Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark Read Online Free PDF Page A

mouth."
    Curt stood up suddenly, pushing his chair back with a
loud, scraping noise, but keeping his fists on the table. Arthur
waved a hand at him slowly and shook his head in time to the waving,
like a man taking his side but saying it had gone far enough for now.
Curt turned his head to stare at him, and Arthur pointed at the
closed door at the foot of the stairs. Curt set his mouth, but
listened, and heard the murmur of women’s voices behind the door.
While he listened one voice made a quick, excited laugh. Then the
other voice laughed too, a lower sound, full of soft, easy amusement.
Curt flushed as if the women had seen through the door how he was
checked like a small boy and were laughing at him.
    "To hell with ’em," he said, "If a
man. . ." but his voice was only a mutter, and he didn’t
finish. He straightened up slowly, and then stood there staring at
the other three, one at a time. None of them said anything, or even
looked at him. The mother, with her back turned, went on stirring the
sizzling potatoes in the pan. Slowly he made a small, angry smile,
and looked around at them again, but now as if they were enemies
already cowed, and not worth even that much attention. He picked up
the lantern and set it on the table and turned the flame a little
higher to stop the smoking.
    "That’s not a bad idea at that," he said.
"At least, if horses have dreams, they don’t get up sour and
talk about them."
    He picked up the lantern and went to the outside
door, but stopped there again, and said, "And when I get back,
we’re leavin' pronto. Get me?"
    "I’ll have your breakfast on," the mother
said. "It’ll be an hour yet before there’s light enough to
see what you’re doing anyway."
    “ We don’t need any light to get to the creek,"
Curt said, "and that’s where it come from."
    He opened the door. The roaring of the pines deepened
and a gust of cold wind came in, driving a thin serpent of snow
across the iloor and nearly blowing the lamp out, so the shadow moths
fluttered wildly on the walls.
    "When I get back," he yelled, to be heard
over the wind, and went out, slamming the door behind him. The flame
of the lamp steadied and rose again, and the moths danced small and
gentle in their places. Slowly the fine, white powder on the floor
vanished. The high woman’s voice spoke in the north bedroom again.
    Arthur took a jack-knife and the unfinished mountain
lion out of his pants pocket. He opened the knife slowly, thinking of
something else, and felt along the edge of the blade with his thumb.
The blade was worn narrow as a dagger with long use and many
sharpenings. He began to cut slowly and carefully at the shoulder of
the lion, holding the knife in his left hand and pushing the back of
the blade with the thumb of his right hand, curling off small, neat
shavings.
    Harold watched him, smiling a little. "No wonder
Joe Sam was in such a stew," he said.
    Arthur nodded. "Behind in my whittling."
    The mother set two plates on the lid of the water
tank on the end of the stove, and lifted two fried eggs onto each
plate and began to scrape the potato and bacon onto them. In the
bedroom the high voice said something quickly and gaily, and the
other made a short answer and then the soft, easy laughter. Harold
turned his head to listen and smiled. "They’re having a good
time in there," he said.
    "Aren’t they," the mother said dryly. She
drew the boiling coffee pot off the fire, and poured coffee, still
hissing and bubbling, into two cups beside the plates.
    "It’s good for Grace, having someone new to
talk to for a while," Arthur said.
    "It’s precious little but talk I’ll get out
of her, too," the mother said. She brought the two filled plates
to the table and set them down in front of Arthur and Harold and laid
a knife, spoon and fork beside each plate. She stood there for a
moment, staring down at the plates, and then she looked at Harold and
said, "Harold, it’d be better if you’d go instead of Arthur,
the