The Track of the Cat

by Walter van Tilburg Clark

  No possum this time, Harold thought, It’s done, and there’s not too much between him and being dead.

  He built the fire up again, and brought the top quilt from his own bunk and laid it over Joe Sam too. Then he took Artl1ur’s knife out of his pocket, and stood bouncing it a little on his hand while he looked down at the old, secret face. Finally he leaned over, turned back the covers, and pressed the knife in between Joe Sam’s hands and knees. The right hand closed around the knife, and when Harold had pulled the covers up again, Joe Sam sighed, letting go of something in him, and loosened under the covers, as if he had caved in. But then his breathing began again, slow and even and quiet, and the little fear that had started in Harold thinned away to nothing. He crossed to the lamp and blew it out, and came back through the imps of firelight to the door. He looked at Joe Sam once more, and went out, and closed the door softly. From the step, he saw the lantern, like a big, soft star, going into the tunnel between the sheds, and he hurried going down, as much as he could on the slick snow.

  When he came into the tunnel, he saw Gwen already inside the corral gate, but waiting there uncertainly, and when he was closer, he saw the big stallion still in the center of the corral, watching her with his head lowered. His eyes shone hollowly in the lantern light, as if from a burning inside him.

  Harold crawled between the bars and took the rope halter from Gwen’s hand.

  "Don’t get too close," he said. "He doesn’t know you."

  He moved out slowly toward the stallion. It waited quietly, only lifting its head higher to watch when he was close. When he was beside it, though, and raised a hand to touch the bulging shoulder, the stallion flinched away. He spoke to it softly and steadily, and after a moment, still murmuring, moved to it again. This time Kentuck bore his touch, only starting a little at first, and then trembling. Harold worked the halter on and clicked the snap shut! The rest of the horses stood in a line against the far fence, watching, and making only small movements of uneasiness, snorting their breath out white into the starlight. Gwen came up with the lantern and Harold’s coat. She held the coat out to him. "I thought you’d want this."

  Harold held his hands down into the light, and saw the dark, glittering blood he had felt. He rinsed his hands in snow again, and took the coat and put it on.

  "Thanks," he said. "It’s not too warm out here, at that."

  Gwen held the lantern up, and they could see the blood on Kentuck’s neck and shoulder too then. It had no color on the black hide, but shone where it was still flowing.

  "We better take him in the stall," Harold said. "The others don’t like it." He put a hand on the halter, and began to coax Kentuck toward the gate,

  "They look bad," Gwen said, raising a hand toward the gashed shoulder, but not touching it.

  "Bad enough," Harold said, "but they’re just on that one side, anyway. He’s dry on the other side."

  "Why would Joe Sam do a thing like that?"

  "He says he thought it was the black panther."

  "Oh, but he couldn’t. How could he?"

  "I don’t know. But he’ll never say anything different now. You can bet on that."

  Gwen let down the bars, and raised them again behind Kentuck. She picked up the kettle and cloths and the bottle of carbolic she’d set down by the fence, and followed Harold and the big stallion into the tunnel.

  In the one stall, which was just a corner boarded off in the hay shed, Harold tied Kentuck to the manger, and they looked at the wounds again, holding the lantern up close. There were eight cuts, like small, moving mouths, all on the shoulder and the neck just off the shoulder. One of them, high behind the shoulder, was still bleeding with a pulse, new blood squeezing out at each beat.

  "The poor thing," Gwen said. Twisting her face as if the pain of the cuts were in her own body, she raised a hand toward the creeping blood again, but didn’t touch it this time either.

  "They could be worse, though," Harold said. "I thought out there they were worse."

  He hung the lantern on a nail in the rafter above, and eased a hand onto Kentuck’s shoulder, between two wounds.

  "Wild with that knife, wasn’t he, boy?" he murmured. "But you weren’t giving him much time to pick his target, were you, boy? No, not you. And a good thing for you, you didn’t, too. It has a long blade, that knife, for something just to whittle with.”

