Authors: P.T. Deutermann
The Cat Dancers (28 page)
SWALLOWING HARD, HE SHOVED the match into the paper, and it caught this time, sending a yellowish cone of light out onto the floor and into Cam’s face. He kept watching the cat, which kept watching him. His coat with the .45 was ten feet away, so that was not an option. He’d seen the big cat, and the big cat had definitely seen him. He didn’t have to know much about mountain lions to know that at this juncture, after they’d been staring at each other, any sudden move on his part was going to provoke a similar move from the huge cat, with negative consequences likely. His heart had begun to pound and his face was probably a little whiter than it had been a moment ago.
The fire grew as the stove began to draw, and he had to back his face away from the sudden heat. Just that tiny movement, an adjustment more than a movement, summoned a deep, sustained growl from the corner of the room. He could see the cat’s face clearly, but not its body. Was it crouching, preparing to pounce? Or just lying there, watching to see what he’d do next?
Okay, he thought, have to do something here. He glanced down into the firebox and saw one thin log that was burning brightly on one end. He’d have to reach through the flames to grab it, but if he grabbed it, threw it at the cat, distracted the damned thing long enough to get to the .45, he might have a chance. The cat growled again, a deep-throated warning rumble, as if it were reading his mind. Those yellow-green eyes never wavered, never blinked. He knew it wouldn’t work. He might be subtle about reaching into the firebox, but then his reflexes would take over as soon as his flesh sensed the flames and he’d jerk that hand out of there, and then that big bastard would be on him in one shrieking leap.
Slap, slap, chow time.
He could no longer hear the dogs, and his legs were starting to tremble. He saw the cat’s shape change slightly in the deep shadows of the corner, as if it was gathering itself. Hell with it, he thought, and began to edge his hand back toward the door of the firebox.
He never saw it coming. One moment, he was trying to watch the cat while positioning his hand to grab for the burning log. The next instant, he was skidding backward, flat on his back, his head bouncing along the wooden floorboards, with two hundred pounds of wet fur and fangs shrieking into his face. The cat’s breath was foul, and two dinner plate–size clawed paws were clamping onto his head on either side. He screamed back, shouting from all the way down in his gut, vaguely aware that he had pissed his pants, his mouth only inches from those long, yellow curved fangs, and then the cat was gone and he was staring up into the rafters, still paralyzed with fear, trying to focus his eyes on something up there. Oh God, not another one. And then he realized he was looking into the grinning face of White Eye Mitchell.
“Ain’t she somethin’?” Mitchell said quietly, his eyes appearing to flicker in the firelight from the stove’s open door. “You oughta see her brothers.”
Cam was speechless after the cat’s pounce. White Eye seemed to levitate out of the rafters, dropping noiselessly into a momentary crouch onto the floor. He straightened up and offered Cam a hand up.
“What the
fuck
?!” Cam asked, trying to make his voice work properly.
fuck
?!” Cam asked, trying to make his voice work properly.
Mitchell pulled out two chairs, pushed one over for Cam, and then sat down in the other. Cam looked around for the panther and found it sitting like any house cat by the door, but it was still watching him. He sat down gingerly, wondering if he could get to his gun, which was still in his jacket pocket, which, in turn, was hanging about eight inches away from the cat. No way, and besides, White Eye saw him looking.
“You don’t need no gun,” he said. “You need to be listenin’ to me now.”
“I say again—what the hell is going on here?” asked Cam.
“You train dogs, right? Well, I train cats. How ’bout them apples, huh?”
Cam just stared at him.
“You wantin’ to know about cat dancin’, ain’t you?”
Cam nodded, still vitally interested in getting his hands on the .45. He’d shoot the cat first, and then Mitchell. That’s exactly what he was going to do. And where the hell were the dogs? He could still smell that cat’s foul breath on his shirt. He realized he was still shaking. Mitchell got up, went over to the front door, and retrieved Cam’s revolver. He came back and sat down, holding the .45 casually in his lap.
“You go in there,” he said, indicating the bedroom with his head, “and git yourself dressed for some snow walkin’. Warmest shit you got. Extra everythin’.” He glanced down at Cam’s trousers. “Dry, too. Night-Night’s gonna come along’n watch.”
“‘Night-Night’?”
“Go on, now,” Mitchell said, waving the gun. “I ain’t got all damn night. And leave that door open.”
