The Rider on the White Horse | Page 7

longest!"
Suddenly the hind legs of the big cat fell languidly down, and Hauke
walked back a few steps and threw it against the hut of the old woman.
As it did not stir, he turned round and continued his way home.
But the Angora cat was the only treasure of her mistress; he was her
companion and the only thing that her son, the sailor, had left her after

he had met with sudden death here on the coast when he had wanted to
help his mother by fishing in the storm. Hauke had scarcely walked on
a hundred steps, while he caught the blood from his wounds on a cloth,
when he heard a shrill howling and screaming from the hut. He turned
round and, in front of it, saw the old woman lying on the ground; her
grey hair was flying in the wind round her red head scarf.
"Dead!" she cried; "dead!" and raised her lean arm threateningly
against him: "A curse on you! You have killed her, you good for
nothing vagabond; you weren't good enough to brush her tail!" She
threw herself upon the animal and with her apron she tenderly wiped
off the blood that was still running from its nose and mouth; then she
began her screaming again.
"When will you be done?" Hauke cried to her. "Then let me tell you, I'll
get you a cat that will be satisfied with the blood of mice and rats!"
Then he went on his way, apparently no longer concerned with
anything. But the dead cat must have caused some confusion in his
head, for when he came to the village, he passed by his father's house
and the others and walked on a good distance toward the south on the
dike toward the city.
Meanwhile Trin Jans, too, wandered on the dike in the same direction.
In her arms she bore a burden wrapped in an old blue checkered
pillowcase, and clasped it carefully as if it were a child; her grey hair
fluttered in the light spring wind. "What are you lugging there, Trina?"
asked a peasant who met her. "More than your house and farm," replied
the old woman, and walked on eagerly. When she came near the house
of old Haien, which lay below, she walked down to the houses along
the "akt," as we call the cattle and foot paths that lead slantingly up and
down the side of the dike.
Old Tede Haien was just standing in front of his door, looking at the
weather. "Well, Trin!" he said, when she stood panting in front of him
and dug her crutch into the ground, "What are you bringing us in your
bag?"

"First let me into the room, Tede Haien! Then you shall see!" and her
eyes looked at him with a strange gleam.
"Well, come along!" said the old man. What did he care about the eyes
of the stupid woman!
When both had entered, she went on: "Take that old tobacco box and
those writing things from the table. What do you always have to write
for, anyway? All right; and now wipe it clean!"
And the old man, who was almost growing curious, did everything just
as she said. Then she took the blue pillow-case at both ends and
emptied the carcass of the big cat out on the table. "There she is!" she
cried; "your Hauke has killed her!" Thereupon she began to cry bitterly;
she stroked the thick fur of the dead animal, laid its paws together, bent
her long nose over its head and whispered incomprehensible words of
tenderness into its ears.
Tede Haien watched this. "Is that so," he said; "Hauke has killed her?"
He did not know what to do with the howling woman.
She nodded at him grimly. "Yes, yes, God knows, that's what he has
done," and she wiped the tears from her eyes with her hand, crippled by
rheumatism. "No child, no live thing any more!" she complained. "And
you know yourself how it is after All Saints' Day, when we old people
feel our legs shiver at night in bed, and instead of sleeping we hear the
northwest wind rattle against the shutters. I don't like to hear it. Tede
Haien, it comes from where my boy sank to death in the quicksand!"
Tede Haien nodded, and the old woman stroked the fur of her dead cat.
"But this one here," she began again, "when I would sit by my
spinning-wheel, there she would sit with me and spin too and look at
me with her green eyes! And when I grew cold and crept into my
bed--then it wasn't long before she jumped up to me and lay down on
my chilly legs, and we both slept