Read Ebook: Swamp Cat by Kjelgaard Jim Shenton Edward Illustrator

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Ebook has 840 lines and 46260 words, and 17 pages

ke '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."

Andy touched a hand to his forehead in salute. "Hello, Luke."

Then they passed and each continued his separate way. A puzzled smile parted Luke's thin lips.

Young Gates was a queer one. Smart enough, if book learning passed for smartness; he had gone to town and got himself a schooling. Then, and only he knew why, he had come back to the ancestral Gates holdings in Dog Tooth Valley. What he, or for that matter anyone else, wanted there was a mystery. There was some five hundred acres, all paid for and with a clear title. But there was not enough plow land to provide even a small family with enough vegetables for its own use. Here and there was a small patch of scrub timber, and almost all the rest was swamp land.

When they'd needed that above all else, Dog Tooth Valley had provided a safe haven for the once-numerous Gates men. They knew the only safe paths across their endless swamps and, to this day, nobody else did. But the feud was long since ended. Though it had been neither as prolonged nor as bitter as the town liked to remember it and there had been a lot more hand to hand slugging than there ever had been combat with deadly weapons, the law had ended it and a new day had come to the hills. It was a better day, too. Who but a fool would try to get what he wanted with a gun when it was much easier and safer to think his way through to it?

Turning to steal a covert glance behind him, Luke saw that Andy had disappeared. The man whirled his horse to the side of the trail, lifted the bag of kittens from his saddle horn and threw the still-tied sack into a copse of brush.

ANDY

The spring sun, which rose at half-past five, was just climbing into the sky when Andy Gates got out of bed. He entered the compact kitchen of his little house, started a wood fire in the range, put a pot of coffee over an open lid hole and, while waiting for this to start percolating, walked to the front of his place and looked over his domain.

The house was built on a rocky knoll, one of the few places in Dog Tooth Valley that was not given over to swamp land. Enough topsoil clung to the elevation to support a small garden. Surrounding the garden was a tightly woven picket fence, and, even as Andy watched, a trim doe from out of the swamp nosed hopefully at the pickets. Andy smiled with his eyes; the doe could not get into his garden. Beyond, were three small sheds. In one Andy kept the dozen chickens that supplied him with eggs and an occasional table fowl; the other two were a fur shed and a place for storing provisions. All the rest was swamp land.

The scene had been familiar since Andy's babyhood, but, even though it was old, somehow it was always new.

Directly in front of the house was a watery slough, around and in which cattails, lily pads and other swamp vegetation grew in lush profusion. Just beyond the slough was a cluster of dead trees that thrust skeleton branches and twigs forlornly and forever skyward. The dead trees were one of the swamp's many mysteries. Why they'd grown in the first place, Andy did not know. Nor could he understand why they did not fall down, as other dead trees did, sooner or later. He thought that they took out of the swamp some mineral content that toughened and hardened them. They'd been there since he could remember. Beyond the trees, marked here and there by other dead trees and an occasional knoll upon which grew a little patch of live ones, the swamp stretched clear to the foot of some low hills that rose in the distance. Andy picked out the paths across it; the sloughs and ponds wherein lurked pickerel, perch and bass; the game trails; and the places where, in bygone days, men of the Gates clan had hidden from their enemies.

He turned soberly back to the stove, put a slab of butter in a skillet, melted it and broke four eggs into it. He toasted bread on top of the stove and sat down to eat his breakfast.

The Gates family had long since scattered far and wide. When the railroad brought the law with it, they could no longer raid the Trulls and Casmans and retreat to the safety of their swamp. Safety was about all the swamp did offer; no hungry family had yet found a way to take a livelihood from it. Andy poured himself a second cup of coffee.

One by one, the Gates men had taken their belongings and their families from the hills. But there'd been the inevitable one who couldn't leave. Foolish, the rest had called Jared, Andy's father, but Jared hadn't cared. Only his son could understand that some roots went too deep to be torn out. Jared might have left the swamp, but he wouldn't have been happy elsewhere. This was perfectly plain to Andy because he wouldn't either. He'd striven to finish four years of high school in three largely because he was lonesome for the swamp and he'd gone to school for a specific purpose.

