The Track of the Cat

by Walter van Tilburg Clark

  Then he understood also, that in his complete absorption in the presence of the cat, he had overlooked another danger. Joe Sam was out there too. He was helping the cat in its hunt, and it was his mind and his unrelenting purpose which had all this time made the cat seem so humanly dangerous. He had come up the canyon silently from the east, from the ranch, and joined the cat in its waiting on the delta of snow. Curt could see him too now, and was shaken to think that he had lain there so long, blind to the very most dangerous quality of his enemy. Joe Sam was dressed only in a breach clout, but he did not seem to notice the bitter cold at all. He had a knife in one hand, an ancient, chipped flint knife, and with the other hand, he was feeling over the uncovered rocks at the head of the cave. The great cat lifted its head eagerly, its tongue lolling out one corner of its mouth as it panted, to watch Joe Sam’s hand trying the loose rocks. There was no question that the two were working together. The panther was only waiting for Joe Sam to select the best slabs of the shale, and silently, one at a time, remove them until it could reach in.

  Joe Sam took hold of the top rock, and a queer, whimpering noise occurred in the little cave. It sounded very loud to Curt. Joe Sam and the cat heard it too. Joe Sam became motionless, with his hand on the rock. The cat lowered its head again, and tightened its shoulders. Joe Sam was looking down where the cat was looking. They were both looking right at him. Curt could see the thin, wicked, restrained pleasure in Joe Sam’s face, with its narrowed eyes, one of them half lidded, and looking away dead, but the other looking right at him with its wicked joke. Then he saw that the cat had only one good eye too. The one eye was fixed upon him, and it winked very slowly without ever closing, as if the fire inside the cat rose and fell in response to some slow pulsing of its strong and unpleasant desire.

  The courage-breaking whimper occurred again in the cave, so that the cat settled its shoulders down further, working them a little in preparation for a leap, and Curt realized that he was making the whimper himself, and probably couldn’t help making it again. A sudden, tangible fear ran out all through him, but especially up his spine to spread among the roots of his hair. At the same time, he saw Joe Sam spring back, grinning, and vanish at the head of the niche, and the cat sink down still farther, till only its one burning eye was visible against the darkness of the canyon. They knew he had come to the end of bearing his confinement, and they were preparing for his break. The whimper broke out of him again, more loudly.

  There was a change in his situation which he couldn’t explain for a moment. Finally he understood that the wall had become solid again. It closed him in, almost as if it pressed upon him, and he was unable to see out into the pass at all. He could see only one thing still, the cat’s attentive, slowly blinking, single eye. It was actually inside the little cave with him now. He raised an arm to shield himself from the expected blow, and knew that something else had changed. The arm rose quite freely. He was still lying like a cold child, with his knees drawn up, but he believed that he could stretch out if he chose to, and that there was some space between the shelving rock roof and his shoulder. It was a great relief to know that he had that much freedom of action.

  Never looking away from the blinking eye, holding it with his own gaze, as if he could thus keep the cat from pouncing, he began to calculate his chances. It felt good to be able to calculate them, to be able to think, to be able to make his mind test this and that possibility as he directed, after his will had been so long extinct in terror. The impulse to whimper grew weaker. He lay silent, watchful, and tense for action, while he thought.

  A second hopeful impulse, one that approached triumph, so little does it require once despair is broken, took place in him when his liberated mind informed him, at the joining of a number of faint, encouraging doubts, that the winking, which observed him from so near he could have touched it, wasn’t an eye at all, but only a coal of his fire, in the last stages of burning itself out.

  He was sure, then, that he was awake, although he couldn’t be sure at just what point in the events he had awakened, or what, of all that had happened, was dream and what reality. The lambent eye or coal was still there; it had existed on both sides of a border he was unable to locate. The big dinner, the warmth, the glittering light, and the contest with Gwen, had receded to an unquestionable and regrettable unreality, but this was not true of Joe Sam and the panther, waiting outside. He believed that their actual presence there, particularly Joe Sam’s, was to be doubted, but at the same time a more credulous and forceful part of his being insisted that he consider them real, and act accordingly, that only a fool would do otherwise.

  He lay very still, listening intently all the time, and thought about how to get out. There was no wind out there now; he was quickly sure of that. Instead there was a thick, oppressive silence of snow. His breath stopped occasionally, as he believed he heard the soft snuffling against the stones, but it was very faint, perhaps not there at all, perhaps just vagrant movements of the canyon air.

  He made up his mind definitely about three things: he must wait for daylight; he must trust to the carbine, not the knife, despite the dangerously crowded quarters; and he must make a rush for it, prepare in complete silence, and then move all of a sudden. That was his only chance to catch the huge cat off guard, perhaps to frighten it into a momentary retreat, at least to get time for a shot, maybe even two shots, before it could jump him. There was no possible way to get out by stealth. He was enclosed, as if by a dozen enemies, by his conception of the cat’s superior senses and powers.

