Deploying a massive shrug, Malone returned to his contemplation of the backbar. A sizable painting hanging there displayed its creator’s modest competency in oils. It showed a somewhat thickset woman lying on a bed in a typically clichéd yet no less pleasant state of complete deshabille.
“Not my cat.”
Having got hold of the issue, the newcomer seemed unwilling to let go of it. “Then what’s it doing lolling in simpering disgust all over your foot?”
Malone did not turn from the aesthetic that was currently holding his attention. “Why don’t you ask the cat?”
It was plain that the visitor was not used to being so casually dismissed. One hand pushed away the half-filled glass resting on the bar before him.
“You are toying with me, sir. Know that I am Gustavus Eyvind Hudiksvall, and I am not one to be toyed with.” He waved in the general direction of the crowd. “Unlike these simpletons, I am not intimidated by your great unhygienic bulk. Would you like to know why?” When Malone chose not to respond, Hudiksvall continued.
“You see this fine animal standing proudly beside me, that has no hesitation in expressing its dislike for your cat? I am not only its master. I am a master of all the dogs of the Americas. It is my profession. It is my avocation. I know American dogs. I understand American dogs. I perceive them and their inner selves in ways that you and others cannot imagine. I comprehend their needs, their desires, their innermost being! Yea, even their thoughts, for those who believe that dogs do not think know nothing of the animal.”
Lovely, Malone thought as he continued to gaze at the painting. He sighed. Just lovely. Someone he had not known, but would have wished to. “Cats think also. They just don’t jump around stupidly and brag about it.”
The color of Hudiksvall’s cheeks began to approach that of the rugoid bulbosity attached to the center of his face. “You persist in playing me for a fool, sir. Well, I will not be played.” He peered down at the chow that was growling softly. A most disagreeable smile creased his wide, wide face. “Neither will Elehzub. I think…I think I will let him eat your cat.”
“Not my cat.” Malone did not shift his attention from the painting.
“Then you won’t mind.”
Leaning over and grunting with the effort, Hudiksvall whispered something in the chow’s direction. Tongue hanging and eyes eager, it perked its black ears up intently. Whatever the fat man was whispering clearly made an impression on the animal. It tensed as it listened and its soft growling took on a new, more lethal aspect.
The sound was enough to wake the tabby. Eyes snapping open, they shifted to focus on the eager dog. Rising from where it had been slumbering while contentedly inhaling the inexpressibly powerful effluvia from Malone’s boot, it moved behind the mountain man’s leg. Its ears flattened against its head and its back arched as it hissed warningly.
Malone took a swallow from his glass. “Looks like your animal might have a fight on its hands.”
If Hudiksvall was concerned, he didn’t show it. “I thought something like this might happen.” His eyes zeroed in on the alarmed cat, twin blue gunsights targeting prey unable to escape. “Did I not tell you I was a master of dogs?”
Leaning over once more, still straining from the effort, he whispered something else to the chow. Something more than mere communication this time. Something powerful and private and ancient that would be known only to an individual possessed of some special and unique knowledge. Malone caught the gist of it and reacted. By which is to say a couple of black whiskers twitched among their multitudinous companions.
“Et pugnare crescere.” Hudiksvall revealed impressive elocution in commanding his animal. “Pugnare, et interficere!”
A dark, dank, flea-free cloud began to coalesce around the chow. Small bursts of miniature lightning flashed within the murk, each one accompanied not by thunder but by a short, sharp bark. The vapor continued to darken until the chow could no longer be seen. Two men seated nearby arguing over the ownership of a mining claim noted this unexpected manifestation of necromancy and stared, but did not flee.
The miasma began to dissipate. In its place Hudiksvall’s dog still stood as before, only it had been transformed. In place of the black chow there now squatted a massive, wide-shouldered bulldog. When it growled, the sound was deeper and far more menacing than anything that had been expressed by its previously chowly form. A collar of taupe leather studded with two-inch-long spikes encircled its thick neck. In response to its master’s command, the revamped dog’s eyes and attention were now focused exclusively on the cat that had taken shelter behind Malone’s right leg.
