“Everything is complicated, Drover. If you spent more time paying attention and less time goofing off, you would know just how complicated this life can be.”
“I’ll be derned.” He began scratching at his ear. “I thought maybe he was laughing ’cause you got in trouble with Sally May.”
I beamed him a steely gaze. “There, you see? This is exactly what I’ve been talking about. Once again, you lost concentration and missed out on one of the most exciting cases of the year, The Invasion of Monster Woman.”
He stopped scratching and stared at me. “Monster Woman! You mean . . . there’s a monster on the ranch?”
“Exactly. She attacked me in daily broadlight and tried to bite me on the neck with her bloody fangs.”
Drover’s eyes grew as wide as plates and be began backing away. “Oh my gosh, I think I’ll go hide under my bed.”
I found myself . . . uh . . . casting glances over both shoulders. “Not a bad idea, son. In fact, I might even join you. Let’s get out of here.”
And with that, we went streaking down to the Security Division’s Vast Office Complex under the gas tanks, rode the elevator up to the twelfth floor, burst into our bedroom-office, and dived beneath our respective gunnysack beds.
Only then could we be sure that we were safe.
Chapter Six: We Are the Victims of Treachery
Pretty scary story, huh? You bet. But don’t forget that I tried to warn you.
Where were we? Oh yes, Drover and I had just hotfooted it back to our bedroom-office under the gas tanks, for reasons which should be obvious by now. Monster Woman was running loose on our ranch and nobody was safe.
Once inside the office, we took the only sensible course of action available to us—we dived beneath our gunnysack beds and went into Bunker Position. There, safe inside our armored bunkers, we waited and listened. Nothing. Not a sound.
No, wait! There was a sound . . . a clacking noise. At first I couldn’t identify the source, but after running it through our Sound Analyzer . . . well, I still couldn’t identify the source. In the silence of the bunker, I reached for the Microphone of My Mind and sent out an urgent coded message to the rest of the troops.
“Oatmeal, this is Sirloin. Can you read me, over?”
Silence. Then . . . Drover’s voice came over the crackle of the radio. “Are you talking to me?”
“Of course I’m talking to you. This is the Security Division’s special frequency. Who else would be listening?”
“Well . . . I don’t know.”
“Do you read me?”
“I don’t think so. It’s too dark in here.”
“Drover, can you hear me?”
“Am I Drover or Oatmeal?”
“You’re Oatmeal . . . unless you want Monster Woman to know your name, rank, and serial number.”
“Oh. I get it now. Oatmeal’s a cereal.”
“Roger on that.”
“But how come I have to be Oatmeal and you get to be Sirloin? It doesn’t seem fair.”
I let out a groan. “Oatmeal, forget about food and pay close attention. Over here in Bunker One we picked up an odd clacking sound on Earatory Scanners.”
“Yeah, I heard it too. Over here. Over.”
“An odor? You’re picking up some kind of scent? Quick, give me a description.”
“Well . . . I can smell a gunnysack odor, over.”
I lifted my nose ten degrees and tested the air. “Hmmm. We’re picking it up over here too. I wonder if it might be . . . wait! Hold everything. Oatbran, what we’re picking up is the smell of our gunnysacks, so disregard all references to gunnysack odors, over.”
“Yeah, mine stinks.”
“What? You’ve discovered a land mine? Why wasn’t I informed of this sooner!”
“No, I said mine stinks.”
“Roger on that, Bran Flakes. The clues are beginning to fall in place: the odd clacking sound, the strange odor, and now you’ve traced it to a land mine in your bunker. At this point we don’t know why the land mine has a bad smell or who planted it here in the office, but the important thing is, don’t touch it! Those land mines are extremely dangerous. In fact . . . Buckwheat, this is T-Bone. Evacuate the bunkers! Repeat: evacuate all bunkers!”
