Cat Who Went Up the Creek

He had attributed Koko’s earlier fascination with the shoes to . . . foot powder? Or new leather? Obviously the cat had stashed the shoes away for future reference. Did he sense he was going to return? That cat’s ability to predict events was unnerving. . . . And now he had a sudden interest in the area behind the cabins. Apparently he knew that the airport limousine was coming down the hill and would deliver Mrs. Truffle to Cabin Four.

Qwilleran went on unpacking and putting things away: typewriter and writing materials on the dinette table, books on a wall-hung shelf over the sofa, Koko’s harness and leash in a kitchen drawer, the brown oxfords in a drawer under the TV. He was meeting Roger at five-thirty, and he had to freshen up and feed the cats.

At the inn Roger’s gray van was pulling into the parking lot, and they went to the dining room together.

The hostess who seated them seemed to know Roger, and he said, “Cathy! Will you be able to get to rehearsal tonight?”

“Yes. Mrs. Bamba is letting me leave at seven-thirty.”

Qwilleran’s curiosity was piqued. “You’ll have to tell me what this reenactment is all about. How is Cathy involved?”

“She’s one of our dance hall girls. . . . That’s what we’re calling them, anyway.”

Roger was a young man with a growing family who seldom went out to dinner except to “Grandma’s,” meaning Mildred Riker. So Qwilleran urged him to order from the high end of the menu, saying, “It’ll go on my expense account, Rog.”

Gradually the scenario for the “Saturday Night Brawl” evolved. Roger said, “The year is 1860, and the community of North Cove, now the town of Brrr, is a world of lumber camps, log drives, sawmills, and tall-masted sailing ships. It’s a Saturday night in spring, and the saloon at the Hotel Booze is filled with lumberjacks, sawyers and sailors. Upstairs they can stay overnight for a quarter, in a room without a bed but with enough floor space for a dozen men.

“In the saloon there is drinking and gambling and flirting with girls who hang around. Arguments lead to fistfights. Drunks are carried out to sober up on the wooden sidewalk.”

“And you’re staging this in the Black Bear Café?” Qwilleran asked.

“Yep! The audience sits in the booths on three sides of the restaurant. The action takes place at the long bar and at the tables in the center of the room. The cast is divided into teams of two or three at the bar . . . three or four at the tables. Each team does its thing: card playing, crap-shooting, womanizing, Indian wrestling—whatever . . . Got it, Qwill?”

“Got it!”

“Thornton Haggis worked out the staging and plays the saloonkeeper. During the performance he subtly directs the action, so that each team has its moment, and it isn’t total chaos.”

“Who are the members of the club?”

“Mostly young men, plus a few sisters and girlfriends. My job is to acquaint them with life as it was lived, when this whole area was nothing but dense forest. French traders were the first explorers. Then logging companies came from Maine and Canada. They set up lumber camps in the backwoods, felled trees, floated them down the creeks to sawmills that were set up wherever there was water power.”

“What kind of trees did they cut?” Qwilleran asked, thinking of black walnut.

“Pine was king in those days! Pine boards were shipped Down Below because of the building boom in cities. Also, the straight, slender trees, more than a hundred feet tall, made great masts for schooners. Do you realize that winter is when trees were harvested? Lumberjacks lived in primitive camps in the backwoods, felled the trees, dragged them out of the woods to ice-covered ‘skid roads,’ where they were loaded on sledges drawn by ox-teams, and stockpiled on the bank of a frozen creek. When the spring thaw came, they were floated downstream to the sawmills.”

Steaks and baked potatoes were served, and the men concentrated on eating, with scraps of information surfacing between bites: “Sawdust cities consisted of a sawmill, boarding house, saloon and undertaker. . . . ‘River-drivers’ were the daredevils who rode the logs down rushing streams. . . . Danger was everywhere.”

Dinner was interrupted when Nick Bamba rushed into the dining room and whispered in Qwilleran’s ear.

Jumping to his feet, Qwilleran blurted, “Something’s happened to Yum Yum!” He hurried from the room.

“I’ll go with you!” Nick said.

“How did you find out?”

“Someone phoned. The Underhills, I think.”

The two men were running down the back road—the shortcut.

“What did they say?”

“A cat howling bloody murder.”

Qwilleran had the door key in his hand. There was not a second to lose. The howls could be heard.

Then—when they approached the cabin, there was sudden silence.

“What . . . happened?” Nick gasped.

“Don’t know.”

Qwilleran jabbed the key into the lock and burst into the silent cabin. For a few seconds he looked about wildly.

Nick, at his heels, shouted, “Where are they?”