Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (2 page)

His face showed clearly at the center of the light,
thin, with a high, narrow forehead and high
cheekbones
and a thin, dark beard with a narrow gray streak going down through
it from each corner of his mouth. He straightened up slowly, and the
one color the close lamp had given his face became two colors,
weathered darkness to just above his eyebrows, and then white
forehead his hat had bleached all summer. He looked at his brothers.
Hal was sleeping with his head on his arm and his face turned toward
the light. His arm was out straight on the pillow, and his big hand
hung limply over the edge of the bunk. His wide, beardless face was
calm, and his tousled hair shone gold in the light. Curt, sleeping
with his face to the wall, was only a thick shape under the
red-and-white quilt, and a dark head on the pillow.

Arthur moved away from the light toward Curt’s
bunk. He was a grotesque figure, with his long hair thick at the
back, and his wrists and long, narrow hands protruding from the
sleeves of the winter underwear he slept in. His shadow loomed over
Curt, and then, as he advanced, grew shorter and narrower. He moved
slowly, and as if still in a dream. His shadow came down off the
rafters onto the wall, and dwindled there, and finally, when he stood
beside Curt’s bunk, lay only across Curt’s head and shoulders.
The shadow darkened Curt’s sleep, or the near presence oppressed
him. He stirred uneasily, and muttered thick words of protest. Arthur
waited, looking down at him. He didn’t know that he was waiting. He
was thinking about the mountain in his dream. It still seemed to him
that he should remember where he had seen that mountain before.

The wind turned down from the Sierra again and leaned
heavily upon the house and pummeled it for a moment, and then failed,
and beat off south under the eaves, and once more the faint,
melancholy blowing came after it. Arthur lifted his head to listen,
and then drew a deep breath and sighed and leaned over and put his
hand gently on Curt's shoulder.

"Curt," he said softly. "Curt, wake
up."

Harold, with the light shining in his face, heard the
voice like a whispering, and woke up. He didn’t move, but only
opened his eyes and looked at once at Arthur bending over Curt, and
after a moment asked quietly, "What’s up, Art?"

The wind was beginning to play under the eaves again.
Arthur, still with his hand on Curt’s shoulder, looked around and
grinned. "Awake already? Thought you’d need your sleep this
morning."

Harold grinned too. "Slept plenty. The old man
wouldn’t go to bed till we did. What’s wrong?"

"Maybe I’m just hearing things," Arthur
said. "You listen."

He raised his left hand from the wrist without
raising his arm and pointed to the west wall. "When the wind
shifts."

Harold raised himself onto his elbow and lay
listening. He was going to speak once, but Arthur hushed him with the
shy left hand. At last the wind swelled out of its fluttering, and
thundered across the house. It spent itself and retreated south, and
came again, less violently
and almost straight
from the north. The sound like faraway horns was in it, swelling and
shrinking in the gusts.

"Something’s at ’em up there," Harold
said quickly, and swung out from under his covers and stood up.

Arthur nodded and turned back to Curt, saying, "Curt,
wake up," and rocking him gently by the shoulder.

Harold was pulling on his shirt already. He grinned
and said, "Look out you don’t get a fist in the teeth."

Arthur nodded without looking around. "He was
fighting the wall when I woke up," he said, and went on rocking
Curt, and said, more loudly, "Curt."

Curt muttered, and struck loosely at the hand on his
shoulder. Then he turned over suddenly and lifted himself on both
elbows and stared up at Arthur. The down-curved wings of his big,
dark moustache made an enormous, grim mouth in the shadow.

"Huh?" he asked loudly. “What the hell
now?"

Arthur straightened up and made the little, left-hand
sign to him to listen, but Harold, sitting on the edge of his bunk to
pull on his socks, said, "Cows are bawlin’. Something’s at
’em."

But the wind turned up without losing strength this
time, lifting into the pines with a roar like a heavy surf, and the
creaking in the walls died away and there was nothing else after it.

