Читать книгу The Case of the Double Bumblebee Sting - John R. Erickson - Страница 6

Chapter One: First Report of the _______

It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. It was morning. It was early summer. Slim and Loper were about to leave the ranch for three days to help a friend with his spring branding.

Little did they know, and even littler did I know, that within minutes I would be attacked and bitten by a . . .

Maybe I shouldn’t say. It might frighten the kids, and you know how I am about these kids. I don’t mind giving ’em a little thrill, but I sure would hate to scare ’em too badly.

So I don’t dare mention that I was bitten on the nose by a rat . . . tell you what. For the time bean, we’ll just leave it at that and say that I was bitten on the nose by a rat. A big rat.

That shouldn’t scare the kids too badly. I mean, everybody knows that rats bite but they don’t have poison fangs or stingers. In the meantime, let’s see if we can get the little kids into bed, the ones who might be terribly scared if they knew the truth of the matter.

(See, the whatever-it-was that bit me turned out to be quite a bit worse than a rat. Mum’s the word.)

So let me set the scenery. Ranch headquarters. Early morning. Birds chirping and chattering in the big elm trees, mostly blackbirds and starlings and sparrows and those other birds whose names I don’t know. I’m not a bird dog.

Swallows. There were several swallows darting around.

And baldheaded peckerwoods, did I mention them? They tap on trees with their beaks. That would give me a headache.

Where was I? Oh yes. Loper’s pickup was parked beside the gas tanks. He’d already hooked up the gooseneck trailer and was filling the pickup with gas.

I noticed a certain edge of tension in the air, which is common around here when someone is trying to meet a deadline or get away for a trip. Loper had been looking forward to this trip for a long time, and no doubt he was running behind schedule.

It happens every time.

Slim arrived in his pickup and pulled up beside the gas tanks. He shut off the motor and gave Loper a grin. “Mornin’. How’s it going?”

Loper was not wearing a happy face. “Typical. The phone started ringing at seven o’clock. The pressure pump tripped the circuit breaker again. That’s the third time in two days. Alfred spilled a full glass of milk at breakfast. It went in my lap and I had to change pants.

“I can’t find my good heeling rope. The stock trailer had a flat tire. The pickup was out of gas. I walked into the bathroom to brush my teeth and caught Molly scrubbing the pot with my toothbrush.

“Just a typical day. We’re running thirty min­utes late and quite a few dollars short, and you need to saddle both our horses. Then, unless lightning strikes, we might be ready to leave.”

Slim got out of the pickup and headed for the saddle lot in that slow walk of his. Loper watched him for a moment and shook his head. “That’s the slowest human being I ever met. I’d like to see him in a burning house some time. I’ll bet he’d walk just like that.

“Hey!” he yelled at Slim. “Hurry up, first chance you get! If we don’t get on the road, they’ll have the first pasture gathered.” Slim lifted one hand in the air and continued slouching along at exactly the same pace. Loper grumbled and muttered. “Slowest human I ever saw.”

There didn’t seem to be much excitement at the gas tanks, so I made my way up the hill to the yard gate. Drover followed. It was morning, after all, and Loper had mentioned something about “breakfast.” Over the years, I had noticed that breakfast scraps most often occurred in the morning, after breakfast, and that was definitely worth checking out.

We have two good reasons for checking out the scrap situation. The first is that scraps are delicious, especially breakfast scraps which might include juicy fatty ends of bacon. The second reason is that we dogs feel some obligation to . . .

How can I put this so that it doesn’t sound tacky? We dogs recognize that Pete the Barncat gets very little exercise and, therefore, should not be eating certain foods, particularly those that are high in . . . well, fat and juice, such as juicy fatty ends of bacon.

Pete is such a natural glutton that he can’t impose discipline upon his eating patterns and he needs friends to, uh, help him. We accept that as part of our job, helping Pete choose only those food groups that are good for his health, such as corncobs, brussels sprouts, and burnt toast.

I’m told that burnt toast is the best thing in the world for cats to eat—makes their coat shine and keeps ’em trim and thin.

Ho! Guess who was sitting beside the yard gate—grinning, staring at us dogs with weird eyes, and waiting to gorge himself on scraps that would make him fat and ugly.

Fatter and uglier, that is.

Pete.

I went lumbering up to him. Without actually troubling himself to move, he winced as though he expected to be stepped on or smacked by my tail—which all at once seemed a real good idea, so somehow they happened. I stepped on him and bopped him across the nose with my tail, tee hee.

