Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (11 page)

Out on the bottom, and nearly up to the aspens, Curt
drew rein and turned back in the saddle, holding the nervous red to
half-wheeling within a small circle. He didn’t wait for Arthur to
come all the way, but when he was closer, pointed into the snow near
the willows, and led on up along the track.

Coming past the spot he had pointed at, Arthur saw
the snow churned and mud spattered over it, and bits of torn sod with
the yellow grass still rooted in them. There were many clearcut
prints of hoofs, like split hearts, most of them pointing down along
the willows toward the little bunch that was on guard down there, or
out toward the south wall and then down. A few, however, four, he
thought, singling them out, led on up into the rock canyon, and among
these, when he was past the torn-up patch where nothing was clear, he
saw the other track, the one like an incomplete flower, its four
petals only half enclosing the center. All the tracks were dusted
over lightly with new snow.

A cat after all, and one that makes tracks too, he
thought, smiling. And big, he thought, leaning down from the saddle
to look at the prints. Not so big as a horse, though, after all ....
Curt can use his noisy toy.

He straightened up and looked ahead along the trail
of flower prints. They came close together in irregular clusters of
four, with several feet of unmarked snow between the clusters.

Moving fast, he thought.

He peered across the snow toward the south wall,
which was drawing in closer now, but saw no tracks.

And he’s up there still.

The little mustang lifted her head, and would have
stopped if he hadn’t pressed her forward. She went on up, then, but
half dancing and making a soft nickering protest.

"You think so too, girl, don’t you?"
Arthur said, and patted her shoulder in front of the saddle.

A cat in a box, he thought, and only this way out.
Keep your eyes open up there, Curt. A bold butcher, too, to jump a
bunch like that, and run half of them. The god’s had about enough
of us, he thought, and smiled in the darkness of the hood, but at the
same time kept watch ahead, from side to side of the ravine, as much
as the aspens would let him.

In the loose rock under the platform, Curt’s horse
reared, trying to turn. He smells it fresh now, poor brute, Arthur
thought, and felt his breath tighten, and something in him dance
quickly, like the leaves of the aspens beside
him.

Steadying the gray, holding her up-canyon, he watched
Curt wrench the red back again and try to drive it up onto the loose
rock with his heels. It half-spun and reared again, refusing, its
hoofs stumbling and clattering in the rock. Arthur heard Curt cursing
it, and saw him swing down and put his weight on the reins, nearly at
the bit, to stop the plunging, and make a heavy, upward signal with
the carbine for Arthur to hurry.

No cat by now, he thought, if there’s any way out
of the trap. There’ll be tracking to do, and not on a horse either,
or I miss my guess.

He urged the gray up, but then the red plunged again,
dragging Curt, and trumpeted wildly, a shrill sound that flew back
and forth between the rock walls of the ravine above, and Smudge
reared and spun too, and Arthur let himself down into the snow and
dragged her on up by the reins.

"The goddam horses," Curt said, when he
wouldn’t have to shout. He drew the red down toward Arthur, and
held the reins out to him. "Hold ’em," he said, "and
by God, hold ’em. I don’t want to walk six miles in these goddam
boots."

Arthur took both horses again, standing between them
and checking their tossing with the drag of his weight only, and
making a low, slow patter of talk for them. Curt started up into the
tumbled rock, the carbine held ready in both hands. After two or
three steps, he stopped and turned, though.

"Did you see those tracks?" he asked
quietly, exulting. "It’s as big as a horse, at that: twice as
big as the bastard got my dogs; but you won’t see through the cat
that made those tracks." He turned and went on up warily,
scanning the width of the canyon ahead of him, and working back and
forth to find sure footing. Toward the top of the rocks, fifty or
sixty yards above, he let himself down and crept up, a small, moving
red patch on the jumble of dark rock faced with snow. The black walls
of the canyon rose high above him on each side and at the back. Above
the back wall, there was a patch of open snow in the timber, with the
black line of the creek coming crookedly down it into the ice-bearded
chimney. At the top of the shale Curt lay still, but only for a
moment. Then he stood up and climbed over the edge and disappeared
back onto the platform. After perhaps a minute, he returned to the
edge and called down, his voice enormous and unclear in the hollow.

