The Track of the Cat

by Walter van Tilburg Clark

  Harold picked up the lantern and moved back into the drag lane, where Gwen was. They stood there together, not looking at each other, but only watching the fire grow. After a few minutes the flames were bannering high out of the peak of the cone, and the slumping and crashing of settling began inside, where the brush was burned away to fibers like glowing wicks that curled and broke off and winked out. The banks of the snow wall began to sink a little and run in the heat. The waving, colored light spread over the snow beyond the circle, and made phantoms that danced along the walls of the house too quickly to take clear shape. For a time, while the blaze was highest, the light on the tower window made it look as if there was a raging tire inside the house too. Only the brightest stars, out around the edges, on the hills, showed beyond the glare. Turning once to look at the fire in the window, Harold saw that the kitchen door was open, and the figure of the mother was standing in it against the lamplight.

  When the timbers had sunk over each other, burning separately in many places, and the column of fire in the center was slower and uncertain, he went into the circle again, and walked slowly around, prodding the timbers in with the heel of his boot. When the flame in the center was single and steady once more, he came back and picked up the lantern.

  “That’ll hold for a while'," he said.

  He waited until she had turned and gone ahead of him into the path, and then he followed her slowly.

  The mother wasn’t in the kitchen when they came in, but the Testament she’d carried in the afternoon was lying open at her place at the table, with an empty coffee mug beside it. Harold set the lantern on the table, and took off his cap and stuffed it into his pocket. Then he slowly turned the lantern down until it went out. The warmth of the room closed on him like first sleep, and he stood there staring at the Testament and thinking, as if he were reading a title page, The words of Christ are printed in red.

  Gwen’s voice said, "You’d better take your coat off, Haro1d," and he obeyed like one in a trance. He hung the coat over the back of Arthur’s chair, and sat down in the chair. After a minute he put his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands.

  Gwen set a mug of coffee beside him, and went around and sat down across from him with hers. She began to sip at her coffee, but Harold couldn’t bring himself to move. After a few sips, Gwen set her mug down again.

  "The fire. Do you have to keep it going all night?" she asked. She spoke very quietly, because of the three open doors, and because the Testament and the empty coffee mug between them made a kind of bodiless deputy there.

  "What?" he asked, and lifted his head to look at her.

  "The fire. Do you have to keep it going all night?"

  He nodded. "I guess so."

  Gwen was silent, looking at him, and thinking something she wouldn’t say. Then she said, smiling a little, "You’d better drink your coffee, then, hadn’t you?"

  "I guess so," he said again, but didn’t move to pick it up. After a minute, Gwen said, "I’d better go see how Grace is, I guess. I’ll be right back."

  Harold smiled at her faintly, and nodded, and she got up and went quietly into the bunk-room. Harold sat there staring in front of him until he began to hear the clock. Then he pushed the mug of coffee aside and laid his head down on his arms on the table.

  21

  It was morning in the kitchen, and Harold was very happy, because Arthur was sitting there across from him, whittling at one of the wooden cats, and getting ready to make another of the little jokes you had to think about too. But just when he looked up to speak, someone far away began screaming. Then Arthur wasn’t smiling at all. He was leaning across the table, staring with terrible eyes that had only pupils and no irises. He was looking right through Harold at something where the stairs were. "Hal," he cried softly, "Hal." He reached across under the lamp and took hold of Harold’s shoulder. "Hal," he said again, no louder, but even more urgently, and began to shake him gently.

  Then suddenly there was only an empty coffee cup in his place, and the barred chair-back showing above the table. The kitchen was much smaller and darker too, and the stairs were behind the empty chair, not behind Harold, where they should have been. The shaking went on, though, and he heard his name again. He looked up, and it was Gwen standing beside him, with her hand still on his shoulder. She was saying something quick and frightened to him, but he couldn’t understand it yet. Grace was there too, standing by the stove and hugging the old bathrobe around her. She was staring at him almost the way Arthur had been staring at him. He was frightened, and he didn’t know what was wrong, except that Arthur had been frightened, and now he was gone.

  "What?" he asked Gwen.

  "Something’s at the horses."

