Shirley Murphy - The Cat, the Devil, and Lee Fontana

“The cowboy,” Sammie said, looking deeply at him. “My dream, my cowboy. My dream told me. The cowboy belongs to us. He doesn’t know that, he doesn’t know about us, not yet. It will be a long time,” she said, “a long journey. I dreamed of snow and prisons and then he is sick, but then he will get better and he will come to us and he will help you.”

Sergeant Trevis seemed to be paying no attention, looking blankly away as if his mind were on something far distant, as he took in Sammie’s whispers.

Again Sammie took Morgan’s face in her hands. “You mustn’t lose hope, Daddy. You must take what comes, until the cowboy is here with us, until he comes to help us.”

Across from them, all Becky could do was wipe away her own tears, rise from her chair, come around the table and put her arms around them, holding them close, holding the two of them close to her, wondering, frightened but strangely hopeful.

32

As the Stearman lifted higher into the night wind, Lee pulled the blanket over his legs, looking down over the lower wing where the pale desert caught the last gleam of light. For a second just below them he saw the gray jogging free, the good gelding ducking his nose and switching his tail, smart and sassy at his own release. He’d have a fine taste of freedom and, when he got thirsty and hungry, he’d head for the one lone ranch off beyond the little dirt strip, he was already moving in that direction. No horseman, seeing the gray, would let him wander. As the plane passed over him he shied, bucked a little, and broke into a gallop.

When Mark banked sharply, lifting toward the mountains heading east, Lee leaned over scanning the foothills, but it was too dark among the massed rocks to see the higher pinnacle where he had buried the money. How long before he’d be back, to dig it up again? And what would happen to him, meantime? He began to worry about someone finding his stash, then he worried about the saddlebags and canvas bags rotting, or pack rats digging in and chewing up the money for nests. Sitting hunched under the blanket in the hopper of the front cockpit, he got himself all worked up worrying, like some little old woman.

Well, hell, the money was safe enough, it wasn’t going anywhere. He was too edgy, he’d been nervous ever since he accidentally killed Zigler. He didn’t like the thoughts he’d had, either, back there in the post office, wanting to hurt that young guard, he didn’t like that it had even crossed his mind to kill him. That young fellow wasn’t Zigler, he didn’t deserve to die, he wasn’t anything like that scum that Lee had wasted.

Mark had said they’d be following the Colorado River most of the way to Vegas but, looking out over the plane’s nose, Lee couldn’t see much but the night closing in on the deeper blackness of the low mountains, just their crowns catching the last gleam of daylight. Soon between the mountains they hit a patch of turbulence, the plane bucking, the wind so cold Lee pulled his jacket collar up, settled deeper in his seat, and pulled the blanket tighter. When he felt a tap on his shoulder, he looked back to see Mark shoving a wadded-up coat at him. He grabbed at it, the wind trying to tear it away. He got it into the cockpit and gladly pulled it on. Soon, bundled in the coat and blanket, he grew warmer—warm all but inside his chest where it felt like his breath had turned to ice. Hunching down in the coat collar like a turtle to warm his breath, he thought about the wagon trains that had crossed the desert and crossed those bare ranges below him, pioneers stubbornly heading west: a trip that took many months, where he and Mark were looking at just over an hour.

Some of the mountains those folks had crossed would take three teams of horses or oxen to pull one wagon up, with everyone pushing from behind. And on the other side, going down, trees had to be cut to use for drags to keep the wagons from getting away, from falling wheel over canvas, dragging their good teams with them. Those men and women, crossing a foreign land hauling their loaded wagons over the frozen mountains, they had had no idea what lay ahead, and they’d had only themselves to rely on. But they kept on, despite starvation, frozen limbs, despite sickness and death, despite the ultimate desperate measures that had kept some of them alive, that had shocked the generations who came after them, had shocked descendants who might not be here at all, if not for what they called, looking back, the most heinous of crimes.

Lee didn’t know how to judge what was not his to judge, all he knew right now was, if it was cold in this open hopper, the winters during those crossings had been a hundred times colder, down there among the wild mountains.

As a kid, growing up in South Dakota, he’d thought there’d never be an end to winter. Every chore seemed twice as hard, his hands froze to any metal he touched, ropes frozen stiff, even the flakes of hay froze hard. Barn doors stuck, latches wouldn’t work, ice had to be broken from water buckets several times a day and at night, too, so the animals could drink. He’d hated winter, and he’d had a home to live in, they’d had a fire at night to warm them and where his mother cooked, they’d had plenty of food, good beef from their own cattle, grain and root stores, but still he’d grumbled. Grumbled about splitting the firewood, grumbled about dragging hay over the snow to the waiting cattle. He’d even complained when he had to slog through deep snow to the barn to do his chores where he’d be cozy and warm among the warm animals.

Now, hunched down in the little airplane traveling in a way he had never imagined as a boy, he felt strangely unreal. The land below the wings humped away in darkness, a glint from the river now and then, and above the upper wing a glint of stars; and then far ahead Lee saw a cluster of lights, warm and beckoning, and that would be Vegas, a glittering oasis appearing and then vanishing between the low hills.

But where, all this time, was the ghost cat? Why wasn’t he here beneath the blanket, warming Lee? Why had Lee not seen or sensed the cat during all his moves at the post office and then burying the money, turning the gray loose, getting in the plane and taking off—all without Misto?

Had the yellow cat abandoned him? Had even this crime of robbery, so removed from any betrayal of Jake Ellson, had even this transgression against the law turned the cat from him? Lee prayed not. He would feel a failure, he would feel betrayed if that were the case. To be abandoned so suddenly, without a word, without a last rub and purr, that couldn’t make any sense to Lee.

Beneath him, now, the little city took shape, the land below brightened by colored neon, by palaces of yellow lights as the Stearman dropped down over the last ridge into Vegas. Mark circled the city lights, then put her nose down toward the valley. Warmer air washed over Lee. He sat up straighter watching the lights come up at him in sweeps of raw neon, the windows of the tall buildings crowded together and bright, and then a dark and empty space delineated by long straight rows of airport lights picking out the runways.

Mark banked the Stearman, coming around for a straight shot, a long approach. He set her down lightly and taxied to the far end of the runway, where he moved off toward a row of small planes tied down, and a few small hangars. The night was pleasantly warm, Lee pulled off the heavy coat as Mark killed the engine.

He was stiff, getting out. And he was still wondering about the cat, he still had that empty feeling, without the companionship of the ghost cat. Even when he didn’t see Misto he could often sense him near, but now he sensed only emptiness. He felt lost, felt so alone suddenly that he might even welcome the goading presence of the dark spirit—if the cat would return, as well.