Читать книгу The Case of the Missing Birddog - John R. Erickson - Страница 6

Chapter One: Sleepless Nights

On the morning of November 1, at precisely nine o’clock in the morning, I noticed that something very strange was occurring on my ranch. It had nothing to do with Plato’s sudden disappearance or with an invasion of wild hogs on the ranch. All that stuff came later.

It began with a casual observation. I was in my office, as I recall. I had been up most of the night. No, I had been up most of the week. The entire Security Division had been staggering under a workload that would have killed most of your ordinary dogs.

What was the big deal? Well, it was the fall of the year, see, and we had just weaned our calves. Have we discussed weaning time? Maybe not, but maybe we should. It’s pretty complicated, so pay attention.

Okay, let’s start with basics. This ranch is what we call a “cow-calf operation.” That means we run mother cows in our grass pastures. In the springtime, the cows deliver their calves, and throughout the summer the calves live on their mothers’ milk. They grow big and strong, the calves do, and then one day in the fall, we round up all the animals in the pastures and separate the calves from the cows.

The calves are old enough to start eating solid food, don’t you see, and to get along without momma’s milk. And the mommas need some time to rest and put on flesh before winter arrives. This is weaning time. It happens every year and it’s part of nature’s plan for cows.

So where’s the problem? The problem is that . . . well, you just wouldn’t believe what happens when we separate the cows and calves. You’d think those mother cows would be happy to get rid of their little parasites—who, by the way, aren’t so little. By November, they all weigh four hundred to five hundred pounds. Would you want to furnish groceries for something that weighed five hundred pounds?

Not me, brother. I’d kick him out and tell him to get a job. But these cows . . . they are so dumb! You know what they do when we cut off the calves? They bawl and grieve. For days, they stand outside the corrals and bawl for their five-hundred-pound babies, who stand on the other side of the fence and bawl for their mommies.

It’s the worst noise you can imagine. Day and night, honking and moaning, bellering and mooing. Who can sleep through such noise? Not me. Only a rock could sleep—a rock or Drover. Drover seems to be able to sleep through anything, but I can’t.

Oh, and did I mention the neurotic behavior of the cows? Once we free them from the drain of having to support their calves, they don’t know what to do with themselves, so they pace: from the pens to the water tank, from the water tank back to the pens, from the pens out into the pasture, and then back again. They pace and honk and bawl.

And when they get tired of doing that, they start doing other things that are really weird. They’ll chew anything. Why? Ask a cow; I have no idea. They’ll chew bones. They’ll chew on rocks and sticks. They’ll chew the boards on the corral fence. Slim even caught one trying to eat a garden hose. Is that weird?

And you know what else they do? They chase dogs. Honest. No kidding. For the past five days, I had been followed and chased by a hundred and twenty-seven head of unemployed mother cows.

Why do they do this? Again, I have no idea. Sometimes I get the feeling that they . . . well, want to eat me. Don’t laugh. Any animal that will eat a garden hose might be crazy enough to eat a dog. But other times I’ve gotten the impression that they want to . . . I don’t know. Adopt me or play dolls with me or something nutty like that.

But the main point here is that at weaning time, I get no sleep. Zero. If I happen to collapse into my gunnysack bed beneath the gas tanks and try to grab a few minutes of moo-filled sleep, one of the old hags will come up and start licking my ears. Yes, they do that, and you know where I stand on the issue of Cow Licking. I won’t stand for it, never have.

So what happens is that I’m forced to give sympathy and counseling to the birdbrains. I mean, it’s a hard time for them and if I can say a word or two to ease their pain and grief, I’m glad to do it.

Well, I’m not glad to do it, but I do it. It’s part of my job.

I’ll hike over to the weaning pen and have a little chat with the kids—the calves, that is. I’ll pace back and forth in front of the fence and give ’em a few comforting words.

“Idiots. Morons. Did you think you’d get a free lunch for the rest of your lives? What do you have to complain about? The hay feeders are full of good bright alfalfa. Go eat. That’s what the rest of us have to do. We have to hustle our own grub and chew our own food. Welcome to the real world. Oh, and if you have any problems in the night, just keep them to yourselves. Thanks.”

And then I’ll turn to the mother cows and give them a little talk. “You cows are SO DUMB! You ought to be out celebrating. At last you’re rid of your ungrateful children. They’ve sucked the life out of you and you’re nothing but skinny hags. I’m sorry, but it’s true. You’re skinny hags, and you know what else? I haven’t gotten a decent hour’s sleep in five days, all because of you! Pace and bawl, bawl and pace. I’m fed up, do you understand? Go away and leave me alone.”

