"Makes no mind," Luke Trull said. "I'll stop down to the drugstore an'
git aught to put on it."
"I'll pay for it. Will two dollars extra be all right?"
"If ye've a mind, Miz Harris."
"You--you won't hurt the kittens?"
"Oh no, Miz Harris! 'Course not! Why would I hurt 'em when I told the
Mister I'd take 'em?"
"Here's your money."
"Thankee."
Luke Trull tied the mouth of the gunny sack, slung it over the saddle
horn, and swung expertly into the saddle. The horse broke into a fast
walk and the gunny sack bobbed back and forth in cadence with the
horse's movements. Paws spread, claws extended, Frosty steadied himself
by holding onto the sacking. One of the gray kittens whimpered
plaintively. Rigid with uncertainty, the second merely stared. Frosty
paid his brothers not the slightest attention.
He could smell nothing, see nothing except dim light that filtered
through the gunny sack's coarse weave, and he heard little but the
measured clomp-clomp of the horse's hooves. Since he could know nothing
whatever of what lay about him, or what might happen next, he couldn't
possibly plan any intelligent course of action or know how to cope with
the next problem that arose. He must be ready for anything and he was.
Though he knew no fear, his nerves were taut as a blown-up balloon. From
the tip of his nose to the end of his tail, no tiny part of him was even
slightly relaxed. Just so, provision is made for all cats that find
themselves in serious and uncertain situations. Frosty, and to a lesser
extent the gray kittens, were ready to fly in any direction or to do
instantly whatever the next second, the next minute, the next hour, or
any elapsed time, might have them do.
They did not bob around as puppies would have because each had all four
claws firmly fixed in the sacking and, in a very real way, even while
they were together, they remained apart. Though on occasion several cats
will cooperate to do what one alone cannot do, theirs is not the pack
instinct of dogs and wolves. Intelligent enough to work with others when
the situation demands it, they are too highly individualized to look to
any one leader and too smart ever completely to trust their own fate to
anything except themselves.
The gray kitten that had mewed before, called a second time. It was not
a cry of fear, but one of appeal. Until now, the kitten's world had
consisted of the shed, of daytime forays into the yard, of all the food
it could eat and of unfailingly gentle treatment at the hands of human
beings. The desperate kitten wanted only to be back in the familiar
world from which it had been so rudely torn.
Far more intelligent and advanced than either of the gray kittens,
Frosty gave himself wholly to facing things as they were, with no vain
lamentations for what had been. Still able to smell only the dusty sack,
to see little and to hear only the horse's hoofbeats, he kept every
sense alert. Thus he knew when they left the road and started climbing a
mountain path. The little dust bombs that had been exploding under the
horse's feet no longer floated upwards. Metal-shod hooves rang on rocks
and boulders and the air was cleaner.
Frosty sensed only the physical change, welcome because the dust was
less oppressive. Being a cat, he knew nothing of the town's social life,
as it was conducted by humans, and if he had known, he wouldn't have
cared. But town life had a definite bearing on why he and his brothers
were here.
The town owed its existence to the fact that it was the logical place to
establish a railroad yard. Its inhabitants consisted of those who worked
for the railroad and various business and professional people who had
gathered to serve them. The first scheduled train had run over the
new-laid rails just twenty-eight years ago, and, with few exceptions,
everybody in the town who was past thirty had come from somewhere else.
Those who'd stayed had established the town's oldest and most-respected
families, and such traditions as there were centered about them and the
history they'd seen in the making.
It was a colorful story, for though there hadn't been any town, there
had been people here long before the steel rails crept this way. They
were the Trulls, the Casmans, the Haroldsons, the Gates, and others.
According to popular report, in which there was probably more than a
little truth, these natives of the region lived back in the hills
because no place that smacked even faintly of civilization would have
them and, before the coming of the railroad and the building of the
town, they did just about as they pleased. A choice story, one the
town's newspaper reprinted at least once a year, concerned the
twenty-five-year-long feud that the Trulls and Casmans had carried on
with the Gates.
Occasionally, some of the hill people had come into town, worked on the
railroad long enough to get money for some purpose or other and gone
again. They hadn't wanted steady jobs and they still didn't.
Now the town's relations with the hill dwellers were somewhat curious.
The railroad had brought law with it and the hill people had had to
conform, but they had never conformed completely. Periodically, the game
warden found a Trull, Casman, or some other hillman, with game or fish
taken out of season. Two years ago, federal officers, searching for
illicit stills, had combed the whole area thoroughly. They had uncovered
no bootlegging operations but that, as every townsman knew, was only
because the hill dwellers had been too clever for them.
Legend and fact mingled indiscriminately to influence the town's view of
the hill people. It was commonly believed that, once a hill man promised
to do something, the deed was as good as done. It was also believed
that, back in their own wild country, the hill dwellers were still a law
unto themselves. Many were the darkly whispered tales of violence, even
murder, and pagan rites. But most of these stories were born in some
town-dweller's imagination.
However, there was fact, and Andy Gates furnished the outstanding
example. Andy was the last resident survivor of the Gates clan. Three
years ago, looking fourteen but claiming he was sixteen, Andy had come
into town and obtained a job on the night shift in the roundhouse. Days
he had enrolled in the town's high school, where he not only completed a
four-year course in three but graduated as salutatorian. Then, though he
might have continued to work for the railroad, with every prospect of
some day having a very good job, Andy had gone back to the hills.
So fact and romance tinted each other, and when Mrs. Harris handed the
three kittens over to Luke Trull, she hadn't the least idea that he
would do anything but exactly as he had promised and give them a fine
home. She didn't know anything about his home and had only a vague idea
of where he lived. However, who could doubt that surplus kittens, for
which there was no room in town, would be very well off in the hills? It
never occurred to her, it never occurred to anyone outside the hills,
that Luke was a man of the meanest order. With an inborn aversion to
work, he liked money and he constantly schemed and planned to get some.
His scratched hand, an injury not even worth noticing, he had quickly
recognized as an opportunity to extort two dollars more from Mrs.
Harris. He had never had the slightest intention of buying any
antiseptic from the drugstore and now, as his horse climbed the mountain
path, he looked for a good place to rid himself of the kittens. They'd
be nothing except a burden at Luke's place and he did not want them.
At the same time, he must be very careful. Those fools from town were
always coming into the hills for one reason or another, and, of course,
everybody in the town knew everybody else. If he were seen discarding
the kittens, he'd get no more surplus kittens or pups either and thus a
handy source of income would dry up.
Luke swung in the saddle to look behind him and saw nobody. There didn't
seem to be anybody ahead, either, but Luke's were the senses and
instincts of a hillman. He could not see around the next bend, but there
might be somebody there who could see him. Luke rode on. He rounded the
bend and silently commended himself for his own caution.
Swinging down a long, straight stretch toward him came young Andy Gates.
Although of anything except a poetical turn of mind, Luke thought, as he
always did when he saw Andy at a distance, of a birch sapling that has
shot far into the air without developing a trunk that is capable of
supporting it. There was nothing complimentary in the comparison; slim
and tall saplings might topple with the first storm. But the description
was apt. Six feet two, Andy's body had not yet filled out in proportion
to his height. He had straight, jet-black hair and a smile that always
seemed in bud on his mouth but never quite bloomed. Unless one looked
squarely into his black eyes--and Luke never did because Andy's eyes
made him uncomfortable--the over-all impression he gave was one of
extreme gentleness. With his long legs, he covered the ground like a
coursing greyhound. He was now, Luke guessed, on his way into town to
buy some needed supplies. They met and Luke said,
"Hi, Andy."