The Cat Dancers

42

Swallowing hard, he shoved the match into the paper, and it caught this time, sending a yellowish cone of light out onto the floor and into Cam’s face. He kept watching the cat, which kept watching him. His coat with the. 45 was ten feet away, so that was not an option. He’d seen the big cat, and the big cat had definitely seen him. He didn’t have to know much about mountain lions to know that at this juncture, after they’d been staring at each other, any sudden move on his part was going to provoke a similar move from the huge cat, with negative consequences likely. His heart had begun to pound and his face was probably a little whiter than it had been a moment ago.

The fire grew as the stove began to draw, and he had to back his face away from the sudden heat. Just that tiny movement, an adjustment more than a movement, summoned a deep, sustained growl from the corner of the room. He could see the cat’s face clearly, but not its body. Was it crouching, preparing to pounce? Or just lying there, watching to see what he’d do next?

Okay, he thought, have to do something here. He glanced down into the firebox and saw one thin log that was burning brightly on one end. He’d have to reach through the flames to grab it, but if he grabbed it, threw it at the cat, distracted the damned thing long enough to get to the. 45, he might have a chance. The cat growled again, a deep-throated warning rumble, as if it were reading his mind. Those yellow-green eyes never wavered, never blinked. He knew it wouldn’t work. He might be subtle about reaching into the firebox, but then his reflexes would take over as soon as his flesh sensed the flames and he’d jerk that hand out of there, and then that big bastard would be on him in one shrieking leap.

Slap, slap, chow time.

He could no longer hear the dogs, and his legs were starting to tremble. He saw the cat’s shape change slightly in the deep shadows of the corner, as if it was gathering itself. Hell with it, he thought, and began to edge his hand back toward the door of the firebox.

He never saw it coming. One moment, he was trying to watch the cat while positioning his hand to grab for the burning log. The next instant, he was skidding backward, flat on his back, his head bouncing along the wooden floorboards, with two hundred pounds of wet fur and fangs shrieking into his face. The cat’s breath was foul, and two dinner plate-size clawed paws were clamping onto his head on either side. He screamed back, shouting from all the way down in his gut, vaguely aware that he had pissed his pants, his mouth only inches from those long, yellow curved fangs, and then the cat was gone and he was staring up into the rafters, still paralyzed with fear, trying to focus his eyes on something up there. Oh God, not another one. And then he realized he was looking into the grinning face of White Eye Mitchell.

“Ain’t she somethin’?” Mitchell said quietly, his eyes appearing to flicker in the firelight from the stove’s open door. “You oughta see her brothers.”

Cam was speechless after the cat’s pounce. White Eye seemed to levitate out of the rafters, dropping noiselessly into a momentary crouch onto the floor. He straightened up and offered Cam a hand up.

“What the fuck?!” Cam asked, trying to make his voice work properly.

Mitchell pulled out two chairs, pushed one over for Cam, and then sat down in the other. Cam looked around for the panther and found it sitting like any house cat by the door, but it was still watching him. He sat down gingerly, wondering if he could get to his gun, which was still in his jacket pocket, which, in turn, was hanging about eight inches away from the cat. No way, and besides, White Eye saw him looking.

“You don’t need no gun,” he said. “You need to be listenin’ to me now.”

“I say again-what the hell is going on here?” asked Cam.

“You train dogs, right? Well, I train cats. How ’bout them apples, huh?”

Cam just stared at him.

“You wantin’ to know about cat dancin’, ain’t you?”

Cam nodded, still vitally interested in getting his hands on the. 45. He’d shoot the cat first, and then Mitchell. That’s exactly what he was going to do. And where the hell were the dogs? He could still smell that cat’s foul breath on his shirt. He realized he was still shaking. Mitchell got up, went over to the front door, and retrieved Cam’s revolver. He came back and sat down, holding the. 45 casually in his lap.

“You go in there,” he said, indicating the bedroom with his head, “and git yourself dressed for some snow walkin’. Warmest shit you got. Extra everythin’.” He glanced down at Cam’s trousers. “Dry, too. Night-Night’s gonna come along’n watch.”

“‘Night-Night’?”

“Go on, now,” Mitchell said, waving the gun. “I ain’t got all damn night. And leave that door open.”

Cam got up unsteadily and headed for the bedroom, where his clothes were stacked on a chair. On some signal from Mitchell that Cam couldn’t see, the cat got up and followed him into the room, where it sat down in the doorway and began licking one of its enormous paws, watching him. He heard Mitchell get up and go into the kitchen.

He changed his clothes in the dark and started putting on layers. Night-Night, he thought. He eyed the cat while he dressed. It was a beautiful thing, he had to admit, until it stopped licking and stared at him, one massive paw held motionless right by its mouth. Its eyes glowed as if lit from within, and they were not friendly. It’s tame, Cam told himself.

When he was ready, he started for the door, but the cat changed its position in such a way as to stop Cam in his tracks. White Eye made a sound in his throat and the cat turned away out of the door. Cam smelled coffee when he came out of the bedroom. The fire in the woodstove was roaring now, and there was much more light in the cabin.

“Set ye down,” Mitchell said. Cam sat, moving awkwardly in all his layers of clothing. Mitchell brought over two mugs of coffee, pushed one across the table toward Cam, and sat down. “I reckon everybody’s tellin’ you that cat dancin’ is bool-shit,” he said.

“That’s right,” Cam replied. There were coffee grounds twirling in his mug. “The rangers said that mountain lions were extinct in these parts.”

Mitchell snorted. “Seemed real enough sittin’ on your chest, didn’t she?”

“They were talking about wild mountain lions, I think,” Cam said. “Not tame ones.”

“They’s wrong about that, too,” Mitchell said. “Jist ’cause they ain’t seen ’em don’t mean they ain’t up there. Them rangers like that warm office. Only one of ’em goes deep back country.”

“And cat dancing? How about that?”

Mitchell looked him over. “You git around in the mountains any?” he asked.

“Some. But not normally in winter.”

“This ain’t winter,” Mitchell scoffed. “Not yet. I can show you what it is you’re askin’ about, but you gotta come with me right now.”

“Tonight?”

“Right now. It ain’t winter yet, but it’s fixin’ to be.”

“Do I have choice?”

“You want to know about this stuff, or what? ’Cause if you do, I’m the man to see. That part you got right.”

“I want that gun back.”

White Eye shrugged, pulled the. 45 out of his coat pocket, opened the cylinder and thumbed the rounds out of it, and then handed the gun back to Cam. He dropped the rounds into his own coat pocket. “Leave it unloaded till you see what I got to show you,” he said. “Remember, you the one started this shit.”

“What’s James Marlor’s connection to all this?”

“Don’t know,” Mitchell said. He got up and kicked the door shut on the wood stove. “Let’s go.”

“Where are my dogs?” Cam asked.

“They run off when they got a whiff of Night-Night. They’s smart dogs. They’ll be back. Leave ’em some chow out front. And bring that coffeepot.”