Читать книгу The Further Adventures of Hank the Cowdog - John R. Erickson - Страница 7

Chapter Two: Egged On by Pete

In the security business, you learn to live your life a day at a time because you never know if you’ll make it past that next monster. Any one of them is liable to be your last.

A lot of dogs can’t handle that kind of pressure, but there’s others of us who kind of thrive on danger. When you’re in that category, you learn to savor the precious moments. I mean the little things that most dogs take for granted.

Like a roll in the sewer after a big battle. There’s nothing quite like it, believe me. You come in hot and bloody and tore up and wore out, proud of yourself on the one hand but just derned near exhausted on the other hand, and you walk up to that pool of lovely green water and . . . well, it’s hard to describe the wonderfulness of it.

That first plunge is probably the best, when you step in and plop down and feel the water moving over your body. Then you roll around and kick your legs in the air and let your nose feast on that deep manly aroma.

Your poodles and your Chihuahuas and your other varieties of house dogs never know the savage delight of a good ranch bath. If they ever found what they’re missing, they’d never be the same again. There’s just something about it that makes a dog proud to be a dog.

Well, I climbed out of the sewer and shook myself and sat down in the warm sunshine. Drover was still standing in water up to his knees. I noticed that he hadn’t rolled around in it. He never does. He just wades in and stands there, looking stiff and uncomfortable.

“How do you expect to get clean if you don’t get yourself wet?”

He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t like to get wet.”

“This water has special power, son. It revives the spirit.”

He kind of dipped down and got his brisket wet and scampered out on dry land. “There. I feel much better now.”

I just shook my head. Sometimes Drover acts more like a cat than a cowdog. Makes me wonder . . . oh well.

We sunned ourselves for a few minutes, then headed on down to the gas tanks. I had a gunnysack bed down there with my name on it and I was all set to pour myself into it. I was fluffing it up again and getting it arranged just right when I heard the back door slam up at the house.

I perked my ears and listened. When the back door slams at that hour of the morning, it often means that Sally May has busted the yoke on Loper’s breakfast egg. He won’t eat busted eggs, for reasons which I don’t understand. Seems to me that an egg’s an egg, and after a guy chews it up and swallers it, it’s all about the same anyway.

But Loper doesn’t see it that way, which is fine with me because around here, in Co-op dog food country, an egg in any form is a gourmet delight.

I cut my eyes toward Drover. He had his chin resting on his front paws and was drifting off to sleep. He hadn’t heard the door slam, and I didn’t see that it was my duty to tell him about it.

I slipped away from the gas tanks and loped up the hill. Had my taste buds all tuned up for a fried egg when I met Pete. He was going the same direction I was.

“Get lost, cat. Nobody called your name.”

He gave me a hateful look and hissed. Well, you know me. I try to live by the Golden Rule: “Do unto others but don’t take trash off the cats.” Pete was in the market for a whipping, seemed to me, so I obliged him. Figgered I might as well get it over with, while it was fresh on both our minds.

I jumped him, rolled him, buried him, cuffed him a couple of times, and generally gave him a stern warning about how cats are supposed to behave. After I’d settled that little matter, I trotted up to the yard gate, ready for my egg.

Sally May was standing there with her hands on her hips. I sat down and swept the ground with my tail, gave her a big smile and sat up on my back legs.

I picked up this little begging trick some years ago. It was pretty tough to learn—I mean, it takes balance and coordination and considerable athletic ability—but it’s paid off more than once. People seem to love it. They like to see a dog beg for what they’re going to give him anyway. Don’t ask me why, but they do.

Begging sort of goes against my grain. I mean, my ma was no ordinary mutt. She had papers and everything and cowdog pride was sort of bred into me. But a guy has to make a living, and now and then he finds himself cutting a few corners.

Well, I went up on my hind legs. Sometimes I get my balance the first time and sometimes I don’t. This time it worked. I balanced myself on two legs, and then to add a special touch, I wagged my tail and moved my front paws at the same time.

I don’t believe the trick could have been done any better. It was a real smasher.

I was so busy with the trick that I didn’t notice the sour look on Sally May’s face. “Hank, you big bully! You ought to be ashamed of yourself for picking on that poor cat!”

“HUH?”

“Just for that, you don’t get this egg. Here, Pete, kitty, kitty, kitty.”

In a flash, Pete was there. I mean, when it comes to freeloading, he has amazing speed. He gave me a surly grin and went through the gate and started eating my egg. That really hurt.

Sally May gave Kitty-Kitty a nice motherly smile, then she turned a cold glare on me. “And besides being a bully, you smell awful.”

How could she say that? I had just taken a bath, shampooed, the whole nine yards. I mean, a guy can’t spend his whole life taking a bath. He’s got to get out sometimes and when he does it’s just natural that he picks up a few of the smells of the earth.

Besides that, I knew for a fact that Pete hadn’t taken a bath in years. He hated water even more than Drover did. And he had dandruff too. You could see it all over him, looked like he’d been in a snowstorm.

What kind of justice do you have when a dog that takes a bath every day, and sometimes two or three times a day, gets accused of smelling bad, and a rinky-dink cat . . . oh well.

Pete was chewing my egg, and every now and then he’d turn his eyes toward me and give me a grin. Let me tell you, it took tremendous self-discipline for me to sit there and watch, when all of my savage instincts were urging me to tear down the fence and pulverize the cat.