  "The horses?" He struggled to his feet and looked around at the front window. Then he saw that it wasn’t morning at all. The window was full of darkness, with only a faint, red light wavering across the little Alps of plowed snow outside.

  "Yes, the horses," Gwen said sharply.

  The mother’s voice behind them said, "Harold, don’t you go out there now. There’s been enough . . ."

  "Harold, wake up," Gwen cried.

  "I’m awake," he said, "only I don't. . ."

  "It’s black as pitch out there," the mother said angrily, and he could tell she was coming toward them from the bedroom.

  The scream came again. It was the same one he’d heard while Arthur was there. It trailed away in a long, shuddering, high cry, and then he was sure that it came from outside, and understood what Gwen had been trying to tell him. He started toward the door.

  "Harold," the mother cried, to stop him, and Gwen was coming after him, crying, "Here, Harold, take the gun. If it’s that painter again . . ."

  Even Grace’s voice cried shrilly now, "Harold, don’t be a fool," and then the loud, heavy voice called down from above, "What in hel1’s going on down there?" He was already at the door, and had it partly open, but this voice was so different from the women’s voices flocking after him like beaked birds that he stopped and looked up. The father was up there, enormous and faceless in the shadow. He leaned over the rail so that part of his face and one eye came

  out of the shadow of the platform, and said angrily, "What’s going on? I asked you."

  He wasn’t real either, though. Arthur, with the knife and the carving in his hands and that horror beginning to come on his face was still what was real, and the rest of this was a bad dream he’d fallen asleep into. But Arthur had heard the screaming too, and tried to tell him something about it. He went on out the door, with someone catching at his sleeve, and saying something he didn’t understand because the father’s big voice was saying, "What’s burning out there? Damned fire woke me up. Are you all . . ." but then he was outside and couldn’t hear the rest, but only the rumbling of the voice in the house.

  Still heavy with sleep, so that the fear was alive in him by itself, but he wasn’t alive around it yet, he heard the horse make the shrill, sudden screams twice more, close together. The sound was much louder now, and it made something go swiftly and coldly up his back, raising the hairs on his neck. He began to run heavily in the snow, with voices still calling behind him. When he got out of the light from the doorway, he missed the path somewhere. He floundered on across through the deep snow with the far-away firelight moving the shadows on it, and came into the tunnel between the sheds with snow on him up to the waist. Between the dark bars of the corral gate at the other end of the tunnel, he could see the horses all running in a shadowy bunch along the far fence. The wildest pounding was separate from them, though, and nearer, and then the terrible, sudden cry of the horse came again, and it was very near. It shook him like a blow. A horse in the bunch on the other side nickered like a whimper, and then another and another took up the sound of fear, and suddenly, piercing as a steam whistle, the scream came again. It came suddenly each time, as if struck from the lungs by sharp pain.

  Harold came to the gate and crouched there, holding ont
o the center pole. He was Hlled with a murderous rage now, and at the same time he wanted to run back into the greater darkness of the tunnel and watch from there, with the wall behind him, ready to defend himself. This straining balance held him motionless at the gate through three quick screams. Then the cold man’s mind said, There’s no black painter. You’re sunk in two dreams, that’s all, Joe Sam’s and the one you had in there. You fell asleep on the table. He climbed onto the gate, not wanting to be caught between the poles if it was a cat in there after all. He knew that Gwen had somehow got there right after him, but he hardly felt her clutching at his shirt, and didn’t understand anything of what she was saying so rapidly. He wished he had the lantern, though. He wanted light. From his high post astride the top bar, he could see only the great, unclear shadow of the horse plunging and turning in the darkness by the shed. He couldn’t make out at all what was at it, but only a thickening and blurring of its forelegs and shoulders. The horse suddenly screamed and leaped again, and in spite of himself, a belief in the black panther took hold of him for a moment. He felt how helpless he was against it too, against any kind of a cat, without a weapon that would keep it from reaching him.

