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.
“It were that black ruff o’ yours,” he murmured to the big cat. “I saw the connection right off, but ’tweren’t no reason at the time t’ pursue it.” He nodded toward the damaged doorway. “Until it were forced. On the both of us.” Leaning forward, he whispered into the lion’s right ear.
This time the cloud shrank instead of expanding. Which was a fortunate adjustment, because it was unlikely the town itself would have survived a cat-thing of any greater dimension. When the last of the gilded cloud vanished, it left behind on the tobacco-stained floor a tabby of normal size, gold and tan in color, with an odd black streak in its hair that stretched from shoulder to shoulder. It shook itself, licked one paw to briefly groom the fur on its forehead, and then began to arch its back and rub against Malone’s right boot. Reaching down, the mountain man picked it up and placed it gently on the now-deserted sweep of mahogany bar. Then he leaned forward and over to peer down behind the barrier.
“Barkeep.”
Trembling visibly, the bartender rose from where he had been hiding. He looked at Malone, at the cat sitting contentedly near the giant’s right hand, then back at Malone.
“Wh-wh-wh-what’ll it be… sir?”
“Whiskey. Same label.” Malone indicated the serene feline seated nearby. “And a saucer of milk for my friend. Straight up.”
The barkeep managed to nod. “This… this is a saloon, sir. Milk, I’m not so sure…”
“This here’s also a hotel, friend. Got t’ be some milk or cream on ice in the kitchen.” He leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice. “Go find it. And you’d best come back.”
No one else entered the saloon that night. No one else came near the saloon that night. Its interior was occupied solely by its shaky proprietor, a mountain man of measureless smells and unsuspected abilities, and the gold and tan cat seated comfortably on the bar off to his right. Not his cat. Together the three passed the remainder of the evening undisturbed and mostly in silence, until the time finally came for Malone to exit. At this the bartender allowed himself to faint gratefully and with some grace. He did not hit the floor too hard.
The cat followed Malone outside. After the mountain man finished admonishing his horse for eating half the hitching post, he turned to look back at the plank sidewalk. The cat was sitting there, its tail switching slowly back and forth, staring at him in the unblinking, fearless manner of cats everywhere. For certain a most ordinary cat.
“G’night, puss. Got t’ be on my way. Watch your step. Don’t eat any mice I wouldn’t eat.”
The cat turned to depart, looking back only once to meow.
That is generally remembered as the Manhattan, Kansas, earthquake of 1867.