He turned left under the wall, which would be east, the way he wanted to go out in the morning, and slogged along, breathing hard and shakily, and peering around him constantly, but also glancing up often at the dark band of the cliff above the steep snow that covered the talus slope.
He hadn’t gone more than a hundred steps along the cliff, when he believed he saw what he wanted, a narrow, elliptical rift of gloom, right at the top of the snowbank. He went up sidewards toward it, knocking steps in the snow with the edge of his right web. When he was close enough under it to be sure that it was a cave, and not an illusion, he stopped suddenly. It came over him that the cat might be curled up in that very niche. Then he could imagine it not curled up at all, but crouched at the edge, peering down at him. The wish to weep returned upon him strongly.
"Oh, Jesus," he whispered despairingly.
After a long minute of standing there listening, he slowly took off his right mitten and stuffed it into his pocket, and moved along the snow bank toward the east end of the cave, watching the black opening unwinkingly, and holding the carbine ready. Nothing stirred in there that he could be sure of. At the end of the cave, he faced about and climbed up until he was at the top of the slope. He squatted there, still peering into the rift, and dug into the snow beside him with his bare hand, and brought up a big piece of the fallen shale. He held it poised at arm’s length for a moment, and then hurled it into the cave, and at once brought the carbine up, with his finger on the trigger. The shale struck much sooner than he’d expected, and made only the briefest of small, dry echoes. Nothing else happened. He threw two more pieces, one into each end of the little cave. Each time there was only the prompt, shallow echo, and then the silence in which nothing moved but the falling snow. He thought of reaching in with the carbine and prodding, to make completely sure, but realized at once that such a process would put him much too close, if there was really anything in there.
He thought of lighting a match. The idea alarmed him. The cat probably wasn’t in here, and if he just crawled in, daring the darkness, it wouldn’t even know he was in the pass. The flame of the match would show up like a railroad headlight. If the cat didn’t know where he was now, it certainly would after that. Again the wish to weep swelled terribly within him. No effort of his will, however, could bring him to crawl into that cave without seeing in first. At last he got the match container out of his pocket, and took one match from it, and closed the container and returned it to the pocket. He took a deep breath, and held the carbine in his left hand ready to lift it quickly, and then, with an effort so desperate as to blind him for an instant, scratched the match at the edge of the cave, and held it in just under the corner of the roof. He more than half expected to see the two yellow eyes staring back at him like lights themselves. The match made a small, shadowy, moving light, but it was enough to show him, after a moment, that there was no cat in there, and no opening at the back big enough to let anything through that mattered. It was a very low, shallow cave, almost crescent-shaped, and he could see mostly because of the shadows they made, the three pieces of shale he’d thrown, and the rough, down-shelving roof and back, and the litter of twigs and small bones and tiny droppings on the sand. He took only one good look, and then shook the match out and drew a deep breath of relief in the dark. It was a poor shelter, hardly more than big enough to let him lie down, but it was dry and it was his, and it could be easily defended, with that steep, snow-covered slope coming up to it. It would get him in out of the wind and the snow, too, and that was the most important thing.
He peered all around below him, over the snow shimmer under the darkness, and then laid the carbine on the edge of the cave floor and crawled up and sat beside it. There he took off his other mitten, and slowly, with difficulty, unlaced the webs and laid them in together against the back of the cave. All the time he kept peering down into the populous darkness he had stirred up with the match. At last, still watching, he lay over on his elbow, with his head to the west end, and drew his legs up into the other, more tapered end, and took the carbine into his hands. Many dark shapesformed and dissolved below, but none of them ventured onto the snowy slope, and gradually he became indifferent to them. It no longer seemed so important that he had lighted a match. He must keep watch, of course, but he needn’t torture himself to do it. He held the carbine then only with his left hand, and pillowed his head upon his right arm. After a little while, his eyes closed.
He started up abruptly, striking his head on the low roof of the cave, but paid no attention to the blow. It seemed to him he’d been dozing for some time, a half hour at least, exposed in his cave as upon a shelf. He glanced swiftly down over the white slope, and then more slowly studied the darkness below it. When he had reassured himself, only wondering a little what might have climbed up out of his sight beyond the ends of the cave, he realized that there was another reason why he didn’t dare sleep. He was shaking ridiculously from the cold, and there was no feeling at all in the hand that held the carbine. He lay there, working the hand until the pin jabs began in it and working his toes inside the pacs too, and slowly, laboriously, considered his position.