Sally May went back into the house. I should have left right there, just walked away and tried to forget the whole thing. But I didn’t.

Pete had laid down in front of the plate. I mean, he was too lazy to stand up and eat. He was purring and flicking the end of his tail back and forth and chewing every bite twenty-three times.

I found myself growling, just couldn’t help it. His head came up. “Hmmm, you hungry, Hankie? You’d like this egg. It just melts in your mouth.”

“No thanks, I got better things to do.” That was the truth. I did. But I stayed there.

Pete shrugged and went on eating. I watched, and before I knew it, I was drooling at the mouth.

Pete got up, took a big stretch, and ambled over to where I was. He started rubbing against the fence. He was so close, I could have snatched him baldheaded, which I wanted to do very sincerely, only there was a wire fence between us.

“I’m not sure I can eat all that egg,” he said. “I’m stuffed. You want the rest of it, Hankie?”

I should have said no. I mean, a guy has his pride and everything. But my mouth went to watering at the thought of that egg and . . . “Oh, I might . . . yeah, I’ll take it.”

He grinned and ambled back to the plate. He picked up the egg in his mouth and brought it over to the fence and dropped it right in front of my nose.

Well, I wasn’t going to give him a chance to reconsider, so I made a grab for it. Hit the derned fence with the end of my nose.

But it was right there in front of me. I mean, I could smell it now, it was so close. It was giving off warm waves and delicious smells. I could even smell the butter it had been cooked in.

I made another snap at it, hit the fence and scabbed up my nose. Made my eyes water. When my vision cleared up, I saw Pete sitting there and grinning. I was losing patience fast.

“Gimme that egg. You said I could have it.”

“Here, I’ll move it a little closer.” He got his nose under the egg and nudged it right against the fence.

Well, I just knew I could get it now, so I made another lunge for it. Got a taste of it this time, but also wrecked my nose on that frazzling wire. I could see a piece of skin sticking up, right out toward the end.

“Gimme that egg!”

He licked his paw and purred.

Okay, that settled it. I’ll fool around and nickel-and-dime a problem for a while, but there comes a time when you’ve got to get down to brute strength.

I backed off and took a run at it and hit the fence with all my speed and strength. I expected at least two posts to snap off at the ground, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if I had taken out the whole west side.

Them posts turned out to be a little stouter than I thought, and you might say that the wire didn’t break either. The collision shortened my backbone by about six inches and also came close to ruining my nose.

“Gimme that egg, cat, or I’ll . . .”

Pete throwed a hump into his back and hissed, right in my face. That was a serious mistake. No cat does that to Hank the Cowdog and lives to tell about it.

I started barking. I snarled, I snapped, I tore at the fence with my front paws, I clawed the ground. I mean, we had us a little riot going, fellers, and it was only a matter of time until Pete died a horrible death.

And through it all, I could still smell that egg, fried in butter.

The back door flew open and Loper stormed out. He had shaving cream on one side of his face and the other side was bright red.

“HANK, SHUT UP! YOU’RE GONNA WAKE UP THE BABY!”

I stopped barking and stared at him. Me? What had I . . . if it hadn’t been for the cat . . .

I heard the baby squall inside the house. Sally May exploded out the door. “Will you tell your dog to shut up! He just woke the baby.”

“Shut up, Hank!”

Shut up, Hank. Shut up, Hank. That’s all anybody ever says to me. Not “good morning, Hank,” or “thanks for saving the ranch from the silver monster bird, Hank, we really appreciate you risking your life while we were asleep.” Nothing like that, no siree.

Well, I can take a hint. I gave Pete one last glare, just to let him know that his days on this earth were numbered, and I stalked back to the gas tanks.

I met Drover halfway down the hill. He’d just pried himself out of bed. “What’s going on, Hank? I heard some noise.”

I glared at him. “You heard some noise? Well, glory be. It’s kind of a shame you didn’t come a little sooner when you might have made a hand.”

“You need some help?”

I glanced back up the hill. Sally May was still out in the yard, talking to her Kitty-Kitty. “Yeah, I need some help. Go up there and bark at the cat.”

“Just . . . just bark at the cat, that’s all?”

“That’s all. Give it your best shot.”

“Any special reason?”

“General principles, Drover.”

“Well, okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

He went skipping up the hill and I went down to the gas tanks to watch the show.

Maybe it was kind of mean, me sending Drover up there on a suicide mission, when he was too dumb to know better. But look at it this way: I get blamed for everything around here, and most of the time I don’t deserve it. I figgered it wouldn’t hurt Drover to get yelled at once or twice, and it might even do him some good.

Getting yelled at is no fun, but it does build character. Drover needed some character-building. That was one of his mainest problems, a weak character.

So I watched. The little runt padded up to the fence, plopped down, sat up on his back legs, and started yipping. Sally May put her hands on her hips, gave her head a shake, and said, “Well, if that isn’t the cutest thing!”

She pitched him my egg and he caught it in the air and gulped it down.

A minute later, he was down at the gas tanks. “I did what you said, Hank, and I won a free egg. Are you proud of me?”

I was so proud of him, I thought about blacking both his eyes. But I was too disgusted. I just went to sleep.

That seems to be the only thing I can do around here without getting yelled at: sleep.