Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (16 page)

Jumped him from the rock, Curt thought.

He felt an unwilling awe of the cat that would
conceive this trick before he was on the rock and then use it. There
passed through his mind, quick and incomplete, like the bird fears
again, many tales he’d heard of the cunning and treachery of
mountain lions. They were better stories now, more real, things to
remember and think about and learn from.

Looking once more up along the climbing track that
vanished in the mist and woods he said aloud, "But he changed
his mind about going back for breakfast, the murdering bastard,"
and turned and went down again to Arthur’s body. Propping the
carbine carefully against the base of the big rock, he knelt and drew
the body over toward him. It turned stiffly at first, all in one
piece, but then loosened a little, the right arm giving, and turned
against the stretched left arm as against a pivot. Tightening his
mouth a little, making a faint grimace of distaste, Curt forced the
left arm down, put his own arm under the head, and turned the body
onto its back. As it turned the legs twined on one another and the
head fell limply back to one side over the crotch of his elbow, and
stopped his breath. When he let the shoulders down into the snow, the
head remained bent back and turned that way. The hood was pulled off
the face, and the dark beard, stiffened with ice, jutted sideways at
the sky, with beads of earth and sand frozen into it and the mouth in
it a little and rigidly open.

It was as if this first glimpse of the face made real
what had happened.

Jesus, Curt thought, half outside himself, and with
something of the nature of prayer in the word too, Jesus, it even got
him. He conceived Arthur, for the moment, as a creature made up of
his dreams, and beyond any hazards of flesh.

He straightened the head from the shoulders, so that
the face looked up directly out of the shelter of the hood. Then,
kneeling there, carefully not looking at the mouth, he gazed at the
face above the beard. It was quiet and unchanging. The shadowed lids
were closed over the eyes, and the long, black lashes, like a
woman’s, lay curved on the high cheek bones. The lines of time and
thought had grown a little fainter already, the weathered cheeks and
bleached forehead smoother. It seemed, looking at that face, that
even violent death must have entered slowly and easily, like a
pleasant dream or a long, engrossing thought for which there was
plenty of time. Grains of fine quartz sand, shallowly sunk in the
skin along the left side of the nose and up onto the cheek, and the
faint red scrapings they’d made were the only visible blemish. Curt
reached down his bare hand and gently brushed out the sand. The daze
that guarded him was broken by the act, and all at once he was filled
by a rush of love and pity for the face. A few tears came, and he was
no longer able to see the features clearly. He
stood
up slowly, and at this movement, anger rose to help him against the
weakness.

"The goddam cat," he said aloud. He wiped
at his eyes ' quickly with the back of his bare hand. "The
goddam, son-of-a-bitchin’ cat."

He was a little relieved, and saw the face clearly
again, and knelt and carefully worked the beads of sand and dirt out
of the beard. He tried gently to close the mouth, but the jaw was
set, and he couldn’t. He knelt a moment longer, just looking at the
face, with nothing for his hand to do. "Don’t you worry, Art,"
he said. "I’ll get the son-of-a-bitch if I have to chase him
to the Pacific."

This oath, and the thought of the deed it promised,
released him. He lifted the body, propping the head in the hollow of
his shoulder, and staggered to his feet, and went slowly down toward
the tethered stallion. Kentuck nickered softly and swung away on the
end of the rope as he saw the strange shape coming, and perhaps
already felt the death in it. Curt stopped and spoke to him, but
still he pulled away, watching him with his head high, and the white
showing above the dark center of his eyes. Curt spoke again, a little
longer, and then once more began to approach. Each time the stallion
strained away, he waited again, holding the long body across both
arms. At last Kentuck let him come alongside, although he trembled
and kept his head high and turned to watch.

Curt lifted the body and slid it onto the saddle
slowly. Holding it there with one arm, he patted Kentuck’s shoulder
with his free hand. But when he judged it safe, and drew his arm from
under the cowhide hood, the dead man’s head swung down within it as
if it had come loose. Curt’s lips writhed back from his teeth, and
quickly he propped the head again with his arm.

After a moment he lifted the whole body down, moving
as carefully as if it had been a living man badly hurt, and laid it
on the ground. He removed his other mitten and stuffed it into his
pocket with the first. Then he carefully worked the cowhide parka off
the body, so Arthur lay in his dark blue shirt, with his long hair
spread on the snow. He removed his own red mackinaw, and took the
mitten and food packet and matches, and the cartridges and the knife
and its sheath, out of the pockets, and made a neat little pile of
them to one side. Slowly he worked the mackinaw onto Arthur, and took
off his own sombrero and unwound the long black scarf from around his
head, and raising the stiff collar of the mackinaw till it stood up
about Arthur’s head, bound it in place with the scarf, to make a
supporting sling.

He lifted the body onto the saddle again, talking to
Kentuck all the time he worked. The stallion, having stood for it
once, stirred only a little. Balancing the body across the saddle so
it hung there without his holding it, he began to work down the
tether rope to the knot, watching the body all the time, prepared to
leap and catch it if the horse jerked, and talking steadily to
Kentuck, though only with his mouth. When he got to the knot, he
untied it hastily, tugging and muttering, and came back up to the
stallion quickly. He felt much better when he could hold the body
again with one hand, while the other loosened the slip-knot and
lifted the loop over Kentuck’s head. He bound the body securely to
the saddle with the rope. Once he lessened the indignity he felt in
the position of the body and in the act of binding it,
by
promising again, out loud, "I’ll get the son-of-a-bitch, Art,
if I have to chase him to the Pacific."

