Лилиан Браун - The Cat Who Had 14 Tales

They were sitting around the fireplace after dinner. Bill threw his head back, stiffened his body, rolled his eyes, and started to mumble. An unearthly silence descended on the chalet, except for the snapping of logs in the fireplace.

Margaret shivered, and in a moment Deedee screeched: “Stop it! It’s too spooky! It makes me nervous.”

Bill jumped up and stirred the fire. “Okay, how about a nightcap? We better hit the sack if we’re going fishing at five in the morning. Hey, Meg honey, I’m leaving the Lucky Seven on the bar to ripen overnight. The cat won’t get into it, will he?”

“Of course not,” Margaret said, and Percy—who had been watching the proceedings with disdain—turned his head away with a shudder.

After the others had retired he prowled around the chalet in the dark, stretching with a sense of relief. The fire had burned down to a dull glow. It was a peaceful moonless night with nothing beyond the chalet windows but black sky, black lake, and black pine trees.

Percy settled down on the hearth rug and was moistly licking his fur in the warmth of the waning fire when a sound in the top of the pines made him pause with his tongue extended. It was like the moaning of the upper branches that gave warning of a storm, yet his whiskers told him this had nothing to do with weather. As he peered at the black windows a presence came through the glass. It came gently and soundlessly. A gust of chilled air reached Percy’s damp fur.

The presence that had entered the chalet began to utter a low, painful lament, swirling all the while in a formless mass. Then, as Percy watched with interest, it took shape—a beefy human shape.

Apparitions were nothing new to Percy. As a young cat in England he had once tried to rub his back against some ghostly ankles and had found nothing there. This one was larger and rougher than the silver tabby had ever seen. As it became more clearly defined he observed a figure with a beard and a fuzzy cap, a burly jacket, and breeches stuffed into heavy boots. Click-click-click went the boots on the polished wood floor.

“Holy Mackinaw!” said a hollow, reverberating voice. “What kind of a shanty would this be?” The apparition looked in wonder at the luxurious hearth rug, the brass ornaments on the fieldstone chimney breast, the glass-topped coffee table with half-finished jigsaw puzzle.

Percy settled down comfortably to watch, tucking his legs under his body for warmth. A musty dampness pervaded the room. Click-click-click again. He turned his head to see another figure materializing behind him. Though dressed in the same rough clothing, it was smaller than the first and beardless, and it had a rope of hair hanging down its back.

“Pigtail Beebe!” roared the first apparition in a harsh voice without substance. It was a sound that only a cat could hear.

“I’m haywire if it ain’t Morgan Black!” exclaimed the other in the same kind of thundering whisper. The two loggers stood staring at each other with legs braced wide apart and arms hanging loose. “I got a thirst fit to drain a swamp,” Pigtail complained.

“Me, I got a head as big as an ox,” said Morgan, groaning and touching his temples.

“Likely we was both oiled up when we got sluiced. How’d you get yours, you orie-eyed ol’ coot?”

“A jumped-up brawl in the Red Keg Saloon.” Morgan sat down wearily on the pine woodbox, removing his head and resting it on his lap, the better to massage his temples.

Pigtail said with a ghostly chuckle: “They got me on the Sawdust Flats. I’d had me a few drinks of Eagle Sweat and was on the way to Sadie Lou’s to get m’teeth fixed, as the sayin’ goes, when along come this bandy-legged Blue Noser, and I give him a squirt o’ B&L Black right in the eye. ‘Fore I knowed it, seven o’ them Blue Nosers come at me. When they got through puttin’ their boots to m’hide, I had the best case o’ smallpox you ever did see . . . . Never did get to Sadie Lou’s.”

“That was in ’61,” said Morgan’s head noiselessly. “Good drive on the river that spring.”

“An’ I was a catty man on the logs. I could ride a soap bubble to shore, I could.”

“Still braggin’.”

Pigtail sat down cautiously in Cornelius’s deep-cushioned leather chair. “Holy Mackinaw! This shanty is sure-thing candyside!” The logger began to sing, in an eerie whine. “Oh, our logs was piled up mountain high, and our cots was on the snow . . . in that godforsaken countree-e-e of Michigan-eye-o!”

“Pipe down,” said Morgan. “My head’s aimin’ to go off like dynamite.”

“You think you’re bad off? I got a thirst that’d dry up the Tittabawassee River. I could chaw an ear off the tin-plated fool what called us back! Why couldn’t they leave us be?”

Morgan carefully fitted his head back on his shoulders. “It’s nigh to daylight. We’ll be goin’ soon.”

“No sense goin’ without leavin’ a sign,” said Pigtail. “I’m feelin’ stakey. Yahow!” he yelled in a ghostly facsimile of a logger’s howl as he upended the coffee table and pulled the needles out of Margaret’s knitting. Percy cringed in horror.

Then the logger began to swagger around the room. Click-click-click went his calks, although they left no mark on the polished wood floor. “What’s this jigamaree?” he said, as he pushed the seven-layer torte off the bar. It landed on the floorboards with a sickening splash. “Yahow-w-w!” There was a distant echo as a rooster at one of the inland farms announced the break of day.

“Pipe down, you furriner!” Morgan warned, getting up from the woodbox with clenched fists. “You aimin’ to split m’head open? If I could get holt o’ you, I’d—”

“Hit the gut-hammer!” Pigtail sang out. “It’s daylight in the swamp!”

Morgan Black lunged at him, and the two figures blended in a hazy blur.

“Da-a-aylight in the swamp!” was the last fading cry Percy heard as the cock crowed again. The blur was melting around the edges. It wilted and shrank until nothing was left but a puddle on the polished wood floor. Then all was quiet except for the swish of waves on the shore and the first waking peeps of the sandpipers.

Thankful that the raucous visitors had gone, Percy curled on the hearth rug with one foreleg thrown over his ears and slept. He was waked by a voice bellowing in consternation.

“It’s a rotten shame!” Bill Diddleton roared, pacing back and forth in his fishing clothes. “It’s a filthy rotten shame!”

“I fail to understand it,” Cornelius kept repeating. “He has never been guilty of any mischief of this sort.”

“It took me three hours to make that cake—with eighteen eggs and seven kinds of booze!”

The disturbance brought the two women sleepily to the balcony railing.

“Look at my torte!” Bill shouted up at them. “That blasted cat knocked it on the floor.”

Margaret groped her way downstairs. “I can’t believe Percy would do such a thing. Where is he?” Percy—aghast at Bill’s accusation—sensed it might be wise to disappear.

“There he goes!” Bill shouted. “Sneaky devil just ran under the couch.”

Then Margaret cried out in shocked surprise. “Look at my knitting! He pulled the needles out! Percy, you are a bad cat! ”

Percy laid his ears back in hopeless indignation, alone in the dark under the sofa.

“It is quite unlike him,” said Cornelius. “I fail to understand what could have prompted such . . . Margaret! My jigsaw puzzle has been swept off the table! That cat must have gone berserk!”

Now Deedee was coming slowly downstairs. “Do you know the floor’s all wet? There’s a big puddle right in the middle of the room.”