P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

Leaving the lights in his cabin on, he locked the front door. He got the Peacemaker and his Maglite, took the dogs out the back door, and walked next door to the adjoining cabin. He went around the side that was away from his cabin to minimize visible footprints. He tried its front door. It was locked, but the back door was not. He let himself and the dogs inside and unlocked the front door from the inside. The outside temperature wasn’t that cold, maybe low twenties, and it was the same in the empty cabin. The dogs had their winter growth, so they’d be all right. He set up a chair so that he could see the snow-covered lane between the cabins, then sat down to wait. The only lights visible were the one he had left on inside his cabin and the amber security light up at the office. He tried the phone in the empty cabin, but it was dead. He thought about going back and getting his cell phone but decided against it. He had the dogs, he had the Colt, and he wasn’t where he’d said he’d be. If hostiles were coming, he should have at least a little warning.

After thirty minutes of waiting, he got up and moved around the empty cabin. The mountain cold had begun to penetrate his layers of clothes and he needed to restore his circulation. The shepherds were curled up by the front door. Frack was dozing; Frick was watching Cam. The snow was still coming down outside, and now the security light up by the road was only an amber glow. The smoke from his cabin’s woodstove was barely visible.

The caller may have given up the trip because of the heavy snow, he thought. And if it had been a setup of some kind, the baby blizzard going on outside would make that sort of thing pretty difficult. He decided to give it another half hour and then go back to his heated cabin. He checked out the back windows of the cabin, but the falling snow obscured the ravine and hills behind the cabins. He went back to the front windows-no change: heavy snowfall, everything out front losing definition. And then Frick started growling, a deep belly growl that woke Frack right up. He got up and went to the door and sniffed it, then looked back at Frick, who was still lying on the floor, ears up and growling.

“What’s out there, killer?” Cam said, and she got up and went to one of the front windows. Whatever it was, Frack hadn’t heard it, and Cam certainly hadn’t heard it, but he’d learned not to ignore the dogs when they sensed that something wasn’t right. He palmed the Colt and began to go from window to window in the dark cabin, taking care not to silhouette himself. Although there was no moon visible, the snow brightened up the night and he could see pretty well in the immediate area around the cabin. Frick continued to growl quietly, although less frequently now. She lay down by the front door. He thought about letting her out, but if it was just a deer, she might get lost in the ensuing chase. A bear prowling for garbage would be another possibility, except they should be hibernating. He’d heard no vehicle noises, so it probably was wildlife.

He did another circuit of the windows-nothing. He thought about going back to his cabin, getting the cell phone, and dialing that number again, but something told him not to go outside. He watched the dogs. Frick had her head down on the floor, eyes watchful. Frack, as usual, watched her, ready to take his cue from his more aggressive partner. Neither dog seemed very anxious to go outside, which told Cam that they just might be afraid of whatever was out there.

Then Frick went on alert at the front door, getting up and staring at the door but making no sound, her hackles up and her body rigid in that position of readiness from which she would launch an attack. Frack moved behind her, also staring at the crack at the bottom of the front door. Cam moved to the back corner of the room, standing in relative shadow, and watched windows. There wasn’t a sound from outside-no wind, no crunch of footsteps in the snow, no engine noises. His breath formed little puffs of vapor in the frigid air. Then he thought he heard something out front, but it was a very subtle sound: a soft pressure on the porch floorboards, a muffled creaking noise. Cam crouched down in the corner of the room, pointed the Colt at the door, and watched the front windows very carefully, looking for shapes or shadows against the snow glare. The dogs suddenly went down on the floor, their eyes still locked on the front door but their bodies no longer poised for an attack. In fact, Frick was assuming what was almost a submissive posture, while Frack lay there, his head cocked sideways, listening to something. Cam thought he, too, sensed something out front, but knew he was just reacting to the dogs.

The three of them remained motionless in the cabin for another minute, and then the dogs slowly relaxed. There were no more sounds out front, which made Cam turn slowly on his haunches and watch the back windows and door. He snapped his fingers quietly and Frick scuttled over, followed by Frack. He sat them down next to him in the corner. They nuzzled his hands, their tails sweeping the floor, their relief palpable. Whatever it had been, it was gone, and since their senses were a whole lot better than his, he stood up and walked to the front windows. The shepherds went with him, plastered to his legs. He studied the front yard and the road but saw nothing but more snow. Then he looked down at the porch floorboards and saw a line of large soup plate-size prints in the shallow snow that had accumulated there.

The prints stretched across the full length of the porch and looked a lot like what he’d seen on the hood of his truck that morning. There was a shiny film of ice already forming in the depressions. His breath started to fog the glass, so he could not make out details, such as which way the animal had gone or whether or not there were claw marks, but now he had a pretty good idea of what had come calling, and why the shepherds had been scared.

He checked all the windows again, but there was nothing moving out front. He gathered up the dogs and went out the back door, gun in hand, in case they’d all guessed wrong. He stood for a moment on the back deck, the snow tickling his face. It was coming down hard enough that he could hear it sleeting through the trees. The dogs stayed right by his side, and they were no longer relaxed. He went back over to his cabin and walked around it to see if there were any tracks, but the snow looked undisturbed until he got to the front porch, where there were shapeless indentations in the snow out in front of the cabin. He tried to trace them out to the street, but the snow was too deep. They did seem to go from the front of his cabin over to the front of the other cabin, so the cat had been able to tell where he’d been hiding. But where had it gone?

He told the dogs to go find it, and they reluctantly moved away from him, sniffing the rapidly disappearing indentations, circling close by, but clearly unwilling to go romping off into the dark woods. It’s definitely colder out here in the falling snow, he thought as he scanned the shadows in the trees and listened for any sign of wildlife. The dogs were back, looking at him as if to say, Was that good enough? The security light up at the office was barely visible now, and he looked hard at the road to see if there were any signs of a vehicle. Then there was movement in the tops of the trees and he felt a sudden draft of colder air come down from the slopes above him and blow through the line of cabins. The snow went sideways for a moment and both dogs put their noses up to scan the moving air. Frick made that low, rumbling growl again, and Cam felt the hair rising on the back of his neck. He backed toward the porch of his cabin, the dogs going with him while he kept the gun pointed out into the whirling darkness. The wind made a slow moaning noise, and somewhere off to his right a pine top cracked and then fell to the ground with a thump. He kept backing until he felt the steps against his heels; then he stepped up and reached for the door handle.