The Mountain Cat

Chapter 19

The idea of the mountain cat popped into Delia’s head as she sat in the car, stopped at the roadside a mile or so beyond Frenchy’s Corners. She had stopped there because she didn’t want to enter Cody until she had resolved what to do. At the moment the idea came she had about decided that the only possible thing was to run away. She could go home and get the money from the drawer, all but that twenty-dollar bill, facing through it somehow with Clara if she was there, and leave at the first opportunity. She would go in the car, heading for California, perhaps taking a train from Ashton for the coast... at least, somehow, somewhere, losing herself.

The vengeance of man. God’s errand. She could be the instrument of neither. Not now. What others might or might not do about it, that was either God’s business or man’s, but not hers.

What kept her from instant execution of her plan of flight was the germ of doubt that still existed. If she had possessed certainty it would have been at once incommunicable and unbearable, and to flee with the unsharable secret would have been the only recourse of desperation; but she was not certain. She was horribly sure, but she was not sure.

It was there at the roadside near Frenchy’s Corners, where she had stopped for a decision, that she thought of the mountain cat and remembered the scene three days earlier when her coyote’s howl had interrupted the inspection of a furry belly on which no hair was slipping.

That would prove everything. She might, if she had that proof, even be able to tell Clara and Ty, and share the secret and not have to carry it all alone...

She started the engine, swung into the road, and in five minutes was in Cody. It was exactly half past seven. He wouldn’t be there. The usual dinner hour in Cody was around six o’clock, but it was his custom to work at his bench until seven and then go to the Pay Streak lunchroom three blocks away. Even if by mischance he were there he would be upstairs, and she needed only three minutes. And as a sudden impulse to repeat a childish trick had been responsible for the scene three days earlier, so now the memory of another childish trick from the days of Del the tomboy was the inspiration of her strategy.

She parked the car around the corner and walked to the two-storied frame building, with the plate-glass window, elevated above the sidewalk level, displaying the brown bear licking a cub. Without making undue noise, she climbed the four steps and tried the door. It was locked. She nodded to herself, and stood there a moment, aware that her heart was beating too fast and that her hand had been far from steady as she had turned the doorknob. But coolness was not especially required; the chief thing was speed, to get it done. She descended the steps, went to the corner of the building and passed along its side to the rear.

In the rear was clutter and chaos. Amid a stack of discarded mounting frames of rusty wire, weeds grew up to a man’s belt. Bales encased in burlap were stacked under the rickety steps. Packing boxes of all sizes and conditions were scattered around, and weeds were everywhere. Delia took it in with a swift glance, and saw that one of the packing boxes, a long narrow one, needed to be shifted only a few feet to serve her purpose. She grabbed a corner of it and tugged, got it moved, and upended it, propping it against the wall of the building. Then she scrambled up. It teetered and nearly fell, but she lunged to seize the window sill above her, got it balanced again, and pulled herself upright so that the window sill was at the height of her breasts. She saw that the window was open and the screen was apparently unfastened, and was trying to get purchase with her finger nails under the frame of the screen, when she nearly toppled off at the sound of a sharp call from somewhere behind her: “Hey there!”

She twisted her head and saw a man in a back yard among tomato vines. She waved a hand, clinging to the window sill with the other, and called, “Okay! The human fly! Free seats in the grandstand!”

“You’ll fall and break your neck!”

“Oh, no! You just watch!”

She stood a moment, her brain whirling. But why stop for that? Why stop for anything? She got her nails under the frame again, broke one prying it up, squeezed the tips of her fingers in the slit, exerted all her strength, and the screen went up with a bang. The rest was easy. Taking a firm grip with both hands inside, she leaped up and dived through, hung there an instant, wriggled on, and flopped onto the floor. She scrambled to her feet, waved from the window to reassure the horticulturist, and closed the screen. Her heart was a hammer on the wall of her chest. Four steps took her to the workbench, where a miscellany of tools were arrayed in slotted cleats. She had long ago been permitted to play with many of those tools, though never the sharp knives; now a knife with a long sharp blade was what she took. With it in her hand she went to the door at the end of the partition and passed through it into the large front room. She had thought, anticipating this moment, that now she would go to the foot of the stairs and call his name, to make sure he wasn’t above in his living quarters, but the momentum of her urgency abandoned that precaution. Without even a glance at the stairs, she went swiftly to the mountain cat on the platform in the center of the room, the cougar with his paw resting on the carcass of a fawn; and, throwing herself on her back underneath its belly, ripped the tough hide with a savage sweep of the knife. But it was well mounted and there was only a slit, so she wriggled her shoulders and slashed crosswise, once, twice, three times. She seized the corners and jerked at the flaps, and the hole gaped open, and objects tumbled out and fell on her face and shoulders, and she squirmed away as if they had been deadly snakes, though a glance showed her that they were money, currency, packets of twenty-dollar bills. Her heart was hammering her chest.

A voice came: “Del!”

