Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (39 page)

"Kill black painter," Joe Sam insisted.
"Black painter kill Arthur." He was beginning to shake now.
The shaking was in his voice.

Harold squatted and thrust the blade of the knife
through the hoof packed snow into the dung and earth of the corral,
and worked it there to clean it. Then he rubbed the handle with snow
too, and cleaned his hands in it, and stood up. He wiped the knife on
his jeans, closed it, and stood tossing it slowly on the palm of his
hand and looking at Joe Sam.

"It was no black painter," he said finally,
"and you know it. It was Kentuck. You knifed Kentuck. Why did
you do it?"

"Black painter," Joe Sam said again, but
now without conviction. His teeth began to chatter, and he hunched
himself a little.

He knew, all right, Harold thought. Because it was
Curt’s horse, maybe? The one that made him dodge?

"Harold, what is it?" Gwen called.

"He was knifing the black stud. Curt’s."

"Oh, the poor horse. Why?" She was coming
out to them now.

"Wait a minute," Harold called. "We’re
coming."

"Black painter not dead," Joe Sam said
mournfully. "Not kill. You stop."

Or did he know? Harold thought. How can you guess
what he sees? He slipped the knife into the pocket of his jeans, and
took off his shirt and held it out to Joe Sam. "Here, put this
on."

The old Indian suddenly shook so violently he could
hardly stand, but made no move to take the shirt. "Arthur give
me," he pleaded between chattering teeth.

"All right," Harold said. "I’ll give
it back to you. But you have to get some sleep first. Get up in the
bunk-house and get warm."

He held out the shirt again, but the old man still
just stood there, his head bowed and his body jerking, and he had to
put the shirt on him. Then he took his arm, feeling how thin it was
in the big sleeve of the shirt, like a starving child’s.

"Come on, old man," he said gently. "Get
to bed now. Get warm."

Joe Sam took the first step with him, but then he
made a little, whimpering sound, and sagged forward, and Harold had
to take him up in his arms. He was astonishingly light.

Old bird bones, Harold thought. Dried out with age,
or burned out with seeing things. His pride weighed more than he did,
and I’ve robbed him of it. He walked toward the gate. Gwen came to
meet him quickly, peering at Joe Sam, and asking, "Is he hurt,
Hal?"

"I don’t think so. Worn out and half-frozen, I
guess. And the fit’s off him. That knocks him out sometimes. Let
the bars down, would you, please?"

Gwen hurried ahead and let the poles down at one end,
and Harold went through with his burden.

"By rights it’s the horse I ought to look at
first," he said.

Gwen, raising the bars again, asked, "Is he hurt
bad?"

"I don’t know yet, but it was no fun for him.
The old fool had Arthur’s knife."

Gwen hesitated, with the top pole still in her hands.

"Don’t go in there," Harold said. "He’s
crazy afraid still. I’ll be back as quick as I can." He
started through the tunnel.

Gwen slid the last bar into its slot and followed
him, carrying the rifle.

"Can I help?"

"You could get the lantern, if you would, and a
halter from the harness room. And get a coat on too."

"How about some hot water and rags?"

"We’ll need them, I guess. And carbolic too.
It’s on the window ledge in the harness room."

Where the drag line crossed in front of the house, he
turned and went up the hill to the bunk-house. Although he was
shivering himself now, he had to go slowly, digging his toes in,
because the cold had made the path glassy. On the level in front of
the bunk-house, the snow squealed under his feet. He raised Joe Sam
higher in his arms, sprung the latch with the hand that was under his
shoulders, and pushed the door open with his knee. He crossed the
room and laid Joe Sam down in his bunk. Then he closed the door,
lighted the lamp and came back to the old man. He took the big shirt
off him, worked him into his own red flannels and got him under the
covers. At once Joe Sam drew himself together, hugging his knees.
Harold stood looking down at him while he put on his shirt again. Joe
Sam was still shivering and breathing jerkily. His eyes were closed,
and his face, half veiled by his long hair, looked tight and hollowed
as an old skull.

