The Track of the Cat

by Walter van Tilburg Clark

  Then he knew what he should have known the moment he saw the eyes. The cat wasn’t alone. Joe Sam was here, just the way he’d been there at the cave. The cat was thinking about him with the mind of Joe Sam, only he’d been slow to recognize the look because it was in two eyes instead of just one. Joe Sam was on the south side of the clearing, right in the edge of the woods. It was impossible to look away from the eager and mocking gaze of the cat, but he knew as certainly as if he could see through the back of his head that Joe Sam was there, the same queerly young, smooth Joe Sam in a breech-clout, with a stone knife held ready in his hand. Joe Sam was there to block his retreat, to make sure the panther got a good open chance at him.

  The voice called from below again, though from much nearer, and it wasn’t Arthur’s at all. It wasn’t even alarmed. It called with thick, stupid cheerfulness, "Curtis, where are you?” It was the father, and he was drunk. The father had got drunk and come up here to look for him. He was walking right into the same playful trap Curt himself was caught in.

  At the sound of the voice, Joe Sam faded back among the trees and waited there, just out of sight. The cat was distracted by the new presence too. It looked away from Curt’s eyes and past him, and held its tail still and fixed itself in exactly the stage of preparation it had reached when the thick voice called. Its monstrous intention seemed to weaken with the division of attention; Curt could feel the concentration go out of the creature, as if it were partially deflated.

  His body became his own, and he leaped to his feet, bringing up the carbine even as the cat, startled by his quick motion, looked back at him and recoiled into a lower crouch. He fired directly into the forehead interval of darkness between the two great burning eyes.

  The report was shocking beyond any report the carbine had ever made before. A moment earlier he had been standing in front of a big fire that lighted the clearing all the way out to the trees. Now he was standing in blind darkness, with the carbine still at his shoulder, and he could still hear the last, flat echoes of the shot on the mountain above and a deep, thunderous echo rolling downhill behind him. He could still smell the stinging powder. Yet he was as astonished by the report as if someone else, the heavy-bodied man who’d held him down, had fired the shot, and bewildered because the shot had blown out the light in the clearing like that. The shot had missed too. The cat had leapt aside from a shot right in its face; or worse, the shot had gone right through its head and done it no harm. It was crouching there again, just beyond the fire hollow and a little to one side of where it had been before. It was still staring at him with the great, lambent, knowing eyes, and the pleasure of mockery which had restrained it before had almost completely given way, because of the voice and the shot, to that murderous urge. At any instant it would leap. And I shot right through it, he thought wildly. I shot right through it.

  The monitor abdicated with a long, internal wail, and he dropped the useless carbine and turned to run. He fell into the sharp, resilient wall of the boughs and crawled up over it on all fours, yelling, "Dad, go back, go back," and fell into the snow on the other side. He scrambled forward and up to his feet again without a pause. Someone near him was making tremulous, unceasing whimpers of terror and the sound made his hair crawl and weakened his knees. He could think only to run as fast as he could down across the star-shimering open. The snow was nearly to his hips and he plowed down through it clumsily, falling when he stepped into hollows or onto unexpected rises, but always swimming back up to his feet and downhill, with that crazy whimpering going on around him. He expected at any instant to feel the great, hurtling weight of the cat strike him across the back, raking at the torn shoulder of the parka, through which he was vulnerable, and the great curving teeth, with the hot wetness between them, close upon his narrow neck.

  "Dad," he yelled again, and once more, "Dad," as loudly as he could, not warning the old man now, but begging for his help. He didn’t yell a third time, though he was about to, because he suddenly realized that it wasn’t his father down there at all, and that it never had been. It was Joe Sam down there, ahead of him and just to his right, in the edge of timber. Joe Sam had called in the father’s voice to fool him, to get him to start running, or to jump up, as he had, and yell. He had done it to make the cat leap. He was waiting down there with that knife in his hand in order to finish the job himself in case the cat should miss.