He knotted the end of the rope in the cinch ring,
took the bear-paws off the saddle horn and dropped them beside the
cowhide parka in the snow, and tied the reins to the horn, leaving
them loose enough to give the stallion head-room. Then he stood
there, holding the reins at the bit, trying to think of something to
do or say that would make the trifle of ceremony he needed for the
parting. The wind came down, bugling in the rocks and whirling the
floating snow about him and the burdened stallion.

Final1y he said, "If I’m out all winter, I
will, so help me God."

That wasn’t enough; it didn’t fill the bill.
There was a long past it didn’t make up for, and a lonely journey
home. Nothing else came, though. He hadn’t got close to this man
while he was alive, and he couldn’t now.

He picked up his sombrero, but didn’t put it on,
and led Kentuck down the track to the place where the panther had sat
to look back, and a little over the edge. There he released him,
slapping him sharply over the rump with the hat, crying, "Get
home now; get home with you."

The big stallion plunged at the blow, but slipped in
the snow and sand and old pine needles, and catching himself, went on
down slowly, picking his way among the trees. The body lay firm in
its ties, head down on one side and feet on the other, moving only
with the roll of the saddle. Far below, the black stallion came into
a bar of clear sunlight, and for a moment the red coat made a spot of
bright color on the snow.

PART TWO

9

The noon meal was late because the mother kept it for
a long time on the back of the stove, waiting for Arthur.

Finally she said, "We better eat, I guess.
Everything’s dryin’ out," and served the plates and handed
them around.

They ate with the empty place still set at the table,
but nobody said anything about it until they were nearly finished.
Then Grace, who had eaten very little, and hadn’t spoken at all
before, said abruptly, "I wish Arthur would get back. It’s
going to snow again."

She interrupted a story the father was telling, and
for a moment he held his fork still and glared at her. She didn’t
even look at him, though, so at last he spoke.

"For heaven sakes, girl, stop your fretting. Did
you ever know him to get anywhere on time?" and as an
afterthought, "And there’s no telling when Curt’ll be back,
either, if he’s found something to hunt."

He couldn’t get his story started again, after
that, and the meal was finished in silence, except for his muttering
to himself, now and then, as if someone were arguing the matter
against him, about the state things had come to when the head of a
house couldn’t even finish a sentence at his own table.

At last the mother rose and picked up her plate and
Harold’s and carried them to the sink. She came back and picked up
the father’s and Gwen’s, and paused there, holding them.

"I’ll fx up a plate for Joe Sam, and you can
take it out to him," she said to Harold.

"He’s asleep," Harold said. He didn’t
want to say it, and he put his hands on the edge of the table and
looked at them instead of at her.

The mother didn’t say anything, but remained where
she was, holding the plates and waiting for him to go on.

"Already?" Grace asked.

Harold nodded. "I went up to see if his fire was
all right, before I came in, and he was asleep."

"We1l," the father said loudly, "that’s
a good sign. Must be the storm’s about over. There you are, Grace,
all that fretting for nothing."

The mother began to moved again. She carried the
plates to the sink, and spoke from there, with her back turned.

"You can wake him up, can’t you? He has to eat
something. You take it out, and stay there, and see he gets it down
him."

"I don’t much like to wake him up,"
Harold said.

"Don’t you worry. He’ll go back to sleep
fast enough," the mother said. She came back and picked up the
last things from the table. "In fact, he ain’t likely to do
much but sleep for a week now."

"I don’t know," Harold said. "He
looks bad. He looks sick to me. I’ve never seen him look so bad
before."

"That’s because Curt bullied him," Grace
said. "Showing off this morning."

The father snorted. "Don’t be a fool, Grace.
The boy didn’t touch him."

"Don’t you think he has any feeling?"
Grace asked. "Just because he’s an Indian, don’t you think
he has feelings?"

"Stop it, Grace," the mother said. "How
do you mean, he looks bad?" she asked Harold.

"I don’t know," he said uneasily. "He
was sleeping all curled up, like a little kid would, with his arms
around his knees."

"Did he have any covers over him?"

"No, but. . ."

"Then he was cold, that’s all. Why wouldn’t
he be, lally-gaggin’ around out there in his shirt-sleeves half the
night?"

"No, his fire was still going good enough. It
was good and warm in there. He don’t look right to me. His face
looks kind of too old, some way, even for him. Kind of all caved in.
And he was breathing hard and sort of moaning to himself, or talking
to himself, maybe."

"Cou1d be he ain’t over his spell yet,"
the mother said. "Just went to sleep with it still on him."

"He never has before," Grace said sharply.
"Did he say anything you could understand?" she asked
Harold.

Harold made a fist out of his right hand on the
table, and slowly rubbed the other hand over it, and said, "He
was dreaming about Arthur, I guess. He said his name two or three
times, but that was all I could get."

Grace sat staring across the table at him, with the
white, old look on her face again, but the father made a short,
impatient laugh.

"There’s nothing in that to get all worked up
about that I can see," he said. "He always looks for
Arthur, if he’s in any kind of trouble. Arthur’s the only one
will take the old fool seriously. Birds of a feather," he said,
and laughed again.

Grace turned her face at him, and for a moment it had
almost the sharpness of the mother’s when she was angry.

"Joe Sam is no fool," she said. "He
knows a lot of things that . . ."

"He knows a lot of things that never was, in
this world or the next," the mother said. "Did you wake him
up?" she asked Harold. "Maybe it would stop his dreaming."

"I tried to, but I couldn’t without getting
pretty rough, so I just covered him up and fixed his fire."

"Well, that’s probably as good as anything,"
the mother said, and started toward the sink with the dishes she was
holding. "Let him sleep it off, then. He can eat when he wakes
up."

"Good lord, such a fuss about nothing," the
father said. "Can’t we talk about anything but Joe Sam and
black panthers today? After one of those spells, the old fool always
sleeps as if he’d
been on a three-day drunk."