“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 something 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!”