Читать книгу The Case of the Perfect Dog - John R. Erickson - Страница 6

Chapter One: Another Grinding Day in the Office

It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. The mystery began one day in August. Yes, it was August because oftentimes in August, the wind quits blowing and we have water problems on the ranch. See, when the wind quits blowing, the windmills don’t turn and the cattle run out of water in the stock tanks.

When you’re operating a ranch in the Texas Panhandle, the one thing you can’t do in the summertime is run out of water. Cattle can live for weeks without feed, but let ‘em run out of water and they start dropping dead. That has never happened on this ranch, but only because…

Actually, that water business came up later in the week, so forget that I brought it up. The day of which we are speaking began as most days begin—in the morning. All our days follow a regular schedule, don’t you see. We have morning, then afternoon, then evening, then night, and it doesn’t matter whether it is raining or Tuesday.

On that particular morning, Little Alfred came out of the house around ten o’clock. The slamming of the screen door woke me up.

Wait. Let’s rephrase that. I’m never in bed at that hour of the morning, so I couldn’t have been awakened by the slamming of the screen door. I was at my desk, doing paperwork and going over a stack of reports. As usual, I’d gotten about three hours of sleep. I mean, the work never ends on this ranch: night patrol, Monster Watch, Bark at the Mailman, coyote alerts, and taking care of the kids. We squeeze in a few hours of gunnysack time when we can.

So, yes, I was at my desk, and heard the slamming of the screen door. Drover, my assistant, heard it too, and said, “Sniffle tricky turnip blooms on the back door piffle.”

I looked up from the report I was reading. “Hardly ever murky snap foggy bottoms.”

“Red suspenders?”

“I agree, or donkey underpants in the green tomatoes.”

We stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment, then Drover said, “Oh, hi. Did you just wake up?”

“Absolutely not. I’ve been acroak for hours.” I glanced around. “Where are we?”

“When?”

“I’m not sure, right now, I guess.”

“Well,” he yawned, “I’d say we’re still in bed.”

“Rubbish. It’s almost noon.” I leaped to my feet and took a step…and fell on my face. “Where did I put my legs last night?”

“Well, I think you’re still wearing them.”

“In that case, they’re not working properly. Have you been tampering with my legs?”

“I think you’re still asleep. Try ‘em again.”

“Please don’t tell me what to do.” I rose to my feet and took several steps. “Okay, they’re working now.”

“See? You were asleep.”

“I was not asleep.” I narrowed my eyes and studied the dog to whom I was speaking. “Wait a second, who are you?”

“I’m Drover, remember me?”

“Oh yes, it’s coming back to me now. We used to work together, right?”

“Still do.”

I gave him a hard look. “If we work together, why are you still in bed at this hour of the morning?”

“Well…”

“Five demerits for slacking.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Ten demerits.”

“You were in bed too.”

“Fifteen demerits and three Chicken Marks.” At that moment, I heard the squeaking of a gate. “Drover, I don’t want to alarm you, but we have an unidentified person or persons on the ranch.”

“Yeah, it’s Little Alfred. He just came out of the house.”

“Oh? Why wasn’t I informed? How can I run this ranch when nobody turns in their reports?”

He heaved a sigh. “Hank, you were asleep.”

I marched over to him and melted him with a glare. “Stand at attention when I’m addressing you.”

He stiffened his posture and sat up straight. “Sorry.”

“This outfit has no more discipline than a pack of stray cats.”

“Meow.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said, yeah.”

“What ever happened to ‘Yes Sir’?”

“Sorry. Yes sir.”

I began pacing in front of him. I mean, he was fixing to get the full load. “I was not asleep, and spreading lies about a superior officer is a serious offense. If it happens again, you will spend entire days and nights with your nose in the corner.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Hush. Nobody cares if you’re sorry.”

“Okay, I’m not sorry.”

“The trouble with you is that you’re never sorry for your mistakes.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s your attitude, Drover. You have a lousy attitude. I ought to throw the book at you, but I’m going to let you off easy this time. Twenty-three demerits and fifteen Chicken Marks.”

“Ouch.”

“Don’t argue with me. This will go into your permanent record.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re dismissed.” I glanced around. “What were we doing before you provoked this outburst?”

“Well, let me think.” He rolled his eyes. “Oh yeah, Little Alfred just came out of the house.”

“In that case, we haven’t a moment to spare. Prepare to launch all dogs!”

And with that, we dived into our Rocket Dog suits and went streaking through ranch headquarters to join our little pal. We had no idea what he was doing, but among the possibilities was that he had come out of the house with breakfast scraps, and you know where I stand on that issue.

Scrap Time is a major event in the life of every dog. Not only do we enjoy wolfing down the scraps, but we draw even more pleasure wolfing at the cat and making sure that he gets no scraps. Hee, hee.

Yes, by George, we needed to check this out.

We arrived just as the boy was coming out the yard gate. I reconoodled the situation, and noted that he carried a red plastic bucket in his right hand. Left hand. He was carrying a bucket, is the point, and it really doesn’t matter which hand was doing the work. The real question was—what did the bucket contain?

See, at our previous Scrap Events, he had come outside with a plate and a fork, not a bucket. Most of the time, the plate held luscious scraps and he used the fork to scrape them off the plate, at which point we dogs did our best job of gobbling them down…while following certain anti-cat procedures, shall we say.

May I speak frankly about those procedures? They’re designed to encourage our little creep of a cat to move along. His name is Pete. We don’t like him and we’re dedicated to the belief that he deserves no scraps, none, zero. Any time Pete gets a bite of scraps, we regard it as a personal tragedy for our side. It plunges the entire Security Division into a period of mourning and brooding.

Why should the cat receive the reward of scraps? He does nothing that contributes to the good of the ranch. On an average day, he spends most of his time lurking in the iris patch. Now and then, he will come out to rub on someone’s ankles or to whine for a handout, but you’ll never see him doing what ranch cats are supposed to do: catching mice. That’s too much trouble. He makes me sick.

But would you like to guess who followed Little Alfred out the gate? Mister Never Sweat, Mister Kitty Moocher. His mere presence caused lights to flash in the control room of my mind, and I heard a fearsome rumble in the depths of my throat.

I rolled up to him and lifted Tooth Shields, revealing two rows of bad news for cats. “Get lost, kitty, dogs are on the scene. Buzz off, go back to your spider web.”

Do you suppose he took the hint? Oh no. Cats don’t take hints. He gave me his usual smirk, and in his usual whiney voice, he said, “My, my! I think the cops have just arrived.”

“You get a bingo on that. The cops are here and the cats need to move along. Scram.”

“But Hankie, I’m curious to see what’s in the red bucket.”

“What’s in the red bucket is classified information. You’ll be told after we’ve checked it out.”

“But Hankie,” he widened his eyes, “what if it contains scraps?”

“We’ll make that announcement at the appropriate time, after we’ve had a chance to sift through the material. If we find scraps, you’ll never see them, but we might tell you about them.” I turned to my assistant. “Drover, stand by. We might need to help this cat find a tree.”

Drover giggled. “Oh goodie, this’ll be fun!” Drover must have been feeling brave, because he inched closer to the cat and growled. “Pick a tree, Pete, ‘cause we’re fixing to…”

Bam! It was a left jab. It came out of nowhere and left a tattoo on the soft leathery portion of Drover’s nose. He never saw it coming, and let out a squall of shock and pain. By then, it was over. Pete high-balled it back to the yard and took up a position right below Sally May’s kitchen window. From that location, he waved a paw and stuck out his tongue at us.

Pete had just brought us to the drink of war.

The brink of war.