Her heart stopped. She became rigid, there under the mountain cat on her back. She was aware of steps, a hand touching her, fingers gripping her ankle, and she jerked her leg away, rolled over, rolled from under the mountain cat, causing two of the bundles of bills to fall from the platform, and was on her feet. Quinby Pellett stood there, looking at her, his face pale and contorted, his lips twisted like those of a child trying not to cry. “So,” he said.

She nodded her head without knowing it. “So,” she said.

“Del.” His hand lifted, fluttered, and dropped again. “Godamighty.”

She was looking at his middle, where a fold of his untidy shirt was escaping from his belt. She couldn’t look at his face. Involuntarily she took a sidewise step, and another one. He moved toward her.

“Where you going?”

There was a noise from her throat, but no word.

“Nowhere,” he said; and, apparently satisfied that the command was sufficient, he stooped to pick up the two bundles of bills and lay them on the platform. Seeing the knife there under the cougar, he picked that up too and held it in his hand, not as one arming himself but rather, automatically, as a man who doesn’t like to see tools thrown around. He faced her again. “Who sent you here?”

She shook her head. “Nobody.” Her voice was a croak in her ears. “I came alone. When I was climbing in a man saw me—”

“I know he did. I heard him, from upstairs. I heard you, too. I was behind the moosehide when you came in here. I wanted to see — but you acted too quick before I could stop you.” He glanced at the platform. “I know why you did that. The way you saw me looking at it the other day. You’ve got a brain like mine, you don’t miss things. You remembered how I looked at it that day, didn’t you?”

She nodded without knowing it.

He nodded back. “Sure you did. I know how your brain works. I was afraid it might. Since Toale came to me yesterday and showed me the bill he had that I gave him Easter time, and I was afraid the one I gave you for your birthday was the same kind, and if you looked at it you would know because Toale had told you. I was afraid your brain would work that way, but I didn’t move the money because I knew if you had that bill I knew you would find out some day and I didn’t want to wait for it. I didn’t want it to be like it was with your mother, when I knew she knew, but I didn’t know how and I didn’t know how much—”

Delia gasped, “Mother knew?”

“Sure she did. Toale told her.” A spasm went over Quinby Pellett’s face and left it distorted. “He didn’t believe in the vengeance of man. He wanted to drive vengeance from her heart, and he wanted her to persuade me to repent to God. What he did was drive her to suicide. She wouldn’t — she couldn’t tell me about it. He told me yesterday, and showed me that bill, because he knew I had killed Jackson, too.”

Delia wanted to tell him to stop talking. She felt her knees giving. The edge of the platform was there and she sank, sitting on it. “Oh, don’t!” she pleaded.

“Don’t what, don’t talk?” Pellett demanded with sudden ferocity. He gestured with the knife. “Godamighty, Del, I’ve got to talk, to you. It’s you I’ve got to talk to. Because it was an awful thing I did, but I didn’t mean to. Of course I didn’t have it worked out to use your gun until after I took it away from that fellow that stole it from your car. Then I saw how good it would be to do that. I put the handbag with the gun in it under the seat of my car before I went in there and went up the stairs and got a piece of ore from the bin and hit myself with it. Later I found there were no cartridges, but my own gun’s a .38 and I had some. That night I thought it would be good to leave the gun there and the handbag on the desk, because I supposed naturally you’d be with Clara and maybe other people and your alibi would keep you out of it, and it would be good for me because everybody would know that I never in God’s world would frame you. Then you went right there to the office and Hurley found you there. That was terrible. That made me feel worse than anything. Except...” The spasm distorted his face again. “Except your mother,” he said.

Delia couldn’t look at him. Her eyes gazed straight, at their own level as she sat, at the long-bladed knife in his hand.

“Except for your mother,” he said harshly, “I’ve never repented, Del. I want to be honest with you. I’ve never repented about your father. You’ll hate me now. I hated him. He was full of life and full of success. Then that talk started about him and Amy Jackson. I didn’t know then how much was behind it and I don’t know now and I don’t give a damn. When I asked your mother she wouldn’t discuss it. A man has no right to live so there can be such talk. My own sister wouldn’t discuss it with me. I put it to him, to his face, and he laughed at me. He always did laugh at me. I was his brother-in-law, and he’d let me have a little money now and then because I couldn’t make a go of this taxidermy business, but what he really thought, he regarded me as a bum. You know he did.”

He gestured at her. “Another thing you’ve got to understand, Del. About the money. I wanted that money and I got it, but I didn’t want it for myself. The day would come, I knew it would, when your mother would have hers used up, and then I would help her, and you and Clara too. Her poor bum of a brother would help her. I could do that when the time came without being suspected, because my business was better and I could pretend it was a lot better than it was. That was all in my head, about the money, before I ever went there to the cabin to wait for him—”

“Please!” Delia begged. “Please don’t—”

He nodded. “I know. Now you hate me. Sure you do. But I had to tell you them two things, that I never would have framed you, never in God’s world, and I didn’t take that money just for myself. I used to think it would be a fine thing some day, that money, for your mother and you girls and me... and then she... then she knew and I knew she did but I didn’t know how... she... my own sister that I really did it for...”

