Читать книгу Wagons West - John R. Erickson - Страница 7

Chapter Two: Rocket Dog to the Rescue

Drover’s words caused my head to snap to attention. “What! Pete is going to…stand by, soldier, we’re fixing to Launch All Dogs!”

Have we discussed my Position on Birds? Maybe not, but maybe we’d better. A lot of your ordinary mutts consider birds a nuisance. Ordinary mutts bark at the birds and try to chase them away.

Me? I’ve always taken a more enlightened position. Yes, birds cause a certain amount of distraction, but THINK OF ALL THE BEAUTY THEY BESTOW UPON OUR RANCH.

The flinches and the robinsons and the oreganos add color to a drab world. The song of the markingbird breaks the monotony of long days, and the little swillers are so graceful as they swoop and turn in the air—feathered poetry, you might say. What kind of dreary world would this be without our birds?

But don’t expect your ordinary run of mutts to notice any of that, and most of all, don’t expect any kind of Art Appreciation from a scheming, selfish little ranch cat. Do you suppose that cats give a rip about feathered poetry or lovely bird songs? They don’t. You know what cats do with our precious little birdie friends?

EAT THEM.

That was the crisis facing us. Our local cat was lurking and scheming and waiting for an opportunity to cheap-shot one of the feathered visitors on my ranch, and I was just the dog to bring it to a screeching halt.

I dived into my Rocket Dog suit, turned the dials to the Blast-Off Position, and went roaring away from the Security Division’s Vast Office Complex. Oh, you should have seen it! I went swooping over trees and buildings, and executed a smooth landing on the gravel drive behind the ranch house. There, I shucked off the RD suit and rushed to the yard gate.

It took me several moments to reconoodle the situation and gather up the pieces of the peesle. The puzzle, that is, the puds of the piddle. The pieces of the petal. Phooey.

It took me several moments to peddle the puddle…it took me several moments to peedle together the piddles of the…let’s just skip this.

It really burns me up when this happens. I mean, a guy gets all excited about describing an important event, but when the words come out of his moth, they’ve turned to mush. Nonsense. Gibberish. It makes him sound…well, not too bright.

Let’s slow things down and try this one more time. What I saw was a complicated scene. A bird, a little prairie dog owl, was fluttering its wings, hovering in front of a window on the second story of the house, and jabbering some kind of nonsense. Now and then it crashed into the window. Meanwhile…

The cat was sitting on the sidewalk below—smirking, twitching the end of his tail, and staring up at the activity on the second level. Anyone could see that he was up to no good.

I turned to my assistant, who had just arrived, huffing and puffing. “I know that bird. It’s Madame Moonshine.”

“Yeah, I told you.”

“Stop telling me what you told me.”

“Yeah, but I was right, wasn’t I?”

“You were lucky.”

“What’s she doing up there?”

That was a good question. I wasn’t sure what she was doing, but it looked pretty strange. It appeared that she was screeching at someone. She said, “Imposter! Usurper! Lowly woodpecker, pretender to the Feathered Realm! Away, away, be gone!”

She delivered that message in a screechy owlish voice, and then…this was really strange…she crashed into the window. For a second, it appeared that the impact would cause her to fall to the ground. In fact, she did lose altitude, but at the last second, she flapped her way out of trouble and swooped back to the window.

And the cat was waiting and watching down below.

Drover said, “I just figured it out. She sees her reflection in the glass and thinks it’s another bird.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Gosh, that rhymes.”

“You’re wasting time.”

“That rhymes too.”

“Get to the point, if you have one.”

“She sees herself in the glass. You did that once. Remember that time with the mirror? You saw yourself in the mirror and thought it was a Phantom Dog. Hee hee. Boy, that was funny.”

I gave him a scalding glare. “Drover, I don’t know what you hope to gain by spreading lies about your commanding officer, but let me warn you. This conversation could end up in your permanent peppermint.”

“My what?”

“Your permanent record.”

“You don’t remember barking at the mirror?”

“Of course I don’t remember. I don’t remember a lot of things that never happened.”

“Yeah, but it happened, honest.”

I rewound the Tape of My Life and turned my mind back to that afternoon in the machine shed, and remembered…well, I was barking at my reflection in a stupid mirror. “Okay, maybe I remember, but there’s a huge difference between what I did and what that bird is doing.”

“No, it’s the same thing.”

“It is NOT the same. She’s a bird and I’m a dog. I will always be a dog. I’m proud to be a dog, so stop trying to say that I’m a bird.” He shook his head and crossed his eyes. “And stop crossing your eyes when I talk to you.”

“Talking to you is hopeless.”

“Well, hopeless is better than no hope at all. The point is that I am not a bird.”

“I never said you’re a bird.”

You see what I have to live with? Endless arguments about nothing. Drover gets a crazy idea in his head and…oh well.

I paced several steps away and gazed up at the sky. “All right, listen up. I’ve reviewed all the evidence in this case and here’s the situation. That owl sees her reflection in the window glass and thinks it’s another bird. She’s attacking the image in the glass. In small but tiny ways, it reminds me of my encounter with the Phantom in the Mirror.”

“I’ll be derned. I never would have thought of that.”

“Yes, well, you have no mental discipline. You just spout whatever nonsense comes into your head.”

“Sorry. I’ll try harder next time.”

“Good. Now, let’s put this episode behind us.” I paced back to him and laid a paw on his shoulder. “Are you sorry you said I was a bird?”

“Oh yes, and I’ll never say it again. What about the cat?”

“The cat is not a bird either.”

“Yeah, but he’s fixing to eat one. Look!”

Huh? I turned my gaze back to the house, just in time to see a tragedy unfoiling before my very eyes. The owl crashed into the window so hard, it knocked her senseless, and she fell like a rock into the flower bed. An instant later, the cat sprang off the porch and landed on top of the bird.

Drover let out a gasp. “Oh my gosh, what’ll we do?”

My mind was racing. “We have no choice. We must send troops over the fence. We have to save Madame Moonshine from the cat.”

“I agree.”

“Okay, here’s the plan. You go in the first wave, just in case Sally May comes out with her broom. Lay down some heavy barking.”

His eyes blanked out. “Her broom?”

“Right, it’s no big deal. Get in there and kick out some big barks.”

“Help!”

“You can do it, son. Remember: this is for the birds!”

He gave that some thought. “You’re right. Here I go!” He pointed himself toward the yard fence and went charging off like…

Oh brother. You’ll never guess what happened next.