Cat on the Scent

            “If you all don’t need me any longer I’ll go.” Harry began to move toward the open door.

            “Go on.” Sheriff Shaw nodded.

            Cynthia called out, “I’ll catch you later.”

            Miss Tally placed her left hand on Harry’s arm. Her thin ring gleamed. “Mary Minor, you never believed the story about my brother shooting your great-granddaddy because Biddy walked up on his still, did you?”

            “No.”

            She nodded, satisfied. “Good girl.”

            Harry herded Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker into the truck, hearing Mim say, “Now, Aunt Tally, why would anyone put a plane in your barn?”

            “To give me excitement in my declining years.”

            21

            That evening Harry walked out to the creek dividing her land from Blair Bainbridge’s. A soft squish accompanied each step. Pewter picked her paws up, periodically shaking them.

            “It was much worse the other night,” Mrs. Murphy nonchalantly remarked.

            “I’ll have to spend half the night washing my feet.”

            “Stick ‘em under the faucet,” the dog joked.

            “Never.” Pewter shook her paws again.

            Harry stopped at the creek. The sun was setting, crowning the mountains in pink clouds suffused with gold.

            Tucker sat down.

            “I’m not sitting down in this,” Pewter complained.

            “You’re cranky. Bet you’ve got a tapeworm.”

            “I do not!” The cat slapped at the dog, who laughed.

            “You should talk.” Mrs. Murphy hated those monthly worm pills but they worked. She knew Tucker sometimes cheated and spit hers out. Then she’d feel bad, Harry would discover evidence of roundworms, and Tucker would really get a dose of medicine.

            Harry drank in the sunset and the sound of peepers. She studied her animals; uncanny, as though they knew where the plane was stashed.

            It occurred to Harry that whoever deposited Tommy Van Allen’s airplane would not be happy to know that she had discovered it. But someone would have eventually done so. She didn’t think she’d be in the line of fire.

            But Sir H. Vane-Tempest was.

            “Just doesn’t compute,” she said out loud.

            “It’s not our problem.” Pewter felt that suppertime started with sunset. She turned to face the distant house, hoping Harry would take the hint.

            Instead Harry climbed the massive walnut tree. Mrs. Murphy joined her, as did Pewter.

            “What am I supposed to do?” the dog whined at the base of the tree.

            “Guard us, Tucker,” Mrs. Murphy said.

            “I might have to,” the dog grumbled, “and lest you forget, egotist of all time, I ran and chased the bobcat.”

            “You did. I really am grateful.”

            “How often do humans climb trees?” Pewter watched Harry swing her legs as she sat on the low, wide branch.

            “Not very often. As they get older they don’t do it at all, I think,” Mrs. Murphy answered. “You see so much more from up here. You’d think they’d want to keep doing it.”

            “No claws. Must be hard for them.” Pewter kept her claws dangerously sharp.

            “Everything’s hard for them. That’s why all their religions are full of fear. You know, hellfire and damnation, that sort of thing.”

            “And being plunged into darkness.” Tucker agreed with the tiger cat.

            “If they could see in the dark as well as we do, their gods would be dark gods.” Mrs. Murphy pitied humans their wide variety of fears.

            “If they were bats their gods would be sounds.” Tucker suffered no religious anxiety. She knew perfectly well that a corgi presided over the universe and she ignored the cats’ blasphemous references to a celestial feline.

            “How long do you think Harry will live?” Pewter rubbed against the cobbled trunk of the tree.

            Walnuts, beautiful trees, possessed the exact right type of bark for cats to sharpen their claws on—and it was good to rub against, too.

            “She’s strong. Into her eighties, I should say, maybe as long as Tally Urquhart,” Murphy replied.

            “Then why are humans scared, really? They live much longer than we do.”

            “Nah. Just seems longer.” Tucker giggled.

            The cats laughed.