“Duke!” I says. “In his kennel! Quick!”
He didn’t seem to hear me. He was still backing, and the tiger was still coming. A woman screamed. The tiger’s head went down, he crouched on the ground, and tightened every muscle. I knew what that meant. Everybody knew what it meant, and ’specially Duke knew what it meant. He made a funny sound in his throat, turned, and ran.
That was when the tiger sprung. Duke had no idea where he was going, but when he turned he fell through the trapdoor and I snapped it down. The tiger hit it so hard I thought it would split. One of Duke’s legs was out, and the tiger was on it in a flash, but all he got on that grab was the sole of Duke’s shoe. Duke got his leg in somehow and I jammed the door down tight.
It was a sweet time at supper that night. Lura didn’t see this here, because she was busy in the lunchroom when it happened, but them people had talked on their way out, and she knowed all about it. What she said was plenty. And Duke, what do you think he done? He passed it off like it wasn’t nothing at all. “Just one of them things you got to expect,” he says. And then he let on he knowed what he was doing all the time, and the only lucky part of it was that he didn’t have to shoot a valuable animal like Rajah was. “Keep cool, that’s the main thing,” he says. “A thing like that can happen now and then, but never let a animal see you excited.”
I heard him, and I couldn’t believe my ears, but when I looked at Lura I jumped. I think I told you she wasn’t hard to look at. She was a kind of medium size, with a shape that would make a guy leave his happy home, sunburned all over, and high cheekbones that give her eyes a funny slant. But her eyes was narrowed down to slits, looking at Duke, and they shot green where the light hit them, and it come over me all of a sudden that she looked so much like Rajah, when he was closing in on Duke in the afternoon, that she could of been his twin sister.
Next off, Duke got it in his head he was such a big cat man now that he had to go up in the hills and do some trapping. Bring in his own stuff, he called it.
I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time. Of course, he never brought in no stuff, except a couple of raccoons that he probably bought down the road for two dollars, but Duke was the kind of a guy that every once in a while has to sit on a rock and fish, so when he loaded up the flivver and blew, it wasn’t nothing you would get excited about. Maybe I didn’t really care what he was up to, because it was pretty nice, running the place with Lura with him out of the way, and I didn’t ask no questions. But it was more to it than cats or ’coons or fish, and Lura knowed it, even if I didn’t.
Anyhow, it was while he was away on one of them trips of his that Wild Bill Smith, the Texas Tornado, showed up. Bill was a snake doctor. He had a truck, with his picture painted on it, and two or three boxes of old rattlesnakes with their teeth pulled out, and he sold snake oil that would cure what ailed you, and a Indian herb medicine that would do the same. He was a fake, but he was big and brown and had white teeth, and I guess he really wasn’t no bad guy. The first I seen of him was when he drove up in his truck, and told me to gas him up and look at his tires. He had a bum differential that made a funny rattle, but he said never mind and went over to the lunchroom.
He was there a long time, and I thought I better let him know his car was ready. When I went over there, he was setting on a stool with a sheepish look on his face, rubbing his hand. He had a snake ring on one finger, with two red eyes, and on the back of his hand was red streaks. I knew what that meant. He had started something and Lura had fixed him. She had a pretty arm, but a grip like iron, that she said come from milking cows when she was a kid. What she done when a guy got fresh was take hold of his hand and squeeze it so the bones cracked, and he generally changed his mind.
She handed him his check without a word, and I told him what he owed on the car, and he paid up and left.
“So you settled his hash, hey?” I says to her.
“If there’s one thing gets on my nerves,” she says, “it’s a man that starts something the minute he gets in the door.”
“Why didn’t you yell for me?”
“Oh, I didn’t need no help.”
But the next day he was back, and after I filled up his car I went over to see how he was behaving. He was setting at one of the tables this time, and Lura was standing beside him. I saw her jerk her hand away quick, and he give me the bright grin a man has when he’s got something he wants to cover up. He was all teeth. “Nice day,” he says. “Great weather you have in this country,”
“So I hear,” I says. “Your car’s ready.”
“What I owe you?” he says.
“Dollar twenty.”
He counted it out and left.
“Listen,” says Lura, “we weren’t doing anything when you come in. He was just reading my hand. He’s a snake doctor, and knows about the zodiac.”
“Oh, wasn’t we?” I says. “Well, wasn’t we nice!”
“What’s it to you?” she says.
“Nothing,” I snapped at her. I was pretty sore.
“He says I was born under the sign of Yin,” she says. You would of thought it was a piece of news fit to put in the paper.
“And who is Yin?” I says.
“It’s Chinese for tiger,” she says.
“Then bite yourself off a piece of raw meat,” I says, and slammed out of there. We didn’t have no nice time running the joint that day.
Next morning he was back. I kept away from the lunchroom, but I took a stroll and seen them back there with the tigers. We had hauled a tree in there by that time for Rajah to sharpen his claws on, and she was setting on that. The tiger had his head in her lap, and Wild Bill was looking through the wire. He couldn’t even draw his breath. I didn’t go near enough to hear what they was saying. I went back to the car and begin blowing the horn.
