I kem on the camp just in time to see Splinters pass in
his checks, and he wasn’t sorry to go either. He was a hard citizen,
and though I never could shake with him after that papoose business—for
it was bitter bad, and he should have been a white man, for he looked
like one—I see he had got paid out in full. Durn me, but I took a piece
of his hide from one of his skinnin’ posts an’ had it made into a
pocket-book. It’s here now!” and he slapped the breast pocket of his
coat. Whilst he was speaking the cat was continuing her frantic efforts to
get up the wall. She would take a run back and then charge up,
sometimes reaching an incredible height. She did not seem to mind the
heavy fall which she got each time but started with renewed vigour; and
at every tumble her appearance became more horrible. Hutcheson was a
kind-hearted man—my wife and I had both noticed little acts of kindness
to animals as well as to persons—and he seemed concerned at the state
of fury to which the cat had wrought herself. “Wall, now!” he said, “I du declare that that poor critter seems quite
desperate. There! there! poor thing, it was all an accident—though that
won’t bring back your little one to you. Say! I wouldn’t have had such
a thing happen for a thousand! Just shows what a clumsy fool of a man
can do when he tries to play! Seems I’m too darned slipperhanded to
even play with a cat. Say Colonel!” it was a pleasant way he had to
bestow titles freely—“I hope your wife don’t hold no grudge against me
on account of this unpleasantness? Why, I wouldn’t have had it occur on
no account.”

He came over to Amelia and apologised profusely, and she with her usual
kindness of heart hastened to assure him that she quite understood that
it was an accident. Then we all went again to the wall and looked over. The cat missing Hutcheson’s face had drawn back across the moat, and
was sitting on her haunches as though ready to spring. Indeed, the very
instant she saw him she did spring, and with a blind unreasoning fury,
which would have been grotesque, only that it was so frightfully real. She did not try to run up the wall, but simply launched herself at him
as though hate and fury could lend her wings to pass straight through
the great distance between them. Amelia, womanlike, got quite
concerned, and said to Elias P. in a warning voice:

“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. When we came out again after our survey of this most beautiful old
place which not even the well-intentioned efforts of the Gothic
restorers of forty years ago have been able to spoil—though their
restoration was then glaring white—we seemed to have quite forgotten
the unpleasant episode of the morning. The old lime tree with its great
trunk gnarled with the passing of nearly nine centuries, the deep well
cut through the heart of the rock by those captives of old, and the
lovely view from the city wall whence we heard, spread over almost a
full quarter of an hour, the multitudinous chimes of the city, had all
helped to wipe out from our minds the incident of the slain kitten. We were the only visitors who had entered the Torture Tower that
morning—so at least said the old custodian—and as we had the place all
to ourselves were able to make a minute and more satisfactory survey
than would have otherwise been possible. The custodian, looking to us
as the sole source of his gains for the day, was willing to meet our
wishes in any way. The Torture Tower is truly a grim place, even now
when many thousands of visitors have sent a stream of life, and the joy
that follows life, into the place; but at the time I mention it wore
its grimmest and most gruesome aspect. The dust of ages seemed to have
settled on it, and the darkness and the horror of its memories seem to
have become sentient in a way that would have satisfied the Pantheistic
souls of Philo or Spinoza. The lower chamber where we entered was
seemingly, in its normal state, filled with incarnate darkness; even
the hot sunlight streaming in through the door seemed to be lost in the
vast thickness of the walls, and only showed the masonry rough as when
the builder’s scaffolding had come down, but coated with dust and
marked here and there with patches of dark stain which, if walls could
speak, could have given their own dread memories of fear and pain.