his own feet, to make sure none of the chips had come that far, and stood up. He crossed to the shelves and lighted the lamp. The second bottle was still there and still sealed. He took the old stub of broom from the corner and swept the glass around Joe Sam’s feet into a little pile in front of him.

  "Better put that in too," he said, pointing to the bottle neck.

  Joe Sam looked down at it the way he had looked at his feet. Then he leaned over and laid it gently on the pile of broken glass. Harold brought the nail keg that was the bunk-ho
use waste basket from its corner by the front window, and swept the glass into it. He swept the last dust of glass that wouldn’t go in, under the stove, and put the broom and the keg back in the corner. When he turned around, Joe Sam was still standing there in front of the stove.

  "All right, Joe Sam. It’s all gone."

  The old Indian walked slowly over to his bunk and sat down. He laid his hands one over the other between his legs, so they covered his crotch, and sat staring at the worms and fluttering wings of light the fire made on the floor.

  Harold came back to his bunk and began to dress.

  "Did you get any sleep, Joe Sam?" he asked.

  After a long time, Joe Sam said drowsily, "No sleep. All time snow. Much snow. Painter hunt."

  Harold stood still the way he was, with his pants only half pulled up, and looked at the old man. So that was it, he thought finally. But he was plenty happy about it, that’s a cinch. He was celebrating something.

  "Did you get him?" he asked.

  "No get,” Joe Sam said. He sounded very unhappy about it, and he didn’t say anything more.

  Harold pulled his pants on up and buttoned them and fastened his belt. Then he sat down on the edge of his bunk and began to pull on his socks. Joe Sam said something in a very low voice.

  "What?" Harold asked.

  "No hunt painter," Joe Sam said.

  After a moment Harold said, "No, it’s no use, I guess."

  "Painter get," Joe Sam said more clearly. "Painter get now. He know."

  He’s getting worked up again, Harold thought.

  "Get who, Joe Sam?"

  But Joe Sam just said sadly, in the going—away voice again, "No get now."

  After a minute Harold gave up trying to straighten it out. He finished dressing and came over and stood in front of the old man. Joe Sam didn’t even seem to know he was there.

  "Maybe you can get some sleep now, Joe Sam," Harold said finally. “The painter won’t hunt in the daylight. You better get under the covers, though."

  Joe Sam didn’t answer, and for some time didn’t move. Finally he began to tug awkwardly at his blankets, trying to get them out from under himself. When he got them out, he just lay down on his side on top of them, with his knees drawn up. Harold worked the blankets out again, and pulled them up over him. Then he put on his mackinaw and cap, I and picked up Joe Sam’s plate and mug from the box. The mug was empty, but only the meat was gone from the plate. He stood holding the mug and plate and looking down at Joe Sam. Even under the blankets, the old man was still lying drawn up like a cold child. His eyes were closed now, and his breathing was slow and regular.

  Harold turned away, saying softly, but out loud. "Old as time, and nothing but bones. I don’t know what keeps him alive when he has these spells."

  Joe Sam’s voice said, "Much ’live, all right. Pretty quick get."

  Harold turned back and stared at him. Joe Sam was looking at him, and grinning a little. Slowly Harold realized that he had spoken aloud himself. The old man was making a joke about it, and about the hunting that was going on in his mind too. Harold didn’t understand the last part, but finally he grinned too.

  "Get what?" he asked.

  Joe Sam’s grin faded slowly, but only as if he were falling asleep in spite of himself. Before his eyes were quite closed, though, Harold thought the good one looked at him the way Joe Sam looked when he wasn’t saying what he meant. The good eye was amused about the joke Joe Sam was keeping to himself. Then the dark, heavy lids came all the way down.

  "Much whisky. Much ’live," Joe Sam muttered drowsily. Harold thought, That’s no answer, you old fraud. And you’re not sleepy either; you’re not a damn bit sleepy. But alive or not, there won’t be any more whisky. I can take care of that much, anyway, and went over and blew out the lamp, and took down the bottle of whisky from beside it.

  With the lamp out, the blue window turned gray, and through it he could see the snow still falling outside. The flakes were very big, but they were coming down slower and farther apart than they had been the night before. Standing there in the dim light and watching the snow fall, he was again seized by the emptiness and the wish to be asleep or even to be dead that came every time he remembered that Arthur was gone. He waited there, only bending his head a little, until the despair weakened into the bearable unhappiness that came after it. Then he said in his mind, Keep moving, boy. You can’t lick it standing still, and crossed to the door. As he went out, he believed he heard a soft chuckle behind him, but when he looked, Joe Sam’s eyes were closed and there was no smile on the sunken, melancholy old face. He pulled the door shut, and stood there in the quietly falling snow for a minute or two, just listening. There was no sound he could hear except the occasional passage of wind through the laden pines, and the soft whispering and thumping of their burdens falling.