His words gave out. Delia had none. She was benumbed; her nerves were dead and her blood cold. She would hate him, of course, but hate is life and she was not alive; her only feeling was a dull overpowering revulsion to the sight and sound of him. She would get up and go; but she could not move. Could she lift her eyes to look at his face? Yes; she must first see his face...

But before she could achieve that he spoke again, in a new and different tone: “Now you’ve fixed it, ripping that cat open. I might have known you would.” He was scolding a child. “I should have stopped you when you came in here, but I wanted to see. Godamighty, look at it. It’s dangerous. You’d better go upstairs and wait. I don’t want you to see where I put it.”

Her eyes had reached his face and she was gaping at him.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded.

She shook her head.

He gestured impatiently with the hand that held the knife. “Go on upstairs. I’ll be up pretty soon. It’s dangerous as hell. That stuff scattered around.”

She shook her head again.

“Go on now.” He sounded petulant. “For one thing I’ve got to explain to you some more, and for another thing if you go home right now you’ll be apt to blurt it out to Clara, and that’s one of the things I want to explain, why you’re not to tell Clara. There’s no reason for her to know about it. I’ve got to explain — I’ve got to be sure you realize that I’d rather have cut off my arm than to seem to be framing you or letting you in for any trouble. Godamighty, Del, it’s bad enough as it is—”

He whirled like lightning and stood tense.

The sounds of steps on the wooden stoop in front had been faint, but now the turning of the knob was louder, and the pounding on the door that followed immediately shattered the silence.

Quinby Pellett glanced at Delia to instruct her in a low tone of urgent menacing command, “Quiet!”

She nodded, and he seemed satisfied, for he faced toward the door again and stood rigid. The pounding was repeated, rattling the old wooden panels, and through them a shout came: “Del! Del, it’s Ty! Del!”

It is conceivable that even to that appeal Delia would have been silent. But Quinby Pellett made a mistake; he mistrusted the depth and force of her disinclination to become an instrument of the vengeance of man — she who only three days ago had bought a box of cartridges to commit murder with — or, more simply, he was overcome by fear. He started for her and she saw his face; and it was no longer the face of an uncle trying to convince his niece of his regret at having unwittingly let her in for trouble; it was the face of the malign and ruthless monster who had murdered Charlie Brand and Dan Jackson and Rufus Toale.

She screamed at the top of her voice, Ty’s name, three times before Pellett could reach her. It is quite likely that he intended only to cover her mouth, to keep her silent; but her screams changed everything. She lunged to seize the wrist of the hand that held the knife as she heard the splintering crash made by Ty’s shoulder when he hurled himself against the door. Pellett jerked back and she missed. She lunged again, missed again, and sprawled on the floor. She got to her knees, and saw that in fact she was not being assaulted at all: Pellett was five paces away, in the direction of the door, crouched behind the forequarters of the yearling elk. For five seconds she stayed there on her hands and knees, staring like a fool. Then two things happened at once: Ty’s fifth attack on the door burst it open, and she realized what Pellett was crouching there for; and she screamed Ty’s name again to warn him, but too late. As Ty rushed across, Pellett leaped from his ambush and struck; Ty swerved; Pellett’s momentum toppled him to the floor; Delia screamed again; Pellett regained his feet before Ty could reach him, and backed off, brandishing the knife, with Ty following him, now cautious but resolute; Delia rushed to grab Ty’s arm, pulling at him; he commanded her roughly, without looking at her, “Let go, get behind something, let go!” He shook her off. “Drop it, Pellett. What’s the use? Drop—”

Pellett, from a crouch eight feet away, came through the air at him like a mountain cat. But his muscles were old. With his left hand, Ty parried the knife; with his right, he swung, and Pellett went down, stretched out on the floor, the knife falling from his hand and sliding almost to Delia’s feet. Ty picked it up and tossed it to a corner of the room. She shuddered, a convulsion shaking her from head to foot. As he put out a hand for her there was the sound, at the open door, of rushing footsteps.

It seemed adequate for an army, but there were only three who entered: Chief of Police Frank Phelan, a cop in uniform, and the horticulturist who had shouted to Delia that she would break her neck. They came in on the run, put on the brakes and gawked. Pellett, on the floor, did not move.

“What the hell.” Phelan gazed at Delia. “By God, again! You look him over, Pete, and I’ll—”

“You’ll eat your tongue and choke on it!” Ty Dillon was trembling with fury. “You goddamn fools! There’s your murderer! Do you think you can handle him? Do you want him delivered f.o.b. your goddamn jail? You ought to be cocky, by God, you ought to be cocky, leaving a girl to do it for you! She might have been killed! She damn near was killed! He was after her with a knife—”

“No, Ty, no—”

“Shut up! You can shut me up the rest of my life, but this once is my turn! You’re a fine bunch of lousy poops! I’m taking her home, and try to stop me, and by God, you let her alone! I’m her lawyer and her husband and you let her alone! When you want it explained to you, come to me!”

With an arm around her, he took her away. It was obvious that anybody who tried to stop him would have been murdered, so no one tried.