The Devil's Breath

by R. R. Irvine

  Fisk eyed the door for a while, then said, “Are you going to let her do your fighting for you?”

  “No,” Graham replied, and with that padded toward the front door. They stepped outside.

  Overhead, thunderheads pushed the last remaining patch of blue from the sky. The morning, bright and cheerful only moments before, went dark. The result was an instant chill, as if the sun had died.

  Graham had seen a lot of downpours in his time, including Southern California cloudbursts that turned housing developments into mud heaps, but never anything like this. One moment he and Sheriff Fisk had been squaring off, and in the next instant water was coming down hard enough to make a man wonder if it was possible to drown in rain.

  “Come back in here!” Harry shouted from the doorway. It was the same tone she might have used to scold Shotgun.

  Graham and the sheriff didn’t need a second opinion; they rushed for the door.

  “Only mad dogs would go out in such weather,” Harry said in exasperation.

  Once inside, the two men stood there contritely, watching puddles grow at their feet.

  “Incredible,” Harry muttered. “I turn my back on you two for a moment and look what happens.” She heaved a sigh and shook her head. “As for you, Jack Graham, you get dressed, unless you like the idea of pneumonia.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he answered sheepishly. But in his mind, he rejoiced because he’d had the guts to stand up to the sheriff, who now would have to put up with a soggy uniform.

  Ten minutes later Graham returned to the living room to find Harry bending over the fireplace, fanning a reluctant log, while Sheriff Fisk stood by like a slowly melting ice statue.

  “Now,” Graham said to the man, “let’s get down to business. Why are you really here?”

  The sheriff smiled thinly. “To tell Harry that the mayor has called an emergency meeting of the town council.”

  “Why?” she asked suspiciously.

  The sheriff glanced at Graham and shook his head.

  “You can talk in front of Jack,” she said.

  For a moment, Fisk hesitated. He cleaned wax from first one ear then the other. Finally he said, “Del Timmons is dead.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t give me that kind of crap,” Harry said.

  “Mayor Benyon thinks it was probably another bear.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ve never seen a dead man look like that.”

  19

  THE EMERGENCY session of the council had to wait, because Harry insisted on fixing Graham breakfast first. Even the sheriff was invited to a meal of hot-cakes and eggs.

  “Thank God,” Graham said after his first bite. “I thought you couldn’t cook at all.”

  “Don’t blame me for the stew. I didn’t have my mind on my cooking last night.”

  Graham grinned and kept eating.

  “The only one who’ll be disappointed is Shotgun,” Harry said. “He was hoping for leftovers.”

  Thirty minutes later, after the last of the breakfast dishes had been washed and put away, Graham accompanied Harry and the sheriff outside, where they stood peering up at the Uintas, now so sharply defined by morning sun.

  “Strange how the clouds disappeared,” Graham said. “It looked like it was going to rain all day.”

  “They’ll be back this afternoon,” Harry said. “You can count on that.” She smiled at Graham.

  “You two can talk about the weather all you like,” the sheriff put in, “but it won’t change the fact that half the town is going to be talking about you.”

  “No doubt you intend to help spread the word,” Graham said. It was a challenge.

  Sheriff Fisk shrugged.

  “If I hear one word to embarrass Harry,” Graham went on, “you can count me out as far as cooperating. You can tell your mayor that.”

  Harry took hold of Graham’s hand. “I don’t care what people say.”

  “Maybe not. But I’m tired of being pushed around. The Hunting Ground needs me. I don’t need it.”

  “What are you saying?” Fisk asked. “Are you promising to help us if Harry’s reputation is protected?”

  “Oh, Jack,” Harry said. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I’ve thought it over carefully, Harry. I’ve decided to go along with the town council, at least for a while. Of course, there’s a catch.” He winked at her.

  The sheriff’s eyes narrowed.

  “I intend to have myself appointed as the Hunting Ground’s official artist,” Graham said.

