Dance with the Devil

Katherine told the warm air inside the car, “I'm really being silly now!” She grinned and shook her head. Moving trees, malicious snow! What would she be thinking of next?
        The cat.
        When she looked at the barn, the snow was falling even more heavily than before, so that she could not be certain if the dark object dangling in the center of the open doorway was really what she had thought at first. It could be a trick of shadows.
        She preferred to think that it was.
        She was especially fond of cats. She had been permitted a cat at the orphanage, as a child, and she had owned a second cat, Mr. Phooey, when she was in college. The first had died a natural death; the second had been struck and killed by an automobile. Both times, she had found acceptance of the death hard.
        And now this… Well, this was clearly none of her business, of course. Even if that were a dead cat up there, she had no reason to call anyone to account for it. Still, a cat was a cat, and all cats held a mystic bond with her Spike and Mr. Phooey.
        She looked both ways, hoping to see another car approaching. This was the sort of thing a man should handle.
        The road was deserted in both directions.
        She got out of the Ford, pulled her coat collar up under her chin. Still, the wind bit her cheeks, turned her pert nose a bright red, and managed to force a few cold flakes down her neck. She closed the door and leaned against it, looking at the thing hanging in the doorway. She shuddered and looked away from it again.
        Where the farmhouse had once been, there was now nothing but a burned-out foundation of charred field-stones and crumbling mortar. Weeds had sprung up in the man-made pit, evidence that the disaster had taken place a good many years before.
        On her side of the road, there was nothing but open land, some crippled length of fence. She had not passed any homes for several miles, but she thought there might be a few ahead on the road. All of which was an excuse to keep from going up to that barn and looking at what hung in its doorway. She forced herself to stop pretending, to stop looking at the scenery, and to get on with it. The poor thing, if it was a poor thing, shouldn't have to hang there like that.
        She walked away from the car, crossed the slippery road and stepped over another broken rail fence. The land, beneath the snow, was rocky and all but sent her tumbling several times.
        Why don't I stop right here? she asked herself. What can I do, anyway? If it really is a cat, who could I find to take responsibility for its murder, and who would care to prosecute them? A cat, after all, is only an animal. That might sound cruel, but it was a fact.
        Even an animal, however, deserved a proper burial. Suppose she had let Mr. Phooey out in the cold, to rot when summer came around? No, she could not turn away. Even an animal deserved privacy in its death.
        When she was ten feet from the doorway, she knew beyond doubt that it was a cat and not some trick of light or her imagination. Each step closer was painful. When she was directly beneath it, she could see what had been done to it, and she turned away, staggering into the snow. She bent over and was very sick.
        A while later, she came back, white-faced and trembling. Her revulsion at the brutality had now turned to anger, and anger as hot as a July day, here in the cold of January. She did not think there were any limits to what she would be capable of if she ever got her hands on the ugly, sick people who had mutilated the animal.
        Gently, gently, she untied the cord knotted at a nail above the doorway. The noose had dug so deeply into the cat's body that she could not easily have loosened that.
        She laid the little creature on the purity of the driven snow by the barn door.
        Both of its eyes had been taken out. Its forepaws were bound together by heavy wire, and clasped in them was a tiny, silver crucifix which had been broken in two. Three hatpins marred its belly. It had, to be mercifully short, been tortured without conscience before its tormentors had seen fit to let it die of strangulation.
        Kids! Katherine thought. Whining little brats who had never been brought up right, selfish children who had no respect for life or beauty. She had known children like that both in and out of the orphanage, spoiled by parents or by the lack of