I tripped the Emergency Alarm, went flying up six flights of stairs, and emerged into the light of daylight of day. Whew! That was close. Moments later, Drover came scrambling out of his bunker.
I looked him over. He appeared to be uninjured. “How are you doing, soldier?”
“Well . . . I’m all confused. I don’t understand . . .”
“Never mind, we don’t have time to discuss it. We’ve had a serious breach of security. Let’s go straight into Alert Stage One. Ready? Go!”
Have we discussed our Alert Procedures? Maybe not, and there’s a reason for that. Most of this stuff is so secret and highly classified, we can’t discuss it with the general public, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to reveal a few details—if you’ll promise not to blab it around. Promise?
Okay, Alert Stage One is our highest stage of readiness. In this stage of the procedure, two dogs stand back-to-back, looking in opposite directions. One dog surveys the North and West Quadrants, while the other conducts Visual Sweeps of the South and East Quadrants. That way, two dogs can spot enemy troop movements in all four directions.
It sounds pretty complicated, doesn’t it? Well, it is complicated, but what else would you expect from the Elite Troops of the Security Division? Protecting this ranch is no ball of wax and sometimes it gets pretty derned complicated.
We went into the Stage One Alert Formation and did Visual Scans of . . . well, just about everything. The seconds crept by and there were no reports of enemy spies or troop movements. But then . . .
“Drover, I don’t want to alarm you, but once again I’m picking up that odd clacking sound. Can you hear it over there?”
“Let’s see. Oh yeah, I hear it now.”
“Okay, let’s study the sound and try to identify its source. It could lead us straight to the person or persons who’ve been planting all these land mines.”
“Well, I think . . . it was me.”
“What? You planted mines in your own bunker?”
“No, the clacking noise. I was cold and my teeth were chattering.”
“Your teeth were . . . but what about the land mine? You did see a land mind, didn’t you?”
“Nope, not me. It was so dark in there, I couldn’t see anything.”
“So you’re saying . . .”
The air hissed out of my lungs and the upper half of my body sagged. I marched a few steps away and looked up at the sky. A few flakes of snow were beginning to fall from the dreary gray clouds. Was that a clue? No.
I marched back over to my . . . whatever he was. “Drover, I must speak frankly to someone. I’d rather not share my deepest thoughts with a nincompoop, but, well, you’re the only one here.”
“Gosh, thanks.”
“No problem. Drover, sometimes I feel that I’m being crushed by the awesome responsibilities of running this ranch. I mean, the mysteries, the investigations, the endless details wear me down to the point where I feel . . .” I paused and glanced over both shoulders, just in case we were being watched. “Drover, sometimes I get the feeling that we’re involved in things that are . . . really stupid.”
Drover gasped. “Gosh, no fooling?”
“Yes. I know that shocks you, but we must face the facts. That conversation we held in our bunkers . . . Drover, it was all garbage. There was no enemy spy and no land mine.”
“Well, I wondered about that.”
“Yes, and you know what else?” I began pacing. “I can’t even remember why we took refuge in our bunkers. Obviously, we were fleeing from something . . . but what?”
“Well, let me t
hink here. I can’t remember either.”
“There, you see what I mean? The pressure is getting to both of us, Drover. We’re doing all these odd things and we don’t even know why. Maybe we need a vacation, a few days off. Maybe . . .”
Drover sat straight up. “Wait, I remember now! It was Monster Woman.”
I stopped pacing and froze. “You’re right. Holy smokes, Droker, into the bunkers! She’s probably spying on us this very minute!”
We dived into our bunkers, screwed down the hatches, and waited in the throbbing silence for something to happen. Nothing happened. The seconds crawled by. Then . . . a peculiar thought began crawling through the ant den of my mind.
“Drover, can you hear me?”
“I thought I was Oatmeal.”
“You were Buckwheat, but let’s skip all that. I must ask you a very important question. Did you actually see Monster Woman?”
“Nope, not me. But Pete did.”