  "Gwen, get back," he said fiercely, but all the time watching the dark plunging by the shed, no clearer than a cloud moving on a night sky. "Get away from here, out of the tunnel." He felt her hand leave him, but she was still talking at him. "Did you hear me?” he said. "Get out. If it breaks. . ." Then he didn’t hear her voice any longer either. He watched the plunging, waiting, and when it came toward the gate, cried out as loudly as he could, "Hi-ya, hi-ya, hi-ya," in the high, piercing tone he used to harry the cattle, or turn a steer that threatened him. With his second yelp, the tortured horse screamed again, and the rest of his cry was small and lost, but this time the pattern of the battle was broken anyhow. The horse reared and crashed against the shed, its weight cracking the poles, its hoofs rattling down them, and spun suddenly back along the wall, and out free in a long curve into the center of the corral. The nervous bunch swung and streamed away along the far rail with dull, numerous thunder, leaving it in lone silhouette against the starlit snow, and Harold guessed it was Kentuck. Then the enemy came out into the starlight after it, gliding quickly and soundlessly, like a soft-footed dancer, stooping, and maneuvering to keep the big stallion from getting in with the bunch.

  Harold said softly, "The damn little bastard," and let him self down into the corral. He felt a hand clutch at his shirt again, and heard Gwen’s voice saying, "Hal, don’t go in there. Hal, take the gun; here’s the gun," and then again, when she lost her hold as he moved away, "Harold, take the gun, you fool."

  He said angrily, over his shoulder, "Quit yelling, will you? It’s all right. It’s only Joe Sam."

  "Joe Sam," he called sharply.

  The little figure still danced on the snow, cutting off the stallion that moved slowly now, trying to run, but stumbling each time, and only turning away in a limping trot. "Joe Sam," he yelled again. The little figure straightened up in the center of the corral and stood waiting.

  "Harold," Gwen said, "don’t go out there. He’s crazy."

  "He’ll be all right now," Harold said. "He heard me, and he knows who it is."

  He went out slowly, just the same, watching the old Indian for any sudden move, stopping beyond his reach and peering, trying to see him better. The old man was naked again, even in this cold that was already shortening Harold’s breath, but there was something about the shape he made against the snow that wasn’t right.

  Behind him the horses were running again, to keep away from the black. When he slowed to a walk and turned across the open at them, they waited, moving restlessly in a small space and only nickering a little, until he was within two or three lengths of them. Then they milled suddenly, several of them rearing like a shadowy surf, and lined out again, streaming back around the fence. Kentuck stood then, blowing heavily, only turning his head to watch them. Joe Sam turned a little too, at the sound of the running, and Harold saw it was his hair that was wrong. It hung down tentwise over his shoulders and back, so his head had no shape except in profile. The second braid must have come all undone too.

  He looks like a Digger, Harold thought. Like a damn cave man. Well, no bottle neck, anyway. But he’s got something, he thought suddenly. He didn’t make the stud scream like that with his hands.

  “What have you got there, Joe Sam‘?" he asked. "In your hand?"

  "No got," Joe Sam muttered.

  Still playing possum, Harold thought. He isn’t giving up yet.

  "What’s in your hand? I asked you."

  After a moment, Joe Sam said, "Arthur give. Arthur my friend."

  "Drop it," Harold said.

  Still the old man kept his hands in the dark by his sides. It was hard to wait against this stubbornness, and with no way to guess, in the dark, what he was thinking, but Harold waited, only holding himself ready to move quickly, in case the old habit of his authority were broken now by some older vision, or some thwarted remnant of the strange fury. The waiting and the cold won for him. When the old Indian spoke at last, he was pleading.

  "Arthur give. My friend give. —Please, I keep."

  "All right," Harold_said. "You can keep it, but give it to me now." He held out his hand.

  Joe Sam made some small movement with the object, in the dark against his side, and then slowly reached out and laid it on Harold’s hand. Harold felt the corrugated bone of the handle through the slippery, still warm wetness of it.

  "Kill black painter," Joe Sam said.

  Black painter, hell, Harold thought. You can’t dream that hard, and felt with his forefinger along the base of the blade, where the blood was already cool and thickened. The blade was worn narrow as a dagger’s with long use and much sharpening. It was Arthur’s knife, all right, however Joe Sam had come by it. When they carried him out of the tunnel? No, or why all that trickery with the clumsy bottle neck? It must have been when he put his gifts into the coffin, then. The mother, knowing it was Arthur’s treasure, must have put it in the black suit when she changed his clothes.