He was back quite a few times after that, in between while Duke was away. Then one night I heard a truck drive up. I knowed that truck by its rattle. And it was daylight before I heard it go away.
Couple weeks after that, Duke come running over to me at the filling station. “Shake hands with me,” he says, “I’m going to be a father.”
“Gee,” I says, “that’s great!”
But I took good care he wasn’t around when I mentioned it to Lura.
“Congratulations,” I says. “Letting Romeos into the place seems to be about the best thing you do.”
“What do you mean?” she says.
“Nothing,” I says. “Only I heard him drive up that night. Look like to me the moon was under the sign of Cupid. Well, it’s nice if you can get away with it.”
“Oh,” she says.
“Yeah,” I says. “A fine double cross you thought up. I didn’t know they tried that any more.”
She set and looked at me, and then her mouth begin to twitch and her eyes filled with tears. She tried to snuffle them up but it didn’t work. “It’s not any double cross,” she says. “That night I never went out there. And I never let anybody in. I was supposed to go away with him that night, but—”
She broke off and begin to cry. I took her in my arms. “But then you found this out?” I says. “Is that it?” She nodded her head. It’s awful to have a pretty woman in your arms that’s crying over somebody else.
From then on, it was terrible. Lura would go along two or three days pretty well, trying to like Duke again on account of the baby coming, but then would come a day when she looked like some kind of a hex, with her eyes all sunk in so you could hardly see them at all, and not a word out of her.
Them bad days, anyhow when Duke wasn’t around, she would spend with the tiger. She would set and watch him sleep, or maybe play with him, and he seemed to like it as much as she did. He was young when we got him, and mangy and thin, so you could see his slats. But now he was about six years old, and had been fed good, so he had got his growth, and his coat was n
ice, and I think he was the biggest tiger I ever seen. A tiger, when he is really big, is a lot bigger than a lion, and sometimes when Rajah would be rubbing around Lura, he looked more like a mule than a cat.
His shoulders come up above her waist, and his head was so big it would cover both legs when he put it in her lap. When his tail would go sliding past her it looked like some kind of a constrictor snake. His teeth were something to make you lie awake nights. A tiger has the biggest teeth of any cat, and Rajah’s must have been four inches long, curved like a cavalry sword, and ivory white. They were the most murderous-looking fangs I ever set eyes on.
When Lura went to the hospital it was a hurry call, and she didn’t even have time to get her clothes together. Next day Duke had to pack her bag, and he was strutting around, because it was a boy, and Lura had named him Ron. But when he come out with the bag he didn’t have much of a strut. “Look what I found,” he says to me, and fishes something out of his pocket. It was the snake ring.
“Well?” I says. “They sell them in any ten-cent store.”
“H’m,” he says, and kind of weighed the ring in his hand. That afternoon, when he come back, he says: “Ten-cent store, hey? I took it to a jeweler today, and he offered me two hundred dollars for it.”
“You ought to sold it,” I says. “Maybe save you bad luck.”
Duke went away again right after Lura come back, and for a little while things was all right. She was crazy about the little boy, and I thought he was pretty cute myself, and we got along fine. But then Duke come back and at lunch one day he made a crack about the ring. Lura didn’t say nothing, but he kept at it, and pretty soon she wheeled on him.
“All right,” she says. “There was another man around here, and I loved him. He give me that ring, and it meant that he and I belonged to each other. But I didn’t go with him, and you know why I didn’t. For Ron’s sake, I’ve tried to love you again, and maybe I can yet, God knows. A woman can do some funny things if she tries. But that’s where we’re at now. That’s right where we’re at. And if you don’t like it, you better say what you’re going to do.”
“When was this?” says Duke.
“It was quite a while ago. I told you I give him up, and I give him up for keeps.”
“It was just before you knowed about Ron, wasn’t it?” he says.
“Hey,” I cut in. “That’s no way to talk.”
“Just what I thought,” he says, not paying no attention to me. “Ron. That’s a funny name for a kid. I thought it was funny, right off when I heard it. Ron. Ron. That’s a laugh, ain’t it?”
“That’s a lie,” she says. “That’s a lie, every bit of it. And it’s not the only lie you’ve been getting away with around here. Or think you have. Trapping up in the hills, hey? And what do you trap?”
But she looked at me and choked it back. I begun to see that the cats wasn’t the only things had been gumming it up.
“All right,” she wound up. “Say what you’re going to do. Go on. Say it!”
But he didn’t.
“Ron,” he cackles, “that’s a hot one,” and walks out.
Next day was Saturday, and he acted funny all day. He wouldn’t speak to me or Lura, and once or twice I heard him mumbling to himself. Right after supper he says to me, “How are we on oil?”
“All right,” I says. “The truck was around yesterday.”
“You better drive in and get some,” he says. “I don’t think we got enough.”
“Enough?” I says. “We got enough for two weeks.”
“Tomorrow is Sunday,” he says, “and there’ll be a big call for it. Bring out a hundred gallon and tell them to put it on the account.”