Hudiksvall’s grin arose directly from the nastiness of his soul. “This won’t take but a moment, sir. When this strapping expression of Elehzub gets done, there’ll be nothing left of your cat save a few picked-over bones.”
“Not my cat,” Malone reiterated. Thick dark brows drew together over eyes as black as the lowermost reaches of a failed Montana copper mine. “On the other hand, I like cats. I also don’t much cotton to an unfair contest.”
It was a remarkable thing to see a man as big as Malone, who stood just shy of seven feet and whose weight approached three hundred pounds, bend nearly in half. But that was the kind of astonishing flexibility he proceeded to display. He bent over, bent some more, and whispered something to the hissing cat. As a surprised Hudiksvall looked on, a swirl of gold and white opacity coiled up around the cat. Light twinkled within, flashing and blinking, accompanied by a sound like the boiler of a small Mississippi riverboat letting off steam. Or it might have been an extremely attenuated feline hiss.
As Malone straightened and returned to his drinking, the white-gold mist faded away. Where the tabby had stood before now stood—another cat. Much larger than its former self, it was heavily spotted and thickly muscled, with a high butt, short tail, and unmistakable dark tufts rising from the tips of its ears. It snarled more impressively than any street cat while simultaneously displaying very impressive teeth.
Having initially taken a step forward, the bulldog, now finding itself confronted by a decidedly more imposing opponent, whimpered once and retreated.
Hudiksvall’s anger was palpable, but he was not about to withdraw with a nonexistent tail between his legs.
“So! A man of learning and cleverness you are, also. One would not gainsay it from your uncouth appearance. It seems then it is to be tit for tat, cat for cat. I have no fear of that, for I grasp the soul of such conjuring. Just as you must know that only a cat native to America can counter a transformative American dog and vice the versa. It is written so, in aged tomes I suspect you may also have read.” He eyed the lynx that now stepped out from behind the mountain man’s leg. “While your adroit alteration is a fine example of the wild continental feline kind, it remains no less only a cat for all that. You think I am done? Then observe, learn, and prepare to sweep up the scraps!”
Once more bending low, this time over the bulldog, Hudiksvall murmured anew, now with more energy than before.
“Surgens autem, vinco inferno, et occidas!”
For a second time a dark cloud ballooned to life around Hudiksvall’s companion. It swallowed up the bulldog, obscuring its canine reality. The cloud itself grew larger, much larger than before, until when it finally evaporated there stood in its wake a dog of truly imposing proportions. It was huge, with a blunt, powerful face and a tail that curled up over its rump. It looked down, down at the lynx, which held its ground, albeit with an effort.
“American mastiff.” Hudiksvall’s triumphant smile was wider this time. “Bred to protect herds of sheep and cattle.” Piggish eyes blinking, he gazed expectantly down from his seat at the lynx standing firm beside Malone’s leg. “Bigger bones will be left this time, but bones nonetheless.”
“Dogs be dogs and cats be cats.” With a shrug, Malone bent over once again to whisper someth
ing to the lynx. Tufted ears flicked immediately in his direction.
A miniature cumulus colored gold and ivory enveloped the lynx even as the mastiff started forward, drool dripping from its powerful jaws. Then it halted and began backing up, until it was standing, though still growling, behind its master, whose buttocks overflowed both sides of the bar stool.
Having come to the decision that it was about time that they pushed their argument off to another day, the two miners who had been looking on abandoned their table in favor of a joint quick-march in the direction of the saloon entrance. Simultaneously, several ladies of the evening determined that it was time to embrace the lateness of the hour, if not potential customers, whereupon they proceeded to hightail it up the nearby stairs in a concerted rush for the second-floor back rooms. Torn between fear and fascination by the increasingly ominous transformations taking place at the bar, the rest of the saloon’s motley population mostly remained, transfixed.