Cam got up unsteadily and headed for the bedroom, where his clothes were stacked on a chair. On some signal from Mitchell that Cam couldn’t see, the cat got up and followed him into the room, where it sat down in the doorway and began licking one of its enormous paws, watching him. He heard Mitchell get up and go into the kitchen.
He changed his clothes in the dark and started putting on layers. Night-Night, he thought. He eyed the cat while he dressed. It was a beautiful thing, he had to admit, until it stopped licking and stared at him, one massive paw held motionless right by its mouth. Its eyes glowed as if lit from within, and they were not friendly. It’s tame, Cam told himself.
When he was ready, he started for the door, but the cat changed its position in such a way as to stop Cam in his tracks. White Eye made a sound in his throat and the cat turned away out of the door. Cam smelled coffee when he came out of the bedroom. The fire in the woodstove was roaring now, and there was much more light in the cabin.
“Set ye down,” Mitchell said. Cam sat, moving awkwardly in all his layers of clothing. Mitchell brought over two mugs of coffee, pushed one across the table toward Cam, and sat down. “I reckon everybody’s tellin’ you that cat dancin’ is bool-shit,” he said.
“That’s right,” Cam replied. There were coffee grounds twirling in his mug. “The rangers said that mountain lions were extinct in these parts.”
Mitchell snorted. “Seemed real enough sittin’ on your chest, didn’t she?”
“They were talking about wild mountain lions, I think,” Cam said. “Not tame ones.”
“They’s wrong about that, too,” Mitchell said. “Jist ’cause they ain’t seen ’em don’t mean they ain’t up there. Them rangers like that warm office. Only one of ’em goes deep back country.”
“And cat dancing? How about that?”
Mitchell looked him over. “You git around in the mountains any?” he asked.
“Some. But not normally in winter.”
“This ain’t winter,” Mitchell scoffed. “Not yet. I can show you what it is you’re askin’ about, but you gotta come with me right now.”
“Tonight?”
“Right now. It ain’t winter yet, but it’s fixin’ to be.”
“Do I have choice?”
“You want to know about this stuff, or what? ’Cause if you do, I’m the man to see. That part you got right.”
“I want that gun back.”
White Eye shrugged, pulled the .45 out of his coat pocket, opened the cylinder and thumbed the rounds out of it, and then handed the gun back to Cam. He dropped the rounds into his own coat pocket. “Leave it unloaded till you see what I got to show you,” he said. “Remember, you the one started this shit.”
“What’s James Marlor’s connection to all this?”
“Don’t know,” Mitchell said. He got up and kicked the door shut on the wood stove. “Let’s go.”
“Where are my dogs?” Cam asked.
“They run off when they got a whiff of Night-Night. They’s smart dogs. They’ll be back. Leave ’em some chow out front. And bring that coffeepot.”
TWO HOURS LATER, THEY were grinding their way up a narrow mountain road in White Eye’s ancient Bronco, and Cam was thinking that
road
was probably not the right word. Track, maybe. Mountain-goat trail. Trace? The vehicle’s four-wheel drive worked just fine, but even with that, they were making no more than five miles an hour, if that, and often much less. White Eye had produced the vehicle from behind the cabin park’s office, where he’d also restored the electricity. Night-Night loped along behind the Bronco with seemingly endless ease, and Cam was grateful that she was outside and not riding in the backseat, two feet from his neck.
road
was probably not the right word. Track, maybe. Mountain-goat trail. Trace? The vehicle’s four-wheel drive worked just fine, but even with that, they were making no more than five miles an hour, if that, and often much less. White Eye had produced the vehicle from behind the cabin park’s office, where he’d also restored the electricity. Night-Night loped along behind the Bronco with seemingly endless ease, and Cam was grateful that she was outside and not riding in the backseat, two feet from his neck.
He had no idea of where they were. Mitchell had driven about a hundred feet down the county road toward town, abruptly turned right into what had looked to Cam like an empty meadow, and then pointed the Bronco toward higher ground. The snow wasn’t that deep, but it was crusted with ice, which made a crunching sound as they plowed through it, the nose of the Bronco permanently tilted up as they climbed.
About a half hour into the trip, White Eye had taken off his jacket and draped it over the center console as the heater began to kick in. Cam had done the same, piling his outer coat on top of White Eye’s. And then surreptitiously, using his left hand, he had picked Mitchell’s jacket pocket to retrieve three rounds. He’d quietly slipped these into his pants pocket. He’d have to figure out how to get the rounds back into the .45 once he got his coat back on. He was pretty sure that White Eye meant him no harm.