  Harry caught her breath.

  Graham pulled her to him and kissed her gently on the ear. “Thanks to you, I feel like painting again, or trying to anyway, for the first time in months. And this hunt will give me the perfect chance to sketch the countryside.”

  “How do you know Mayor Benyon will agree?” asked the sheriff.

  “I think he will.”

  “We’ll be hiking over ten thousand feet at one point.”

  Graham forced a smile. It seemed like the right decision when he said it out loud. Now he hoped he wouldn’t live to regret it.

  Harry tightened her grip on his hand. “You’re not a hunter. You told me that you hated killing.”

  “I do. But I don’t think I’m going to be able to stop it single-handedly. So, when you can’t beat „em . . .”

  “For Godsake, Jack. Its rough going up there.” She pointed at the mountains towering above them.

  “I can take care of myself,” he said stubbornly. He couldn’t back out now.

  “No one expects you to play hero,” she said.

  “Harry, don’t spoil it. You’ve given me the will to try painting again. And this country”—he looked up at the snow-covered peaks—“it cries out to me.”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Come on, Harry. Look up there.” He pointed his hook at the timberline where the Uintas turned bleak and gray. “You and I know that if there’s anything out there to be afraid of, it’s walking on two feet.”

  “I don’t—”

  Graham silenced her with a kiss. Then he said, “If Yeba Kah’s up there, he was my uncle’s friend. So I probably don’t have a thing to worry about.”

  The sheriff looked embarrassed and walked toward his patrol car.

  “Harry,” Graham said softly, “this is something I have to do. It’s a test. Once and for all, I’ve got to know if I can paint what I feel.”

  “If you love me, paint me.”

  “One day I will, but first I have to go into those mountains. If I can capture the beauty of this place, the awe of it, then maybe, just maybe, people around here will think twice about turning over their lives and land to the kind of men who hunt and kill for pleasure. And even if the people of Moondance go ahead and turn this into a fast-buck franchise, why, then my paintings will at least serve to show what things used to look like.”

  Unless, of course, he told himself, it was just so much wishful thinking on his part. Unless he was about to make a fool of himself by proving that he could no longer paint.

  20

  COUNCILMAN LAMAR Mortenson’s hands were shaking so badly he spilled his first cup of Sunday Postum.

  “You had that nightmare again, didn’t you?” his wife said across the kitchen table.

  He grunted and mopped up the spill with a paper napkin.

  “It’s been going on for a week now. Every night.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that.”

  With deft movements, she fixed him another cup of Postum. Then she came back to the table and sat down, careful not to wrinkle her Sunday best.

  “Maybe you ought to go see Doc Epperson,” she suggested without looking at her husband.

  “Nothing’s wrong with me.”

  “Lamar, you’ve being stubborn. I have to lie in the same bed with you every night listening to you cry out in your sleep. If you won’t go to the doctor, let’s at least talk i
t over at church with one of the elders.”

  “You know I have to attend an emergency session of the council in a few minutes.”

  “It’s not right. Hi Benyon ought to have better sense than to call a meeting during services.”

  Mortenson muttered something incomprehensible.

  “Please. Forget the meeting. Come to church with me.”

  “I can’t. The whole town is depending on us to make certain that nothing else goes wrong.”

  The back door banged. The sound of scratching followed immediately.

  “One of these days,” his wife said, “those dogs of yours are going to knock that door right off its hinges. As it is, they’ve scratched off all the paint. You really ought to build a kennel for them.”

  “I want them running loose, you know that,” he answered sharply. “Terriers need exercise. Besides—”

  “I know,” his wife interrupted, then sighed. “You want them loose so they can chase every cat in the neighborhood.”

  Mortenson wiped his hands on the remains of his napkin.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re having your cat dream again.” He nodded.

  “Honey, I’m sorry.” She reached out and touched his arm. “You haven’t dreamt about them in years.”