  Despite this desperate conclusion, he felt much better when he had thought the problem out to a decision. The process restored his strength and his will considerably, as if A it were a kind of act itself. He settled himself, almost with a secure tactician’s enjoyment, to watch in the cracks among the stones for daylight, and to plan the rush that was forced upon him. At the same time, in order that he shouldn’t betray himself by clumsiness when the moment came, he began to work against the cold which stiffened him now, continuously flexing and relaxing all the parts of his body he could without making a sound, his feet and the calves of his legs with them, his thighs separately, his buttocks and his belly, his chest and shoulder muscles together, his biceps, his forearms, his hands, even his neck, turning his head cautiously within the hood. It worked well enough to help. His whole body was stiff and sore and slow to begin with, and so rigid from cold that he had trouble commencing the exercises, but as he persisted, he gained noticeably in warmth and flexibility, and his confidence grew in proportion. The discipline interrupted his planning at times, but by jerks and single conclusions, he got ahead with it too.

  By the time there was surely daylight between the stones, enough of it filtering through in pale, narrow beams to let him see dimly what he was doing, his plan and his body were ready. He had even reached the point of looking forward to the break, and had to divert a portion of his will to restraining himself, so that he wouldn’t move carelessly and give himself away.

  Very slowly, an inch at a time, he rolled over and got hold of the carbine, and rolled back with it. He drew off his right mitten and laid it down as if it were fragile and of great value, and felt lightly of the trigger of the carbine, to make sure it was set. He picked up the knife and took it, pirate style, between his teeth, in case something went wrong and he had no choice but in-fighting. Then, with the greatest care yet, taking minutes to accomplish the small change, he worked himself down into the narrower end of the cave as far as he could and still assume the position necessary to the surprise. The cat, naturally, would be giving its attention to the other end of the cave, where the smell of the man and his belongings, and the last little smoke of his fire, came out.

  Drawing his legs up against his chest as closely as he could, he worked himself around sideways in the cave, and lay back, hunched against the sloping roof and held the carbine aimed at the point on the wall toward which he was slowly raising his feet. In the final position, his feet direct
ly before the portion of the wall he intended to kick out, his legs and his body coiled back like a spring before release, he lay still again, and made a last check and a last exhortation to his courage. He had forgotten nothing that could be of any use. He listened intently, and believed that twice he heard the faint snuffling at the unsealed end. He grinned tightly.

  Distinctly, and in a cheerfully encouraging tone, though only in his head, he said, All set, Bridges, and then, very quickly, Here goes.

  His legs shot out so that he grunted with the effort. His heels, hitting the stones through the soft pacs, were bruised, and the blow jarred him all up his spine, but he didn’t notice. In an instant a wide gap appeared almost soundlessly in the wall before him, and he caught a darkly framed glimpse of huge, white flakes falling softly and thickly, and through them, dimly, of the opposite wall of the canyon, astonishingly close. In the same instant that the opening appeared, and in exact accord with his plan, he drew his legs back again against his chest, bowed himself over them, rolled forward onto his knees, and thrust himself, carbine lifting, into the break, with his back toward tthe shallow end, in order to aim toward the deep end, outside.

  So complete was his preparation that only the slight reservations he had maintained as to the exact position of the panther, and a sudden and tremendous effort of will, enabled him to check his eager forefinger. There was nothing out there; nothing at all. He could see the whole sloping buttress of snow up to the uncovered rocks, and there was nothing on it but the new, light, perfectly untracked whiteness, except, right below him, the short sliding trenches and wells made by the shale he had kicked out, and the scattering pock marks of the snow that had fallen with it.

  The absolute silence and the perfect motionlessness of everything in sight save the slowly falling snow were shocking to him, so completely had he prepared for a roaring report and a scream, and some wild, confused fury of action. He was stunned, for a moment. It was as if he had been smothered, mind and body, in a thick blanket of white. Then it came to him, desperately, because of the delay, that he was the one who had been tricked, that they had heard and understood his every cautious movement in there, and were leaping at him from behind. He swung violently around in the aperture, striking his head and scraping one knee and one shoulder, and, with sickening clumsiness, managed to get the carbine around and aimed again.

  There was nothing there either, only the slow, thick, sifting down through silence of snow onto unbroken snow. Slowly he relaxed, and as he relaxed, an unthinking, still faintly incredulous dreaminess settled upon him. Finally he leaned forward and thrust his head and shoulders through the opening. He could see along that whole side of the canyon then, as far as the falling snow would let him, and there was still nothing, not even the faintest trace of a dark movement or a track on the whole tranquil, derisive whiteness. It wasn’t like waking from a dream. It was like entering one.

  Finally, moving slowly, with a faint, chagrined smile upon his face, and a feeling that he had been observed by a multitude while behaving like a frightened fool, he pushed more of the wall out and let himself down into the snow. He sank into it almost to his hips, and stood there, with the carbine cradled in his arm, staring across at the other wall, which was much too near, and then one way along the canyon, and then the other. Without knowing it, he still

  held the knife between his teeth.

