Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (37 page)

The wild notion passed, and he thought, though only
wearily, What now? Playing dead? It’s a bad joke, old woman. Or do
you just forget that fast? He went in and stood by the bed, but the
mother didn’t open her eyes or speak. Finally he said, "What
did you want, Mother?"

She opened her eyes then, and without moving her
head, turned them slowly to look at him. "I was thinking,"
she began, hardly moving her lips, but then turned her eyes away from
him and let them close again. "It was just a notion I had,"
she said.

"What was?"

"Never mind. It doesn’t matter."

"If it’s anything I can do," Harold said
finally.

She waited for a long time, and then slowly opened
her eyes and looked at him again. "I was just thinkin’ we
might keep a fire out front tonight, now it’s clear." She
looked away from him. "But it wouldn’t do no good, I know
that," she said. "It’s just I keep feelin’ we oughta do
somethin’."

"Well," Harold said, "it wouldn’t do
any harm."

The mother rolled her head a little in the pillow to
mean no. "You got more’n enough to do the way it is," she
murmured. "It was just a notion."

"I’l1 get one going as soon as I’ve finished
the chores."

The mother didn’t move or speak, and after a moment
he went back into the kitchen, and lit the lantern and roused Joe
Sam. Gwen was still sitting there bowed over her plate. She let them
go without saying anything.

On the way up the hill, Harold stopped once and
looked up at the sky, letting Joe Sam go on up the path alone. All
the stars were out sharp and small now, and the constellations
weren’t broken anywhere until they got down to the hills. He looked
north and searched out the Great Dipper, and then the Pole Star.

He wouldn’t even need the lamp, let alone a fire,
he thought, and then, Well, it’s not for him anyway, and felt his
weariness settle down upon him full weight again. He felt the cold
working into him already, through the house—warmth in his clothes.
It pinched his nostrils every time he drew a breath. If he’s still
out there, he’d better have a fire for himself, though, he thought,
and turned and went on up, climbing with his upright shadow the
lantern made on the snow wall of the path.

When he came into the bunk-house, the lantern showed
him Joe Sam, already undressed down to his underwear, and barefooted,
but standing by the cold stove again, with his hands out to it.

"Get in your bunk, Joe Sam," he said. "I’ll
make you a fire."

He set the lantern down by the stove and went over to
the woodpile and began to whittle shaving for kindling. When he came
back with the long, white splinters in his hand, Joe Sam was still by
the stove, but now he was taking off the underclothes too.

"You better keep those on," Harold said.
"It’s gonna be colder than hell tonight."

The old Indian, his face dead and away by itself,
went on taking off the red flannels. Harold stared at him for a
moment, but then thought, Have it your own way. Everybody else is,
and took an old newspaper from the box behind the stove and wadded it
and thrust it down in onto the grate.

Then he shook the ashes from under the paper, and
tossed the light kindling in, and four bigger sticks on top of it,
and lit the paper. When the kindling was burning, he closed the stove
door and stood up. Joe Sam was in his bunk and under the covers. He
was lying on his side, drawn up like a kid again, and his eyes were
closed.

Harold waited until he could put chunks on the fire,
and the old man didn’t move or open his eyes. When the chunks were
burning too, Harold picked up the lantern and went out. In a slow,
tired walk that was still perfectly regular, so it made a monotony in
his mind too, he went down the hill and past the house and out across
the yard, all broken into white peaks and walls and long black
shadows by the lantern moving through the work of the shovels and the
drag. He did the chores in the same dull, steady way, his mind hardly
taking hold on anything, and his body working by habit. He broke the
ice on the corral trough and forked hay out for the horses the last
thing, and then, still walking with his legs only, climbed back up to
the woodpile and got his axe. Carrying the axe and the lantern in the
same hand, he went down once more, and out of the yard to the south,
in the track the drag had made. Where the track curved away east on
the rise, he broke through the wall of snow it had left and went
floundering on up through the loose snow above until he came into the
big brush the quail liked. He stamped a circle firm in the snow
there, and set the lantern at the side of it. Then he just stood
there resting for a while, looking up at the vast dome of stars over
the glimmering valley and the ghostly mountains that closed it in,
and down at the brighter, yellow spark that was the bunk-room window.
The cold began to work into him again, and far up in the northeast,
toward the pass, a coyote cried, small and quavering and desolate.
Something in him cried back to it so much in the same voice it made
him uneasy. When it happened a second time, he shook himself awake.

He moved out beyond the circle and began to knock the
snow out of the brush with the axe, and to kick it away from the
stems. When he’d gone as far as the lantern would let him see, he
began to hack at the twisted stems of the brush he had cleared. The
stems sprang back from the blows, making the axe jump so that his
hands tingled, and sometimes it took half a dozen strokes to cut
through. He began to strike harder, and to flare with rage when a
bush resisted him too long.

All right, he thought, if you want a fire, I’ll
make you a fire that’ll show to Oregon. There’s nobody to see
your goddam fire, but what do we care about a little thing like that.
We’ll have a real fire. We’ll burn every goddam bush on the hill.

"Never let it be said," he muttered,
feeling the sweat beginning to come on his face, even in that sharp
cold, "that a Bridges ever did anything in a small way, even if
the small way would be better. Whatever it is, do it big, and do it
as fast as you can."

He worked faster, grunting every time he struck. Each
time a bush fell or leapt away into the snow, he caught it up and
threw it fiercely back into the circle where the lantern was.

"Why not burn the damn haystack‘?" he
growled. "Hell, we’re no pikers," he muttered. "Burn
the sheds, burn the house. Think what a light that’d make for the
coyotes to see."