“Yes, or so he claimed. And you know what else? It was Pete who suggested that I escort Sally May’s car down the road. He emphasized that I should go slow. Remember that?”
“Well . . .”
“And Pete was laughing his little head off. Remember?”
“Yeah, but you said he was coughing.”
“I said no such thing. Are you seeing the pattern here?”
“Not yet. I’m too cold.”
“There’s a pattern here, Drover, a very disturbing pattern. Now listen carefully. In five seconds, we will leave our respective bunkers and meet in the Conference Room. There, we will hold a secret high-level meeting of the Security Division’s highest-ranking officers. Ready? Go!”
Exactly five seconds later, Drover and I gathered in the Conference Room. Before the meeting began, I did a complete security scan of the room, just to make sure we hadn’t been bugged and penetrated by Outside Forces. Only then did I take my place at the front and begin the secret presentation.
“All right, men, I’ll get right to the point. We have just learned that Operation Monster Woman was a complete farce.”
Sitting on the front row, Drover let out a gasp. “Oh my gosh, you mean . . .”
“Yes, exactly. We’ve reviewed all the files and records from the case and it’s now clear that there was no Monster Woman.”
“Gosh, you mean . . .”
“Yes, Drover. We’ve been duped. That wasn’t Monster Woman. It was Sally May. She was merely mad and looked like a monster.”
Drover blinked his eyes and grinned. “You know, I was going to say that, but . . .”
“But you didn’t. You kept silent and allowed the entire Security Division to be dragged down into a disgraceful scandal. Because of you, Pete has made us look like monkeys.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t do anything.”
“That is exactly the point, Drover. You did nothing. You stood back and allowed your superior officer to make an idiot of himself. How does that make you feel?”
“Well, at least it wasn’t me.”
“What? Speak up.”
“I said . . . I hope I can live with the guilt.”
I marched over to him and laid a paw upon his shoulder. “I’m glad this hurts you, son. It should. You really let us down this time.”
He sniffled. “I don’t know what I did, but I’ll try not to do it again.”
“That’s the spirit.” I lifted my head to a proud angle and took a deep breath of air. “Now it’s all behind us, Drover. What’s done is done. But this was the straw that broke the camel’s haystack.”
He gave me a blank stare. “What does that mean?”
“It means . . . WAR! Pete has inflicted a terrible wound, but like the mythical Tucson, we will rise again from the ashes.”
“Phoenix.”
“What?”
“I think it was the mythical Phoenix. Tucson’s in Arizona.”
“So is Phoenix.”
“Well . . . how about Flagstaff?”
“Close enough. Like the mythical Flagstaff, we will rise from the ashes and seek our revenge on Pete the Barncat.”
And with that, the room erupted in a roar of applause and cheering. It had been one of the most inspiring speeches of my entire career. The Security Division had come back from the edge of the brink and we were now at war with Mister Kitty Cheater.
Chapter Seven: The Geothermal Procedure
Were you able to follow all of that? Maybe not, because it came at a rapid pace and involved classified information from the very highest levels of the ranch’s Security Division, so let me summarize with a Three Point Summary of the most impointant porks.
Points, that is. Impointant points.
Important points.
Point One: Certain members of our Elite Forces made the mistake of establishing friendly relations with our Number One Enemy, Pete the Barncat, and I guess it’s obvious by now that one of the guilty parties was . . . well, ME, you might say. Okay, let’s come clean on this. I made a really dumb mistake. In a moment of weakness, I trusted the cat.
Point Two: Admitting this really rips me. How could I have made such a bonehead mistake? I should have known better. Oh well.
Point Three: Once the little sneak had won my trust, he set a trap to get me in deep trouble with Sally May. How? He proposed the idea, the perfectly stupid idea, that I should run in front of her car at a slow rate of speed.
Point Two: It should have been obvious that this was a trap, a trick, and a set-up deal, and yet . . .
