When we got back to the chamber we found Hutcheson still opposite the Iron Virgin; he had been evidently philosophizing, and now gave us the benefit of his thought in the shape of a sort of exordium.
“Wall, I guess I’ve been learnin’ somethin’ here while madam has been gettin’ over her faint. ’Pears to me that we’re a long way behind the times on our side of the big drink. We uster think out on the plains that the Injun could give us points in tryin’ to make a man uncomfortable; but I guess your old mediaeval law-and-order party could raise him every time. Splinters was pretty good in his bluff on the squaw, but this here young miss held a straight flush all high on him. The points of them spikes air sharp enough still, though even the edges air eaten out by what uster be on them. It’d be a good thing for our Indian section to get some specimens of this here play-toy to send round to the Reservations jest to knock the stuffin’ out of the bucks, and the squaws too, by showing them as how old civilization lays over them at their best. Guess but I’ll get in that box a minute jest to see how it feels!”
“Oh no! no!” said Amelia. “It is too terrible!”
“Guess, ma’am, nothin’s too terrible to the explorin’ mind. I’ve been in some queer places in my time. Spent a night inside a dead horse while a prairie fire swept over me in Montana Territory—an’ another time slept inside a dead buffler when the Comanches was on the war path an’ I didn’t keer to leave my kyard on them. I’ve been two days in a caved-in tunnel in the Billy Broncho gold mine in New Mexico, an’ was one of the four shut up for three parts of a day in the caisson what slid over on her side when we was settin’ the foundations of the Buffalo Bridge. I’ve not funked an odd experience yet, an’ I don’t propose to begin now!”
We saw that he was set on the experiment, so I said: “Well, hurry up, old man, and get through it quick!”
“All right, General,” said he, “but I calculate we ain’t quite ready yet. The gentlemen, my predecessors, what stood in that thar canister, didn’t volunteer for the office—not much! And I guess there was some ornamental tyin’ up before the big stroke was made. I want to go into this thing fair and square, so I must get fixed up proper first. I dare say this old galoot can rise some string and tie me up accordin’ to sample?”
This was said interrogatively to the old custodian, but the latter, who understood the drift of his speech, though perhaps not appreciating to the full the niceties of dialect and imagery, shook his head. His protest was, however, only formal and made to be overcome. The American thrust a gold piece into his hand, saying: “Take it, pard! it’s your pot; and don’t be skeer’d. This ain’t no necktie party that you’re asked to assist in!” He produced some thin frayed rope and proceeded to bind our companion with sufficient strictness for the purpose. When the upper part of his body was bound, Hutcheson said:
“Hold on a moment, Judge. Guess I’m too heavy for you to tote into the canister. You jest let me walk in, and then you can wash up regardin’ my legs!”
Whilst speaking he had backed himself into the opening which was just enough to hold him. It was a close fit and no mistake. Amelia looked on with fear in her eyes, but she evidently did not like to say anything. Then the custodian completed his task by tying the American’s feet together so that he was now absolutely helpless and fixed in his voluntary prison. He seemed to really enjoy it, and the incipient smile which was habitual to his face blossomed into actuality as he said:
“Guess this here Eve was made out of the rib of a dwarf! There ain’t much room for a full-grown citizen of the United States to hustle. We uster make our coffins more roomier in Idaho territory. Now, Judge, you jest begin to let this door down, slow, on to me. I want to feel the same pleasure as the other jays had when those spikes began to move toward their eyes!”
“Oh no! no! no!” broke in Amelia hysterically. “It is too terrible! I can’t bear to see it!—I can’t! I can’t!” But the American was obdurate. “Say, Colonel,” said he, “why not take Madame for a little promenade? I wouldn’t hurt her feelin’s for the world; but now that I am here, havin’ kem eight thousand miles, wouldn’t it be too hard to give up the very experience I’ve been pinin’ an’ pantin’ fur? A man can’t get to feel like canned goods every time! Me and the Judge here’ll fix up this thing in no time, an’ then you’ll come back, an’ we’ll all laugh together!”
Once more the resolution that is born of curiosity triumphed, and Amelia stayed holding tight to my arm and shivering whilst the custodian began to slacken slowly inch by inch the rope that held back the iron door. Hutcheson’s face was positively radiant as his eyes followed the first movement of the spikes.
“Wall!” he said, “I guess I’ve not had enjoyment like this since I left Noo York. Bar a scrap with a French sailor at Wapping—an’ that warn’t much of a picnic neither—I’ve not had a show fur real pleasure in this dod-rotted Continent, where there ain’t no b’ars nor no Injuns, an’ wheer nary man goes heeled. Slow there, Judge! Don’t you rush this business! I want a show for my money this game—I du!”
