The Cat Dancers

52

By hopping stones, they crossed the river just below the big bend. The rushing water was black, smooth, and deep between his feet, and Cam kept wondering what the hell he was doing out here. He also didn’t like being in the woods without the shepherds, but Kenny had been adamant: The dogs would screw the whole thing up, and they might get killed in the process. Once across, they entered the narrow canyon, staying on the gravel banks of the river. The entrance was only a couple hundred yards wide and the stone walls of the canyon tossed echoes of the river back and forth. A quarter of a mile in, there was a low waterfall, with a line of boulders forming the top rim. Directly across the mouth of the river, the south wall rose straight up out of the water. Kenny pointed at the line of boulders.

“We’ll cross those,” he said. “We’ll stay on the southside bank for about a half mile, and then cut up into the woods.”

“You do this shit in the dark?” Cam asked.

“Negative,” Kenny said. “First light. But I have to be in position above the den before then. I’ll leave you where you can see the den, but across the river from it.”

“How do you get to the den?”

“On a wire, from above. The rig is already up there. C’mon, we have to move.”

“Is the cat in the den?’

Kenny looked back at him with a patronizing look. “Cats sleep in the daytime, boss. At night, they hunt. She’s out here somewhere, so try to be quiet.”

The stone walls of the canyon reflected some moonlight down into the gorge, but not a lot, so they had to go slowly, climbing over large rocks and deadfall deposited by the rushing stream during higher water. It was close to 4:00 A.M. when they bore left away from the riverbank and up onto a pine-covered hillside. There wasn’t much snow on the ground. The walls of the canyon on the north side were sheer and went up in ragged terraces nearly a thousand feet. The southside slope was less extreme, even though it rose to the same height.

Kenny took Cam up the slope on a loose diagonal until they reached a promontory of rock that cut back over to form a cliff over the river, some three hundred feet below them. Pine trees came down almost to the edge of the overhang of rock, and then subsided, leaving a small gravelly clearing. Perched over the noisy river below, Cam felt like he was on the bow of a ship under way.

There was marginally better light up here out of the forest. Kenny handed Cam a small pair of binoculars. He pointed to the rock face on the other side, which was only about two hundred yards straight across from them.

“First terrace up, above the rockfall, you’ll see a cave,” he whispered. “Black hole in the rock. Not very big. There’s an overhanging ledge above it, maybe a hundred feet up.”

Cam searched but couldn’t find it. Then he did. It was much smaller than he had expected. He lifted the binocs but couldn’t make out the overhang in the shadows.

“Twilight’s in three hours,” Kenny said. “I have to get down there, cross, and get back up above the den before then.”

“Why won’t the cat hear you coming?” Cam asked.

“Because she’s not there, boss,” he said. “I hope.”

“Do you know where she is?”

Kenny shook his head. “The best deer woods are upcanyon, although she could be anywhere. Including on my route to that terrace.” He grinned. “That’s part of the challenge. You still carrying that antique?”

Cam said yes.

“Keep it handy.”

Cam looked over the cliff and down toward the river, which was still very audible even up where they were perched. “How do you get across?” he asked.

“I rigged a second wire, right down there. I’ll go hand over hand, and then there’s the rockfall up to the first terrace, and from there I have to do some rock climbing to the second terrace. The wire’s set up on a ledge there. The river masks the sound of my going up the rockfall. After that I have to be really quiet, in case I’m wrong about her being in the den. You stay right here. You’ll see the whole thing.”

“You have a gun?” Cam asked.

Kenny said, “No, just the camera.” He pulled it out of his pocket. He’d applied shrink-wrapping of some kind to the body of the camera to protect it from the elements. “That’s the deal. I have a short-range can of pepper spray in case things get really out of hand, but this is what it’s all about. We have a rule: We don’t hurt the cats.”

“And the cats?”

“They have no rules.”

It was actually a little warmer now that they were in the canyon, but not much. Cam shivered as he remembered being up in that tree, with Night-Night coming up after him. “Kenny, look,” he said. “I’m convinced, okay? Let’s call it a win and get the hell back to town. I don’t need to see this.”

“Yeah, you do, boss,” Kenny said. “Seeing truly is believing in this little game. But for right now, get back into the trees until first light. These cats can see pretty good in the dark. Here, take this.” Kenny passed him a folded-up plastic winter survival suit. “Climb into this thing and back yourself into a pine tree. And try to stay awake.” Then he was gone.

