Читать книгу The Case of the Fiddle-Playing Fox - John R. Erickson - Страница 6

Chapter Two: Little Alfred’s School of Cat Roping

I looked at Drover. “What did he just say?”

The question caught him in the middle of a yawn. “What? Who?”

“That rooster. He just said something over his shoulder.”

“I didn’t know chickens had shoulders.”

“Over his wing!”

“Oh. Yeah, I think he did say something—about a gigantic fiddleback spider in the night.”

“Hmmm. That’s funny.” Suddenly Drover began laughing. I stared at him. “What’s so funny?”

“I don’t know, but you said it was funny and all at once I thought it was funny, too, and I guess . . . well, I couldn’t help laughing.”

I narrowed my eyes and studied the wasteland of his face. “Are you trying to make a mockery of my investigation?”

“No, I just . . . couldn’t help . . . laughing . . . is all.”

“Well, this is no laughing matter, so wipe that stupid grin off your face.” He wiped it off.

“That’s better. Now, let’s start all over again. What did J. T. Cluck say? It was something about a fiddle.”

Drover rolled his eyes and chewed his lip. “Fiddle. Fiddle? Fiddle. I’ll be derned, I just drew a blank.”

“You drew a blank the day you were born, Drover, and it settled between your ears. Concen­trate and try to remember. Fiddle.”

“Fiddle. Oh yeah. He said he woke up in the night and saw a gigantic fiddleback spider crawling into the chicken house. I think that’s what he said.”

“That’s NOT what he said.”

“I didn’t think it was.”

“He said he heard Mysterious Fiddle Music in the Night.”

“Oh yeah, and the spider was playing the fiddle behind his back.”

“He said nothing about a spider.”

“I didn’t think he did.”

“So we can forget about the spiders.”

“Oh good.”

“But we can’t forget about the Mysterious Music.”

“No, it kind of gets in your head.”

“Which means that we have an unconfounded report from an unreliable source about Mysterious Fiddle Music in the Night. Hence, the next question is, do we dismiss it as hearsay and gossip, or do we follow it up with a thorough investigation?”

“That’s a tough one.”

“And the answer to that question, Drover, is very simple.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“We follow it up with a complete and thorough investigation, because to do otherwise would be a dare election of duty.”

“I’ll vote for that.”

I began pacing. As I might have noted before in another context, my mind seems to work better when I pace.

“Question, Drover. Do you know anything about this so-called Mysterious Fiddle Music in the Night?”

He flopped down and started scratching his left ear. “Well, let’s see here. Fiddle music. I always kind of liked fiddle music, myself.”

“Yes? Go on.”

“Especially when they play fast. It gets me all stirred up.”

“Get to the point.”

“The point. Okay, let’s see here.” All at once his eyes got big and his mouth dropped open. “Say, you know what? I dreamed about fiddle music last night!”

I whirled around and paced over to a point directly in front of him. “All right, very good, we’re getting to the core of the heart. You say that you dreamed about fiddle music last night?”

“Yeah, I sure . . . unless . . . gosh, maybe I didn’t dream it. Maybe . . . there was this fox, came out of nowhere and stood over me while I was asleep. And Hank, he was playing a fiddle!”

I let the air hiss out of my lungs and my eyelids sank. “Okay, never mind, I’m sorry I asked, I should have known better.”

“Did I say something wrong?”

I refilled my lungs and raised my lids. “I thought we were on the trail of something, Drover, but it’s turned out to be another of your wild, improbable fantasies. Number one, there are no foxes on this ranch.”

“Oh dern.”

“Number two, even if there were a fox on this ranch, which there isn’t, he wouldn’t be playing a fiddle because foxes don’t play fiddles.”

“Huh. Maybe it was a harmonica.”

“Number three, you’re wasting my valuable time. I don’t want to hear anymore about foxes or fiddles or spiders.”

“But Hank . . .”

“Period. End of discussion. Now, what were we doing before that rooster intruded into our lives and got us stirred up about nothing?”

“Sleeping, I think.”

“Wrong again, Drover. YOU were sleeping. I had been up since before daylight, checking things out and getting the day started. Speaking of which, the day has started and we have two weeks of work to do before dark.”

Just then I heard the screen door slam up at the house. Hmm. Oftentimes the slamming of the screen door at that hour of the morning indicates that Sally May has come outside to distribute juicy morsels of food left over from breakfast.

“Come on, Drover. Never mind the work, it’s scrap time! To the yard gate, on the double.”

We went streaking up the hill, just in time to see Pete the Barncat scampering towards the yard gate. No doubt he too had heard the screen door slam, and he, being your typical ne’er-do-well, freeloading, never-sweat variety of cat, had been lurking in the flowerbeds, waiting for someone to come out and give him a free meal.