  He veered in his flight to avoid the place where Joe Sam was waiting, and went straight down the white strip of the clearing. He knew now that the cat wasn’t about to jump him. It wasn’t in that much of a hurry; it was only Joe Sam, really, who was in such a terrible hurry. He could feel how easily the cat was loping down behind him. He could hear it panting and making little nervous, whining noises closer and closer to him. He fell again, and rolled to one side to escape the cat’s leap, and continued without a pause to scramble down on all fours through a yard of the drift before he could get to his feet.

  He could see the pale, open highway of the snow reaching far down ahead, perhaps all the way into the valley, and even in his terror he knew that he was lost, really lost, and just hadn’t known it before. There was no such long, open strip down any mountain all the way around the Aspen Creek Valley. He’d been wrong about everything. He was in entirely strange mountains; they might as well have been the Andes or the Himalayas or the mountains on the moon. The cat whimpered louder than ever behind him.

  He stepped down unexpectedly again and fell. For a small portion of an instant he tried to scramble back onto his feet, because he could feel the cat breathing on him now. Then he knew, because he couldn’t find even the loose snow with either hand or either foot, that this fall was not the same as the others. He felt himself helplessly turning a cartwheel he didn’t want to turn in nothing at all. Something sharp, and set in the whole weight of earth, struck his back and threw him over faster and farther out and almost at the same instant struck his right ankle and turned him over so that he was falling head down, and then, as if it had been started by the first blow, but had been a little delayed by the shock, there was a wild, long scream going down with him.

  It grew around him. It multiplied and became as twenty despairing voices through whose wailing chorus he fell headlong.

  PART 4

  31

  The hand continued to move Harold’s shoulder gently, and now he was sure it was Gwen’s hand, because it couldn’t be Arthur’s, and Curt wasn’t even there, whatever Arthur had said. He realized suddenly that Arthur wasn’t there either, now, and he was frightened.

  “Harold," Gwen said, softly, but with the utmost urgency.

  "Arthur’s gone," he told her. "Arthur’s lost in there. We've got to find him."

  His voice sounded too loud, dangerously loud, now that the blue jungle had stopped moving and there was no waterfall. He knew that he shouldn’t have spoken, and that there hadn’t been any need of speaking, because that was what Gwen had been trying to tell him. She already knew.

  "Darling, wake up," Gwen said, which was ridiculous, because he wasn’t asleep, and he hadn’t been asleep. Perhaps she only meant his confusion. He was certainly confused. He didn’t know what to do. He must answer her. She had known the truth all the time, and perhaps she could tell him what to do. That was why she wanted him to listen to her.

  "Yes?" he said, sitting up and turning his head quickly to look at her. "What is it? What’s the matter?"

  It was Gwen beside him, all right, but everything became more confused than ever for a moment, because she didn’t have on the blue cloak, with the hood up over her head. She was wearing the yellow blouse, and her head was uncovered. That blue darkness wasn’t around her, either. A melancholy, far-away sunlight was shining on her braided hair, showing the little gold and copper glints in it.

  “It’s no use," he told her sadly, and when he spoke, and heard his own voice quite distinctly, he realized at once why it was no use.

  "It was just that bedspread," he explained. "The blue
one we put around Arthur."

  "What was?" Gwen asked, and he was confused again.

  He was going to say, "Arthur’s dead. It was just the bedspread, the blue one with the unicorn in the middle," when Gwen took his face in her hands and kissed him.

  "Darling, wake up," she said. "You’re still dreaming."

  He knew then that she was rea1ly there, and the blue jungle wasn’t, and Arthur hadn’t been with them, because he was dead, and they had buried him up by the pines. It wasn’t sunlight on her hair, either, but the light from the kitchen lamp.

  "Yes," he said, "I guess I was just dreaming."

  The roaring of the waterfall became a new fire in the stove behind him, and the cold wind was blowing because the outside door was standing wide open. He saw that it was still dark outside. Through the open door, he could see the stars over the shed, and the soft, colored flickering of the fire on the snow in the yard. He was afraid something more had happened because the door had been left open like that.

  "What’s the door doing open?" he asked.

  He started to get up and go and look out the door, but Gwen came back from the stove and put a cup of coffee down beside him.