Standing beside Malone, its smooth tan back rising to a level not far below the height of the bar, the puma fastened bright yellow eyes on the mastiff and hissed loudly enough to be heard out in the street. Exhibiting unified homage to the true frontier spirit, no one outside proved dumb enough to enter and investigate the sound.
By now the newcomer was beside himself, near apoplectic with frustration. “I am Gustavus Eyvind Hudiksvall, master of American canines and all knowledge thereto related, and no stinking mountain of a man and his cat will best me this night or any other! It is the nature of existence that dog should lord it over cat, that the latter should run before the former, and I swear it will be so this night as it is on every other night!”
Holding his glass between thumb and forefinger of his left hand, Malone took a half swallow of the good whiskey while with his right hand he reached down and stroked the back of the neck of the fully alert cougar. It growled in response.
“Not my cat.”
Sliding off the stool, an avalanche of fat, Hudiksvall squatted in front of the mastiff in order to look directly into its eyes. Reaching out with thick fingers, he grasped both ears of the dog. This time he did not even try to murmur. Instead, his voice rose until it rattled around the saloon.
“FORMARE MAXIME AUTEM!” The fat man’s bellow rattled the second-floor rafters and shook dust on those seated below. “FRATRES, DE DENTE, ET INIMICOS TUOS INTERFICERE!”
At this, the one couple in the saloon that was actually married rose from their table and departed in haste, leaving behind the uneaten remnants of their supper. A well-dressed rancher of some means swore mightily in a foreign language. Everyone else could only sit and stare, half-paralyzed. The situation had turned serious. Spittoons were missed.
As with its predecessors, the cloud that rose around the mastiff was dark with bark and lit with snarls, but this time the vaporous manifestation fractured, splitting into two, three, and many more distinct upwellings. Straightening, a sweaty but confident Hudiksvall surveyed his canine handiwork. In time each cloud began to dissipate, swept away by the fat man’s sinister and definitive necromancy.
“Or should I say, and this I suspect you know,” he told Malone, “simply ‘Cave canum.’ ”
Growling to themselves, the pack assembled beside Hudiksvall. Tongues hanging out, panting, they flashed sharp teeth set in jaws strong enough to bring down a bear or a bison. More than a dozen of the huge timber wolves began to spread out, forming a semicircle in front of Malone and the cougar in preparation for an attack.
Whereas until now the mystical, inexplicable manifestation of dogs and cats of increasingly larger species had served largely to enthrall the majority of the saloon’s patrons, the appearance of the wolf pack succeeded in emptying the establishment of its remaining customers. Libations were left unimbibed, poker chips were scattered, chairs were overturned, screams and curses were essayed with a mixture of vehemence and panic, and at least two heretofore atheistic shopkeepers competed in a footrace to see who could arrive first at the Baptist church that was located at the far end of the town’s central thoroughfare.
“Maybe,” a heavily perspiring but expectant Hudiksvall ventured maliciously, “your cat will not be sufficient to satisfy the appetite of my pets, and they will express a desire to taste man as well. They are certain to find attractive the jambalaya of effluvia that clings to you.” He licked thick lips expectantly. “Well, sir, I await your response. Your final response. Is it again to be ‘Not my cat’? Or perhaps, if you grovel with sufficient eloquence, I may command the pack to spare you. Though not, to be sure, this current, final, and failed iteration of your unfortunate feline.”
By way of response Malone carefully set down his glass. The bottle before him was now empty, the liquid warmth it had dispensed a pleasant glow deep within his belly. Turning, he regarded with sad eyes the bloated boaster before him.
“A true necromancer knows how to fight fair.” Raising a huge, callused hand, he gestured at the pack that was systematically positioning itself prior to rushing in for the kill. “Twelve against one ain’t hardly fair. But if that is how it is to be…”
Bending toward the cougar, he commenced once more to speak softly.
Hudiksvall was neither impressed nor worried. “What is to be now, sir? I know you cannot do the same spell of multiplicity as I, for I sense it, and I have the perception of the animals for whom I care. What single local feline will you draw upon now, to counter the kings of canines, who cooperate in a fight better than any other of their kind? I await your last and best counter, prior to your animal’s—and possibly your own—dismemberment!”