And yet, he thought. Cam hadn’t forgotten the mysterious caller and the feline night visitor that little call had produced. Had that been White Eye’s work? How many trained mountain
lions were running around out here anyway? He topped off their coffee mugs with the last of the coffee and put the pot into the backseat, which was piled high with gear.
lions were running around out here anyway? He topped off their coffee mugs with the last of the coffee and put the pot into the backseat, which was piled high with gear.
“Where we going?” he asked finally.
“Catlett’s Bald,” White Eye responded. “Be there directly, long as we don’t hit no big drifts and the river ain’t full of melt.”
“What’s a bald?” Cam asked.
“Yonder’s some balds,” Mitchell replied. Cam looked through the windshield as the Bronco topped a rise, and the sight almost took his breath away. The entire Smoky Mountain range lay before them, wave after wave of moonlit humped granite ascending into the night sky as far as he could see from southwest to northeast. The nearest mountains rose up on either side of the track, thick with bare trees on the lower slopes but thinning out just below the individual summits, to be replaced with snow-covered domes. He knew from his maps that there were some six-thousand-foot-high mountains out here, but they all looked much higher than that from the vantage point of the twisting track.
“Bald refers to the tops, then,” Cam said. White Eye shot him a patient sideways look, as if to say, Yeah, dummy, that’s why they call them balds. Cam kept looking as they started down the back side of the pass, checking the side mirror to see if that big cat was still out there. He didn’t see it for a moment, but then he did. It was trotting along as if it did this every night of the week, and he would have sworn that it was watching him via the side mirror, too.
“So tell me about cat dancers,” he said, settling back into his seat as the Bronco nosed down into some bumpy snow. The moonlight outside was bright enough to create glare from all the snow.
“They’s seven of ’em,” White Eye said. “No more’n that. Don’t know who they are. They call themselves Bob, Frank, Jim, and the like, but the way they look when they say them names? Them ain’t their real names.”
“Young men? Old men?”
“A mix; thirties, fifties, ain’t no kids, if that’s what you’re askin’.”
“And what do they do, exactly?”
“First one come to see me fifteen, maybe sixteen years ago now, said he wanted me to find him a mountain lion. Called himself Carl. Early thirties. Big guy, hard, but not pushy about it. Guy you wouldn’t mess with in a bar. Had that look about him. That’s Carl. Didn’t give no last name, and I wasn’t askin’, seein’s he was showin’ cash money. Anyways, I told him they wasn’t any panthers left. He allowed as to how he knew I had one. That there surprised me some.”
“That was a secret?”
“Oh hell yeah. Illegal in C’lina. Legal over in Tennessee, but you gotta pay high for licenses and such. They get ’em from out west somewheres.” He looked sideways at Cam again. “I don’t b’lieve in payin’—taxes, fees, licenses, any of it—you understand.”
“Nice if you can work it,” Cam said. “How’d he know you had a cat?”
“Damned if I know, but he surely did. Knew she was tame and that she went with me time to time. Knew her goddamned name even. Said what he really wanted to learn was how to
track
a big cat. Asked him what he’d do if’n he ever caught up with one. You know what he says? Take its picture, he says. Surprised the shit out of me. I told him the notion was crazy and dangerous. He pulls out this envelope with five thousand greenback dollars in it. Asked if I’d reconsider.” White Eye chuckled at the memory. “Yeah, that was the word. Reeconsider his proposition. Shit. Took me about two seconds.”
track
a big cat. Asked him what he’d do if’n he ever caught up with one. You know what he says? Take its picture, he says. Surprised the shit out of me. I told him the notion was crazy and dangerous. He pulls out this envelope with five thousand greenback dollars in it. Asked if I’d reconsider.” White Eye chuckled at the memory. “Yeah, that was the word. Reeconsider his proposition. Shit. Took me about two seconds.”
“So there are wild mountain lions out here?” Cam asked.
White Eye didn’t answer for a minute as he maneuvered the Bronco across a frozen creek, shifting down into grandma when the ice crust broke and the vehicle lurched alarmingly. Cam found himself reaching for a handhold.