Curt squinted his eyes as if he could see the sound,
and when there was only the gentle sliding of snow at the window,
said, "For God’s sake, do you have to wake me up to hear your
dreams? Go back to bed," and rolled under the covers with his
face to the wall again.

"It’s no dream," Harold said.

"You only hear it when the wind’s right,"
Arthur said.

Curt twisted over onto one elbow and stared up at him
again. There was no sleep in his eyes now; they were wide and
unsteady with rage.

"Look," he said, growling in the thick
column of his throat, "all I want is a little sleep. If you have
to hold somebody’s hand, hold Ha1’s. He’s hearing things too."

The wind turned down toward the house and deepened
again, and Arthur, with his head bent to listen, so that he smiled at
nothing between himself and Curt, once more made the little sign with
his left hand.

Harold said, "Listen now," and sat
motionless with one boot in his hands.

The long, melancholy blowing came down behind the
wind.

Curt was out of his bunk and standing before the wind
had lifted onto the mountain again.

"How 1ong’s that been going on?" he
asked, accusing them both with the question.

Arthur, still smiling, shrugged his shoulders a
little, but Harold said quickly, "We’ve only been awake a
minute."

"And doing what?"

"I thought you’d want to know," Arthur
said.

"You thought," Curt said. "The hell
you did, ever." He pushed past Arthur, saying, "Why the
hell wouldn’t I" and took his clothes off the wall and threw
them onto the bunk and began to dress.

"Get your clothes on," he told Arthur. "Do
you think it’ll wait for us?"

Arthur stood there with his head turned away, as if
he were still listening, but for something farther away than the
bawling of the cattle now. He was close to remembering whose voice it
was that had called to him out of the chasm below the cliff.

Curt had his shirt and pants on already. He sat down
on the edge of his bunk and pulled his boots on, and stood up and
began to pound the heels again the floor to get them clear on. He saw
Arthur still standing there listening, and asked sharply, "What
ails you now? Gettin’ Joe Sam’s second sight?" He picked up
the scarred bat-wing chaps, and, when Arthur didn’t reply, stood
holding them and staring at him.

Finally he said softly, "I bet it’s that black
cat, eh? That awful black painter, big as a horse, and you can see
through it? Sure," he murmured. "What the hell’s the use
of hunting a cat as big as a horse, especially when it hates men
worse than anything, and lives forever, and a slug just goes through
it and it keeps a-comin'? That it?"

He pulled on the chaps, wrenching angrily at them
when they caught. "Do you see the black cat out there, medicine
man?" he asked, his voice louder. He jerked the big nickel
buckle of the chaps to lock it. "So you’d like to go back to
bed?"

Arthur looked at him then, still smiling, but as if
at something else. "I had a dream," he said. "I was
just trying to remember . . ."

"You had a dream," Curt said. "He had
a dream," he told Harold. "Look, dreamer," he said to
Arthur, "I know what really ails you, if you don’t. You know
damn well it’s a cat, and no dream cat either, and you’re afraid
dear pussy’ll get hurt. By God, if I don’t believe you’d give
’em our best beef, and bottle-feed the cubs too, if you could."

Arthur smiled, and studied him with his eyes in the
way Curt couldn’t stand. "I might at that,"
he
said. "Slaughter for the joy of it is a thing comes back on you,
in time. It’s a matter of numbers. The cats were here when we came,
and still there were more deer than there are now."

Curt made a short laugh, and would have answered, but
again the wind turned down and struck the house like a slide of
earth, and the three men looked away from one another and listened.
The flame of the lamp shook and dwindled in an errant draft, and
their three shadows danced in changing shapes on the walls. The wind
went off crying under the eaves. The flame rose again, and the three
shadows became steady, but this time no sound of the bawling
followed.

