Word: ranching
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Bridges family lives alone on a ranch in an isolated valley of the Sierra Nevada at the turn of the century. One night, during the first snow of the year, one of the sons awakes in the bunkhouse to hear the cattle crying far out in the storm. Subsequently he and one of his brothers ride out to investigate; a few hours later his body is carried back to the ranch slung to his horse. His brother remains in the mountains to hunt down the killer...
Most of the story deals with this lonely hunt, and also with teh tight complex tensions which are released in the Bridges family by the death of the first son. The third and youngest son is left at the ranch to cope with the messy psychological situation created by his brother's death, among his sister, his parents, and his fiancee. By exercising fantastic self-control, he keeps the tensions in hand msot of the time, but just barely...
Nevertheless, "The Track Of The Cat" is a deeply engrossing bock. What Clark misses by his indefinite allegory and also by his sometimes tedious portrayal of petty details (endless scenes of housework in the ranch kitchen for instance) he makes up for in his absolutely unsurpassed descriptions of the mountains, the storm, the break-up of a strong man under stress, and the general atmosphere of coldness, loneliness and terror...
Curt goes after the panther first, bullies gentle Arthur into going along. Miles from the ranch house, they find the tracks of an enormous cat. When Curt goes back to get supplies for the pursuit, daydreaming Arthur is jumped by the panther and killed. Gnawed by guilt, Curt sends back his brother's body lashed to a horse, takes off on foot to track down...
Back at the ranch house, Arthur's return lets loose a flood of repressed passion, recriminations and superstitious maundering that Novelist Clark's meager story structure is too fragile to bear. What happens out on the snow-covered range is more successful and easily the most exciting part of the book. In a first-rate section of more than 100 pages, Curt's pursuit of the cat becomes a thriller with symbolic moral overtones that will remind some readers of Moby Dick. The cunning of the cat, the cold, the lack of food, the growing image...