“Oh! you must be very careful. That animal would try to kill you if she
were here; her eyes look like positive murder.”
He laughed out jovially. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, “but I can’t help
laughin’. Fancy a man that has fought grizzlies an’ Injuns bein’
careful of bein’ murdered by a cat!”
When the cat heard him laugh, her whole demeanour seemed to change. She
no longer tried to jump or run up the wall, but went quietly over, and
sitting again beside the dead kitten began to lick and fondle it as
though it were alive.
“See!” said I, “the effect of a really strong man. Even that animal in
the midst of her fury recognises the voice of a master, and bows to
him!”
“Like a squaw!” was the only comment of Elias P. Hutcheson, as we moved
on our way round the city fosse. Every now and then we looked over the
wall and each time saw the cat following us. At first she had kept
going back to the dead kitten, and then as the distance grew greater
took it in her mouth and so followed. After a while, however, she
abandoned this, for we saw her following all alone; she had evidently
hidden the body somewhere. Amelia’s alarm grew at the cat’s
persistence, and more than once she repeated her warning; but the
American always laughed with amusement, till finally, seeing that she
was beginning to be worried, he said:
“I say, ma’am, you needn’t be skeered over that cat. I go heeled, I
du!” Here he slapped his pistol pocket at the back of his lumbar
region. “Why sooner’n have you worried, I’ll shoot the critter, right
here, an’ risk the police interferin’ with a citizen of the United
States for carryin’ arms contrairy to reg’lations!” As he spoke he
looked over the wall, but the cat on seeing him, retreated, with a
growl, into a bed of tall flowers, and was hidden. He went on: “Blest
if that ar critter ain’t got more sense of what’s good for her than
most Christians. I guess we’ve seen the last of her! You bet, she’ll go
back now to that busted kitten and have a private funeral of it, all to
herself!”
Amelia did not like to say more, lest he might, in mistaken kindness to
her, fulfil his threat of shooting the cat: and so we went on and
crossed the little wooden bridge leading to the gateway whence ran the
steep paved roadway between the Burg and the pentagonal Torture Tower.
As we crossed the bridge we saw the cat again down below us. When she
saw us her fury seemed to return, and she made frantic efforts to get
up the steep wall. Hutcheson laughed as he looked down at her, and
said:
“Goodbye, old girl. Sorry I injured your feelin’s, but you’ll get over
it in time! So long!” And then we passed through the long, dim archway
and came to the gate of the Burg.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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