  When he tried to swallow, his esophagus sounded a protest

  “You ought to resign from the council,” she said. “You’re working too hard.”

  He pushed away from the table.

  “I’m going to call Doc Epperson before I go to church and make an appointment for you.”

  “All right. But he won’t find anything wrong with me.”

  “At least I’ll feel better.”

  He kissed her. “If I have time, I’ll join you at church.”

  Then he went out the back door and said to the terriers, “Come on. Let’s go find ourselves a cat.”

  As always, the three dogs preceded him to the garage, a precaution he’d taken after finding a stray tabby sleeping on the roof of his car.

  The terriers sniffed at the closed garage door. When they didn’t so much as whine, he swung it open and stepped back, allowing the dogs to circle his Pontiac. Then, their duty done, they padded back to the porch, where they collapsed, looking surly. They seemed to know he wasn’t taking them for a ride.

  Mortenson unlocked the car and slid in behind the wheel. As usual the V-8’s roar brought a satisfied smile to his face. A car, a man’s car, needed power, power to pass slowpokes on the highway or to dodge the maniacs the state was licensing to drive these days.

  He backed the Pontiac out onto the two-lane road and then turned toward city hall. All the car windows were rolled up, all the doors locked.

  He felt totally protected. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he delighted in the heavy, sturdy feel of the car. Come to think of it, a Pontiac wouldn’t be such a bad place in which to die.

  He nodded to himself. He was one person who did not want to die in bed. A bed didn’t provide a body with any protection. When a man died, he shouldn’t have to fret about the safety of his body.

  His mother was proof of that, his mother who’d kept half a dozen cats and called every one of them her “little darling.”

  Her little darlings had started eating her as soon as she died. Cats were like that, Mortenson told himself. They wouldn’t so much as miss one meal.

  Mortenson found her body originally, and he found it again last night in his dreams.

  “I can’t understand it,” the doctor had told him. “Cats don’t usually act like that, especially since she’d only been dead a few hours.”

  But Mortenson understood. Cats weren’t to be trusted, and that’s why he had every last one of his mother’s little darlings gassed.

  He was approaching the outskirts of town when he spotted the big yellow cat sitting on the dirt shoulder of the highway. Big as life it was, preening itself, a striped tabby just like the one that had defiled the roof of his Pontiac.

  His lips curled into a mirthless grin.

  “Now,” he said to the Pontiac.

  The car responded instantly.

  The cat, however, surprised Mortenson. Instead of fleeing for the underbrush, it darted straight out onto the asphalt.

  He swung the wheel hard over to correct his aim. But the Pontiac’s power steering was too responsive. The car went into a skid.

  Even so, Mortenson felt elated, joyful as the cat was hurled into oblivion.

  Elation turned to pain as the Pontiac slammed into a drainage ditch at the side of the road. Mortenson bounced around. His head hit the shatterproof glass in the driver’s door.

  And that was when he saw them. They were everywhere, surrounding him. Cats by the thousands.

  ******

  The house seemed lonely to Graham, lonely and cold. He sat next to the fire, but that wasn’t like having Harry’s warmth beside him.

  He scratched Shotgun for a while and even hugged the dog. Even that didn’t lessen Graham’s sense of loss. With her, he was a man again. Without her . . . It didn’t bear thinking about.

  “Tell you what,” he said to Shotgun, “I’m going to take her out to lunch. With luck, I’ll bring her back for dinner.”

  The dog stretched; its tail wagged briefly.

  “You need your rest. As for me, I’ll do my recuperating with Harry.”

  With that, Graham filled the dog’s bowl with food, then hurried out to the Jeep, nursed it against the cold to get it started, and drove down the dirt road at a speed that would have been unthinkable only yesterday. He was just about to turn onto the highway when a Pontiac went by heading toward town. Graham recognized Mortenson driving. The Jeep followed in the man’s wake.