  "Your father had to go out," she said.

  He saw the cards still spread out across the table from him, and the glass and whisky bottle and saucer full of cigar butts and ash. He must have been asleep a long time, because there were many more cigar butts in the saucer than there had been when he’d last seen it. At first he’d thought he’d only been asleep a few minutes, because the fire was still throwing its light so far out there. Even with the door open, the cigar smoke was still strong in the kitchen.

  "I left it open to get some of the smoke out," Gwen said. She had her arm around his head, and was stroking his forehead gently with her hard, warm hand.

  "Drink your coffee, darling," she said. "I had to wake you up. I didn’t want to, but you were having a nightmare. You were talking in your sleep, and you sounded terribly unhappy-"

  "Yes, I guess it was a kind of nightmare," Harold said. "It was all right at first, but then it changed."

  He began to sip the hot coffee. The whole place is getting full of dreams, he thought. Half our life is dreams, and they all keep turning bad. I wonder if Arthur’s dreams kept turning bad on him too. That last one did, anyway, from what he said.

  Gwen went over to the door, and made a fan of it between her two hands, to get more of the cigar smoke out, and then closed it and came back.

  "It’s nearly moming, anyway," she said. "Your mother wants to see you. She heard you talking in your sleep, I guess, and thought you were awake. You better finish your coffee first, though."

  There was something else she wasn’t saying. She wanted to say it, but she thought maybe she shouldn’t. He could guess that from the factual way she spoke, and went back to her work at the stove, holding herself apart from him again, after she’d been so gentle about waking him up. He couldn’t ask her what it was, though, with the bedroom door open. Probably that was why she wouldn’t tell him. It was probably something about why the mother wanted to talk

  to him.

  He began to sip slowly at the very hot coffee. The dream still wouldn’t let go of him. It was funny how a dream as impossible as that could go on seeming real when you were awake. Probably that was just because Arthur had been in it. Gwen returned to the table with a cup of coffee, and sat down where he usually sat himself, with her back to the stairs. She sipped her coffee and watched him over the top of her mug. When she let the mug down, she was smiling at him a little, and not the quick, polite smile, either. She looked very tired, and the smile which was slow and gentle, the kind she didn’t give anybody else, seemed ready to turn into crying any time. He reached out his hand and touched her hand that was holding the coffee mug on the table.

  "Didn’t you get any sleep at all, honey?"

  Gwen let go of the coffee mug and took hold of his hand quickly and pressed it hard, and the tears he’d thought were so close to coming, really came, and blurred her eyes and made drops on her lashes. She blinked them away hard, and they fell onto her cheeks. She let go of his hand and took a handkerchief out of the cuff of her blouse and rubbed at the tears almost angrily.

  "Certainly I did," she said. "Never mind me. I’m just all mushy and leaky this morning."

  He wanted very much then to say right out that he loved her, and to beg her pardon for all the things he felt guilty about, but it was difficult to talk of himself, and while he was fumbling for a way to begin, Gwen spoke again, smiling at him in the same slow, gentle way, but trying to speak lightly, and speaking at all, mostly so he wouldn’t, he thought.

  "What on earth were you dreaming about, darling, that was so bad?"

  "Oh, nothing much."

  "Yes, you were. You frightened me, you sounded so scared. I was so glad you were getting a little rest, even if it was only sitting up at the table, and then you began to talk, and you sounded so unhappy."

  "Did I say something I shouldn’t have?" he asked, trying to grin.

  "No" Gwen said. "There was nothing bad. I just had to wake you up because you were in some kind of awful trouble."

  "What did I say?"

  "Mostly you were just sort of mumbling. It was more the way you sounded. You said something about Arthur, like you were going to cry, and something about a jungle, too. And you spoke to me, like you wanted me to help you. You said, ‘Gwen, he’s gone,’ and then you just said my name, like you were really talking to me, only you were scared. I couldn’t let you stay scared when you wanted me to help you."

  Harold smiled at her a little. "Poor Gwen, you can’t get away from it, can you? Even in my sleep, you have to take care of me."