The custodian must have had in him some of the blood of his predecessors in that ghastly tower, for he worked the engine with a deliberate and excruciating slowness which after five minutes, in which the outer edge of the door had not moved half as many inches, began to overcome Amelia. I saw her lips whiten, and felt her hold upon my arm relax. I looked around an instant for a place whereon to lay her, and when I looked at her again found that her eye had become fixed on the side of the Virgin. Following its direction I saw the black cat crouching out of sight. Her green eyes shone like danger lamps in the gloom of the place, and their color was heightened by the blood which still smeared her coat and reddened her mouth. I cried out:
“The cat! Look out for the cat!” for even then she sprang out before the engine. At this moment she looked like a triumphant demon. Her eyes blazed with ferocity, her hair bristled out till she seemed twice her normal size, and her tail lashed about as does a tiger’s when the quarry is before it. Elias P. Hutcheson when he saw her was amused, and his eyes positively sparkled with fun as he said:
“Darned if the squaw hain’t got on all her war paint! Jest give her a shove off if she comes any of her tricks on me, for I’m so fixed everlastingly by the boss, that durn my skin if I can keep my eyes from her if she wants them! Easy there, Judge! Don’t you slack that ar rope or I’m euchered!”
At this moment Amelia completed her faint, and I had to clutch hold of her round the waist or she would have fallen to the floor. Whilst attending to her I saw the black cat crouching for a spring, and jumped up to turn the creature out.
But at that instant, with a sort of hellish scream, she hurled herself, not as we expected at Hutcheson, but straight at the face of the custodian. Her claws seemed to be tearing wildly as one sees in the Chinese drawings of the dragon rampant, and as I looked I saw one of them light on the poor man’s eye, and actually tear through it and down his cheek, leaving a wide band of red where the blood seemed to spurt from every vein.
With a yell of sheer terror which came quicker than even his sense of pain, the man leaped back, dropping as he did so the rope which held back the iron door. I jumped for it, but was too late, for the cord ran like lightning through the pulley-block, and the heavy mass fell forward from its own weight.
As the door closed I caught a glimpse of our poor companion’s face. He seemed frozen with terror. His eyes stared with a horrible anguish as if dazed, and no sound came from his lips.
And then the spikes did their work. Happily the end was quick, for when I wrenched open the door they had pierced so deep that they had locked in the bones of the skull through which they had crushed, and actually tore him—it—out of his iron prison till, bound as he was, he fell at full length with a sickly thud upon the floor, the face turning upward as he fell.
I rushed to my wife, lifted her up and carried her out, for I feared for her very reason if she should wake from her faint to such a scene. I laid her on t
he bench outside and ran back. Leaning against the wooden column was the custodian moaning in pain whilst he held his reddening handkerchief to his eyes. And sitting on the head of the poor American was the cat, purring loudly as she licked the blood which trickled through the gashed socket of his eyes.
I think no one will call me cruel because I seized one of the old executioner’s swords and shore her in two as she sat.
HOW THE FORMER PETS SURVIVE OR DIE, by Michael Hemmingson [Poem]
That summer of bad economy and little tourism,
the streets of central Tijuana are invaded by dozens of dogs and cats,
having been abandoned by families who can no longer afford to
feed and take care of these once cherished pets, these confused and scared
creatures who do not understand why they were tossed out of a car door
and the car sped away, little eyes of children crying in the back windows
like tiny rockets shooting toward the moon.
Some of these former pets quickly learn how to survive,
finding nourishment in trash cans, or begging food from tourists
at restaurants and police officers walking the beat
on Revolucíon Avenue, competing for attention with
hungry humans: adults with hands out and children selling
gum and chocolate with the sad eyes their parents taught them.
Others cannot adapt, depressed and lonely,
they step in front of trucks or simply lie down on the sidewalk
and pass. I witnessed a black Labrador rotting by a stoplight
over the weekend until animal control picked the dead creature
up on Monday afternoon. One night I observed seven male
dogs surround a single female, snapping and barking for who
would be the first to have her,
the winning alpha stuck to her, that post-coitus connect of nature,
groin to ass, stumbling down the street with four legs and cries of
procreation agony as the other males waited for the disconnection
and their turn for a quick poke with the chance their sperm
would hit the mark. Over an eight-week period, I see that
female dog grow pregnant, to have a litter of unwanted mutts
who will never survive out there.
I often saw this skinny cat, who made a home under a broken
car, quietly awaiting for the right time to leap out and catch a
passing mouse or a pigeon on the ground, a feast for one to live
another day—when dogs come near the lair, this cat hisses and
draws claws, able to fight a dog five times its size. Cats seem to
be more inclined to endure when forsaken, unlike the puppy I
saw hiding behind a broken door of a residential hotel, crying
loudly for those once loved and now betrayed by them,
discarded like yesterday’s lunch tossed into the alley,
food for the ants and worms who consider such waste
as a gift from the gods, and when these former pets
die in the street, they will feast on that carcass as well.