Jared, resting these past four years in the family plot on Fiddler's Knob, had been contented just to accept the swamp. He'd hunted a little, fished a little, trapped a little and worked by the day for whomever saw fit to give him a job. Andy wanted to make the swamp produce something worthwhile and he'd spent hours in the school library, seeking a way.

Farming, in the accepted sense, was not even to be considered. The swamp would grow no commercial crop. There was little likelihood that it contained valuable minerals, either, but, by sheer chance, Andy had run across an account of the great swamps of Louisiana and the muskrats that abounded there. In this, he hoped, he had his answer.

There were fur bearers in the swamp; mink, otter, raccoon and an occasional fox or coyote. Strangely enough, there were no muskrats, but Andy thought this was explained by the fact that all the swamp's outlets were subterranean. There was no surface connection with any stream or river, and any muskrat that tried to get into the swamp would have a long and perilous journey overland. However, he knew that there was a vast abundance of the aquatic plants on which muskrats fed, and muskrats did very well in northern climates, too. They were found well into Canada.

If Andy could establish muskrats in his swamp, let them multiply and harvest the surplus, he might very well earn more than just a livelihood. At any rate, the experiment was worth trying and, after corresponding with various animal dealers and breeders, he had succeeded in buying six pairs of muskrats. If everything went according to schedule, they'd arrive on the one o'clock train.

Andy washed his breakfast dishes, tidied up the house and went outside. Hoisting a white tail over her back, the hopeful doe fled into the swamp. Andy walked toward his garden and was halted by a whirring rattle. A thick-bodied rattlesnake wriggled hastily out of his way and he let it go. Rattlesnakes were one commodity that the swamp did produce in abundance, and they'd killed all three of the dogs Andy had tried to keep. After that, he had stopped keeping them. There was little point in getting another dog when it was certain to run afoul of a snake and he didn't really miss the companionship. Though he lived alone, he was never lonely. Nobody could be if he loved and understood the swamp.

Opening the gate, Andy looked at his garden, saw that it had not been molested and sighed relievedly. Deer could not get through the fence, but raccoons had a fancy for tender young vegetables, too, and they could get over it. Perhaps the rattlesnake, dangerous only to the unwary and the small creatures upon which it lived, was acting as a sort of guardian. It would be a good idea to let it stay where it was. Catching up a hoe, Andy cultivated his young plants.

Two hours later, he laid the tool aside, returned to the house, took up a casting rod with a silver spoon on the leader and stepped down to the slough. He cast expertly, laying his spoon just off the fringe of lily pads that grew on the far side of the slough. He let the spoon sink a little ways, began the retrieve, and there was a succession of little ripples as a good bass followed it clear across the slough. Andy cast again and again. On his fourth cast, the bass struck. He fought it across the slough and lifted it out of the water. Thus he had his dinner. After he'd cooked and eaten it, he started down the trail leading into town.

Passing Luke Trull, he was happy to salute him briefly and hurry on. The feud was long since just a memory, but even if it had never been, Andy would not have liked Luke Trull. He was a coarse and often cruel man, and better left alone. Given to violent rages, he was, nevertheless, usually able to avoid trouble.

Andy strode into the town, returned the greetings of friends he met there, made his way to the express office and waited for Johnny Linger, the agent, to look up. An old friend from Andy's railroading days, Johnny's greeting was explosive,

"Hi, Andy!"

"Hello, Johnny. Is there anything for me?"

"Six somethings." Johnny indicated six small wooden crates at one side of the room. "I was hoping you'd drop by. What are they, Andy?"

"Muskrats." Andy peered between the slats of one crate at two brown-furred animals about as big as cottontail rabbits. "Six mated pairs."

Johnny asked whimsically, "What are you going to do with 'em, Andy?"

"See if they like my swamp. I forgot my pack board, Johnny. Will you loan me one?"

"Sure thing."

"Would you mind letting me pick them up after dark?"

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