“Here? Uh-uh. Not here. Out yonder,” he said, gesturing with his head at the distant mountains. “
Way
out yonder. Told him that. No vee-hicles. Shank’s mare all the way. Twenty, thirty mile in and some more straight up. Expensive damn hike. Said he understood. Said there was more money where that came from. He had time, years if need be. Said he was in
shape for it and okay in the mountains, even in winter. I told him that was good, ’cause the best time to track a big cat was in the winter. Summertime, fall? You need kills and scrapes. And even in winter, you playin’ with fire.”
Way
out yonder. Told him that. No vee-hicles. Shank’s mare all the way. Twenty, thirty mile in and some more straight up. Expensive damn hike. Said he understood. Said there was more money where that came from. He had time, years if need be. Said he was in
shape for it and okay in the mountains, even in winter. I told him that was good, ’cause the best time to track a big cat was in the winter. Summertime, fall? You need kills and scrapes. And even in winter, you playin’ with fire.”
“Tell me why.”
“Big cats got seven lives and six senses. They
know
when someone’s fuckin’ with them, specially a human, specially on they own ground. ’Bout the time you get a good track goin’ on one, they like to have one goin’ on you. Trick is to know when that shit’s started, ’cause if you don’t, cat’s gonna take
your
picture, you get my meanin’.”
know
when someone’s fuckin’ with them, specially a human, specially on they own ground. ’Bout the time you get a good track goin’ on one, they like to have one goin’ on you. Trick is to know when that shit’s started, ’cause if you don’t, cat’s gonna take
your
picture, you get my meanin’.”
“How the hell do you know where to even start? This park is what, fifty miles square?”
“Not that big; it’s more like eight hunnert square miles. Somethin’ like that.”
“That’s still a lot of territory.”
“I got me an advantage, comes to scarin’ up a panther,” White Eye said with a sly grin.
Cam looked at him and then understood. “Night-Night.”
White Eye nodded. “Night-Night. Big ole tom up there in them far hills see a human, he’s gonna lie down and watch, but he ain’t never gonna show his face less’n you piss him off. But a female panther? Tom’s gonna sniff that stuff out from
miles
away and he’s gonna talk about it.”
miles
away and he’s gonna talk about it.”
“Then what?”
“Once I find one, we get the hell out of there. Cat won’t usually leave its territory, so when it quits followin’, I know where its home ground starts. After that, we’d come back in, Carl’n me, and I show him how to cut sign, track, and stay alive doin’ all that, so’s he can get his damned picture. Then I get my second surprise. I figger he has hisself one of them telephoto jobs, you know?”
“He doesn’t?”
“Uh-uh. Shows me this little damned thing, fit in your coat pocket. One a them throwaway things from Wal-Mart.”
“Not much range with one of them,” Cam said.
“‘That’s the whole point,’ he says. ‘I have to get close to use this. Real close.’”
“This is the crazy part.”
“Damned straight. I tell him, ‘You go right the hell ahead.’”
“What did he want you to do?”
“Find him a den. Had to be a female with cubs, ’cause tom’s don’t den up. Just the momma cats, and then only for a coupla months. After that, they hide the cubs with their kills.”
“And he wanted you to take him right to a mountain lion’s den?”
“I told him, ‘I’ll set me up camp a coupla miles away and you get to go creepin’ on in there one night and take yer fuckin’ picture, you want to. But I hear you scream, I ain’t ridin’ to no rescue until all the picnic noises stop and it’s daylight.’”
“Can you actually get that close?”
“I took that boy into the woods off and on for two full years, every time he could get out here to the Smokies. Summertime, wintertime, everything in between. Taught him how to Injun-walk, how to be hid and stay hid. How to change human smell into animal smell. How to listen. How to look. How to be still in one place—for hours if need be. How to
hunt
. You know what I’m sayin’? And I’ll say this—he had the natural-born sense for it. I’d’a swore he done it all before.”
hunt
. You know what I’m sayin’? And I’ll say this—he had the natural-born sense for it. I’d’a swore he done it all before.”
“Who are these guys? Do you know?” Cam asked.
The Bronco banged over a downed tree hidden under the snow, rattling Cam’s spine and precipitating a dust fall inside the vehicle. White Eye kept it going as if nothing had happened, and then shook his head. “Ain’t no tellin’,” he said. “Crazy bastards, that’s what they are, for damn sure. Deer hunters. Bored with life.
Sportsmen,
they call themselves. Sorta like you.”
Sportsmen,
they call themselves. Sorta like you.”