Point One: I fell for it anyway. Trying to be a good dog, trying my very hardest to win back the love and affection of Sally May, I led her down the road . . . at a slow rate of speed.
Point Two: That’s why she was blowing her horn and screeching at me. Remember that? At the time it was happening, it didn’t make any sense, but now . . . well, it seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? Boy, this really hurts.
Point Three: The rest is history. She got impatient, tried to pass me on the right side, and got herself stuck in the ditch. The angry woman who emerged from the car and chased me through the snow was SALLY MAY, not some . . .
Point Two: . . . phony Monster Woman. There was never a so-called Monster Woman on the ranch. That was pure garbage, another sneaky, underhanded trick, and Kitty Kitty thought I was, well, dumb enough to fall for it.
Point Three: Okay, I fell for it. That’s why the little wretch was sputtering and gagging. You thought he was coughing, right? Ha. He was LAUGHING at my misfortunes! He’d set the whole thing up and I had . . . phooey.
That’s the end of my Three Point Summary of the Tragic Events. It wasn’t easy to boil it all down to three points but somehow I managed to pull it off. And now you know the Awful Truth.
This is very embarrassing. I mean, when a guy takes pride in his ability to outsmart enemy agents and spies, it comes as a terrible blow when he has to admit that he’s been outwitted by a nitwit.
Wait, hold everything. Admit-outwit-nitwit. Do you see the pattern here? All three words end with the same two letters, i and t. Could this be some kind of clue that might blow the case . . .
I don’t think so. Just skip it.
Where were we? Oh yes, I was performing a duty which I absolutely hated—admitting that Sally May’s precious, scheming little shrimp of a cat had made a monkey out of me. But let me hasten to add that this bitter experience had made me a smarter dog, wiser dog, a dog who had been through the Fires of Life; a dog who had been burned and scorched but who had risen from the ashes like the mythical Tucson and had once again raised the Security Division’s noble banner on the Flagstaff of . . . something.
The point is that Pete had taught me bitter lessons about Life Itself and had left me smarter, wiser, tougher, and more determined than ever to triumph in the never-ending battle of Good Dogs Versus Evil Cats. In other words, what we had
here was another huge moral victory over the cat. No kidding.
Even so, things were looking a little grim. Not only was the day cold and gloomy, but my relationship with Sally May had suffered another terrible blow. Her car was stuck in the ditch and it appeared that her trip into town would have to be cancelled. Unless . . .
Was there something I could do to free her car from the snow bank? Somehow in all the confusion and so forth, I hadn’t thought of that, but now . . .
Drover and I left the Conference Room. “Drover, I just thought of something.”
“I’ll be derned. I thought of something once, but then I forgot it.”
“Please hush and pay attention.” As we made our way toward the house, I told him my plan for freeing Sally May’s car from the snow bank. “What do you think of that?”
“Well . . . you really think it might work?”
“Of course it’ll work. It’s all based on science, the application of geothermal energy.”
“Gee. Oh.”
“Exactly. Gee-oh-therm-al. It means the scientific use of natural reserves of warm water. Warm water melts snow, right? Snow melts away and frees car. Car is free, Sally May is happy again. We win Big Points.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“I’m not finished. We have vast reserves of warm water within our very bodies, Drover, and we’re fixing to harness the forces of nature to help a lady in distress.” In the distance, we could hear the whine of car tires, as Sally May tried to plow her way out of the snow bank. “There, you hear that? She’s in distress and we can help.”
“Yeah, but this old leg is starting to act up on me again. I’m not sure I could hike all the way to the car.”
I gave the runt a withering glare. “Drover, I’m giving you the opportunity to win back Sally May’s love and devotion.”
“Yeah, but that’s your deal.”
“What?”
“I said . . . this old leg’s really starting to throb. Oh, the pain! Oh, my leg!” He limped around in a circle and collapsed in the snow. “There it went, drat the luck!”
The Case of Twisted Kitty Page 4
