Track Of The Cat

Karl put the shovel down. His big shoulders sagged. It was almost as if he were shrinking before her eyes. She lowered the pistol but kept it ready at her side.

"Will you show me who everybody is?" A fleeting image out of the horror movies she'd seen as a teenager sickened her: bodies strung up with baling wire and twine presided over by a psychotic killer.

Without protest, Karl turned and walked toward the trees up the valley from the hut. Keeping a good fifteen feet between them, her side arm still unholstered, A

Things were clarified in A

To his left was a natural overhang in the stone that formed the narrow valley's walls. A grotto fifteen or twenty feet deep and fifty feet long had been formed over the centuries as the tiny seeps in the stone had melted away the soft lime. At its mouth the grotto was half again as tall as Karl. Within this shelter were several cages made from sticks and wire and a pen about ten feet square.

"Everybody," Karl said. From the warmth and pride in his voice, one might've thought he was introducing his family. Edging closer, A

A

"Looky," Karl said, his eyes glowing. He had apparently forgotten the gun. A

Karl knelt. The rough slow voice was as gentle as a nursemaid's. "Are my girls bored?" he asked. As he reached to lift the door of the cage, a tawny paw met his brown one and he laughed. For the moment A

"It's okay," Karl said, folding the twenty-five-pound kitten into his arms. Held in his massive grip, it looked no bigger than a house cat.

"That's my shy baby," Karl said fondly and A

"The orphaned kittens. You found them," A

"They're hungry girls," Karl said in the same doting voice. Without having to be told, A

Outside, in the shade of the spreading pine branches, their backs against a boulder, he and A

A

Karl nodded. He kissed the nursing kitten between its ears.

"Were you whistling Tender Shepherd'?"

"I knew it was you'd come for the babies. I wanted to tell you they were okay. But you couldn't know." He looked around his valley.

"No," A

"I'm nature, too," Karl replied. "This is my course."

A

"Sometimes I have to put them out for a while so I can help them."

"How do you get them up here? This valley is like a fortress."

"I carry them," Karl said simply.

A

"I can carry as much as three hundred pounds sometimes."

A

"Chris and Al. They got to stay here always now," he answered sadly. "Chris is lame and the littler one is blind. Outside, the cats and coyotes would get them. Maybe they'll come here and eat them but maybe not."

"Chris and Al?"

Karl said only: "The eyes." A

"What are the kittens called?" she asked as he refilled the bottles.

Karl looked shy. On so big a man the expression was almost laughable but A

"A

"You came for them when they were left," he said. "They can play here," Karl added as the kittens, finally full, tumbled off their laps.

The kitten A

Karl gathered up both kittens.

"You must feed them more than once a week," A

"While they're little I'll come every day. I don't like people seeing my truck all the time in McKittrick so they might guess. I drive up back of the Lincoln and come in there most times."

A

"When they're bigger," he replied.

"Karl-" Something in her voice made him stop, turn, and look at her. "Your secret is safe with me. I won't tell anybody. Ever." Driven by the remarkable i

"I know that you wouldn't, so I put down the shovel," he said. It didn't seem odd to A

Karl let A

"I got there first." He sounded triumphant.

A triumph deserved, A

A low growl set Yolanda to struggling. The hairs on the back of A

Karl gathered the little mule deer protectively to his chest as A

Karl nuzzled the fawn, started it nursing again. "He was shot in the hind end. I wouldn't've found him except I was looking after Ma