Finally he pushed back the hood, rolled out of the cave, looking quickly to each side as his head emerged, and let himself down onto the snow, and began to dig through it. He worked quickly, pulling up slabs of shale from under the snow and laying them, layer by layer, to make a front wall for the cave, and pausing frequently to peer around below him. He walled the lower end of the cave clear to the top, and then began to pack snow over it. He constructed a regular buttress of the snow, till finally it became like the top of the slope. Then, after thinking for a moment, he drew the carbine out through the open end and stood it against the cliff, just beyond the head of the cave, and within easy reach, and restuned his building, He was working very rapidly by now, breathing quickly and jerkily, and pausing briefly, each time he lifted a stone, to examine the moving but uncommunicative darkness of the pass. He left only a narrow opening at the head of the cave. Through this he tossed slabs of shale down toward the lower end, until he believed he had enough material inside to finish the job. He banked snow against the outside until only the opening remained dark, and then, after a last inspection of the regions below, worked into the little cave feet first, and drew the carbine in after him. At once he felt happier, less exposed and much better able to defend himself. Despite this new confidence, and his extreme weariness, however, he set to work promptly to complete the wall from the inside. The loose stone of this last portion of the defenses, without any snow packed over it, would let in all the air he needed. When every stone inside, including the three he’d thrown in when he first came up, had been set in place, there remained only a narrow gap at the top, no wider than his hand.
Then, the most important matter taken care of, he entered into the condition of careful attention to detail. He felt of the snowshoes, back under the ledge, to make sure they were in place, and laid the carbine upon them. He searched back under the ledges with his hand, in order to know everything that was in there with him. He found no openings of any sort, but in one place, far under, he came upon a whole stock of twigs and small bits of dry wood and clips of stone. Must of been a pack rat in here some time, he thought.
Didn’t know the little bastards ever got up this high. Or do those little chitterers, chipmunks, or whatever they are, collect stuff too?
While he was still searching out the bits of wood with his hand, he remembered the litter of stuff the match had shown him on the floor, and it occurred to him, like a stroke of genius, that he could make a little fire. It would give him light to eat by, and it would warm him up before he went to sleep. After that his body should do well enough in that small, closed space. At once he felt an even greater appetite for fire, for light and warmth, than he did for food, or even sleep. If the light was seen in the cracks of his wall, what of it? Nothing could get at him now until he chose to come out.
He scooped out the stic
ks and twigs, and also gathered everything he could feel on the sand under him and around him, even the little bones. Lying back against the ledges as far as he could get, he assembled all his findings into a pile between him and the front wall, and then chose from them to make a little pyramid on the sand, a miniature Indian fire. He lay still for some time, debating how to light the twigs without wasting too many matches. At last he grunted with satisfaction, and even chuckled a little, and drew the carbine out from behind him. He rubbed two fingers over the oily metal of the carbine, and then rubbed the oil off on a twig. When he had three oiled twigs, he laid the carbine back of him again, and fished out the matches, and lit one, and set the flame to the oiled twigs. They caught fire almost at once, even making a tiny, preliminary wisp of black smoke. He enjoyed another brief thrill of self-congratulation.
Very carefully, so as not to smother out the flame, he inserted the burning twigs and match into the base of the little cone of scraps. When the flame shrank, the beautiful light in his cell diminishing with it, he leaned his face down close to the cone and breathed gently upon it. The flame rose again inside it. It finally rose between two twigs, and danced naked, single and lovely above them, and the little cave was lighted once more. He rubbed his hands together in glee.
Lying on his side, facing the tiny fire and the new wall, he drew out his packet of food, unrolled it, and began to eat. He ate slowly and speculatively, his eyes dreaming upon the fire all the time, and at intervals he held his hands out to the flame, first one and then the other. He didn’t allow this triumph of comfort to destroy his judgment, however. Although his stomach, after the first mouthful of food rumbled and begged for more, at times paining him sharply, like a cramp, he ate only one slice of the bread and butter, and four strips of the jerky. While he was eating, he went over his directions three times like a man saying a rote prayer, in order that he shouldn’t forget them while he slept.
The third time, having reduced them to a simple and memorable formula, he spoke them softly aloud, "Turn right out of the cave, go to the end of the pass, turn left and follow the ridge half a day, turn right and keep going till you see it."
While he ate and prayed, he fed the little fire now and then, from the reserve of twigs beside it.
Once more the salt jerky taught him that he was thirsty. He remembered that he hadn’t even sucked a handful of snow since breakfast under the fir tree. He cursed himself for not having thought of this need before he finished the wall. Now he’d have to sleep thirsty, or put out the fire and lose all his stored warmth when he opened the wall, or allow a great deal of light to show in the opening, and lose most of his heat anyway. It was a complex problem, and he lay there for some time, debating it to no conclusion. His thirst increased greatly while he thought, and finally became so insistent that it drove him to act upon a compromise plan which would also be the quickest and least troublesome solution. He drew the carbine up into the head of the cave where it could be reached from the entrance, and lifted down the two top slabs of shale and quickly set them on edge before the fire, to cut off the light from the opening. Then, with one hand on the carbine, he rose to a stooping position on his knees and peered out of the slot he had made. He remained there until his eyes were used to the darkness outside, and then removed two more slabs and poked his face into the hole and studied the white slope under him and the dark and moving bottom of the pass. At last he lowered the wall still further, thrust the carbine forward, and slowly leaned out of his shelter behind its defending barrel. He was startled into swinging the carbine around, and nearly into firing, by a dark projection from the face of the cliff beside him, but he held himself, and then it hadn’t moved after all, and finally it became only rock.
