The Mountain Cat

Chapter 14

Rufus Toale kept on coming, advancing with a heavy dragging tread. At the big chair in front of the couch, lately occupied by Lem Sammis, he stopped, resting his hand on its back; then he edged around it and lowered himself with ridiculous carefulness onto its seat. Delia started to rise, but her knees wouldn’t take it. She sat and stared.

When he spoke he didn’t begin with “Praise God,” and his voice was as preposterous as his manner of movement had been and his white face still was. Instead of being deep and sonorous and musical, it was little better than a hoarse squeak as he said one word: “Clara?”

Delia shook her head without willing it.

“She’s not here?”

She shook her head again.

Rufus Toale put the palm of his right hand, the fingers outspread, against his breastbone, and pressed it there. “I mustn’t breathe much,” he declared with no improvement in his voice. “I feel it bleed inside when I breathe. I’ve been wounded. Shot. I plugged it with my handkerchief to keep the blood in. If I’m dying... your sister?”

Delia shook her head. “She’s not here.” His zealot’s eyes, out of his white face, bored into hers. “Can I trust you with God’s errand? Do you believe in the vengeance of man?”

“Who—” Delia stopped with her mouth working. “Who shot you?”

He ignored it. “Do you believe in the vengeance of man, my child? I think I’m dying. Answer me.”

That was one of the things Delia had figured out in jail, and apparently she had got it fixed in her mind, for she said clearly, “I don’t believe in vengeance. But if you’re wounded — I must—”

“No!” His voice and his eyes held her to the couch. “This comes first, then whatever comes. You must know it all — if I can—” He controlled a grimace, then inhaled a long slow breath, with a catch in the middle of it. “I thought some day to tell you this, you and your sister, as we kneeled to God — as I did your mother. Now without the preparation of prayer — oh, I entreat you, take the guidance of God! The facts are brief, but follow His guidance!”

“The facts—”

“About your father. God rest his soul. He was not a devout man, but he was a good and friendly man. When he left on that fatal trip two years ago he had with him much worldly money and a little of God’s money. I gave it to him. It was my own money, but it was for my church. It was God’s money. I gave him ten twenty-dollar bills, and in the corner of each one I wrote R.T. for Rufus Toale. He was to select a worthy man to receive them, and whatever treasure that man found in the rocks was to return to my church for the glory of God who made the hills and all the treasure in them. I gave that money, God’s money, to your father. He had it. He was killed and it was taken from him, with the other money he had.”

Rufus Toale stopped, to take another long careful breath, with his hand still pressed against his chest, where it had stayed without movement. His lips twitched and he went on, “That money was taken from your father by the one who killed him. I said nothing about it. I furnish no fuel to the fires of man’s vengeance. But I am human. I didn’t often see twenty-dollar bills, for God’s money is smaller sums, but when I did see one I looked at it. And the day came when, to my horror, I found that I had in my possession one of those bills I had given your father. The R.T. was in the corner just as I had put it there twenty-one months before. I knew where I had got it. Under the circumstances there could be little... little doubt—”

He stopped again to breathe. “I think—” He gasped, trying not to; the fight he was making showed on his face; he reinforced his right hand by spreading his left one over it to hold it tight. “I think... I must finish. The blood inside — chokes me. The bill was taken from me — there where I was shot — as I lay pretending I was dead — to escape death.”

He gasped and a spasm went over his face. Delia, paralyzed with horror, could make no movement. He swayed in the chair and braced his elbow against the arm.

“Praise God!” he whispered fiercely. “I must leave you — with His errand! I must finish! The guilty must confess and submit — but not to man, to Him! You must go to — God! Help me!” His elbow slipped from the chair’s arm and he started to crumple. “Praise God!” he croaked, gasping, and collapsed, hanging on the arm of the chair almost precisely as Dan Jackson had done, arms dangling to the floor.

Delia, staring, said, “No.” She repeated it. “No!” Without moving her eyes from him, she got to her feet and backed away. “No,” she said again, and stopped. She could scream. She, who had thought everything out so carefully and definitely, could scream. Someone would hear her. “No,” she said. A doctor. Yes, of course a doctor; but Clara? Clara—

The telephone rang. She took a deep shivering breath, then, with no hesitation and with firm steps, went to the little table, put the receiver to her ear and said, “Hello?”

“Is this the Brand residence?”

“Yes. This is Delia Brand.”

“Is your sister there? Clara Brand?”

“No, she isn’t here.”

“Well, hold the wire. The county attorney wants—”

“Wait a minute.” Delia’s voice was clear and steady. “Hello? Send a doctor here at once. There’s a man here that’s been shot and he may be dying. Send a—”

“What! You say shot? Who—”

Delia hung up. Her fingers trembled as she got the phone directory and flipped the pages to the T’s, but she found the number without fumbling, took up the receiver again, and dialed. As she waited her back was to the couch and the chair.

“Is this the parsonage?”

“Yes, ma’am. This is the housekeeper.”

“This is Delia Brand. Is my sister Clara there?”

“No, ma’am, she’s left.”

“How long ago?”

“Oh, maybe five or ten minutes. I let her in the church because she said she’d rather wait there, and she came back and said she wouldn’t wait any more and she left.”

“Thank you very much.”

Delia hung up again. For the next call she didn’t need to consult the book, for she knew the number of Ty Dillon’s little apartment on Beech Street. In a moment she removed the receiver once more and dialed. There was no answer to the ringing. When she heard a car in the driveway, continuing to the garage, she kept the receiver to her ear; at the sound of steps on the porch, she lowered it; as Clara appeared in the door she dropped it on the rack.

“He wasn’t there,” Clara said. “Why didn’t you go to bed? I waited an hour, but Mrs. Bonner didn’t know—” She stopped, transfixed, her eyes aimed past Delia’s shoulder at the middle of the room. “Del! Good God, what is it?” She ran across, stooped, peered, straightened up, faced her sister. “Del! For God’s sake, Del—”

“No!” Delia said fiercely, bitterly. “He came here — he came in and sat down and said he had been shot and he was dying — and I thought you had — I thought you — and now you thought I... we are thinking each other—”

She burst into laughter. She stood laughing crazily, swaying, her shoulders shaking and rocking back and forth. Clara sprang for her, seized her shoulders, and pressed her forcibly into a chair. “Sis, for God’s sake stop— Sis! Stop it! I didn’t think anything! Sis, Del darling, you mustn’t, you mustn’t—”

Ed Baker’s voice sounded from the door. “They’re both here.”

Clara froze. Delia was giggling.

Baker went on, entering, “Over there, doc, in the chair. If he’s dead don’t move him till I get a look. Bring the boys in, Frank. There’s enough here for everybody.”