That’s one trait in cats that has always burned me up. You’d think that a ranch cat, a barn cat, would feel some obligation to get out and hustle and earn his keep.

Not this one. He spent his entire life lurking around doors, and the instant he heard someone coming out, ZOOM! There he was, rubbing up against someone’s leg and purring like a little motorboat and waiting for a handout.

It’s disgusting, is what it is, and the worst part about it is that his handouts cut into our Food Rewards for Meritorious Service.

Don’t let anyone kid you. There’s a huge difference between mere handouts and Food Rewards, but never mind the difference because the sleen-scramming—screen-slamming, that is, turned out to be a false alarm anyway. For you see, the person or persons who had emerged from the house turned out to be Little Alfred, not Sally May as you might have suspected, which meant no scraps.

We skidded to a stop in front of the yard gate and waited for our pal, age four or thereabouts, to come out of the yard. He was wearing a pair of brown shorts, a T-shirt, and his little Tony Lama boots, with the spurs attached.

And in his hands was an instrument of mischief: a little three-sixteenth-inch nylon rope. And he was building a loop.

It’s amazing what happens to Drover when someone shows a rope. He suddenly changes direction, drops his head, and begins slinking away.

Sure, he’d been roped a few times by cowboy pranksters and he didn’t enjoy it, but so what? That was no reason for him to be a spoilsport and a chicken-liver about it. Shucks, if I’d had a bone for every time I’d been roped by Slim and Loper, I’d have been one of the 10 wealthiest dogs in the country.

But you didn’t see me slinking away every time somebody showed up with a rope in his hands, and besides, I had reason to suspect that Little Alfred couldn’t hit a bull in the behind with a bass fiddle, much less toss his loop around my neck.

Furthermore, there was always the chance that he might put on a little exhibition, with Pete playing the part of livestock. Stranger things had happened, and I didn’t want to miss a minute of it.

I mean, if you care about cowboying, you like to see these kids learning to rope and carrying on the skills into another generation, and when they’re roping cats, it warms the heart even more.

Pete suspected nothing. That wasn’t exactly the biggest surprise of the year since cats aren’t what you’d call cowboy animals. They don’t understand the business at all and have no idea of what goes on inside a cowboy’s head.

We cowdogs, on the other hand, have a pretty good reading of a cowboy’s mind, and one of the first principles we learn is that a loaded rope tends to go off.

But do you think Pete picked up on that? No sir. He went right on rubbing and purring and winding his tail around the boy’s legs, I mean, it looked like a bullsnake climbing a tree.

Little Alfred stumbled over the cat, which is what usually happens. He stopped and looked down. A gleam came into his eyes and a smile spread across his mouth.

Up went the rope. Three twirls later, a nice little loop sailed out and dropped over Pete’s head, just as pretty as you please.

I barked, wagged my tail, and jumped up and down. I mean, I could hardly contain my pride and enthusiasm. Did I say the boy couldn’t rope? Couldn’t hit a bull in the behind with a bass fiddle? Fellers, he had just one-looped a cat, and I couldn’t have been prouder if I’d done it myself!

Well, you know Pete, sour-puss and can’t-take-a-joke. He pinned his ears down, growled, hissed, and made a dash for the iris patch. Ho ho! Did he come to a sudden stop? Yes he did. Hit the end of that twine, came to a sudden stop, and did a darling little back flip.

Little Alfred beamed a smile at me. “I woped a cat!”

I barked and wagged and gave him my most sincere congratulations on a job well done.

He reeled the cat in. By this time, old Pete had quit fighting the rope and had sulled up. His ears were still pinned down and he was making that police-siren growl that cats make when they ain’t real happy about the state of the world.

Alfred picked him up, opened the gate, and joined me on the other side, guess he wanted to show me his trophy. I gave him a big juicy lick on the face and was about to . . .

HUH?

The little snipe! Now, why did he go and pitch the cat on me? Hey, I’d been on his side all along. I’d been out there cheering him on and trying to coach . . .

All at once, Pete wasn’t sullen anymore. He’d turned into a buzz saw, and before I even knew what was happening, he’d stung me in fifteen different places, and we’re talking about very important places such as my eyebrows, cheeks, gums, lips, ears, and the soft part of my nose.

Did it hurt? You bet it hurt, and never mind who’d started this riot, I was fixing to introduce Pete to an old cowdog technique called “Disaster.” I barked and I snarled and I growled and I snapped . . .

“HANK, YOU BULLY, GET AWAY FROM MY CAT!!”

Huh?

Get away from . . . no doubt that voice belonged to Sally May and . . . perhaps she thought . . .

I cancelled my plans for hamburgerizing the cat, and prepared to thump my tail on the ground and give her an innocent smile.

At the time, I didn’t know that she was already upset about the missing eggs. But I soon found out.