Balancing the carbine on the remaining slabs of the wall, he began to scoop up snow from below and from the side with both hands. He couldn’t take time there to warm it into a more profitable ice-ball, so he decided to make three snow-balls, and melt them down when he was safely walled in again. When the three snow-balls had been made and set inside without incident, success led him on to an act of bravado. He continued to lie there on his belly on the wall making snow-balls, until he had a dozen of them piled up inside, like a pyramid of small, white cannon balls. Then, restored even more by his daring than by his success, he drew back into his hole, and brought the carbine in after him, and set the slabs of shale in place once more. Still huddled on his knees, he surveyed the repaired defenses, and spoke aloud and happily.
"Now, you stinking black bastard, I could last you out a week, if I had to."
He set the snow-balls in a row around the fire, to hasten their melting. He wanted to suck and chew at one immediately, light and unpromising though they were, but now, all snug and supplied in his shelter, he took pride in denying himself. It seemed a gain against all the difficulties of his situation that he should act without haste and only for the best result.
"Lots of time, all the time in the world," he told himself, and put a few more fragments of wood from his reserve into the little fire, and lay watching the snow-balls darken.
The cave was very cold again, though, and his hands were wet and cold from the snow. The violent shivering, even jerking, returned, and his cheerfulness was almost extinguished. It was alarming, with a long night in the cave ahead of him still, and another whole day of hard, watchful slogging, that he should exhibit such weakness. At last it occurred to him that he would get warm much faster with his mittens on.
As he reached into his pocket to draw out the second mitten, his fingertips felt something hard and edged below it.
Now what the hell did I put in there? he thought, and drew the object out. As he did so, he heard others rattling faintly below it. He held the first object down into the light of the fire. It was a little, crouching, wooden panther, not quite finished, but with the planes of the body blocked out enough to show the crouch all right, and the flat, serpent head, thrust forward in fixed attention, completed in detail. "Joe Sam’s medicine, by golly," he said, and then, after
a moment of consideration, "Late is right, old dreamer."
Finallly he said, "Well, I’m the one can use it now, that’s a cinch."
He set the panther up on one of the narrow ledges in the higher end of the cave, moving it about until it lay so that head and shoulders appeared in the light. It crouched there at the edge of its ledge, staring down at him, and the moving shadows gave it life and color.
It was just like that, he thought, and was obscurely moved that his arrangement had taken on such an uncomfortable meaning.
"The hell you say," he told the wooden panther, and added, "And you’re the only one will ever get in here, too, believe you me."
He removed the other two carvings from the pocket of the parka, and held them down to the light as he had the panther. One was heavier and darker than the other, and the whittling only started on it. He could make nothing of it at first glance, and gave his attention to the other. It was unfinished also, not even so far along as the panther, but it had emerged from the block enough to show itself on the way to being a kneeling Indian, a thin, young-bodied man, wearing only a breech-clout, and bending over an indistinguishable victim which he had begun to skin with a tiny, rough knife, meant to be flint, perhaps.
"A buck, maybe," Curt said, studying the uncertain victim. "No, by God," he corrected himself. "That damned cat again."
He held the carving farther out, and viewed it whole.
"Yes-sir," he said, "and he’s skinning the bastard." He chuckled softly.
"The real big medicine," he said. "The medicine to end all medicine.
"And that makes you Joe Sam, don’t it?" he asked the kneeling Indian. He chuckled again, as he surveyed the smooth, lean limbs, and the square face.
"Only about ninety-seven years younger," he said.
He set the Indian up on the ledge beside the panther, and viewed them both.
"Much medicine," he said, grinning. "A regular, damn Joe Sam’s Holy
Family." He was pleased by the wit of this definition.
"Old whiskers sure could whittle, I’ll say that much," he announced. "Only, like with everything else," he added, "more dreaming than work. He didn’t get it finished."
He remembered Arthur lying on the trail after he had rolled him over, so that he was face up, with his beard thrusting ridiculous defiance at the mist of snow and light above him. He was moved nearly to tears by the recollection, and rebuked himself without words for his previous censure, and then added aloud, "Well, what was the hurry? He had plenty of time, as far as he knew."
The thought of Arthur’s tranquil future so abruptly cut off actually brought the tears to his eyes.
"Poor bastard," he said. "Poor goddam bastard. Not a chance in the world."
His sympathy seemed about to overwhelm him, and even, possibly, to produce an uncomfortable return of his own feeling of guilt.
"Just never could learn to keep his eyes open, poor devil," he said, and was satisfied.
He began to study the piece he was still holding. He turned it this way and that, and held it closer to the fire, but still he could make nothing of it. There were only the first tiny, smooth cuts visible, like ripples on a wave, which did nothing but follow the natural shape of the piece.
"Hardly started," he said. He tossed the shapeless piece upon his hand. "Heavy damn stuff. Mountain mahogany, or something. Well, old whiskers must of had some idea about you. Get up there with the rest of the family."
He set the shapeless piece into an upright crevice above the other two, and regarded the completed arrangement.
The Track of the Cat Page 33