Curt said suddenly and loudly, "Yeah, and the
Indians was here first too, preacher, and they’re goin’. What’s
left of 'em in these parts? Joe Sam. One crazy old Piute that thinks
he’s a hundred, and chuck full of kid’s lies, that’s what’s
left. And good riddance, I say. What the hell good are they? And the
same for your cats. You and your dreams," he said
contemptuously. "Yes, and the old man and his wonderful
Comstock; the good old days. You’re both the same kind now. Can’t
see what’s in front of your nose, but, oh, the good, old days.
Well, once I’m out of here, you can have your good, old days; you
can hand-feed your cats, if you want to, yes, and your Joe Sam's too.
You can marry your goddam dreams. Lay ’em every night and see what
it gets you, besides weak knees and whining in the morning. And don’t
worry, once I get a stake big enough to work on, I’ll get out of
here, too, so fast you won’t even see me gin'.

"But until then, by Christ," he said more
heavily, making each word count, "we’ll raise cattle, not
dreams, and we’ll kill whatever kills cattle. Get that, and don’t
forget it. You can breed your dreams later, and welcome. I’ll have
better things to do."

"Meaning if one Comstock’s used up, there’ll
be another?" Arthur asked softly. "A bigger and better
one?"

"You goddam right there will," Curt said,
"for the guy that knows it when he sees it, and has the
cartwheels to buck it. Is 1900 the end of the world, old
whisker-face?"

"It’ll do for the end of one, anyway,"
Arthur said, and then, smiling, and as if to stop the quarrel, "We1l,
a life’s a life, and you can’t buy more than one, no matter how
many Comstocks you own. I’ll stick to ranching the dreams then, and
thanks."

"You think there won’t be more, eh?"

"One kind or another, one man at a time, or in
little gangs, sure, plenty, I guess," Arthur said slowly, as if
thinking it out for himself, and seeing it as it would be. "But
for everybody? No. That was a kind of dream too, a big, fat one, and
it’s over. We’ve gone from ocean to ocean, Curt, burning and
butchering and cutting down and plowing under and digging out, and
now we’re at the end of it. Virginia City’s where the fat dream
winked out. Now we turn back."

"So there’s nothing left now, you think?"
Curt asked.

Arthur shook his head. "There’s us," he
said. "We can start digging into ourselves now; we can plow each
other under. But not so many men will like that for a hope. Even a
good dream, backed up, turns nightmare, and this wasn’t a very good
one to start with. A belly dream."

"It isn’t all like that, Art," Harold
said.

"You’re damned shootin’ it isn’t,"
Curt said.

"No," Arthur said, looking down, and
speaking as if to himself again. "Or it wasn’t, anyway. There
were good dreams too, little ones that got swallowed up by the fat
one. And even the fat one made some good lives, before it got backed
up."

"You’ll eat air from now on, I suppose,"
Curt said.

"Somebody’s going to have to," Arthur
said, "and I’m built for it, I guess." He grinned and
pulled out the slack of his underwear from his flat stomach.

Curt made the short laugh. "I’ll leave you the
air then. That’s a divvy I’d like fine."

Arthur let the slack of his underwear back slowly,
and peered at Curt from under his eyebrows, still grinning. "And
the dreams, Curt? Not the fat one. All the little ones?"

"And all the dear little dreams/’ Curt said.
"I don’t want anybody sayin’ I’m close-listed with my own
brother."

Arthur nodded. "Thanks. They’re going to
multiply."

Curt laughed again. "Well, you should know,"
he said. “I told you he’d breed ’em," he said to Harold.
"Every night he’s at it, and most days too. His own herd bull.
I don’t see how he stands it. But for now . . ." he began,
looking at Arthur again, but the wind returned, thundering, and he
broke off, and they listened. The wind gave way to the lull they were
waiting for, but there was no blowing of the sad horns.

"I’m gettin’ as bad as you are," Curt
said to Arthur, and turned to the pegs by the door and took down his
mackinaw, a bright red one with a wide, black stripe around the
middle and on the sleeves. He took down his scarf and his big hat
with the rattlesnake skin band on it too.

"Get your clothes on, will you?" he said,
with his hand on the latch of the kitchen door. "You’ve laid
enough dreams tonight to. . ." He stopped there and stood
listening. In the kitchen, someone was moving the stove lids.