No possum this time, Harold thought, It’s done, and
there’s not too much between him and being dead.

He built the fire up again, and brought the top quilt
from his own bunk and laid it over Joe Sam too. Then he took
Artl1ur’s knife out of his pocket, and stood bouncing it a little
on his hand while he looked down at the old, secret face. Finally he
leaned over, turned back the covers, and pressed the knife in between
Joe Sam’s hands and knees. The right hand closed around the knife,
and when Harold had pulled the covers up again, Joe Sam sighed,
letting go of something in him, and loosened under the covers, as if
he had caved in. But then his breathing began again, slow and even
and quiet, and the little fear that had started in Harold thinned
away to nothing. He crossed to the lamp and blew it out, and came
back through the imps of firelight to the door. He looked at Joe Sam
once more, and went out, and closed the door softly. From the step,
he saw the lantern, like a big, soft star, going into the tunnel
between the sheds, and he hurried going down, as
much as he could on the slick snow.

When he came into the tunnel, he saw Gwen already
inside the corral gate, but waiting there uncertainly, and when he
was closer, he saw the big stallion still in the center of the
corral, watching her with his head lowered. His eyes shone hollowly
in the lantern light, as if from a burning inside him.

Harold crawled between the bars and took the rope
halter from Gwen’s hand.

"Don’t get too close," he said. "He
doesn’t know you."

He moved out slowly toward the stallion. It waited
quietly, only lifting its head higher to watch when he was close.
When he was beside it, though, and raised a hand to touch the bulging
shoulder, the stallion flinched away. He spoke to it softly and
steadily, and after a moment, still murmuring, moved to it again.
This time Kentuck bore his touch, only starting a little at first,
and then trembling. Harold worked the halter on and clicked the snap
shut! The rest of the horses stood in a line against the far fence,
watching, and making only small movements of uneasiness, snorting
their breath out white into the starlight. Gwen came up with the
lantern and Harold’s coat. She held the coat out to him. "I
thought you’d want this."

Harold held his hands down into the light, and saw
the dark, glittering blood he had felt. He rinsed his hands in snow
again, and took the coat and put it on.

"Thanks," he said. "It’s not too
warm out here, at that."

Gwen held the lantern up, and they could see the
blood on Kentuck’s neck and shoulder too then. It had no color on
the black hide, but shone where it was still flowing.

"We better take him in the stall," Harold
said. "The others don’t like it." He put a hand on the
halter, and began to coax Kentuck toward the gate,

"They look bad," Gwen said, raising a hand
toward the gashed shoulder, but not touching it.

"Bad enough," Harold said, "but
they’re just on that one side, anyway. He’s dry on the other
side."

"Why would Joe Sam do a thing like that?"

"He says he thought it was the black panther."

"Oh, but he couldn’t. How could he?"

"I don’t know. But he’ll never say anything
different now. You can bet on that."

Gwen let down the bars, and raised them again behind
Kentuck. She picked up the kettle and cloths and the bottle of
carbolic she’d set down by the fence, and followed Harold and the
big stallion into the tunnel.

In the one stall, which was just a corner boarded off
in the hay shed, Harold tied Kentuck to the manger, and they looked
at the wounds again, holding the lantern up close. There were eight
cuts, like small, moving mouths, all on the shoulder and the neck
just off the shoulder. One of them, high behind the shoulder, was
still bleeding with a pulse, new blood squeezing out at each beat.

"The poor thing," Gwen said. Twisting her
face as if the pain of the cuts were in her own body, she raised a
hand toward the creeping blood again, but didn’t touch it this time
either.

"They could be worse, though," Harold said.
"I thought out there they were worse."

He hung the lantern on a nail in the rafter above,
and eased a hand onto Kentuck’s shoulder, between two wounds.