  "Kill black painter," Joe Sam insisted. "Black painter kill Arthur." He was beginning to shake now. The shaking was in his voice.

  Harold squatted and thrust the blade of the knife through the hoof packed snow into the dung and earth of the corral, and worked it there to clean it. Then he rubbed the handle with snow too, and cleaned his hands in it, and stood up. He wiped the knife on his jeans, closed it, and stood tossing it slowly on the palm of his hand and looking at Joe Sam.

  "It was no black painter," he said finally, "and you know it. It was Kentuck. You knifed Kentuck. Why did you do it?"

  "Black painter," Joe Sam said again, but now without conviction. His teeth began to chatter, and he hunched himself a little.

  He knew, all right, Harold thought. Because it was Curt’s horse, maybe? The one that made him dodge?

  "Harold, what is it?" Gwen called.

  "He was knifing the black stud. Curt’s."

  "Oh, the poor horse. Why?" She was coming out to them now.

  "Wait a minute," Harold called. "We’re coming."

  "Black painter not dead," Joe Sam said mournfully. "Not kill. You stop."

  Or did he know? Harold thought. How can you guess what he sees? He slipped the knife into the pocket of his jeans, and took off his shirt and held it out to Joe Sam. "Here, put this on."

  The old Indian suddenly shook so violently he could hardly stand, but made no move to take the shirt. "Arthur give me," he pleaded between chattering teeth.

  "All right," Harold said. "I’ll give it back to you. But you have to get some sleep first. Get up in the bunk-house and get warm."

  He held out the shirt again, but the old man still just stood there, his head bowed and his body jerking, and he had to put the shirt on him. Then he took his arm, feeling how thin it was in the big sleeve of the shirt, like a starving child’s.

  "Come on, old m
an," he said gently. "Get to bed now. Get warm."

  Joe Sam took the first step with him, but then he made a little, whimpering sound, and sagged forward, and Harold had to take him up in his arms. He was astonishingly light.

  Old bird bones, Harold thought. Dried out with age, or burned out with seeing things. His pride weighed more than he did, and I’ve robbed him of it. He walked toward the gate. Gwen came to meet him quickly, peering at Joe Sam, and asking, "Is he hurt, Hal?"

  "I don’t think so. Worn out and half-frozen, I guess. And the fit’s off him. That knocks him out sometimes. Let the bars down, would you, please?"

  Gwen hurried ahead and let the poles down at one end, and Harold went through with his burden.

  "By rights it’s the horse I ought to look at first," he said.

  Gwen, raising the bars again, asked, "Is he hurt bad?"

  "I don’t know yet, but it was no fun for him. The old fool had Arthur’s knife."

  Gwen hesitated, with the top pole still in her hands.

  "Don’t go in there," Harold said. "He’s crazy afraid still. I’ll be back as quick as I can." He started through the tunnel.

  Gwen slid the last bar into its slot and followed him, carrying the rifle.

  "Can I help?"

  "You could get the lantern, if you would, and a halter from the harness room. And get a coat on too."

  "How about some hot water and rags?"

  "We’ll need them, I guess. And carbolic too. It’s on the window ledge in the harness room."

  Where the drag line crossed in front of the house, he turned and went up the hill to the bunk-house. Although he was shivering himself now, he had to go slowly, digging his toes in, because the cold had made the path glassy. On the level in front of the bunk-house, the snow squealed under his feet. He raised Joe Sam higher in his arms, sprung the latch with the hand that was under his shoulders, and pushed the door open with his knee. He crossed the room and laid Joe Sam down in his bunk. Then he closed the door, lighted the lamp and came back to the old man. He took the big shirt off him, worked him into his own red flannels and got him under the covers. At once Joe Sam drew himself together, hugging his knees. Harold stood looking down at him while he put on his shirt again. Joe Sam was still shivering and breathing jerkily. His eyes were closed, and his face, half veiled by his long hair, looked tight and hollowed as an old skull.