Cat on the Scent

            Tucker had been given to her as a six-week-old puppy by Susan, one of the best corgi breeders in Virginia. Harry didn’t like small dogs but she learned to love the bouncing, tough corgi. Then she decided if she brought in a shepherd puppy it would upset Tucker—another reason to procrastinate.

            Actually, the shepherd would upset the cats more. Tucker, outnumbered, might have been happy for another canine on the place.

            She dashed back to the barn, rain sliding down the collar of her ancient Barbour. “I’ve got to rewax this thing.” Water was seeping through the back of the coat.

            The phone rang in the tack room. “Hello.”

            “Harry, Ridley Kent here. I’ve agreed to help Archie canvass landowners. I’m looking at a topo map and a flat map. You’ve got a creek in your western boundary.”

            “Yep.”

            “Strong creek?”

            “In spring, but even in summer it never dries out completely. The water comes down from Little Yellow Mountain.”

            “What about springs?”

            “There’s one at the eastern corner.”

            “North or south?”

            “Northeastern.”

            “Have you ever had your well run dry in a drought?”

            “No. Neither did Mom and Dad, and they moved to this farm in the forties.”

            “Thanks.”

            “Sure.” She hung up the phone.

            “Mother, there’s an underground spring in the depression in the cornfield,” Tucker told her. “I can hear it.”

            Harry rubbed the dog’s soft fur. “I don’t have any treaties on me.”

            The horses, munching hay in their stalls, lifted their heads when Mrs. Murphy jumped on the stall divider from the hayloft. Pewter, on the tack trunk, her favorite spot, watched her nimble friend. She could jump like that if she wanted to but she never wanted to; it jarred her bones.

            “Simon’s found a quarter,” Murphy announced.

            “Don’t tell,” a tiny voice complained.

            “I don’t want your quarter,” Tucker called up as the possum’s beady little eyes peered over the hayloft ledge.

            Harry looked up at him. “Evening, Simon.”

            He blinked, then scurried back to his nest. Simon wouldn’t show himself at first but over time he’d learned to trust Harry. That didn’t mean he was going to talk to her. You had to be careful about humans.

            The rain pounded down.

            Harry checked the barometer in the tack room. The needle swung over to stormy. She walked up and down the aisle. She’d filled each water bucket, put out hay, put new salt cubes in the bottoms of their feed buckets. But Harry liked to double-check everything. Then she unplugged the coffeemaker in the tack room, folding up the cord and slipping it in the top drawer of the tall, narrow chest of drawers. She kept bits in those drawers as well as hoof-picks, small flat things. She’d learned her lesson when the mice ruined her first coffeepot by chewing through the cord. They had electrocuted themselves but they could have started a fire in the barn. Since then she ran light cords through a narrow PVC tube that she attached to the wall. This was the only exposed cord.

            Harry also kept fire extinguishers at both ends of the barn plus one in the hayloft. Right now she was in less danger of fire than of being blown off the surface of the earth.

            She paused at the open doorway. “You know, I’d better close the barn doors.” She walked to the other end and pulled the doors closed. Then she returned to the end of the barn facing the house. “Kids, you with me?”

            Three little heads looked up at her. “Yep.”

            She pulled the barn doors at that end closed, with a sliver of room for her to squeeze out. Then she ran like mad for the screened porch door. The two cats and the dog jetted ahead of her.

            “I hate to get wet,” Pewter yowled.

            “Slowpoke.” Mrs. Murphy pulled open the door.

            “You guys are smart.” Harry admired her brood.

            The animals shook on the screened porch. Harry removed her coat and shook it, too. “I swear—when it dries I will rewax it.”

            She lifted a thick-piled towel off a peg, kneeling down to dry off the animals.

            Apart from the rain drumming on the tin roof it was a quiet night. She made herself a fried-egg-and-pickle sandwich, fed the animals, then sat down to read The Life of Cézanne but couldn’t keep her eyes open. Low-pressure systems made her sleepy.

            Mrs. Murphy listened to the rain. “As soon as it dries we’re going over to the old barn.”

            8

            An open one-pound can of gunpowder sat on the butcher-block kitchen table. Paper cartridges, laid out in rows like tiny trapezoidal tents, covered one edge of the table. Ridley Kent bent his handsome head over the litter. Determined to outauthenticate everyone, he was rolling his own cartridges. It wasn’t as easy to roll sixty grains of 2F black powder as he had anticipated.

            Rolling with both hands, he then fumbled with the tie-off. Outside the rain beat down the kitchen window. It was a filthy night.