  Kentuck flinched, and jerked his head up until the rope checked him, and rolled his eyes till the whites showed staringly, but then let the hand explore.

  "How that little, old guy ever got in that many wallops," Harold said, in the same voice for Kentuck to hear, and shook his head. "He must have hung on like a burr." Then he talked to Kentuck again, always in that one tone, low and smooth and constant, while he washed the blood off and bathed the wounds with the warm water. Finally only that one, high wound, where the knife had gone in straighter and deeper, was bleeding. The red, small lips of the cut showed clearly now, and the new blood squeezing between them in the slow rhythm of the big heart.

  "Now’s when it begins to get touchy," Harold said.

  He got an old, battered grain pan out of the manger, and rinsed it and filled it with water from the kettle. He poured a little spurt of the carbolic into the water, corked the bottle, and set it in the far comer. Then he dipped a rag into the solution and stirred it slowly.

  "Keep away from his hind end," he said, straightening up with the rag in his hand. He waited until Gwen had moved into the corner by the manger, and then began the quiet patter of talk again. He fingered the wounds while he talked, until Kentuck stopped flinching. Then, quickly, he put the rag, to the bad wound and squeezed it and wiped along the edges of the cut. After a moment, Kentuck fought back on the rope, his head jerking up, and then suddenly, he trumpeted, an ear-splitting sound in the close stall, and jerked so the timbers of the manger creaked, and struck with his haunch, and then twice with his hoofs against the side of the stall. Harold kept a shoulder against his shoulder, though, moving with him, and still working at the wound until he was satisfied it was clean.

  "Take it easy, boy," he said. "Take it easy. That’s the worst of it. The rest of it’s nothing to that. Just a little sting, maybe,” and kept up the patter, stroking the big flank and the neck above the wounds, until Kentuck stood quiet again. Then he moved slowly away from his shoulder, and soaked the rag in the pan once more, and went back with it. This time he dabbed and squeezed at three of the cuts before the burning started, and then Kentuck only sidled a little, and rapped the boards once, trying to turn his head to see back.

  Three times more Harold soaked the rag and came back, coaxing all the while in the soft, monotonous voice. Twice he was shouldered away heavily, and several times Kentuck snorted and flinched, but then the job was done, and with his hand that didn’t sting, and still the soft chatter, Harold quieted him a last time.

  "He’ll be all right now," he said. "If he isn’t bleeding inside somewhere, and I don’t think he is."

  He took the carbolic back to the harness room and returned with a blanket. He covered the shoulders with warm, wet rags, and laid a piece of dry sheeting over them, and then threw the blanket on over the sheeting. Then he took the pan of reddened solution out and poured it into the snow, and cleaned the pan and his hands in the snow too. Finally he forked hay down into the rack, and brought the pan full of grain and a bucket of water. Kentuck drank thirstily, draining the pail, and Harold brought it full again. Kentuck drank only a little this time, and then nuzzled the surface, blowing softly, and swung his dripping muzzle and blew in the grain. He lipped up a mouthful of the grain and raised his head and began to munch, only stirring restlessly now and then from the itch and fading sting of the

  cuts.

  Gwen came back to his shoulder and caressed the blanket, murmuring comforts. Her face was still a little twisted at the thought of the wounds, and the hot cure that must have seemed like stabbing again, and because of the blood she had longed to touch. When Harold tur
ned from lengthening the hitch rope, he blundered against her. She turned quickly, looking up at him, and caught his coat tightly in her two fists. Her eyes were still dark with her pity, and something else which had moved in her also because of the blood, and she cried up softly at Harold, in the voice she’d used to Kentuck, "Oh, darlin’, I’m sorry, I’m sorry."

  She kept tugging at his coat with one hand, but slid the other up over his shoulder and behind his head. "I’ve been horrible, darlin’, I know. But it wasn’t you; it wasn’t you, really. I just couldn’t, with all. . ." and finished in broken murmuring against him.