Later, when his lips were curled back. and his breath
was hissing in his teeth, he gasped, "It’s Curt’s fire. Do
it Curt’s way."

Three times he worked out of the farthest reach of
the light, and each time he moved the lantern to another side of the
circle. When the pile of brush filled the whole circle and was as
tall as he was, he rested, bent over and leaning on the axe handle.
Little lights that didn’t come from the lantern danced in the night
where he looked, like the stars come down and whirling. He closed his
eyes, and they were still there. He waited until they slowed down,
and became fewer, and darkened. Then his breath was coming slower
too, and not so much like sobs. He could feel the sweat starting
under his armpits now, and running down over his ribs, tickling them.
He opened his eyes and looked at the pile of brush.

"Even for Curt, that would do," he said.

He still rested, bent over the axe, until the pain in
his side was easier and he could breathe with his mouth closed again.
The temper went out of him too, while he waited.

"Jeez," he said softly. "Watch it,
boy. It’s in you too."

Then he saw the whole performance the way it would
have looked to someone else, to Arthur, for instance, that rage of
cutting in a little puddle of lantern light, and with the stars there
over it all the time, and the big, cold, dark silence of the valley
around it. He looked up at the stars and made a little, one-sided
grin, and chuckled softly.

"All right, Art," he said. "Have it
your way."

He stood the axe down in the snow by the lantern, and
began to hook the cut brush together by its branches. When he had as
much in the bunch as he thought would hold, he towed it down into the
track of the drag, and along the track into the yard, and across the
yard into the center of the big whorl the drag had made turning
around at the north end. He made eight trips that way, and then one
more to collect the brush that had come loose along the track. He
stacked all the brush into one big pile again, in the center of the
whorl, and left the lantern beside it, and took the axe back up to
the woodpile. He brought four of the cord-cut timbers down from the
woodpile and leaned them on end against the brush. He kept on,
stubbornly, but very slowly now, carrying down timbers and standing
them against the brush until they made a close, tall tepee over it.
Even then he didn’t stop, though he could only carry the timbers
two at a time now. He built a stack of them over against the snow
wall of the circle. Orion was up over the sheds before he finally
stopped to rest once more. He stood looking down at the stack. He had
no feeling about what he was doing now, and his thoughts about it
came slowly and separately, and had no force.

"That’ll hold it till daylight," he said.

It would start better with kerosene on it, he
thought, but then thought, It’s in the store room. I’d have to go
in the kitchen again.

Finally he picked up the lantern and went slowly down
to the sheds and around to the lumber room. In the lumber room, he
broke up some light boards into kindling, and took them in his arm
with a pile of old newspapers from the bench. He started to pick up a
bucketful of the black oil they used to waterproof the fence posts
and poles where they went into the ground. Then he thought of the
lantern. He laid the papers and kindling on the bench and fastened
the lantem to his belt. Then he picked up the papers and kindling
again, and took the bucket of oil in his other hand, and went back to
the pile of brush and timber. He thought carefully about each little
act now. He wadded the paper and pushed it under the brush in one
place, and pushed the kindling in on top of it. Then he poured some
of the oil through the brush onto the paper and kindling. Finally he
went slowly around the whole pile, splashing the oil in between the
timbers until the bucket was empty. He carried the bucket to the edge
of the circle, where the track went out of it that passed the house,
and set it down as carefully as if it were made of glass. When he
straightened up again, he caught his breath for a moment, because
Gwen was standing there, so close she could have touched him. He
couldn’t see her face at all in the hood.

"I didn’t see you there," he said.

"I haven’t been here very long," she
said. "I didn’t know if you had any matches." She gave
him the matches she was holding. "I made some fresh coffee,"
she said.

"That’s good," he said, but then turned
away from her at once, because he was afraid he was going to cry. He
was so tired it made him want to cry to think of her making the
coffee for him. He went back to the pile of brush and timbers, and
squatted in front of the place where he’d put the paper and
kindling in. He scratched a match on the nearest timber, held it in
his cupped hand until the flame was steady, and then slowly put it in
until the tip of the flame touched the oily paper. For an instant the
dame shrank, and only tiny wisps of quick, black smoke went up from
it. Then there was a sudden little gasping explosion, and a dark red
flame leapt up, making a cloud of black smoke. The flame broke into
many flames over the surface of the oily paper, and he stood up and
moved back from the pile. The flames drew together and sucked up into
the brush. The big flame began to roar, and the brush hissed where
there was still snow on it. Then a thin, nervous crackling began. The
flame brightened and rushed up into the peak of the tepee, and spread
quickly through its base, mostly white and noisy, but breaking out in
a new, small explosion and another murky red fire every time it came
to oil again.

Harold picked up the lantern and moved back into the
drag lane, where Gwen was. They stood there together, not looking at
each other, but only watching the fire grow. After a few minutes the
flames were bannering high out of the peak of the cone, and the
slumping and crashing of settling began inside, where the brush was
burned away to fibers like glowing wicks that curled and broke off
and winked out. The banks of the snow wall began to sink a little and
run in the heat. The waving, colored light spread over the snow
beyond the circle, and made phantoms that danced along the walls of
the house too quickly to take clear shape. For a time, while the
blaze was highest, the light on the tower window made it look as if
there was a raging tire inside the house too. Only the brightest
stars, out around the edges, on the hills, showed beyond the glare.
Turning once to look at the fire in the window, Harold saw
that
the kitchen door was open, and the figure of the mother was standing
in it against the lamplight.

When the timbers had sunk over each other, burning
separately in many places, and the column of fire in the center was
slower and uncertain, he went into the circle again, and walked
slowly around, prodding the timbers in with the heel of his boot.
When the flame in the center was single and steady once more, he came
back and picked up the lantern.