A strange sound began to seep into the saloon. It came from outside the building as Malone continued to whisper—never shouting, never raising his voice. It took a moment for those who had fled outside to identify it. It was in no wise alien; they had all heard it before. It was the collective symphony of cats yowling—every cat in town and onward to its outskirts screeching and hollering at the tops of their lungs.
The golden cloud that enveloped the cougar was darker than any that had preceded it. As Malone looked on with interest and Hudiksvall’s gaze narrowed uncertainly, the vaporous mist grew and expanded, becoming larger, vaster, immenser (if you will), until eventually it passed into the realm of the ridiculous. At last it began to clear, revealing…a cat.
It was a tabby, of sorts, albeit one that weighed about half a ton and might’ve been thirteen feet from its wet black nose to the tip of its tail. Colored somewhere between gold and tan, it showed a distinctive black ruff across its upper shoulders. A black ruff that was thick and wide and flaring. More of a mane, really. Lowering its head and dipping its brow forward, the beast contracted its mouth into a most terrible expression: death writ in wrinkles. Then it opened its jaws, revealing teeth that were large enough to chomp a man in half with one bite.
Having anticipated, called forth, and recognized the breed, Malone nodded to himself with satisfaction.
Rooted to the spot, one hand held out defensively before him, a terrified Hudiksvall stumbled backward. The pack of timber wolves were already gone, having vanished under and through the saloon’s swinging doors. One, caught at the back of the pack as the other eleven struggled to squeeze through the portal simultaneously, opted for leaping through a flanking window in order to escape the room and the gargantuan feline that had materialized before them. That the window in question happened to be closed at the time did not in any way forestall the wolf’s decision. Their judicious flight was accompanied by a notable absence of growls and much frantic whining.
Overweight and underpowered, Hudiksvall had no such opportunity. It was to his credit that despite his fear, it was his curiosity that came to the fore.
“That…that monstrous beast is not an American cat! It is not possible for you to call forth a feline expression from the African continent to confront American canines. It refutes the magikal canon
and cannot be so!”
“Wal now,” Malone drawled as he used his right hand to ruffle the ruff of the massive creature standing beside him, “you are right correct about thet, Mr. Hudiksvall.” Despite Malone’s efforts to calm him, the gigantic cat continued to incline murderously toward the other man, barely restraining itself. “This here is an American lion. Felis atrox, if you will. First dug up by a fella name of Bill Huntington near Natchez in 1836 but not described in much detail until ol’ Doc Joseph Leidy wrote somethin’ up on ’em in 1852. Lot bigger than their African cousins, they are.” He leaned forward. “Danged impressive teeth, ain’t they?”
Advancing on paws each one of which was more than broad enough to completely cover a man’s head and face, the lion took a step toward Hudiksvall and let out a single…ROAR.
The folks who heard it over in the next county thought it was a storm a-brewing. The church bell in town shivered out a couple of desultory clangs that did nothing to reassure the pair of shopkeeper converts who huddled inside. Children woke up crying, in which exercise of their tear ducts they were equaled by a significant number of mothers. Strong men quaked in their boots and the town sheriff hurried to lock the jail door—from the inside.
Gustavus Eyvind Hudiksvall turned positively white (well, whiter than he had been previously, anyhow) and suddenly found his feet. Despite the effort required, they conveyed him with admirable rapidity to the saloon’s entrance, which portal he exited with such velocity that one of the swinging doors was knocked askew on its hinges.
Having nothing else to confront or on which to focus its attention, the splendidly immense example of Felis atrox turned back toward Amos Malone. A relic of an age only recently bygone, the great jaws parted. With interest, Malone peered down the throat thus revealed.
The tongue that emerged licked the mountain man’s face and copious beard so that both were soon dripping with leonine saliva, until Malone finally had to put a stop to the display of primeval affection. Reaching out, he dug his right hand into the vast black mane and began scratching. Like all its kind, the lion could not purr, but it lowered its head contentedly.