  26

  It occurred to him finally that he couldn’t stand there indefinitely, staring into the falling snow. He must get started for home. It would be uncomfortable to face Gwen without a panther skin, and to face Harold and Joe Sam when the cat had been black after all, and he had been compelled to run from it. But by now such considerations of pride had no power over him as compared with his desire to get home, to be safe, to eat hot food and enough of it, to sleep Warm, and to reassure his mind and steady his will with real, limited and familiar problems. The desire to get home, in fact, was the only positive force left in him. In all other matters, the strong, unanchored logic of the cave continued more powerful than white reality.

  He took the first step down, and sank still deeper into the loose snow, and remembered that he hadn’t put on the bear-paws. At the same time he realized that he still had the knife between his teeth. He removed it, dropped it into his pocket and slowly broke his way back up to the little cave. There he drew the webs out, and sat down in the gap in the wall and laced them on. He had to take off his left mitten too, in order to do this, and so was reminded that the other mitten was still in the cave. He reached it out, feeling a little disturbed, as he did so, to fnd the red eye of the mahogany coal still winking at him. As he pulled on the mittens, however, he put the nameless eye into its place in the practical scheme of things.

  "Even if there was something to burn," he said aloud, "it cou1dn’t start a fire with all this snow down."

  He took the carbine into the crook of his right arm, and slowly descended the steep snow bank sideways, leaving a flight of fluffy steps behind him. On the bottom of the pass, with his back to the cave, he hesitated again, and stood peering through the falling snow, first to his right and then to his left. There was nothing more to see than there had been from above. He resorted to his formula for salvation, only remembering it. His mind refused the effort of testing it over again, with nothing to choose between the two walls of the pass or between left or right into the one-colored wilderness of snow.

  "Right out of the cave," he recited, "left at the end of he pass, half a day north, turn down and keep going till you see it."

  He turned right, and began to drag slowly and steadily forward along the iloor of the pass, falling almost at once into the pace his weary but experienced body believed it could maintain.

  "Right, then left, then right," he summarized aloud; “Right, left, right," and was encouraged to have reduced his directions to something so brief and memorable. He continued to move forward slowly and steadily into the hypnotic falling of the snow, and to repeat aloud, at intervals, "Right, left, right."

  Then, all at once, he realized that he was beginning to say right, left, right without its meaning anything at all to him, just the way a drill sergeant might count for a marching squad, and he was a little awakened by a fear that he would forget which came first, right or left.

  "Right comes first," he said aloud. "You’re right-handed. You can remember it that way."

  No, he thought, with a touch of panic because he was so slow to recognize this obvious objection, No, you’ve already turned right. It’s just left and right, now. Just like the drill sergeant, Left, right; left, right. But he was stirred again by the increased danger of monotony in this even simpler count.

  Gotta make it real, he thought.

  He discussed it aloud, as with a companion who must be convinced.

  "Call Cathedral Rock six or seven miles north of the ranch. Say some short of half a day, if I’d done it on these damn webs. That’s close enough; there’s no way to get this down to how many miles. Then there was about another half day to the top of that first range, only I was taking my time, and then some, and it was only partly north, so that’s considerable less than half a day too. Say it was about a half day all told, at a good clip. Then I come south a day and some extra, faster, but I side-tracked and stopped quite a bit. Call it a day south. And there you are; it makes me only about a half a day south of the ranch now. Half a day north, just going steady, and I oughta be right about due west of the ranch. Then I got half a day left to get across to it. Call it three or four hours, anyway," he amended, and was pleased to find his judgment sound enough to leave a margin for error.

  "Three or four hours’ good daylight, anyway, just to get across to the valley. That’s time and to spare. I might miss the ranch a little, one way or t’other, but there’ll still be plenty of time to get in before dark. Another good three or four hours."

  He was elated, not only by his conclusion, but because he had arrived at that conclusion so promptly, and with each figure of
the calculation based upon substantial memories of his route.

  "Mr. Mountain, Mr. Pass-I-never-saw-before," he declaimed happily, "and you too, Mr. Goddam Blizzard-in-October, I got you outfigured. Thought you had me, didn’t you? Well, you ain't. That’s where the little old brain comes in. That’s the only thing you ain’t got, and it’s gonna be enough.

  "And you too, Mr. Son-of-a-bitchin’ black painter," he added ecstatically.

  The moment he ceased speaking, however, he was sharply reprimanded by that internal monitor who disliked prediction in vital matters, and at once he did penance aloud.

  "Only you’re not out of this yet, by a long shot," he told himself, in a tone of foreboding. "And all that’s going to get you out is slow and steady and keep your eyes peeled. Don’t you get to day-dreaming too, right under some goddam rock the goddam black bastard is waiting for you on."

  Having thus insured himself against the doom of the proud, he allowed another little burst of elation within him, but even that seemed too much like making a dare.

  "And don’t you go to getting all steamed up either," he warned himself. "Left out of the pass, north half a day, right, and keep going," he recited, and was pleased to discover that the directions seemed beyond any danger of becoming a drill count now. He repeated them once more, aloud, still avoiding a cadence by saying, "Left, north about three or four hours, right," and was confident he had them for good.

  And if it keeps up like this, he permitted himself to think, looking up into the silent snowing, so that the nearer flakes became black, like a vast swarming of flies, against the untold depth of the white ones above them, if it keeps up like this, it’s gonna get snowed out and give me a look around.