By that time I would give in to one of his nutty ideas rather than have an argument with him, and besides, I never tumbled that he was up to anything. So I wasn’t there for what happened next, but I got it out of Lura later, so here is how it was:
Lura didn’t pay much attention to the argument about the oil, but washed up the supper dishes, and then went in the bedroom to make sure everything was all right with the baby. When she come out she left the door open, so she could hear if he cried. The bedroom was off the sitting room, because these here California houses don’t have but one floor, and all the rooms connect. Then she lit the fire, because it was cool, and sat there watching it burn. Duke come in, walked around, and then went out back. “Close the door,” she says to him. “I’ll be right back,” he says.
So she sat looking at the fire, she didn’t know how long, maybe five minutes, maybe ten minutes. But pretty soon she felt the house shake. She thought maybe it was a earthquake, and looked at the pictures, but they was all hanging straight. Then she felt the house shake again. She listened, but it wasn’t no truck outside that would cause it, and it wouldn’t be no state-road blasting or nothing like that at that time of night. Then she felt it shake again, and this time it shook in a regular movement, one, two, three, four, like that. And then all of a sudden she knew what it was, why Duke had acted so funny all day, why he had sent me off for the oil, why he had left the door open, and all the rest of it. There was five hundred pound of cat walking through the house, and Duke had turned him loose to kill her.
She turned around, and Rajah was looking at her, not five foot away. She didn’t do nothing for a minute, just set there thinking what a boob Duke was to figure on the tiger doing his dirty work for him, when all the time she could handle him easy as a kitten, only Duke didn’t know it. Then she spoke. She expected Rajah to come and put his head in her lap, but he didn’t. He stood there and growled, and his ears flattened back. That scared her, and she thought of the baby. I told you a tiger has that kind of brains. It no sooner went through her head about the baby than Rajah knowed she wanted to get to that door, and he was over there before she could get out of the chair.
He was snarling in a regular roar now, but he hadn’t got a whiff of the baby yet, and he was still facing Lura. She could see he meant business. She reached in the fireplace, grabbed a stick that was burning bright, and walked him down with it. A tiger is afraid of fire, and she shoved it right in his eyes. He backed past the door, and she slid in the bedroom. But he was right after her, and she had to hold the stick at him with one hand and grab her baby with the other.
But she couldn’t get out. He had her cornered, and he was kicking up such a awful fuss she knowed the stick wouldn’t stop him long. So she dropped it, grabbed up the baby’s covers, and threw them at his head. They went wild, but they saved her just the same. A tiger, if you throw something at him with a human smell, will generally jump on it and bite at it before he does anything else, and that’s what he done now. He jumped so hard the rug went out from under him, and while he was scrambling to his feet she shot past him with the baby and pulled the door shut after her.
She run in my room, got a blanket, wrapped the baby in it, and run out to the electric icebox. It was the only thing around the place that was steel. Soon as she opened the door she knowed why she couldn’t do nothing with Rajah. His meat was in there; Duke hadn’t fed him. She pulled the meat out, shoved the baby in, cut off the current, and closed the door. Then she picked up the meat and went around the outside of the house to the window of the bedroom. She could see Rajah in there, biting at the top of the door, where a crack of light showed through. He reached to the ceiling. She took a grip on the meat and drove at the screen with it. It give way, and the meat went through. He was on it before it hit the floor.
Next thing was to give him time to eat. She figured she could handle him once he got something in his belly. She went back to the sitting room. And in there, kind of peering around, was Duke. He had his gun strapped on, and one look at his face was all she needed to know she hadn’t made no mistake about why the tiger was loose.
“Oh,” he says, kind of foolish, and then walked back and closed the door. “I meant to come back sooner, but
I couldn’t help looking at the night. You got no idea how beautiful it is. Stars is bright as anything.”
“Yeah,” she says. “I noticed.”
“Beautiful,” he says. “Beautiful.”
“Was you expecting burglars or something?” she says, looking at the gun.
“Oh, that,” he says. “No. Cat’s been kicking up a fuss. I put it on, case I have to go back there. Always like to have it handy.”
“The tiger,” she says. “I thought I heard him, myself.”
“Loud,” says Duke. “Awful loud.”
He waited. She waited. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of opening up first. But just then there come a growl from the bedroom, and the sound of bones cracking. A tiger acts awful sore when he eats. “What’s that?” says Duke.
“I wonder,” says Lura. She was hell-bent on making him spill it first.
They both looked at each other, and then there was more growls, and more sound of cracking bones. “You better go in there,” says Duke, soft and easy, with the sweat standing out on his forehead and his eyes shining bright as marbles. “Something might be happening to Ron.”
“Do you know what I think it is?” says Lura.
“What’s that?” says Duke. His breath was whistling through his nose like it always done when he got excited.
“I think it’s that tiger you sent in here to kill me,” says Lura. “So you could bring in that woman you been running around with for over a year. That redhead that raises rabbit fryers on the Ventura road. That cat you been trapping!”
“And ’stead of getting you he got Ron,” says Duke. “Little Ron! Oh my, ain’t that tough? Go in there, why don’t you? Ain’t you got no mother love? Why don’t you call up his pappy, get him in there? What’s the matter? Is he afraid of a cat?”