Читать книгу The Curse of the Incredible Priceless Corncob - John R. Erickson - Страница 6

Chapter One: An Astronomy Lesson for the Dunce

It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. I’m still not sure how the corncobs fit into the overall case, or for that matter what part Pete the Barncat played in the mystery, but on the morning of September 7, at approximately ten o’clock, the cowboys roared into headquarters and called me up for Special Emergency Duty.

Little did I know what danger lay in store for me or that my very life would be hanging in the balance before the day was done. But then, that’s getting the cart before the wagon.

Let’s back up and take first things first. In the security business, you can get yourself in a mess trying to take first things second or second things first. First things should always be taken first.

Okay. Let’s start with the corncobs.

On the evening of the morning before the day of which I speak . . . Let’s try that again. On the evening before the morning of the day of which . . .

Might be simpler just to say, “On the evening of September 6.” Okay, on the evening of September 6, Drover and I were down in the vicinity of the gas tanks, taking it easy and catching a few winks of sleep before we had to go out on night patrol.

As I recall the scene, I was reclined on my gunnysack bed, hovering in the twilight zone between watchfulness and more or less complete oblivion. In other words, although my more critical faculties were pretty muchly in neutral, I continued to monitor all sounds and earatory data in the Ready Room of my mind.

This is a trick of the trade, so to speak, that a guy builds up over a period of years. When you’re on call twenty-four hours a day, when the safety of the ranch and all its inhabitants depends on your ability to scramble at the first sign of danger, you learn to grab your sleep when it comes and to remain alert even while sleeping.

Hencely, even though an outside observer would have pronounced me asleep, the inner recesses of my mind continued to monitor incoming signals. A high percentage of those signals were coming from Drover, my associate, who sat nearby, staring up at the sky and composing dumb questions.

“Hank?”

My eyelids twitched but I tried to ignore him.

“Hank?”

“Um.”

“You awake, Hank?”

I cracked my left eye and snapped a visual update for my data base, but this procedure met with only partial success since my left eye was still rolling around in its sprocket. Again, I tried to ignore him.

“Hank?”

“What!”

“You awake?”

“Of course it will! If it weren’t for that, what else could it be?”

“What?”

“You heard what I said. Don’t sit there pretending . . . what did I say?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, if you’re not sure, Drover, who is?”

“You got me.”

“Then I’ve got very little. The question is, what is the meaning of this conversation?”

“I’m not sure, Hank. I just asked if you were awake.”

“And what did I say?”

“That was the part I didn’t understand.”

That did it. I had no choice but to cancel the Sleep Mode and go back on duty. I opened both eyes and sat up.

“Drover, do you have any idea what you’re talking about?”

“Not really. I was just trying to make conversation. I get bored sometimes.”

“If I had to live with that tiny brain of yours, I’d get bored too.”

“Yeah, but even though it’s small, it’s not very big.”

“Don’t try to argue with me. The point is that . . . what was the point?”

“I think we were trying to decide . . . I’m not sure there was a point.”

“Hence, by simple logic, we see that you’ve lured me into another pointless conversation. And you also woke me up, and don’t try to deny it.”

“Okay. Hank, you see the moon?”

I squinted my eyes and looked toward the east and saw the alleged moon. “Of course I see the moon. Anyone with eyes can see the moon. I saw the moon at this same time last night and last month and last year. I assume, since that’s such a stupid question, you’ll follow it with another stupid question.”

He shook his head. “No, that was all. I just wondered if you saw the moon.”

I pushed myself up on all-fours and lumbered over to him. I was not in, shall we say, a jolly frame of mind. “Listen, pipsqueak, after interrupting my sleep, you’d better have another question in mind.”

“Oh. Well, all right. Let me see here. Hank, how come the moon comes up in the evening and goes down after midnight?”

I stared at him and shook my head. “See? I knew you had one more stupid question in there. All right, I’ll tell you, but I expect you to pay attention and remember your lessons. I don’t want to go through this every night for the rest of our lives.”

“Okay, Hank, I’m ready.”

“Number one: hot air rises. Number two: cold air unrises, or you might prefer to say that it falls.”

“Yeah, I like that better.”

“Number three: the air at the end of the day is hot. Number four: the air at the end of the night is cold. Can you figger it from there or do I have to fill in the blanks?”

He squinted one eye and thought about it. “Well, that tells me a lot about air but I was kind of curious about the moon.”

“They’re one and the same, you dunce.”

“You mean the moon’s nothing but air? I thought it was made out of cheese.”

“It IS made out of cheese, but do you think it’s up there hanging in water?”

“Well . . . no.”

“Then what’s it hanging in?”

Again, he squinted at the moon. “Right now, I’d say it’s hanging in that big cottonwood tree down by the creek.”

“Absolutely wrong. It appears to be, but that’s only a tropical illusion.”

“It is? Then that means . . .”

“Exactly. It’s actually hanging in thin air.”

“It does look pretty thin.”

“It’s very thin, Drover, and since thin air is thinner than thick air and warm air is warmer than cool air, it follows from simple deduction that the moon rises. I can’t make it any simpler than that.”

“Oh, that’s simple enough . . . I guess.”

“Any more questions about the moon, the sun, the planets, the canopy of stars that covers the skies at night? This is the time to ask your questions, Drover, while we’re between investigations.”

“Well . . . what would happen if the moon was hanging in thin water instead of thin air? Would it sink or float?”

“That would depend on how thin the water was, and I think that’s about all the time we have for questions. We’ve got work to do.”

“I thought this was the time to ask questions.”

“It was, but time marches on, and we either join the parade or go to the rodeo.”

Drover scratched his ear. “I’ve never been to a rodeo.”

“Yes, but you’ve never been to a parade either, so that only proves what I’ve said all along.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s time to get to work. There’s more to this life than rodeos and parades.”

“I sure hope so. I’ve never been to either one.”

I stared at the runt. “I just said that. Why are you repeating what I’ve already said?”

He hung his head. “I don’t know. It just sounded good at the time, and I didn’t know what else to say.”

“Drover, when you don’t have anything important to say, it’s usually better just to keep your trap shut.”

“Okay Hank, but it’s liable to get awful quiet around here.”

“That gives us something to hope for, doesn’t it, and hope is the fuel for the machinery of life, so that pretty well wraps things up. Are you ready to go on patrol?”

“Well . . . I was feeling kind of sleepy, to tell you the truth.”

“I appreciate the truth but the sleep will have to wait. We’ve got a job to do.”

“Oh rats.”

At that very moment, I heard the back door slam up at the house. I perked my ears and listened. Sally May’s footsteps on the sidewalk, seventeen of them (seventeen footsteps, not seventeen sidewalks). Then, a fork scraping on a plate. Then . . .

“Kitty kitty kitty! Here Hank, here Drover!”

Ah ha! It was scrap time at the yard gate, one of my very favorite times of the day. “Come on, Drover. Our most important job right now is to beat the cat to the scraps. Let’s move out.”

We left the gas tanks and went sprinting up the hill.

Little did we know what awaited us at the top of the hill, and for the very best of reasons.

We weren’t there yet.