"Bring ’em up. Make the bastards come up."

Arthur, smiling, shook his head a very little within
the hood, and moved up tugging the lines gently and steadily, and
talking aloud to the horses. With Curt standing in sight, to show the
place had been looked at, they let themselves be led now, though with
the reins stretched tight and their necks reaching. A narrow trail
made by the cattle went to the south corner of the platform, against
the cliff, and Arthur coaxed them up there. They scrambled on the
last steep pitch to the ledge, dragging him this way and that between
them. Curt went back from the edge ahead of them. On the platform,
however, before Arthur had seen more than Curt’s red
coat
down beside a darkness on the snow farther in, the red pony reared
and plunged again. Smudge nickered tremulously and swung away on the
other side, and they stretched Arthur between them. Curt stood up
quickly, dropping the carbine against the fallen steer, and came
running. He caught the red down with both hands, cursing him, and
then held him close at the bit with his bare fist and struck him over
the nose twice with his mittened hand. Then Arthur had to wrestle the
mare down again too.

When both horses stood, though trembling, and Curt’s
rolling his eyes so the whites showed, Curt cried, "Gone, goddam
him. But his trail’s as clear as print on a page. And look what the
bastard’s done, will you?"

"Did you see him?"

"N0. Bring her in," Curt ordered, dragging
the red across the snow-covered rock shelf toward the steer. Arthur
followed him, coaxing the gray. Half way to the steer, the red
refused again, plunging, and then the gray lifted a little too, and
spun.

"It’s the steer," Arthur said. "They
don’t like the blood."

"The steer," Curt cried. "The steer;
the son-of-a-bitch. Take a look," and jerked his head toward the
dark bulge of the south wall. Across the platform the snow was
trampled and marked by jets of blood, and another steer lay there,
its head bent up queerly onto the fallen rock at the base of the
cliff.

"And another hurt," Curt said, jerking his
head again, and Arthur saw the third, a young bull, backed into a
niche beyond, its front legs spread stiffly to brace it and its head
still lowered, on guard against nothing. Its eyes were dull and
staring, and blood dripped slowly from the cup of one nostril.

"Killing for fun, the bastard," Curt said.
"And running them like he was a wolf. He’s a devil or crazy.
And he picks ’em, too," he said bitterly. "Three of my
best; two year olds and the cross, and one the bull I’d been
counting on. And finished, by the look of him.

Arthur, seeing the dark coat with red glowing under
it, like a banked fire of coals, of the steer on the platform, and
the short up-curve of the horn, and then the curly, white foreheads
of the two against the wall, nodded. He knew how Curt had figured
ahead on the Hereford strain he was breeding into the lanky range
cattle.

"He can’t have gone far," Curt said. "His
stink’s in the air still, that’s a cinch. Here, take this idiot
again, will you? He’ll stand now."

Arthur took the red’s lines again, but said, "You
can’t track in those boots, Curt. And it’s going to snow again
before long."

"Won’t have to track," Curt said. "Not
far enough to matter. His trail’s fresh as a daisy. There’s no
new snow in it at all. We must have just scared him off coming up
here."

He went back to the fallen steer and picked up the
carbine from against it, saying, "There’s blood in it too. One
of them got to him; the bull, chances are. And he’s fed,” he
said, pointing with the carbine at the shoulder of the steer on the
platform. The hide was ripped back, and a shallow hole gouged out
with the white of bone and tendon glistening in it, and new blood
still welling out.

"If he’s that bold, he’ll be too bold. His
trail goes down the other side of the creek, and money says he’s
holed up in the willows."

He turned across the platform toward the creek.

