Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (50 page)

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.
 
"It’s
gonna look mighty different with all this snow down," he warned
himself.

"Yeah," he replied, "but if it really
opens up, so I can see any distance at all, see just one big peak,
for instance, I’ll have a pretty fair notion where I’m at. And if
I get a look at the sun," he added.

"Take it slow and easy, just the same," the
cautious self insisted. "You’re wore down plenty now, boy,
plenty. Take it slow and steady." He understood that the warning
referred to the little, sudden elations as well as to weariness.

"Left, right, and in," he said.

The formula began to repeat itself after all, slowly
and monotonously, to the slow swinging of the bear-paws. "Left,
right, in; left, right, in; left, right, in." Finally he checked
it by a direct, wordless effort of his slumberous will, and then he
was advancing in that same dogged, unchanging pace, with a mind very
nearly as blank as the world around him.

The floor of the pass began to slope downward before
him, and the white domes, of the timberline trees with here and there
the dark, agonized branches breaking out through them, appeared
around him and grew more numerous as he advanced.

Here’s them damn spook trees again, he thought
mildly, and then thought, And I’m going down some, and experienced
a faint revival of his elation because his reasoning had been
sustained.

The wings of the canyon mouth appeared, vast and
insubstantial through the falling snow, their tops invisible. He felt
that the trees were watching his retreat as neutrals, approving of it
as the performance of the cleverer contestant, although perhaps
mocking him a little too, in the dry, silent way of old inhabitants,
because it was a retreat. It seemed they had somehow been informed of
his boast and of his vow. They wouldn’t harbor the cat, however, as
they had the night before. The snow in the pass was too deep and too
light. The bear-paws had become a great advantage. The cat would have
to stick to the wind-swept heights and ledges now, and could be kept
at a distance by the simple expedient of staying where the snow was
deep. It might even be shaken off behind the screen of flakes, during
one of its extended detours. It wouldn’t do to trust to such a
hope, however. He continued to feel that the cat was
not
far from him, and this made it impossible to believe that it wasn’t
being guided by a sense of neighborhood at least as strong as his,
and probably much stronger. It was likely, indeed, if he was able to
maintain this vague but constant sensation of its presence somewhere
above him, and on the left, that it knew exactly where he was all the
time. This was no cause for alarm, or wasteful caution. The storm in
its third day had become his ally in retreat, as, in its first day,
it had been his ally in pursuit. Only he mustn’t get careless or
absent-minded; he mustn’t trust too much to its protection. He must
remember to avoid overhangs of any kind, and slopes where the snow
was shallow.

When he came between the great wings of the canyon
mouth, where the slope became wider and went down more steeply in
front of him, he stopped and peered all around, and then stared for
some time downslope and then, finally, straight out before him into
the falling snow. He believed that he could make out the ghostly,
whitened spires of big trees below, but looking straight out, he
could see nothing at all but curtain behind curtain of the falling
snow. There was a choice to be made there. The alternative had
occurred to him almost every time he had repeated his set directions
knowingly, and now he had to choose. Slowly he brought his ponderous
mind to bear upon the problem. Here he might either turn north, and
go back the way he had come, or he might venture straight ahead,
crossing whatever was there, and do a good part of his distance north
in the security of the Aspen Creek itself.
 

There was something to be said each way. If he went
north along the ridge again, there would be many stretches of shallow
snow, which would allow the cat to draw nearer, and to charge if it
got within range. Down below there, where the big trees had broken
the wind, the snow must be very deep by now. The cat would almost
certainly have to stay well above him, and follow him by wide
circlings.

On the other hand, he could see a reassuring distance
around him up here, as long as no wind came up, fifty yards or more,
while down there he’d be shut in by the trees, and if any cliff or
boulder or close line of trees did let the cat get near him, or over
him, he might never even see it, and certainly he wouldn’t see it
in time to do much good.

Also, he had come so far south that he couldn’t
trust his summer memories of what the region was like. He was
probably clear south of the lower end of the Aspen Creek Valley by
now, and it was a confusing country down there, full of little,
broken hills, all alike, and the timber thick on them. It was easy to
get lost down in there, even without a blizzard. For that matter, the
upper valley, between the two ranges, didn’t go nearly as far south
as the Aspen Creek Valley did, and the section south of it was pretty
well tangled itself, ridges and canyons slanting every direction. He
found that he couldn’t even make a general map of them in his mind,
and knew that unless he had the sun to go by, he might never get out
of them before dark. His margin of time was enough, if he knew where
he was going, but there wasn't any to spare for just running in
circles.

No, back by the ridge was surer, just as he’d
thought all the time. Even if the storm increased instead of
breaking, or the wind began to blow again, he couldn’t lose his
general direction up there. He had only to remember to keep the
downslope on his right, and he could hardly fail
to
do that. There’d be no mistaking the top of the ridge if he got up
too high, and there’d be timber to stop him below. The ridge and
the timber would keep him pretty near straight between them. The
simple pattern of the mountains up north, just the one open meadow
between the two ridges and the one lower range, would make a lot
safer crossing too, one he could do in the dark, if he had to. More
than that, if he stuck to the upper ridge, and the storm did thin
out, he’d stand a much better chance to spot landmarks even the
snow couldn’t disguise. There was maybe a little to be said for
going down to get away from the cat, but there was a lot to be said
for sticking to the heights to beat the storm and the darkness. If he
kept his eyes open, the balance was all for the ridge.

Again he was elated by the soundness of his decision,
and because it agreed with what he’d felt all along, but this time,
with the stability of a good start already made, he was able to
resist voicing his triumph. He said aloud only, "Turn left, go
half a day, and keep your eyes peeled."

He swung left out of the pass, climbed the gentle
incline to the side of the ridge, and began to shuffle steadily
forward between the gray shadow-wall of the ridge above him and the
timber he couldn’t quite see, but knew must be below him.

After a little, his mind began to repeat, in rhythm
with the webs again, the only advice immediately necessary: "Keep
your eyes peeled." He had gone a good way comfortably to that
count, before he realized, with a little, frightened start, that he
hadn’t been keeping his eyes peeled at all, but rather had been
entranced by the advice itself. He stopped and looked quickly up the
gray shadow, and then more slowly the rest of the way around him.
There was only the slow, uniform downpouring of the snow. He went
ahead again, but now drove his floating mind to seek a method of
preventing such lapses.