Rama the Gypsy Cat by Betsy Byars

to the wagon seat and then back into the darkened wagon.
    The peddler, almost as quickly, climbed up on the wagon seat. “Well, goodbye to you, Widow Bowman, Miss Rebecca.”
    “You sure you won’t stay the night now, Peddler? There’s nice clean hay in the barn.”
    “No’m, not this trip.” The peddler drove away quickly and did not slow the wagon until the Widow Bowman’s house was far behind. Then he leaned back and said to Rama, “Nor any other trip, friend.” He liked his solitary life. The lonely countryside gave him a sense of freedom that he found nowhere else.
    “Too-rah-lie-oh!” he sang.
    Slowly, seemingly without direction, although the peddler’s route was carefully planned, they made their way to the north.
    “We’ll swing west soon,” the peddler told Rama, “and maybe you’ll get to see a jack rabbit bigger than you. How would you like that, Gyps?”
    “Miaow.”
    “You really would like it, huh?”
    “Miaow.” Rama licked his bib and settled comfortably on the coat in the corner of the wagon.

GOING WEST
    O NE NIGHT AT DUSK, just before the peddler was to turn his wagon west, they made camp beside the river. It was a lovely spring evening. The moon was full and bright, the breeze was easy, and the grass beneath them was beginning to have the softness of new life.
    But Rama was restless. His uneasiness had begun when he had jumped from the wagon and had heard from across the river the long, low mooing of a cow. He had heard this sound often when he was living at the cabin. The cow would moo, and frequently Rama would go and stand at the door to the cow’s shed, drawn by the sound and the pleasant odor of dry grass. Sometimes he would lie there in the morning sun. Now Rama stood by the wagon, waiting to hear the sound again.
    He ate with the peddler and then he sat by the peddler’s feet. Always before, on a pretty evening, he would move off on his nightly hunt. But tonight he remained, looking up at the peddler.
    “What’s the trouble, Gypsy?” the peddler asked. “Still hungry, are you?”
    He offered Rama the remaining piece of meat, but Rama did not take it.
    “What’s the trouble, old friend?” the peddler asked again.
    Rama did not know. He only sensed that this place was somehow familiar, yet unfamiliar, too. He moved his front paws with a tiny, restless, up-and-down movement that betrayed to the peddler the depth of Rama’s uneasiness.
    The peddler stroked him, and Rama responded by rising and rubbing against the peddler’s leg. Yet when he took his hand away, Rama was restless again.
    The peddler filled his long pipe and began to puff slowly. He did not smoke often, only when he felt especially content. A satisfactory meal and the lovely evening had made him so tonight. Then, too, the western part of the trip was his favorite, and the anticipation of the long days, the favorable dry weather, the even trail, made him smile with contentment.
    He blew a perfect smoke ring in the air and it stayed a moment before it drifted out of shape on the evening breeze.
    Rama waited at the peddler’s feet for more attention, but tonight the peddler was lost in his own thoughts. “Too-rah-lie- oooooh !” he sang quietly before he drew on his pipe again.
    Rama rose and walked toward the river. The moonlight was bright. The river, though higher than usual, was calm and moved unhurriedly between its banks. Rama sat with his front paws close together in the new green grass beneath him.
    Beyond, on the opposite bank, the light of a cabin glowed in the trees. It was a faint light and Rama did not see it, but his keen ears heard again the cow mooing in the night. Rama mewed once. It was the long, loud mew he used to give at the cabin door when he wanted to get in. He waited and mewed again.
    In the grass at his feet a beetle stirred. Rama looked down. He watched it as it moved awkwardly through the weeds. Then he covered it with his paw. The beetle wriggled free and continued on its way.