  He held her tightly, and then, when she tugged at him less, the small, hard body softening in his arms, loosened his hold a little too, and lifted her chin with a big knuckle crooked under it, and put his mouth down to hers. Her head fell back, and she bent limply to him in his circling arm, letting it bear almost all her weight. Her lips parted, and her breath came quick and shallow against his mouth. Harold’s mind thundered at this joining after the long weariness and the separation the mother had made. He jerked back the hood from her hair, and holding that hand under her head, hunted with his mouth along her throat and shoulder, and then back along her face until he found her mouth again. Then they clung there, under the low, burning lantern, and almost against Kentuck’s shoulder. Kentuck swung his head, munching and dripping a little at the mouth, and watched them curiously.

  When the wish that bound them ebbed a little, being too long denied, Harold turned Gwen, almost roughly, still holding her close in his arm, and led her, half lying against him, and both of them stumbling, into the shed beyond. The light of the lantern came in there through the cracks of the board partition, making thin lines of brightness over the mounds of hay, and a dry sweetness stirred in the cold air where they moved. They sank together against the first yielding bank of hay that blocked them, and Harold lay over against her, murmuring her name like the soft echo of a cry that would break him, and lingered her throat and cheek and temple with a trembling hand.

  "Darling," she sighed, "oh, my darling," and closed her eyes again, and drew his shoulder down toward her.

  “Harold," the voice called, from outside and a distance, and they lay still exactly where they were, his face close above hers, but not yet touching.

  After a moment Gwen turned her face into his shoulder, pressing hard, and made a long, soft moan that was muffled by his coat. Harold’s hand lay in the nape of her neck still, curved as it had been in his last caress, but not moving now, not even pressing.

  "Oh, damn her," he whispered, "God damn her to hell. Will she never. . ." but stopped there, choked by the quick fury.

  "Harold," the voice called again.

  Gwen drew her head back quickly, whispering, "She’s coming out here, Harold," and stiffened away from him. Then there was only the knowledge again, almost like hatred, of the clumsy winter garments between them, and of the mother’s will. It was as if their own wills, and the sweet, savage desire that had fused out of them, were sucked away to nothing, leaving them separate and ashamed and wanting to hide, most of all from each other. Harold loosened his hold, and Gwen struggled to her feet at once and moved away two steps toward the door, and stood there with her back turned. After a moment Harold got up too and stood behind her. They waited, separated and listening, the thin bars of light from the stall across them and the motes they had stirred from the hay spinning among themselves in the narrow gleams.

  "Harold," the mother’s voice called again, from much nearer.

  "You’ll have to answer her, Harold," Gwen whispered, and moved away from him, and began hurriedly brushing the hay from her skirt and cloak.

  The quick rage whirled in Harold again, and he couldn’t keep it out of his voice, shouting, "Here. What do you want?" But then he began brushing the hay off himself too.

  "Is Gwen out there too?" the mother called. The voice came from no closer now. She had stopped when he called.

  "Yes, she’s here," he called, but then couldn’t help adding, "She’s helping me. The black stud is hurt. Kentuck."

  Gwen looked up at him, and then straightened up from her brushing, and drew the hood over her head and moved away into the lantern light in the stall. She stood in there by the outside door, with her back to him and her head bent. The lantern made her shadow like a praying nun on the door. He passed her and opened the door. The mother was standing out there in the deep path, half way across.

  "You’re letting the fire go out," she said.

  "I can’t do twenty things at once," Harold said, and again felt the guilt of a half lie, and how dirty the sweet wildness had turned now. "I’ll get it in a minute," he added wearily.

  "The girl had to take care of it for you once before," the mother told him. "While you caught up on your sleep."

  Harold just stood there, not answering, and finally she said, "Well, you better fix it, and then come in before you freeze."

  Harold came back into the stall and took down the lantern and picked up the kettle. Gwen waited for him outside, and when he had closed the door, went on slowly ahead of him, toward the house. The mother was already standing in the open kitchen door. When she saw the lantern moving away from the shed, she went in and closed the door, shutting away its light from the path.

