Читать книгу The Case of the Monster Fire - John R. Erickson - Страница 6

Chapter One: The Mouse Didn’t Run Down the Clock

It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. The main part of this story takes place in March, oh what a terrible day, but to get there, we have to go back to October. Around here, October always happens before March. I don’t know why, it just does.

So it was October before the next March. Drover and I had spent the night at Slim’s place, as we often do because, well, he lets us stay inside the house. I had been up for hours, going over a stalk of poperwick…a stack of pickerwarp on my disk, when I hicked a honk in the frizzling fubble.

Huh?

Sorry, I’m having a little trouble with my words. Every once in a while, we have this pablum, so bee sting beside the honey hive and the mouse ran down the clock. When that hurples, we murple the purple.

Huh?

Sorry, my attention drifted there for a second, but I’m back up to speed now. We were discussing the mouse problem. These mice keep running down our clocks, don’t you see, and when the clocks run down, we don’t know whether it’s raining or Tuesday. Tuesdays are very important in the overall scheme of things, because without Tuesday, we would never be able to measure our rainfall.

Yawn.

You know, some of this isn’t making sense. How did we get onto the subject of mice and clocks and Tuesday? I mean, what is Tuesday to a mouse?

Does anyone remember what we were talking about?

Wait, here we go. Early morning, and I mean EARLY. Dawn. First light. At that hour, most of your ordinary mutts are still sprawled out on the floor, pumping out a line of Z’s. In other words, sleeping their lives away.

Not me, fellers. I take pride in being the first one up. In the Security Business, we have little time for sleeping. At first light, I’m on the jib of the jab…I’m on the job.

May I whisper a little secret? See, one of my greatest fears in life is being infected with the Slacker Virus. Drover’s had it all his life, and we’re talking about BAD, and I’m scared I might catch it.

That’s why, every morning before daylight, I leap out of bed and start doing pushups and pull-ups…pretzels and pork rinds, ketchup on poperwick, and plan out my whole day’s snizzle, whilst all the slackers of the world are still snickerdoodling.

Wait. I seem to have lost my choo-choo…my train of thought, that is, so let’s take a deep breath and start all over.

Okay, Drover and I must have spent the night at Slim’s place, now we’re cookin’, and I had been up for hours, grinding out reports and studying mops and chops…maps and charts, that is, while chained to my desk. I heard an odd sound…several odd sounds and cranked open one eye.

Wait, that can’t be right. I’d been working for hours, so both eyes must have been open, yes, wide open, so if you don’t mind, get a red pencil and mark out that business about “cranked open one eye.” I was misquibbled…misquoted, shall we say.

Go ahead and mark it out. Thanks.

I heard a sound, looked up from my work, and saw…hang on, this is scary…I saw what appeared to be an Egyptian mummy creeping down the dark hallway, sliding its hand along the wall. Somehow radar hadn’t picked him up. Well, you know me. When a mummy shows up in the house, we sound General Quackers.

General Quarters, it should be.

A strip of hair shot up along my backbone and a growl came rumbling up from the engine room. Fellers, I BARKED!

“Hush!”

Huh?

Did you hear that? The mummy said…wait a second. Do you suppose…ha ha. Okay, we can call off the alert. Everybody relax. Ha ha. No big deal, just a simple…hey, when radar doesn’t pick ‘em up, how are we supposed to know?

It was Slim Chance, but believe me, he looked like some kind of mummy monster, I mean pale face and puffy red eyes and a rat’s nest of hair. And he was wearing boxer shorts too. That’s on our Check List For Mummies. They almost always show up wearing boxer shorts.

Okay, things were starting to fall into place. The Elite Troops of the ranch’s Security Division had camped at Slim’s place, and it was morning. It was also October and every dog on the force was exhausted.

Let me emphasize the exhausted part. See, if portions of the preceding so-forth sounded, well, disjointed, that’s why. Our team had been pushed to the limits of Doggie Endurance, I mean, eighteen-hour days, no breaks, no weekends or holidays, no time off, just the grinding routine of running the ranch.

So, yes, Drover and I had spent the night down at Slim’s place, and I’m going to stand before you right now and admit that I might have dozed off at my desk—not a deep sleep, nothing like Drover, I mean, the runt was in a coma, but maybe I’d been drifting in and out of focus.

Hey, it happens, even to the Head of Ranch Security, but now I was wide awake and back on the job.

Slim had pried himself out of bed, and I watched as he stumbled into the kitchen and made himself some coffee. As usual, he turned on the stove burner and left the gas running whilst he scratched a wooden match across the matchbox. As usual, it took several scratches to light the match, so when he finally put it under the pan of water, we had a little propane explosion.

As usual, he seemed surprised. Duh. I mean, propane blows up when you leave it running. There are no exceptions. It happens every time, and the longer you dawdle, the bigger the pow.

If you wonder why cowboys don’t have hair on the back of their hands, this is the reason. Slim has even lost eyebrows.

Incredible.

Dogs don’t enjoy explosions in the morning. We would like to help our people when they don’t function well, but do they ever listen to their dogs or ask for our advice? No. So we go through this every day of the world.

He finally got the water boiling and dumped some coffee into the pan. He waited a few minutes, then sloshed it into a cup. He hadn’t washed that cup in two years, by the way, and it was exactly the color of two-year old coffee.

After downing a couple of slurps, he crept out on the porch in his drawers and a T-shirt and brought in an armload of firewood. Stepping over me and Drover…stepping over Stubtail, who was sprawled out on the floor, he picked his way across the room toward the…

“Hank, move!”

…picked his way across the room to the stove, tripping on Drover in the process. He opened the stove door and placed a strip of dry cedar bark on the coals, blew on the coals until the bark caught fire, and added a few sticks of hackberry. Before long, he had a nice little fire going, closed the door, and set the damper.

Then he glared down at us and grumbled, “If this outfit depended on y’all to build a fire, we’d freeze to death.”

Oh brother. I ignored him.

You know, it’s strange that our story should start with a fire, because that’s how it’s going to…no, that’s all I can say. I mean, it was such an awful…

We can’t talk about it, sorry, and don’t beg or whine. I have to be firm on this. You know how I am about the children. Some parts of this job are just too scary for the little guys, and there’s no fire insurance for spectators. I mean, what if your book bursted into flames?

Don’t laugh. It could happen.

I’m not at liberty to reveal any more information because it’s highly classified and you’re not supposed to know any of this, so the next big question is…do you want to go on with the story?

If not, brush your teeth and go to bed. If you’re still with me, thanks. This is going to be a toughie.

Where were we? Oh yes, Sally May’s rotten little cat. He drives me batty, and he knows that he drives me batty. He thrives on driving me batty. It seems to be the whole purpose of his life. He went to kitty college and got a degree in Batty Driving, but one of these days…

We weren’t talking about the cat.

Tell you what, let’s take a little break and change chapters. If you don’t show up for Chapter Two, I’ll have to go on without you.