Читать книгу Faded Love - John R. Erickson - Страница 6

Chapter Two: The Case Turns Out to Be a Piece of Cake

“All right, Drover,” I called out. “I’m ready to go into action. Two questions: Where is Sally May?”

“She went inside to get her camera.”

“Number two: With whom or what do I go into combat?”

Drover swallowed hard. “Oh, Hank, I hate to tell you this. It’s awful!”

“Nothing’s awful unless you believe it’s awful.”

“You’re going to be scared.”

“I doubt that, son. Remember the Silver Mon­ster Bird? Remember the Enormous Monster? Remember the night I defended the ranch against the entire coyote nation? With that kind of combat record . . . never mind. Point me toward the enemy.”

His teeth were chattering. “Over by the baby. You want to know what it is?”

“Might as well.”

“It’s a giant rattlesnake, Hank!”

“HUH?”

The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Chills rolled down my spine. All at once I felt the cold grip of fear closing around my throat.

I have very few weaknesses, very few clinks in my armor. In fact, you might say I have only one weakness: I’m scared of snakes, always have been. My Uncle Pottsy was bitten on the face by a rattle­snake and died a horrible death.

I started shaking. For a long time I couldn’t speak. The only thing that kept me from losing control was Drover. It would have ruined him.

I fought against the shakes and chills, until at last I was able to speak. “One last question, Drover. Why didn’t you handle this case by yourself? Why did you come get me?”

“Oh, I didn’t think I could jump the fence. My leg’s been . . .”

“Is that the only reason?”

“Uh-huh. Oh, and I’m scared of snakes, especially rattlesnakes. They bite.”

“I see. Did it ever occur to you that I might be bitten?”

“No.”

“Or that I might be afraid of snakes?”

“Oh heck no, ’cause you’re not a chicken-hearted little mutt like me.”

“That’s true, unfortunately.” I took a deep breath. “Well, I guess there’s nothing left to say.”

“No, just kill the snake and that’ll be it.”

I glanced over at Little Alfred, so innocent, so absorbed in his play. “Where’d you see the snake?”

“In the flowerbed, right behind the baby.”

“Very well. So long, Drover.”

“So long, Hankie. I’ll be waiting right here.”

“We can bet on that.”

I turned and started walking toward my fate. It’s funny, the memories that come back to you at such moments. I saw myself as a pup, playing tug-of-war with my sister Maggie while Ma watched us with a contented smile.

Seeing Ma that way kind of gave me courage. She’s the one who taught me right from wrong, and I didn’t want to disgrace her memory. My steps grew bolder and I marched up the flowerbed.

Little Alfred turned and smiled. “Goggie! Goggie!”

I dipped my head, as if to say, “How’s it going, son?”

Then I turned to the grim task before me. I cocked my ear and listened. If the snake rattled, at least I would know his position and could plan my attack so that if I got bitten, it would be on the foot instead of the face. I wanted to save my face for . . .

Oh geeze, that started me thinking about Beulah again, my true and perfect collie love, the only woman in the world who could make me think of romance just before going into combat with a giant rattlesnake. But dang her soul, she loved a bird dog, and how could she love a bird dog . . .

I shook those thoughts out of my head. This was no time for romantic notions.

I cocked my ear and listened. Nothing. The snake wasn’t going to give me any warning, which was a piece of bad luck. I had no choice but to sniff out the flowerbed and force the snake out into the open, offering myself as a target in order to save Little Alfred.

I was shaking again, and I mean all the way down to my toenails. I crept forward—sniffing, listening, waiting for the ineffable . . . uneffitable . . . inedible . . . whatever the dadgum word is, to occur. Inevitable.

Even though I was expecting a strike, it shocked me when it came. I heard a hiss, saw a blur of motion to my right, and felt a sting on the end of my nose—the very worst and most fatal place to take a snakebite.

I staggered back. My eyes began to dim. I felt the poison rushing through my bloodstream. My heart pounded in my ears. As I sank to my knees, I uttered not a cry and faced my untimely end with the little shreds of courage I could muster.

As the gray veil moved across my eyes, I heard a strange voice: “Sorry about that, Hankie. You woke me up and I thought you were a big mouse.”

HUH?

Hadn’t I heard that whiny voice before? That was no snake. That was Pete the Barncat!

I opened my eyes and sure enough, there was Pete’s insipid grin peeking out of the iris. “What are you doing in there? I thought you were a rattle­snake.”

Pete licked his paw. “No, he was here but he crawled under the house. Snakes are very afraid of cats, you know, which is why a lot of people think cats are better at ranch security than dogs.”

“Is that so?”

“Um-hum. Because cats have something no cowdog in history has ever possessed.”

“Such as?”

He throwed an arch in his back, took a big stretch, and scratched the ground with his front paws. “Intelligence.”

All at once I felt my energy coming back. I stood up. “Oh yeah?”

“Um-hum, and you can run along now, Hankie, and . . . oh my goodness, your poor little nose is bleeding!”

“Oh yeah? Well, that’s real bad news for you, cat, and here’s what I’m going to do about it.”