"It’s a big cat," Arthur said slowly,
staring at the gouged steer. "He didn’t more than get started
on that. He must have had a long scrap with the bull, or been licking
his wounds before he fed. He’ll be plenty cranky, if he’s waited.
And it’s no ordinary cat," he added, looking at the bull, and
the steer fallen against the wall, "to break a bunch like that,
and run three of them. They’re no calves."

Curt stopped and turned. He was grinning, but his
eyes were narrowed. "I could half believe your black devil
myself, medicine man," he said. "Only it makes track, and
it bleeds. So I’ll took a look, I think."

Arthur shook his head slowly. "But for all that,
I don’t think he’d wait that close. If he’s gone down-creek,
it’ll only be till he can get up and over the side of the canyon.
Then he’ll head for high places. We made too much racket. You’d
better let him go, Curt. Or wait for him here. He might circle back.
You can’t go a mile in those boots."

"Is he a friend of yours, mister?" Curt
asked. "Sorry, then, but I’m still gonna look."

"Well, drag a deep track, in case it starts to
snow again, or the wind comes up. I’ll go back and fetch the stuff
you need, and pick you up."

"You’d like that, wouldn’t you?" Curt
asked, still grinning. " ‘I told you so,’ " he said in
a high, whining voice. "To say nothing of Hal’s girl to play
the loving priest with," he saidin his own voice, and chuckled.
"No, you wait here. I want to see, anyway. Then, if there’s
any going home to do, I’ll do it myself. So I’ll get what I need,
and get it some time this week. And don’t get dreaming about her
there," he added, and chuckled again. "I still don’t want
to walk home."

Arthur stared at him soberly out of the shadow of the
hood. Finally, when Curt’s grin was gone, he said, "I’ll
watch them, don’t worry. Get along, if you have to."

For a moment Curt stared back at him, with the little
flicker beginning in his eyes, but then he made the one-sided grin.

"Just see you do," he said, and turned and
went to the edge above the creek, and let himself down. He crossed
the creek carefully, rock to rock, breaking the ice armor with his
heel before each step, and went down on the other side out of sight
behind the aspens.

Arthur turned the horses and led them to the edge of
the platform so he could watch below, and stood there, talking to
them softly, and sometimes looking among the aspens or along the
north wall farther down, and sometimes out through the huge V of the
canyon onto the white meadows. There was no snow falling in the
canyon now, but the mist still hung over the valley, hiding the hills
on the other side, so the part of the meadow he could see was like
the beginning of a plain. The long, thin trace of the creek went onto
it, bending south, and at last in the edge of the snow mist, spread
into the dark, map-shapes of the tule marshes. Tiny black cattle were
drifting slowly southward in small clusters on the plain. Slow clouds
of white, like steam, blew across them sometimes, dimming them out,
and then fell away and let them show dark again. There was still some
wind out there then, though it was quiet in the canyon.

The horses waited easily now, making only little
motions of impatience, but he kept himself ready to wrestle them
down. The report of the carbine would be loud between those high
walls.

The minutes passed, and no report came, though. There
was only the soft blowing and shaking of the horses, and, when they
were quiet, the faint, continuous talk of the creek under the ice and
the even softer whispering of the aspens. Finally he heard the sound
of Curt’s boots. It grew louder, and then Curt’s head and
shoulders came up from below.

He saw Arthur standing at the edge, watching him, and
called from the other side of the creek, "Well, you were right
for once, whiskers; the son-of-a-bitch is gone."

He clambered up onto the platform, breathing hard,
his eyes challenging against what Arthur didn’t say. "You can
see where he got out, without going all the way down to it. He just
cleared the rim-rock and went up the north side."

Arthur nodded. "He’ll be back, sooner or
later," he said. "We could take the horses over on the side
toward the ranch, where he wouldn’t get wind of them, and come back
up and wait for him."

"You could sit till the end of time, couldn’t
you?" Curt said. "He won’t come back before dark now, if
he ever does, and it’l1 snow again before then. Not for me, thanks.
It’s early yet. It can’t be much more than six o’clock. I’m
gonna track him."