  A quarter of a mile later the Pontiac started having trouble. Several times it swerved across the center line. Then all at once it went totally out of control and smashed into the ditch that ran along the side of the road.

  Graham caught his breath. His heart pounded. He almost lost control of the Jeep as he began reliving his own accident, the screaming tires, the wack of the amputation. His right hand burned. Yet he managed to stop right next to the Pontiac, and fought down his own panic enough to go to Mortenson’s aid.

  The man was screaming hysterically. Yet there was more than hysteria in his shrill cries. There was absolute terror.

  As Graham reached out to pull open the door, the morning sun cleared a tall mountain peak. With dazzling brilliance, sunlight glinted from every chrome surface on the car. Graham was momentarily blinded. When he could see again, each piece of chrome had become a blade, each sharp enough for an amputation.

  Mortenson’s screams hit a new pitch. The sound dispelled Graham’s illusion. He shook his head. Mortenson’s face was covered with blood from a gash in his forehead. His fingers were clawing at his face.

  Graham grabbed hold of the door handle and pulled, using hook and hand alike. It wouldn’t open. He gave up on that door and tried another, which also refused to budge.

  Only then did he realize that all four doors were locked from the inside.

  “Unlock the door!” he yelled at Mortenson.

  The man didn’t seem to understand.

  Graham banged the window glass with his hook. “Pull the lock.”

  Mortenson began clawing at himself all the harder.

  Graham didn’t know what to do. Maybe it was better to let the man stay where he was. Maybe it would be better to back off. Maybe that would calm him.

  It was then that Graham realized that Mortenson’s fingernails were ripping his face to pieces.

  “The cats,” the man gibbered. “It’s the cats.”

  Then Graham saw that Mortenson had something sharp in his hand, a piece of metal that had come loose in the crash.

  Graham smashed his hook against the glass. It shattered but didn’t break. Graham struck again.

  The glass went red.

  Graham broke through the window and pulled the lock. As he did so, warm blood spraye
d his arm.

  He jerked open the door. Mortenson had ripped open his own jugular.

  Bubbling noises came from his mouth. Graham thought he heard the word cats again before the man died.

  21

  “THERE’S NOT enough left of the council to matter,” Mayor Benyon told the sheriff, although technically that wasn’t true. He, Harry, and the sheriff did still constitute a majority. But Harry, who’d been at the scene of Mortenson’s accident along with Fisk and Graham, was so upset she’d gone home to rest.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” said Fisk. “I think we’d better call off the hunt, at least for a while.”

  Benyon gazed around his city hall office before answering. “Don’t start imagining things. This death was an accident, pure and simple. Lamar lost control of his car. So let’s not make a mystery out of it.” He sighed and added, “Of course, I’m not denying that Graham is spooked. All that crap about cats.”

  “Don’t you believe him?”

  “Maybe you hit him harder than you think. Maybe he has a concussion.” Benyon took a noisy breath. “That’s the only explanation I believe.”

  The sheriff wet his lips. “What about Del Timmons?”

  The mayor shrugged.

  “You drive out to Doc Epperson’s,” Fisk added, “and take a look at his body. Then you tell me a bear killed him.”

  The sheriff looked totally shaken, Benyon decided, as he patted the pockets of his Sunday suit in a vain attempt to find tobacco. He longed to light up, to poison himself.

  “Calm down,” he said. “I’m depending on you, Alden. I always have.”

  “My God. Don’t tell me to calm down. We’ve got to do something.”

  The mayor pushed away from his desk and walked over to stare out of his office window. His town, dying until the Hunting Ground had come along, was spread out before him like a colorful relief map.

  Outside, the afternoon wind was gathering thunderheads, while at the same time shaking the aspens that flanked the sidewalk in front of city hall.

  “Maybe the Indian is still alive?” said the sheriff. “Maybe—”

  “Graham was there. He didn’t see any Indian.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in what Graham saw or didn’t see.”