I went crashing into the iris patch, landed right in the middle of Pete, I mean, just buried him. He was going to pay dearly for his mistake. He’d drawn first blood and I was fixing to draw second blood—about two gallons of it.

I lifted one paw and waited to grab him with my teeth. He didn’t come out. I lifted the other paw and . . . you might say that he’d slipped out of my trap.

Funny, how a cat can be right there in your clutches one second and gone the next. Makes a guy wonder how they do that, and I mean right there in front of your eyes. Beats me, but we can be sure that it saved Pete from a tragic and messy death, because Hank the Cowdog does not take trash off the cats.

I didn’t have much time to study on Pete’s escape, because just then Little Alfred came toddling over and got me in a headlock. He was still talking that “Goggie” stuff, which means “Heroic Guard Dog” in kid language.

Little Alfred may have been little, but he was built a lot like his old man, High Loper—plenty stout in the arms and shoulders. Kind of surprised me when he throwed that headlock on me and started dragging me around. Didn’t figger a kid that age could do that, but he sure as thunder did.

And one of the first things that happened was that, all at once, I couldn’t breathe. Little Alfred had got a good start on strangulating me.

Now, we need to get something straight right here. Your top-of-the-line, blue-ribbon, higher-bred cowdogs are famous for their incredible strength. As a group, we’re probably the strongest breed of dogs ever known to mankind. I mean, shredding monsters, destroying obstacles, breaking into locked buildings—that’s commonplace to us, just part of the job.

But what many people don’t know is that, while we’re licensed by the federal government as Dangerous and Lethal Weapons, we also have hearts of gold. We love children, and at an early age, we have to take a solemn oath never to bite or harm a child.

So here’s the point. Anyone else who had throwed a headlock on me would have had tooth tracks over ninety percent of his body, and I mean within a matter of seconds. It’s impossible to strangulate a cowdog without several winch lines and heavy equipment.

Unless it’s done by an innocent child, and see, our Cowdog Oath forbids us from biting or scratching a child. So there I was, being dragged around the yard by Little Alfred and I couldn’t get my wind and things was getting a little serious.

I just went limp and hoped for the best.

Just before he got me snuffed out, he let go and I dropped into the grass. I sat up and caught my wind and was beginning to think about making my exit before Sally May came back, when the little scoundrel ran his finger across the cake and put a big glob of icing in front of my nose.

Ordinarily I’m not tempted by sweets. I’ve always figgered that too much sweets makes a dog soft. It ain’t the hardship that ruins a good dog; it’s the easy life.

On the other hand, we don’t often get recognition in this line of work. We don’t demand it, we don’t expect it, we go on and do our job without it. But when it comes, a guy kind of hates to turn it down.

Here was this little fellow, offering me a small reward for a job well done. What could I do? I licked the icing off his finger. He got some more and, well, I took that too. Pretty good stuff. He kept dipping and I kept licking.

He really got a kick out of that. He was laughing and squealing and having a wonderful time. Here was a happy child. I knew Sally May wanted her child to be happy—wouldn’t any mother?—so when Little Alfred stuck his whole hand into the cake and offered me a big hunk, I took that too—primarily out of a sense of duty.

I took a bite and he took a bite. Me and Little Alfred had become the best of friends, is what had happened. It was one of them unexpected magic moments when two of God’s creatures sit down and share some of the good things in this life: friendship and cake.

I mean, we were different. We didn’t speak the same language or come from the same stock, but all at once that didn’t matter.

Seemed to me Little Alfred was working awful hard, digging that cake out with his hand and feeding me every bite, so I scootched a little closer to the box and showed him how to eat cake with no hands: just by George stick your face into it and go to lickin’ and chewin’.

He loved that! And let me tell you, the kid was good at it. Well, we had our faces stuck in the cake and had just about eat the west side out of it, when all at once . . .

“Here I come, Sweetie. Daddy put the camera in the wrong place and the phone rang and . . . ALFRED! WHAT ON EARTH . . . HANK!!”

Huh? Our heads came up. I looked at Little Alfred and he looked at me. He giggled. I didn’t. If I had anywhere near as much cake on my face as he did, fellers, I was in trouble.

It’s hard to deny the crime when you’re wearing the evidence.

Sally May’s face turned red. She grabbed a rake and started toward us, in what you might call an angry walk. (Long, sharp steps.)

At a glance, I could see that this was going to be another misunderstanding between me and Sally May. She didn’t understand about the giant rattlesnake or me protecting her baby or the wonderful relationship me and Little Alfred had built up.

She probably thought I was in her yard, eating her cake. And she might have even suspected me of flattening her iris bed.

I hated to walk out on Little Alfred, but I had a pretty good idea which one of us was going to get the rake used on him. “YOU’VE RUINED MY CAKE, YOU, YOU, YOU HOUND!! GET OUT OF THIS YARD! AND MY FLOWERS!”

Just as I suspected.

I tucked my tail and started slinking away. When she throwed the rake at me, I slank no more. I ran.

I had solved The Case of the Giant Rattle­snake. You might even say it had been a piece of cake. But consider the price of success: my reputation was now in shambles.