P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

“But he got his picture?”

“Oh yeah, he got his goddamned picture. Coupla months later, Carl brings out a second one. Some common damn name. I forget. Bill, John, you know. Looked a little like Carl. Same money, though, so I wasn’t askin’ much about names. Trained the new boy just like I trained Carl. Graduation back out to the Chop. Anyways, I think these two turned the whole thing into some kind a test for the third guy. You want to be one of us, first you gotta get your face.”

“‘Face’?”

“That’s what they called it-didn’t count less’n you got a picture of the cat’s face from near enough so’s anyone seein’ it would fuckin’ know that the guy takin’ the picture was noshit close-up.”

Cam shook his head in wonder. A disposable camera was autofocused at eight to ten feet for the best picture.

They broke out of the woods and drove out onto a large meadow at the foot of a massive hill. Cam could just see the summit of the next mountain looming over its top. He glanced at the Bronco’s gas gauge, but there was plenty of fuel, even though the vehicle had been grinding through the snow in second gear.

“Yonder’s Catlett’s Bald,” White Eye said, indicating the mountain behind the big hill. He was able to go a little faster now that they were traversing the open meadow, although the snow was deeper. They were running without headlights, and they needed none. White Eye aimed the vehicle at the left side of the hill, where there appeared to be a small pass between it and the edge of the deep woods.

“Fourth one got hisself killed,” White Eye said, apropos of nothing.

“Whoa. How?”

“How you think?”

“Cat got him?”

“Oh yeah. Me’n Carl, we was hid out on a ridge ’bout a half-mile crow fly from the den. Whoever this Carl is, he’s the boss man. We was out along the back side of Whittier Mountain. They’s a canyon back there, where the Bullet River cuts through. This old boy went in after midnight, aimin’ to rope down to the den ’bout an hour before daylight. He fucked up crossin’ a feeder creek halfway to the cliff, made him some noise. Carl never did hear him, but I did. And so’d the cat. This boy didn’t come back, so we went in around noon. Found a foot in the creek, and a hat full of hair.”

“And the rest of him?”

Mitchell snorted. “Cub meat.”

“You hunt down the cat?”

“Hell no. Cat was just doin’ what she was supposed to, protectin’ her den. If there’s a den, there’s cubs. Carl said he tole each one of them sumbitches, ‘If the cat wins, the cat wins, and you lose. That’s it. Otherwise, this ain’t got no point.’”

“Damn,” Cam said quietly, but he was beginning to understand. Carl, or whoever he was, had turned this deadly little game into an initiation of some kind. But who were these guys? And initiation into what?

“But doesn’t that make the cat a man-eater?” Cam asked. “I mean, what if she gets a taste for it?”

“‘Gets’?” White Eye said. “Mister, they’s already got the taste for it, best I can tell. Look at them cats out there in California. They’s eatin’ folks right and left. And why not? They don’t call ’em mountain lion for nothin’. And besides, look at it this way: Most wild animals ain’t gonna fuck around with no damn panther. So here comes this twolegged animal, bangin’ around on the cat’s ground, don’t seem to know the fuckin’ rules, no respect. Panther’s gotta do somethin’ about that, ’cause, way he figgers, if it ain’t actin’ like prey, then it’s gotta be a predator, right? Pretty fuckin’ logical, I’d say.”

“Why do you have one around, then?”

White Eye smiled. “I like ’em. First one I found as a cub up on the Tennessee line twenty-odd years ago. Little fucker, mewin’ up a damn tree and starvin’. No claws up front. Got away from some breeder, I figger. Put him in the house, raised him up like a house cat. Used to have me some fun when strangers would come round my place, specially after he growed some. Thievin’ white trash comes around at night to steal him one a my chickens? Runs into Night-Night in the barnyard? Come daylight, I’m gonna find me fifty feet a goose shit ’cross my yard.”

They entered the narrow pass, straddling a blackwater creek running between the two elevations. They came out into a smaller meadow, with the full expanse of Catlett’s Bald rising in a sheer face right in front of them. Cam thought it looked like the pictures he’d seen of EI Capitan in Yosemite Park. There was a stand of densely packed tall pines to the left, and the ground rose to the south behind the pines, where there were large bare deciduous trees climbing that slope toward the bald. White Eye stopped the vehicle in the middle of the meadow, but left the engine running. The moonlight was bright enough that the pine trees showed their intense green color.

“Get your gear on,” he said. “Time to show you somethin’ about cat dancin’.”

Cam opened his door and got his coat and overboots on while White Eye did the same. Cam looked at his watch. It was 3:30 A.M., but Mitchell’s grainy coffee brew still had him wide-awake. He put on gloves, a black watch cap, and then an adjustable ball cap on top of the watch cap. He patted the gun to make sure it was in his pocket, then quietly transferred the three bullets to the coat pocket from his trouser pocket when White Eye wasn’t looking. He stood down into the snow, as did White Eye.

“You going to leave it running?” Cam asked.

“Yep,” White Eye said. “Runs good, but sometimes she don’t start so good.”

Cam followed in White Eye’s tracks as they set off for the stand of pines about two hundred yards away. Mercifully, there was no wind, so the temperature didn’t seem that bad. The sound of their boots crunching through the snow filled the night air as they approached the pine stand. White Eye walked right into the pines, which looked a lot like the Leyland cypress Cam had planted around his house, with dense branches reaching all the way down into the snow. Cam followed him in, pushing a little to keep up as the other man’s figure disappeared into the mass of greenery. They’d penetrated about sixty feet when Cam broke into a small clearing. White Eye was waiting for him.

“Right here,” he said, and Cam looked around, not sure of what was coming next.

“What are we doing?” Cam asked.

“Gonna show you somethin’ about trackin’ a big animal out here in the real woods,” he said. “You wait here. I’m gonna go back, move that vehicle back into that little pass, and then I’m gonna come back through these here pines on foot. Not the same way we come in, okay? I want you to sing out when you hear me comin’.”

“That’ll be never,” Cam pointed out. “This soft snow and everything.”

White Eye shook his head, stepping around in the clearing, the crunching sound evident. “Got us ice crust in here,” he said. “Even so, I’m gonna come back in here and tap you on the shoulder ’fore you hear a fuckin’ thing.”

“And why are we doing this?”

“Cause you don’t understand how good I am at this shit,” the old man said. “You gotta ’preciate how hard this is ’fore I take you to see a real panther.”

Cam looked at him. “That’s where we’re going? To see a wild mountain lion?”

“You wanted to know what cat dancin’s all about, right? It’s about lookin’ a wild one in the face, so that’s what I’m gonna show you, mister. But first, I gotta see if you got any wood sense whatsoever. You stay here in this clearin’, and don’t go wanderin’ off.”

White Eye turned on his heel and disappeared back through the pine branches, leaving Cam to watch his own breath condense into tiny ice crystals in front of his face. He waited for a minute, trying to hear the other man’s progress through the pines, but now he heard absolutely nothing. Of course, White Eye might have stopped three feet into the dense pines to see what Cam would do, so Cam did nothing for a couple of minutes but move to the center of the clearing. It was twenty feet on every side to the nearest pine tree, so there was no way in hell that guy could come out of the pines and tap him on the shoulder without Cam seeing him first.