Читать книгу The Case of the Prowling Bear - John R. Erickson - Страница 6

Chapter One: The Secret Donkey Report

It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. Let’s get right to this business of the bear. I can tell you exactly when and how the rumors got started.

It was the first week in January, as I recall. Yes, it was the second week in January—long nights, cold gloomy days. Or was it February? On this ranch, there isn’t much difference between January and February, so it doesn’t matter.

The mystery began when it began, in the cold of winter, only on that particular day, it wasn’t cold. In fact, it was warm and spring-like, almost sixty degrees. Slim shed his coat around nine o’clock that morning and shucked off his wool vest about an hour later.

Slim, Drover, and I were out feeding cattle. In the dead of winter, it’s something we do every day. We drive to the same pastures and pour out feed to the same cattle, who always give the impression that they’ve never eaten a bite of store-bought feed in their whole lives, which makes us wonder why we bother.

Let’s face it. Cows are greedy, dumb, and have no sense of gertrude. Gratitude. They have no gertrude of gratitude. It doesn’t matter how hard you work or how much feed you pour out for them, they’re never happy and they always want more. Hence, don’t stake your career on pleasing a cow. It won’t happen.

We poured out feed in the first two pastures and were chugging along the county road, on our way to the next pasture. Drover stared off into the vapors of space. Slim hummed a tune and concentrated on his driving.

If this had been the middle of summer, he would have been swerving from one side of the road to the other, trying to smash those jumbo grasshoppers that get almost as big as a lizard. But this was wintertime (no grasshoppers for entertainment), so he had nothing to do but drive.

Me? I was in my usual position on the Shotgun Side of the pickup, and perhaps I had dozed off. Yes, I’m sure I had, because…well, active minds tend to doze when there isn’t much to keep them occupied. But that changed all at once, when I heard the screech of brakes and went flying into the dashboard. Next thing I knew, I was sprawled on the floor with something lying on top of me.

It took me a moment to respond. “Battle stations! Code Three! We’ve been rammed! Flood tubes one and three! There’s a dead body on my face!”

I pushed, shoved, and scrambled, and finally pried myself out from under the pile of corpses that had…huh? Okay, relax, false alarm. Ha ha. The pile of corpses turned out to be Drover, and he was still alive. Ha ha. Boy, sometimes the mind plays tricks.

I blinked my eyes and tried to put on a professional face. “What’s the meaning of this, and why were you smashing my face?”

“Well, he slammed on the brakes and we ended up on the floor.”

“Who slammed on the brakes?” I studied the face in front of me. When we had begun this conversation, I had seen two faces, but now they had merged into one. “Okay, you’re Drover and Slim’s the driver, but why did he slam the brakes and sling us to the floor?”

Drover shrugged and we both turned our gazes toward Slim Chance, the hired hand on this outfit. He was sitting behind the wheel, and looking a little…well, dazed, I guess you would say. After a moment, he said, “Dogs, you ain’t going to believe this. Would you like to guess what just ran across the road?”

Oh brother. A rabbit? A coyote? Coon, fox, badger, reindeer, moose…what did we care?

He shook his head and let out a breath of air. “I think I’m wide awake and not any crazier than I was yesterday, but unless my eyes were playing tricks, I saw a bear run across the road.”

He saw a BEAR run across the road? We didn’t have bears in the Texas Panhandle. Bears lived in the mountains. We didn’t have mountains. No mountains, no bears. I had no idea what he’d seen, but it hadn’t been a bear.

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

Of course we didn’t believe him! I mean, the guy was famous for telling windy tales and pulling pranks on his dogs, right?

“Hank, I saw a bear, honest.”

Okay, you saw a bear. I saw an elephant. Could we get on with the business of feeding cattle?

He put the pickup in gear and we drove on to the next pasture. Drover had been silent up to this point, and now he said, “Berries don’t grow in the wintertime.”

“That’s true. Your strawberries and your blackberries make fruit in the summer. If you live on berries, that’s important information, but we don’t eat them, so what’s your point?”