He crouched low on the ground and flattened his ears and glared at me. “Well, well. I believe Hankie the Blunder Dog has just arrived.”

“Yeah, and me too,” said Drover.

“Yes, and aren’t we lucky.”

I gave him a worldly sneer. “You got that right, Kitty. I hope we’re not too late to save you from making a total hog of yourself.”

I began sniffing the ground to check for bacon scent. In the course of doing this, my nose came very close to his nose, so what did he do? He cranked up that police siren yowl of his.

I froze. My tail stiffened. Our eyes met.

“You seem to be yowling at me, Kitty. What does this mean?”

“It means that you seem to be intruding into my space. Cats need space.”

“Oh yeah? Then why don’t you fly to the moon? I hear there’s plenty of space up there.”

Drover broke up on that. “I get it! There’s lots of space in outer space, tee hee hee hee. That’s a good one, Hank, you really got him with that one.”

“Thanks, Drover. It just kind of popped out of my mouth. I guess we can score a big one for the dogs, huh?”

“Yeah, and now we’re ahead, one to nothing.”

I turned back to the cat. “Now, what were you saying? Oh yes, you had just begun yowling at me and I don’t like that.”

“I have to yowl, Hankie, otherwise you wouldn’t know that you had intruded into my space. You do that a lot, and every time you invade my space, I seem to get stepped on and hit by your tail.”

“No kidding? You know, Pete, that almost breaks my heart—almost, but not quite. If you don’t want to get stepped on, quit lurking around the gate and trying to hog all the scraps. You’ll find plenty of space up at the machine shed. Go up there. We’ll even let you have some of our dog kernels.”

“They hurt my teeth.”

“Oh well, big deal!”

“Cats don’t eat dog food.”

“Woooo! Bigger deal!”

Drover got another chuckle out of that one. “Nice shot, Hank, nice shot. That makes two for us.”

Kitty-Kitty wasn’t amused. “And besides, I saw a rattlesnake up there at daylight.”

That got my attention. “What? You saw a rattle­snake around the machine shed? I assume that you killed it.”

“Well, no, not really. That’s more of a dog-job than a cat-job.”

I gave him a stern glare. “It’s a job for whomsoever finds the snake, Kitty. Rattlesnake bites are not good for little children. Maybe you didn’t know that, or maybe you don’t care.”

“Oh, I care, Hankie. Children are precious—when they’re far away and not making noise.”

“Well, if they’re so precious, then maybe you ought to make an effort to protect them from deadly and dangerous creatures. Is that asking too much of a cat?”

He licked his paw. “Well, Hankie, I thought of doing something, but then the snake crawled into a pipe and that was the end of it.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “Oh yeah, sure, that’s the end of it—until one of the kids goes up there and gets bitten!” I turned to Drover. “Drover, I can’t believe this.”

He was looking at the clouds. “What?”

“I said, I can’t believe this.”

“I’ll be derned. I guess I can’t believe it either.”

“Do you know what it is that we’re not believing?”

“Well . . . not really. I guess my mind wandered.”

“Then pay attention. This cat said he saw a rattlesnake in front of the machine shed.”

Pete shook his head. “On the west side of the machine shed, Hankie.”

“Just as I suspected, on the west side of the shed, near that pile of welding iron and pipe.” I turned back to Drover. “This cat saw a deadly rattlesnake this morning, but instead of taking care of the situation and making the place safe for children, he sat there and watched the snake crawl into a pipe. Can you believe that?”

“Well . . . I guess I’m supposed to say no.”

“Of course you’re supposed to say no, because that was a cowardly and chickenhearted thing for him to do, and we can’t believe he did it.”

“Oh. Okay. I can’t believe it.”

I whirled back to the cat. “There, you see? Drover can’t believe it either. We’re both shocked and outraged. You should be ashamed of yourself, Pete.”

The cat gave me a haughty smirk. “Oh really? If you’re so shocked and outraged, then maybe you ought to do something about it yourself.”

“Oh yeah? Well, as a matter of fact, Kitty, that’s exactly what I had in mind. Come on, Drover, we’ve got some business to take care of at the machine shed!”

And so it was that we left the cat in the rubble of his own shameful behavior and went into combat against the deadly rattle . . . the deadly rat. Big rat.

(Hurry and get those kids to bed.)