Cam surveyed the stone wall across the gorge with the binoculars for a few minutes, taking in the rockfall and the gray terraces rising above the lower slopes in the moonlight. He tried again to see the cave, but now he couldn’t. He wondered how many millions of years this river had been carving its way through the granite. The top part of the mountain opposite was covered in snow, but most of the southern face was clear, except where iced-over streams painted silver ribbons down the rock.

He walked back to the first trees, about fifty feet back from the edge of the cliff, and quietly pulled the suit out of its pouch. It was made of some space-age material and was the thickness of kitchen foil. Shaped like a snowsuit, complete with hood, it would contain almost all of his body heat, thus protecting from hypothermia even under extreme conditions. He climbed gingerly into the suit and then made himself a place to sit by shoving aside the lower branches of some pines. He sat down with his back to a tree, patted the comforting bulk of the. 45 in his coat pocket, and promptly dozed off.

He was awakened by the sound of sleet pattering on his hood. He opened his eyes to a curtain of blowing snow and frozen ice particles. What the hell? he thought. It was clear a minute ago. He turned sideways and illuminated his watch. It was 6:30. And then the cloud of blowing snow lifted as suddenly as it had begun, to be followed a minute later by another one. When it subsided, he looked over at the cliffs and saw what was happening. A solid wind had sprung up on the top of the mountain, and it was blowing a graceful cape of snow and ice off the top of the ridge and down into the deep canyon. With the approach of dawn, the sky above was no longer black, but gray. He ducked as another wave of frozen precipitation came blowing down, and then he shucked the survival suit and crept down to the edge of the cliff with the binoculars.

Perversely, the approaching dawn had put the opposite face into even darker shadow, so at first he could see nothing over there except the great gray expanse of rock. Second terrace, Kenny had said. He scanned the cliff face again, starting at the rockfall and going up until he thought he could see the ledge that was the second terrace. Then he searched left and right. He had to duck as another wave of ice crystals blew down across the river, and when he looked back up, he saw a flash of light to the right of where he’d been looking. He focused the binocs in that area and finally saw Kenny. The summit wind penetrated down into the canyon for a moment and his eyes watered in the sudden blast of icy air. Should have kept that suit on, he thought.

Kenny flashed his penlight at him one more time and then swung out on the invisible wire. Cam pointed the binocs down the rock face and finally saw the cave. In fact, everything was becoming more visible as sunrise approached. He looked up and saw that the wind up top had changed direction and was blowing the icy plume southwest, back into the canyon.

He found Kenny again and watched as he slipped down the wire, one arm outstretched to keep from spinning. The terrace apparently overhung the cave ledge, because Kenny was dangling in free space, some twenty feet off the rock face and nearly two hundred feet above the river. Down he went in little jerks until he was about level with the cave entrance, and then he went lower still, five to six more feet. Then he stopped. He spun slowly on the wire and looked over in Cam’s direction. Cam, keeping the binocs to his eyes, dropped a glove and waved his bare hand. Kenny waved back, and Cam could see that he had something in his hand, probably the camera. Then he swung around on the wire and began to pump his legs, initiating a swinging motion in toward the rock face. Cam stared into the cave and saw nothing but a black hole.

Kenny swung out and back in, getting closer to the rock face with each swing, using both arms to steady himself now that he was no longer sliding down the wire. Each swing in brought him closer to the rock, until it looked to Cam as if he would hit it with his feet at the top of his arc. He swung out one last time, way out, it seemed, and then back in. At that instant, a shriek erupted from inside the cave, amplified by the cavity in the rock, and the cat appeared just as Kenny swung all the way in and flashed the camera. The cat shrieked again at the flash and Kenny swung back out, twirling now that he longer had to control his aspect to the cave.

But he failed to stop his swing.

As the wire arced back in one more time, Cam watched Kenny’s triumphant grin turn to horror as the furious cat gathered itself. He saw Kenny try to stop the swing, pumping hard with his legs, although not succeeding. At the closest reach of the swing, the cat bounded forward from the cave and sprang out across the narrow open space between her and the dangling man. Cam thought he saw another flash, and then the cat was enveloping Kenny in a shrieking, shredding embrace. As the wire went back out, man and beast convulsed for a bloody second and then dropped like separate stones into the rushing black river nearly one hundred feet below, passing out of Cam’s line of sight before they hit.