“Well, he saw he said a berry in the road.”

“Wait. He saw he said? That doesn’t make sense. Perhaps you meant to say, ‘He said he saw.’”

“That’s what I said. I said, ‘He said he saw.’”

“No, you said, ‘He saw he said.’”

“Yeah, but he couldn’t saw what he said until he said what he saw, and you can’t saw words anyway.”

I took a deep breath and searched for patience. “Drover, we seem to be having a little trouble communicating this morning. Let’s go back to the beginning and try again.”

“Yeah, but I forgot what we were talking about.”

“Berries. You were talking about strawberries.”

He gave me a loony stare. “Why would I talk about strawberries?”

“I have no idea. Wait, I remember. You said he said he saw a strawberry growing in the road.”

A little flicker of light came on in his eyes. “Oh yeah. He said he saw a berry run across the road.”

The air hissed out of my lungs. “Okay, let me address this in two parts. First, berries don’t grow in the winter. Second, berries don’t run across roads. And third, he didn’t say ‘berry,’ he said ‘bear.’”

“Hee hee hee. It must be a joke. We don’t have bears.”

“Of course we don’t have bears, but that’s what he said, and I don’t think he was kidding.”

This threw us into a moment of troubled thought. Then Drover brightened. “Wait, here’s an idea. Maybe he said ‘burro’ instead of ‘bear.’ They sound kind of the same: burro and bear.”

“Hmmm. Actually, that makes a certain amount of sense. Yes, of course. He saw a donkey crossing the road.”

“Yeah, and maybe his name was Donkey Hoety and somebody was trying to pin a tail on him.”

“It all fits together, doesn’t it? By George, I think we’ve finally figured it out. Slim saw a donkey crossing the road.”

“Yeah, but I wonder why he crossed the road.”

“That’s easy. We just apply Higher Logic. Why does a chicken cross the road?”

He wadded up his face in a pose of deep concentration. “Well, let me think. To get to the other side?”

“Exactly, very good. Now let’s move to the next step. If a chicken crosses the road to get to the other side, why does a donkey cross the road?”

He struggled with this one. “Well, let’s see. ‘Cause he’s chasing the chicken?”

“No, absolutely wrong. Donkeys don’t chase chickens.”

“I wish you wouldn’t ask me such hard questions.”

“Drover, it’s so obvious you can’t see it, but I’ll give you a hint. Chicken, road, donkey, road.”

A big smile bloomed on his mouth. “Oh, I get it now. The chicken rode the donkey. Hee hee, boy, that was easy.”

What can you say? Nothing. There are some events in our lives that can’t be explained, and some dogs that can’t be helped. “Nice work, son, you really nailed it.”

“Thanks, but I couldn’t have done it without your help.”

“Right. It was a good hint, wasn’t it? I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“Yeah, I love getting the right answers. It makes me tingle all over.”

While he tingled all over, I stared out the window and wondered how this nincompoop had ended up on my staff. Just bad luck, I guess.

Where were we?

Oh yes, burros. We had unauthorized donkeys on the ranch, so I opened a new file, The Case of the Wandering Donkey, and our Special Crimes Division put out an APB for a four-legged, long-eared animal named “Donkey Hoety.”

Oh, by the way, APB is our shorthand for All Points Bulletin. Is that impressive or what? You bet. You know, if the people on this outfit paid more attention to their dogs, things would run a lot smoother. But let’s don’t get started on that.

The point is that for the rest of the day, while Slim drove from pasture to pasture, Drover and I kept the whole ranch under surveillance. I mean, we left no stern untoned. We checked out every animal on the ranch, and compared them to our profiles of donkeys and burros.

You’re probably wondering, “What’s the difference between a donkey and a burro?” Great question. The answer is, they both have big ears. But the impoitant poink is that our surveillance of animals on the ranch turned up no unidentified donkeys or burros. At the end of our daily feed run, Donkey Hoety was still unaccounted for.

To be honest, it caused me to wonder if Slim actually had seen a donkey or if he’d been daydreaming. On this outfit, we’re never sure.