"Wild with that knife, wasn’t he, boy?"
he murmured. "But you weren’t giving him much time to pick his
target, were you, boy? No, not you. And a good thing for you, you
didn’t, too. It has a long blade, that knife, for something just to
whittle with.”

Kentuck flinched, and jerked his head up until the
rope checked him, and rolled his eyes till the whites showed
staringly, but then let the hand explore.

"How that little, old guy ever got in that many
wallops," Harold said, in the same voice for Kentuck to hear,
and shook his head. "He must have hung on like a burr."
Then he talked to Kentuck again, always in that one tone, low and
smooth and constant, while he washed the blood off and bathed the
wounds with the warm water. Finally only that one, high wound, where
the knife had gone in straighter and deeper, was bleeding. The red,
small lips of the cut showed clearly now, and the new blood squeezing
between them in the slow rhythm of the big heart.

"Now’s when it begins to get touchy,"
Harold said.

He got an old, battered grain pan out of the manger,
and rinsed it and filled it with water from the kettle. He poured a
little spurt of the carbolic into the water, corked the bottle, and
set it in the far comer. Then he dipped a rag into the solution and
stirred it slowly.

"Keep away from his hind end," he said,
straightening up with the rag in his hand. He waited until Gwen had
moved into the corner by the manger, and then began the quiet patter
of talk again. He fingered the wounds while he talked, until Kentuck
stopped flinching. Then, quickly, he put the rag, to the bad wound
and squeezed it and wiped along the edges of the cut. After a moment,
Kentuck fought back on the rope, his head jerking up, and then
suddenly, he trumpeted, an ear-splitting sound in the close stall,
and jerked so the timbers of the manger creaked, and struck with his
haunch, and then twice with his hoofs against the side of the stall.
Harold kept a shoulder against his shoulder, though, moving with him,
and still working at the wound until he was satisfied it was clean.

"Take it easy, boy," he said. "Take it
easy. That’s the worst of it. The rest of it’s nothing to
that.
Just a little sting, maybe,” and kept up the patter, stroking the
big flank and the neck above the wounds, until Kentuck stood quiet
again. Then he moved slowly away from his shoulder, and soaked the
rag in the pan once more, and went back with it. This time he dabbed
and squeezed at three of the cuts before the burning started, and
then Kentuck only sidled a little, and rapped the boards once, trying
to turn his head to see back.

Three times more Harold soaked the rag and came back,
coaxing all the while in the soft, monotonous voice. Twice he was
shouldered away heavily, and several times Kentuck snorted and
flinched, but then the job was done, and with his hand that didn’t
sting, and still the soft chatter, Harold quieted him a last time.

"He’ll be all right now," he said. "If
he isn’t bleeding inside somewhere, and I don’t think he is."

He took the carbolic back to the harness room and
returned with a blanket. He covered the shoulders with warm, wet
rags, and laid a piece of dry sheeting over them, and then threw the
blanket on over the sheeting. Then he took the pan of reddened
solution out and poured it into the snow, and cleaned the pan and his
hands in the snow too. Finally he forked hay down into the rack, and
brought the pan full of grain and a bucket of water. Kentuck drank
thirstily, draining the pail, and Harold brought it full again.
Kentuck drank only a little this time, and then nuzzled the surface,
blowing softly, and swung his dripping muzzle and blew in the grain.
He lipped up a mouthful of the grain and raised his head and began to
munch, only stirring restlessly now and then from the itch and fading
sting of the
cuts.

Gwen came back to his shoulder and caressed the
blanket, murmuring comforts. Her face was still a little twisted at
the thought of the wounds, and the hot cure that must have seemed
like stabbing again, and because of the blood she had longed to
touch. When Harold turned from lengthening the hitch rope, he
blundered against her. She turned quickly, looking up at him, and
caught his coat tightly in her two fists. Her eyes were still dark
with her pity, and something else which had moved in her also because
of the blood, and she cried up softly at Harold, in the voice she’d
used to Kentuck, "Oh, darlin’, I’m sorry, I’m sorry."