some seven feet of carpet stretching from the stairs to the kitchen door was obviously brand-new. It did not match the wide Oriental runner on the stairs.
"You,d never know it even happened!" declared Galton triumphantly. "We scrubbed those floorboards. There must have been two inches of old wax on them anyway. You would just never know."
Reuben stopped. No memory attached itself to the spot. All he remembered was darkness, and he slipped into the darkness, compulsively reliving the attack, as though he was making the Stations of the Cross in St. Francis at Gubbio Church on Good Friday. Teeth like needles driving into his neck and skull.
Did you know what would happen to me when you let me live?
Galton let loose with a long, truly awe-inspiring string of cliches and platitudes to the effect that life goes on, life belongs to the living, these things happen, nobody,s safe, you know, you never knew why things happened, one day you would know why things happened, and even the best boys can go bad these days with the dope the way it is, and we just have to get over these things and move on.
"I,ll tell you this much," he said suddenly in a low, confidential voice. "I know what did it. I know what got you. And it,s a miracle it let you live."
The hair stood up on the back of Reuben,s neck. His heart was thudding in his ears. "You know what did it?" he asked.
"Mountain lion," said Galton, narrowing his eyes and lifting his chin. "And I know which mountain lion too. She,s been in these parts too long."
Reuben shook his head. He felt a surge of relief. Back to the old mystery. "It couldn,t have been," he said.
"Oh, son, we all know it was that mountain lion. She,s out there somewhere now with her litter. Three times I,ve gotten a clear shot at her and missed. She took my dog from me, young man. Now you never knew my dog. But my dog was no ordinary dog."
Reuben felt a surge of relief at all this, because it was utterly off the mark.
"My dog was the most beautiful German shepherd I ever saw. Panzer was his name, and I reared that dog from a six-week-old pup myself and trained him never to take a morsel of food except from my hand, gave him all the commands in German, and he was the finest dog I ever had."
"And the mountain lion got him," Reuben murmured.
The old man lifted his chin again and nodded solemnly. "Dragged him off, right out of my yard down there and into the woods, and there was hardly anything left of him when I found him. She did that. She and her litter, and that litter,s almost grown. I went after her, went after the brood. I,ll get her, permit or no permit! They can,t stop me. Just a matter of time. But you be careful if you go walking in these woods. She,s got her young cats with her. I know she has, she,s teaching them to hunt, and you have to be careful at sundown and at dawn."
"I,ll be careful," Reuben said. "But it really wasn,t a mountain lion."
"And how do you know that, son?" the man asked.
Why was he arguing? Why was he even saying a word? Let the old man believe what he wanted to believe. Isn,t that what everybody was doing?
"Because I would have smelled it if it had been a mountain lion," he confessed, "and the scent would have been on the dead men and on me."
The man pondered that for a moment, reluctantly, but seemingly honestly. He shook his head. "Well, she got my dog," he confessed, "and I,m going to kill her just the same."
Reuben nodded.
The old man started up the broad oak stairway.
"Did you hear about that poor little girl in Marin County?" Galton asked over his shoulder.
Reuben murmured that indeed he had.
He could scarce breathe. But he wanted to see everything, yes, every single thing.
The place looked so clean, polished floorboards gleaming on either side of the old Oriental carpet. The little candlelike sconces were all lighted as they had been that first night.
"You can put me in that last bedroom back there," he said. This was the last one at the end of the western hall, Felix,s old room.
"You don,t want the master bedroom on the front of the house? Gets a lot more sun, that front room. Beautiful front room."