“Not like me at all,” Cam said. “I mean, I’m a cop. We hunt bad guys, but we do it with teams of detectives, technology, and prosecutors. No way in hell would I mess with a mountain lion or any other large wild animal on its own ground. I’ve never been that bored.”
“That’s just the word,” White Eye said. “That’s why they do it, I think. They was bored. Wanted them some real excitement. They was hunters already, but this—this was different.
Real different. Called it a challenge. Got fire in their eyes when they’d come out. Especially Carl. Kept sayin’
extreme
all the time. And I believe it turned into something else once Carl brought out the third one.”
Real different. Called it a challenge. Got fire in their eyes when they’d come out. Especially Carl. Kept sayin’
extreme
all the time. And I believe it turned into something else once Carl brought out the third one.”
“What was that?”
“Took Carl three years to get his first picture, ’long with fifty damn stitches on his back. Goddamned cat came
this
close—he snapped his fingers—“to takin’ his fool head off. This was out to the Chop. He’d gone down one a them mountain-climbin’ wires to get hisself level with the den, then swung hisself in to shoot that cheap-ass little camera. Cat went right at him, jumped the damn wire. They both fell fifty feet into a creek. Cat screamin’, Carl screamin’. Said I wouldn’t, but I come a-runnin’ anyway, used a rifle to run the cat off, and there was goddamned Carl, flounderin’ around in that creek. Deep December it was, blood all over the ice, and all that crazy fucker cared about was findin’ his damn camera, his back all tore up—I’m talkin’ the whites of his ribs showin’. I mean,
damn
! Hurt me to look at it.”
this
close—he snapped his fingers—“to takin’ his fool head off. This was out to the Chop. He’d gone down one a them mountain-climbin’ wires to get hisself level with the den, then swung hisself in to shoot that cheap-ass little camera. Cat went right at him, jumped the damn wire. They both fell fifty feet into a creek. Cat screamin’, Carl screamin’. Said I wouldn’t, but I come a-runnin’ anyway, used a rifle to run the cat off, and there was goddamned Carl, flounderin’ around in that creek. Deep December it was, blood all over the ice, and all that crazy fucker cared about was findin’ his damn camera, his back all tore up—I’m talkin’ the whites of his ribs showin’. I mean,
damn
! Hurt me to look at it.”
“But he got his picture?”
“Oh yeah, he got his goddamned picture. Coupla months later, Carl brings out a second one. Some common damn name. I forget. Bill, John, you know. Looked a little like Carl. Same money, though, so I wasn’t askin’ much about names. Trained the new boy just like I trained Carl. Graduation back out to the Chop. Anyways, I think these two turned the whole thing into some kind a test for the third guy. You want to be one of us, first you gotta get your face.”
“‘Face’?”
“That’s what they called it—didn’t count less’n you got a picture of the cat’s face from near enough so’s anyone seein’ it would fuckin’
know
that the guy takin’ the picture was noshit close-up.”
know
that the guy takin’ the picture was noshit close-up.”
Cam shook his head in wonder. A disposable camera was autofocused at eight to ten feet for the best picture.
They broke out of the woods and drove out onto a large meadow at the foot of a massive hill. Cam could just see the summit of the next mountain looming over its top. He
glanced at the Bronco’s gas gauge, but there was plenty of fuel, even though the vehicle had been grinding through the snow in second gear.
glanced at the Bronco’s gas gauge, but there was plenty of fuel, even though the vehicle had been grinding through the snow in second gear.
“Yonder’s Catlett’s Bald,” White Eye said, indicating the mountain behind the big hill. He was able to go a little faster now that they were traversing the open meadow, although the snow was deeper. They were running without headlights, and they needed none. White Eye aimed the vehicle at the left side of the hill, where there appeared to be a small pass between it and the edge of the deep woods.
“Fourth one got hisself killed,” White Eye said, apropos of nothing.
“Whoa. How?”
“How you think?”
“Cat got him?”
“Oh yeah. Me’n Carl, we was hid out on a ridge ’bout a half-mile crow fly from the den. Whoever this Carl is, he’s the boss man. We was out along the back side of Whittier Mountain. They’s a canyon back there, where the Bullet River cuts through. This old boy went in after midnight, aimin’ to rope down to the den ’bout an hour before daylight. He fucked up crossin’ a feeder creek halfway to the cliff, made him some noise. Carl never did hear him, but I did. And so’d the cat. This boy didn’t come back, so we went in around noon. Found a foot in the creek, and a hat full of hair.”
“And the rest of him?”
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