So there you are, a little glimpse at the kind of counseling work we have to do at weaning time.

Where were we? Oh yes, nine o’clock on the morning of November the . . . something. The first day of November, and also the first day of quail season. It was morning and it was nine o’clock and I’d been up all night listening to unemployed cows and I wasn’t in the greatest of moods.

And that’s when I observed something odd. I was in the office, trying to . . . I don’t remember. Reading reports, planning strategy for the week, preparing my precious bodily fluids for another grueling day on Life’s Front Lines. It was important, we can be sure of that, and all at once I became aware of a certain . . . odd sound.

Kack-kack-kack-kack.

I lifted my head from the huge pile of reports on my desk and slowly turned my eyes toward the source of the odd sound. I saw . . . Drover. There he was, lounging on his gunnysack bed and gnawing on his foot, if you can believe that.

Kack-kack-kack-kack.

I glared at him for a long moment, hoping he might quit. He didn’t. “Drover, could I ask you a personal question?”

His eyes came up. “Oh, hi. Sure, you bet, ask me anything.”

“What are you doing?”

“Well, let me think. I was chewing on my foot . . . I guess.”

“Ah! Chewing on your foot. I thought that’s what you were doing.”

“Yep, that’s what I was doing.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that this foot-chewing creates a sound that is . . . how shall I say this?”

“I don’t know.”

“. . . a sound that is not only disgusting but also very distracting to those of us who have jobs and responsibilities.”

He rolled his eyes around. “I never thought of that.”

“I see. Would you like to think about it?”

“Oh . . . not really.”

“What?”

“I said . . . oh sure. You bet.”

I pushed myself up from the desk and began pacing in front of the runt. “Let me be blunt. I haven’t slept in weeks and my nerves are on edge.”

“I thought you slept last night. I heard you snoring.”

“I didn’t sleep, Drover. I was tossing and turning and listening to the wailing and screeching of a hundred twenty-seven unbalanced mother cows.”

“Yeah, but I heard you snoring.”

“I wasn’t snoring. I was . . . going over reports. I was working my way through a huge stack of paperwork.”

“It sure sounded like snoring to me.”

“Sounds can be very deceiving, Drover, and let’s not get away from the point of this conversation.”

“I already forgot the point.”

“You were gnawing your foot—gnawing it and licking it.”

“Oh yeah.”

“It made a disgusting sound. It bothered me, which brings us to our last question: Why do you chew your foot?”

“Well, let me think here.” He wadded up his face and squinted one eye. “I don’t know.”

“Think harder, son. There must be some reason. If there’s not, then you should find something else to do.”

“Maybe I was . . . bored.”

I halted my pacing and stared at him. “Bored? I’m dying from overwork and the crushing responsibility of running this ranch, and you’re bored?”

“Maybe that was the wrong answer.”

“Yes, or maybe it was the truth. For the moment, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that you really were bored.”

Kack-kack-kack.

I narrowed my steely eyes. “There you go again. Why do you keep doing that?”

“Well, you said I was bored and all at once I felt . . . bored.”

“Ah, there we are. You felt bored, so you began gnawing on your foot. Do you see what this means?”

“Well . . .”

“It means, Drover, that you are chewing your foot out of sheer boredom.”

“I’ll be derned. I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Exactly my point. You’re doing silly things without thinking. If you’re going to do something silly, you should at least give it some thought.” I noticed that a pained expression had come over his face. “Now what’s wrong?”

“It hurts to think.”

“Of course it does. When we don’t use our minds, Drover, they get fat and lazy, and any kind of mental work causes terrible pain. But in the long run, it’s good for us and . . . why do you still have that tormented expression on your face?”

“Well, I have this urge, this powerful urge, to chew my foot.”

“Even after you’ve thought about it? Even after we’ve discussed it and brought it out into the open?”

“Yeah, it’s getting worse! Help! Oh my paw!”

“Fight back, Drover, resist the urge. There’s no reason for it. It makes you look silly, and the sound of it drives me nuts. Remember, it’s all in your mind.”

“No, it’s in my paw, and I just can’t . . .”

Kack-kack-kack-kack.

I watched with feelings of great sadness as he attacked his own foot and began biting it again. Our struggle to overcome his irrational urge had ended in failure, but just then something else occurred that threw this case into an entirely different direction.

You see, we were no longer alone in the office. Someone else had arrived—someone who wasn’t welcome.