CAT BURGLAR, by Kathryn Ptacek
Blanche awakened in the darkness and wondered what it was that brought her out of her sleep; then she heard the faint scraping noise at the window and knew.
She shivered, and clutched at the covers with her wrinkled hands, and waited. There was nothing more she could do; she was confined to the bed, unable to get up by herself. Trapped.
Wait! She thought. The phone extension that her daughter Julia had insisted on installing in the room—the small phone sat on the bedside table. She reached out, trying to find the phone in the clutter. It sat out of arm’s reach. She remembered then: Julia had dropped by earlier and called her husband to tell him she was on her way home, and she had left the instrument there, forgetting to put it back in its usual place. Blanche tried to find the cord so she could pull the phone toward her, but the cord was draped on the other side of the table. She couldn’t move the table closer, either; it was too heavy, too solid.
Now, if she could just push herself up. She managed to struggle up onto her elbows and was leaning over, when she knew she couldn’t do it. It was beyond her capability, and she sank back onto the bed.
Maybe her kids were right, she thought sadly; maybe it was time she went to the nursing home. She was eighty-two now; but others her age lived by themselves. She really could take care of herself. She only needed the nurse’s aide to come in the morning and help her from the bed and get ready. Once that was done, she was on her own, and she did well enough, even if she did it very slowly nowadays.
One of the cats on the bed—she thought it was Snowflake because in the moonlight the cat’s coat was white, but then it might have been Fred who was silvery grey—lifted its head and stared at the window.
The scraping grew louder, then she heard the soft sound of something touching wood. The window was being lifted. Snowflake—or Fred—yawned, ears pricked forward, alert. Tammy, the scrawny tabby, crawled out from under the covers and crouched by the woman’s pillow, her tail flicking back and forth, the tip of it brushing the woman’s chin. One of the other cats ambled in from another room and settled in the doorway, waiting. The cat was big so she knew it was Bear, and beyond Bear she could see the white of Snowflake.
Blanche waited.
She saw the window was now halfway up. A foot emerged, then a pants leg, following by the lower half of someone’s torso. Within seconds the burglar stood inside her room.
Blanche held her breath, afraid to make a sound. What if he heard, what if he attacked her? She tried to smother the rising alarm. She could yell. But who would hear? Her neighbors in the houses on either side worked hard all day and slept heavily at night; besides their houses sat far from hers. An old woman’s thin scream could go unnoticed in the night sounds of the city. Too, her bedroom faced the back of the lot; no one could see anything from the street.
No one would come to rescue her. She was on her own. But what if he raped her, killed her? What if, and she could feel the tears welling in her eyes, what if he did something to the cats? She would have called them to her if she could, but fear had robbed her of her voice. Besides, how could she protect them when she couldn’t protect herself?
The other cats had wandered in now, lured by the unfamiliar sounds, and they watched the intruder as he glanced around. He held a small flashlight, more like a penlight, which he had switched on, and he hissed, an inward breath, when he saw the cats arrayed in the doorway. The thin light traveled across a chair, a dresser, and then finally the bed, traveling up the foot, past Sylvester who had perched himself alongside Fred on the neatly folded quilt there, past Mittens the Siamese who crouched by the woman’s hip, past Tammy who growled a low sound, to the old woman’s face.
She stared at the dark figure behind the light.
“Well, this changes my plans slightly,” he said. “I didn’t expect to find you here. I thought you’d left.”
“Not yet,” she said, finally managing to speak. “My daughter wants me out, but I’ve been stubborn.”
“Old people can be that way.” There was a hint of amusement in his voice.
“I know.” She took a deep breath. “What do you intend to do?”
“I’m here to rob you.” He gave a short laugh and flicked off the flashlight.
Her eyes needed a few minutes to adjust to the sudden blackness; although with the light of the moon streaming through the window she could still see fairly well. Age had taken away many things, but not her sight. The large limb of the oak that stood just outside her bedroom cast a long shadow. She wondered if he had climbed up the tree, or had he been more practical and used a ladder? She decided he must have used a ladder.
“I didn’t know you had all these cats,” he remarked as he picked his way across the room to her antique oak bureau. He ran his gloved hands across the
surface and found the jewelry box her grandson had given to her, the birthday before he went off to Southeast Asia and stepped on a land mine and came home in a box.
The Third Cat Story Megapack: 25 Frisky Feline Tales, Old and New Page 22