  He’s up to something for sure, he thought, but Lord what. Well, I can’t stay here all day, he thought finally.

  "But I’ll be right back, you old possum," he said very quietly, and started down, plowing his way through the fall of new snow that was nearly knee deep now. There was light showing in three windows of the house below. The small kitchen window was a shadowy orange, but the white lamp itself showed in the north window of the bedroom, and the clear light it made let him see into the room through the west window. He could see the tall, dark wardrobe in the corner, and one post of the foot of the bed, and somebody’s shadow, probably the mother’s, moving on the white wall beside the wardrobe. From up there it was like seeing into one corner of a little stage. He was moved by the glimpse, as he had been moved when he stood beside Arthur’s body and watched, through the tunnel, the three women together, and then the old man alone behind them, moving slowly away toward the lamp like a star in the

  kitchen door.

  He looked on out across the roof of the house. The mist of snow still hid the valley, and the hay derrick stood up too near and big in it, like the mast of a vessel appearing unexpectedly out of a heavy fog.

  13

  When Harold opened the kitchen door, he saw the father still there, asleep on his arms on the table. He looked at the big head in the circle of light, the gray hair twisted up into little, wry locks, the shape of flames, and then at the two whisky bottles beyond the old man’s right arm, one of them empty, and the other still half full.

  All night, he thought. That must have been nice. He came in and closed the door quietly. Then the smell of whisky and stale cigar smoke was thick in the warm room. There were new smells too, though, coffee, and the ham he could hear sizzling in the pan. He peered across the table, through the shadow of the lamp, and saw Gwen. She was standing by the stove with a long fork in her hand. The whiter light from the bedroom door reached her, making her face

  pale and her eyes too big and dark.

  "Hello," he said softly.

  Gwen raised one hand a little, in a way that reminded him of Arthur, and turned back to the stove. He stood there looking at her a moment, and wondering why she was so short with him. Then he put the whisky bottle into the cabinet under the clock, and came over beside her, and set Joe Sam’s dishes on the sink shelf.

  "I see you had company, anyway," he said.

  Gwen nodded twice, quickly, but didn’t answer. She began to break eggs into the pan with the ham. She did that too quickly also, and a little too hard. Harold moved closer to her, but, because of the bedroom light behind him, only put his hand gently against the small of her back. His own body would hide that.

  "Did he keep you up all night too?" he asked.

  Gwen shook her head and began to turn the ham over with the long fork.

  After a moment Harold asked, "What’s the matter, honey?" and slid his hand along so that he was almost holding her in his arm.

  "Nothing," Gwen said, still keeping her head down. She was holding herself stiff as wood in his arm, and he had to make up his mind not to let go of her.

  "Something is," he said. "Tell me."

&n
bsp; "Let me alone, please, will you?" she said sharply, and at the same time glanced around at him. She looked down again at once, but he had seen the white anger of her face and the faint glitter of tears in her eyes. He let go of her slowly.

  "It’s nothing, really," Gwen said. "I’m just kind of tired, I guess."

  He understood that this was an apology, but it wasn’t one that made things any easier.

  Finally he said, "It was Dad, wasn’t it?"

  "Please, Harold," she said again, but then added, "It wasn’t anything, really. I just don’t want to talk about it."

  Harold turned part way, and looked at the father sleeping on the table. He was snoring heavily, and at every out-breath his big moustache shivered and his lips burbled softly under it. Harold set his jaw and turned back and took hold of Gwen’s shoulders with his two hands.

  "You better tell me about it, though," he said.

  She shook her head. "It was my fault. I tried to get him to go to bed, that’s all, and he didn’t. . ." Her voice broke, and she bent her head down stiffly, fighting against crying.

  "What did he do?"

  She shook her head again. "Nothing."

  "What did he say, then?"

  "It doesn’t matter, Harold."

  "It does to me," he said. "What did he say?"

  At first he thought she was going to flare out at him again, but that moment passed, and finally she said, "He’s worried about Curt. That’s all it was really. He didn’t even know who I was, I don’t think."

  "Would you be crying about that?" he asked, and started to turn her around to face him.