  Harold turned off in the drag lane and went out to the fire. The timbers had burned apart and there were only small, separate flames at their ends, and the great pile of shimmering embers in the center. Harold worked slowly around the circle, kicking the timbers farther in. Then he set the kettle and lantern down, and brought more timbers from the pile and tossed them on. When the flames drew together again, and began to rise at the center, he picked up the lantern and kettle and turned toward the house. Gwen was waiting for him where the drag had crossed the path, but when he was nearly to her she went on ahead and into the house alone.

  The father was the only man in the kitchen when they came in. He was sitting at the table, playing Black-Jack against himself. There was a pile of matches on each side of him, but the pile by his right hand was much larger than the one by his left. A new bottle of whisky and a glass full of it stood by the right pile. He lifted the glass and drank and made a long, sighing "Ah." Then he set the glass down again, and looked at them.

  "No sign of Curt yet?" he asked.

  Harold shook his head.

  "Two o’c1ock in the morning," the father said angrily. "Almost two in the morning, and the young fool’s not back yet."

  And now he’s dropped two days clean out, Harold thought. Well, if you have to lose two days, they were good days to lose. Does he know Arthur’s dead? I wonder. Gwen turned and moved off toward the bunk-room, and the father peered after her. "Little game of Black-Jack, young woman?" he asked loudly.

  Without giving any sign that she’d heard him, Gwen went on slowly and turned into the dim light of the bunk-room, and disappeared, letting the light fill the door again by itself behind her shadow.

  "Who in hell was that?" the father asked Harold. "Creepin’ around here like a damned ghost," he muttered. "Won’t even answer a civil question. To hell with her then."

  He looked at Harold and held up the cards. "What about you?" he asked. "It’s no fun robbing myself," he said, and snorted happily at his joke, and began to fish clumsily in his vest for a cigar.

  "I guess not now, thanks," Harold said, and having spoken, could move again too. He started toward the stove.

  "And what’s wrong with cards, may I ask?"

  "Nothing," Harold said.

  He slid the kettle onto the stove and blew out the lantern and set it up on the shelf. Then he sat down in the mother’s place, across from the father. The old man stared at him fiercely for a minute, his heavy, black brows drawn together and his breath snoring in his nose, but Harold wouldn’t look at him, so finally he just snorted loudly, making a mouth of contempt, and struck a match to light his cigar. The match made a sound like another snort. When the cigar was drawing well, he clenched i
t between his teeth in the right comer of his mouth, half closing his right eye against the smoke, and flipped two cards out, face down, and then two more on top of them, face up, a nine of clubs on one and a queen of hearts on the other. Holding the rest of the deck ready, he looked at Harold again.

  "Have a drink?"

  "No, thanks."

  The father stared again. "Everybody getting holier than Christ,” he said. "A whole goddam houseful of preachers," he exploded, and then, after a moment, asked, "What’s the matter now? You sick?"

  When Harold just shook his head, he snorted again. "To hell with you too, then," he said. "To hell with the whole, Sniveling, goody-goody bunch of you. What a family for a man who . . ." but took a deep, defiant drink instead of finishing. Then, just in the time it took to put his glass down, his expression became happy and calculating. He peered at his hole cards.

  “Hit me easy," he said for the right-hand cards.

  He turned up a four of spades and chuckled. "That’s just about right, just about right," he said.

  Harold watched him turning the cards for a while, though with empty, unseeing eyes. Then he folded his arms on the table in front of him, and laid his head down on them.

  The father went on flipping the cards out and talking to himself. Sometimes, catching a glimpse of a card as it came off the deck, he’d say quietly, "Turn one under. House rule," and turn it onto the bottom of the deck, and flip the next one out instead. Whenever he could move another match onto the right-hand pile, he would chuckle and pause in the game and take a sip of his drink.

  PART THREE