Page:Weird Tales Volume 3 Number 1 (1923-12).djvu/39

38 THE CAT CALLED CARLOS

Melotte took his wife home. A year later the boy, Carlos, was born. And in two years more she was a widow. Strong and unafraid, she lived on and somehow achieved a living for herself and boy from the little farm. The man Willis stayed away for a dozen years; then he came back. Fearing the ridicule of those who would remember his wrecked face and that wedding night, he built himself a rough camp in the woods and lived there alone. He tried to establish himself in the favor of Widow Melotte; but she would have none of him. It became his habit to sit brooding in the shadow of the pines atop the ledge where he could look down upon the woman and her boy at work in the fields. Carlos was fourteen then—old enough to carry his dead father’s gun and supply their frugal table with what game the woodlands afforded. Willis was a drunken loafer with a great passion for hunting and fishing. He won the boy—could show him where big trout lurked in hidden pools; where partridges fed in alder swamps and on secluded ridges; thickets where the deer hid cunningly. The evil spell of the man was powerful, and many a stolen visit the boy made to the camp in the woods. I was only a lad of ten when Carlos met his death. That was more than twenty years ago; but if I should live to be a hundred I shall never forget that gray day of tragedy. Father had me with him in the buggy that day. We were coming home from the village, had just topped the rise that gave us close view of the Melotte place, when we heard the woman scream. We saw her leap from the doorway of the old brick house and run swiftly across the road. The red and yellow of her dress looked like a windblown flame as she ran. We saw her stumble among the rocks of the roadside, twist and fall, and then go dragging herself on toward the shadow of the ledge. We found her at the foot of the ledge among the rocks and brier bushes with her arms round the broken body of her boy, pleading for his voice. Thorns had raked her skin, and the expression of hate on the bloody face that she finally flung back to look at the ledge above us was one to remember until death. We followed her gaze and saw the head of Vint Willis come sliding slowly into view over the rim of the ledge. Dull comprehension and terror were battling in his ugly crook-nosed face. Then it seemed that every drop of blood drained from his flesh and left it gray as ashes when his eyes met those of the woman. I had a strange fancy that there was an invisible wire from eye to eye and that I could hear the thin crackle of sparks between them. The tension broke when she suddenly flung her arms above her head and snarled some words in a tongue that I could not understand. She fell forward then, upon her face; I thought she was dead. Father wasted no words. He ordered Vint Willis to come down and help him; and the man came, stumbling down the winding path that led from the ledge top near to where we stood. The neck of a broken bottle was clenched tight in Carlos’ hand, and bits of glass tinkled on rock when father lifted the boy in his arms. The odor of liquor was heavy all around us. Father faced Willis, cursed him; his voice was brittle as hard steel. “You’ll swing for this—I ought to fix you now! . . . Help Mis Melotte there—she’s fainted—hurt, too!” Father started for the house with Carlos. I watched Willis, fascinated by the look on his crooked face. He had not moved, was staring past me. I turned—and I saw a cat, a white cat, half-grown and gaunt, crouching close beside the prostrate woman on the very spot where the boy had lain across the jagged rocks! The ears of the beast were flat against his snaky skull, his lips drawn away from his teeth in a hissing snarl; and from a smear of black that lay across his face his green-yellow eyes were blazing out upon the man with a look that made my flesh creep. And there Vint Willis stood, swaying uncertainly on his feet and staring at the snarling cat. Then he wheeled with a drunken oath and lurched back up the path. The shadows of the pines received him, and I heard a snatch of maudlin song come drifting down the ledge. Father came back swiftly. “Where’s Willis?” he demanded. I pointed up the path; and for the second time that day I heard him curse the man. Then he bade me turn the team around and drive back to the village after the doctor while he carried the woman to the house. I laid the whip on the old mare; and well within an hour I was back with the doctor. I followed close upon his heels when he went into the house with his black bag. “The boy is dead,” father told him. He had carried the woman to her bed. He led the doctor there, bidding me to stay in the living-room while they straightened her twisted leg. I was afraid to be alone, but I forced myself to huddle in a great chair and wait with fast beating heart for them to finish their work behind the closed door. Twilight shadows were creeping round me, filling the somber room. The tall clock in the corner began to seem alive as it tolled off the long seconds with slow and hollow voice. Fear grew into terror; and when I saw the eyes of the strange cat blazing out upon me from the shadows at the foot of the clock, I shivered with dread and fled to the side of my father. They were questioning the woman as to what she had seen atop the ledge; but she held grim silence, speaking only to bid them “no” when they proposed to send the sheriff after Vint Willis. The smouldering fire in her black eyes when his name was mentioned was like that in the eyes of the white cat—fire, yet it chilled me to the bone! When we reached home, father sent my sister to stay with the woman until she should be able to walk again. Then he took his rifle from the pegs over the door and went himself to the camp of Vint Willis. He found the place deserted, locked. The man was gone. Willis did not come back. The weeks rolled on to months, and the months to years, and his name became a memory. The Widow Melotte grew old with the passing of these years. She lived on alone with her crutch and the gaunt beast of a cat—a crazed woman, waiting, watching, listening through the years. And her place fell into decay, became a place of silent ruin by day and of sinister menace when the shadows of night closed down. Without means, she lived on the charity of the neighbors. It was my duty to carry the milk that father gave to her each day—milk that she divided with scrupulous care with the gaunt white cat! The terror that had gripped me, when in that somber room I had seen the eyes of the beast upon me, never left me. It dried my throat and dragged at my feet on the nights when milking was late and those sinister shadows lay thick about the place when I drew near. I feared to enter the gloomy house, feared with a terror that I could not define. The stagnant night air about the place seemed always charged with grim expectancy. Often, when I had set the milk upon her table and put my hand to the latch to go, she would hold up her bony hand to bid me silence while she bent her head to listen— listen as she did at the dark window at night! Listen for something she could not quite hear... And the gaunt cat would lift his snaky head and listen with her, his green-yellow eyes chilling me to inaction in that uncanny