  She shook her head at him. "You can’t get around me like that. I was in your dream, and I want to know what I was doing. Or was it really so bad you don’t dare tell me?"

  Harold hushed. "It wasn’t anything like that. It just doesn’t make much sense, that’s all."

  "You were still talking about it after you woke up,"

  Gwen said. "You told me it was just the blue bedspread. What was just the blue bedspread?"

  "Wel1," Harold said, "I was dreaming we were up there looking at this valley together, you and Arthur and me."

  "You’re getting me all mixed up," Gwen said, shaking her head at him. "What valley?"

  "I’m kind of mixed up myself now."

  He sipped at his coffee, and then Gwen began to sip at hers too, and watch him, so he had to go on.

  "We1l," he said, setting his mug down again, "it seemed kind of like a valley in the mountains here, only way up somewhere, and I’d never seen it before. It was this kind of country, though."

  He thought about it for a minute.

  "I tell you," he said. "Did you ever see Yosemite?"

  Gwen shook her head.

  "Well, neither did I, but Arthur used to have a big photograph of it, and I guess I made up this valley for that. It looked a lot like it, with high cliffs all around, and big mountains with snow on them going up at one end, and a big waterfall coming over the cliff from them. We were on a cliff a mile or so down the side of the valley, so the waterfall hardly made a sound you could tell from the wind in the trees. There were trees, big pines, down in the valley, and a kind of open meadow place right below us, with the river going through it."

  "It sounds like a wonderful place," Gwen said.

  Harold sat looking at his coffee and trying to remember.

  "Yes, it was," he said finally. "That’s why Arthur took us up there to see it. I know I felt pretty happy just looking at it, and because you and Arthur were there too."

  It was Gwen who looked down at her coffee cup now.

  "Arthur took us up there because it was so peaceful," Harold said. "There hadn’t ever been anything in there but the animals that lived there. No people had ever been in there. I was sure about that in the dream. Arthur told us so, I guess. I knew some way, anyhow. And I was kind
of all excited because Arthur was going to tell us something about it that would mean a lot to us. I don’t know just what, because he never got a chance to tell us, but it seemed as if I was pretty sure it would fix everything up for us. You know, as if we could live there, and there’d never be any trouble."

  Gwen nodded without looking at him.

  "Only I was a little afraid all the time that something was going to happen, because I’d never seen any animals like that before, and even in the dream I couldn’t quite believe they were real, so I was afraid the whole valley wasn’t real. As if I halfway knew all the time it was just a dream."

  Gwen nodded again, and looked at him. "What were the animals like?"

  "They were all white, was the main trouble, I guess," Harold said. He made a soft chuckle of embarrassment. "There were a lot of white deer down in the meadow, and they all had gold hoofs, and the bucks had gold horns too. And there was a white panther lying on the meadow too, with gold eyes. He wasn’t after the deer, just watching as if he was their best friend."

  "The lion and the lamb," Gwen said.

  "Something like that. Only they all looked like just pretty little toys. The grass in the meadow was so green it didn’t look real either, green as the cloth on a billiard table, and they showed up on it so tiny and white. There were white birds flying around in the trees too, and white snakes, with gold eyes, like the panther had, sliding around on the branches. But they all got along together."

  "Only then something happened?" Gwen asked, when he didn’t go on.

  "Yes, but I can’t remember just how lt was. It was something about Curt, I think. Oh, it was just a fool dream," he said suddenly, as if he meant to drop it because he had remembered something he didn’t want to talk about.

  "But what made you feel so bad?" Gwen asked.

  "Wel1, all of a sudden it just all changed. The valley got all dark, and all the animals and birds and things began to run around, scared to death, and then it wasn’t even the same place. It was a kind of jungle, full of animals and flowers and trees I’d never even seen—nobody ever saw such things, for that matter—and they were all blue, dark blue. That’s what I meant about the bedspread. At first, when I woke up, I could remember all that as if I was still seeing it, and I remembered there was a unicorn right in the middle of it, so I knew I must have been just dreaming about that bedspread.