The Case of the Missing Birddog

by John R. Erickson

  “Is something wrong?”

  I stopped chewing and filled my eyes with the loveliness of her face. “Is something wrong? How can you ask such a question? Isn’t it obvious?”

  She seemed puzzled. “No, I guess not. Do you have fleas? A skin rash? I don’t know, Hank, you’ll have to tell me.”

  I pushed myself up on all fours and walked a few steps away. “All right, Beulah, if you must know . . . I’ve become a mental and emotional wreck. I chew my foot because I can’t eat my heart out. Now do you understand?” She shook her head. “Okay, let’s go straight to the point. That bird dog has ruined my life!”

  She gasped. “You mean . . . Plato?”

  “Yes, Plato. He has ruined my life, broken my heart into eighty-seven pieces, and now he’s causing me to chew off my own foot.” Kack-kack-kack. “There! You see? I can no longer control myself.”

  “Hank, I just don’t undertand what . . .”

  I whirled around and looked into her eyes. “Beulah, what do you see in that creep? How can you waste your time with a bird dog when you could have . . . well, ME, for example?”

  She turned away. “Oh, so that’s it. I thought we’d talked it out, Hank.”

  “Talked it out? Ha! You talked it out and I went on living in the rubble of my broken heart, and that’s what you see before you today—a broken dog, a dog who’s left with nothing to do but . . .” Kack-kack-kack. “. . . eat his leg off. That’s all I have left, Beulah, and when I chew off this leg, I’ll go to the next one and the next one and the next one, and then there’ll be nothing left but two ears and a tail.”

  “Can’t we just . . . be friends?”

  “Oh sure. When there’s nothing left of me but two ears and a tail, we’ll be friends, great friends. Maybe I’ll go chase birds with your hero. Is that what you want? Would you like me better if I fetched tennis shoes and pointed at stupid twittering birds?”

  She sighed. “Hank, I like you just as you are.”

  “What’s to like? I’m a mere shelf of my former self, a husk without grain, a house without a home. Without you, my collie dream, there’s nothing here.”

  “You do get carried away, don’t you?”

  “Yes, my plum garden, I get carried away, I admit it, and until the day when you . . .”

  At that very moment, Billy and Slim came walking up behind me, forcing me to, well, put my mission on hold. That was rotten luck, because I think I had her moving in the right direction.

  Billy and Slim were discussing some kind of cow­boy stuff.

  Billy: “Well, we’ll get on down the road. Thanks for letting me use your leather punch. I’ll get it back to you tomorrow or the next day.”

  Slim: “No problem.”

  Billy: “Oh, by the way, have y’all seen any signs of feral hogs?”

  Slim: “What’s a feral hog?”

  Billy: “Farm hogs that have gone back to the wild. They’ve had ’em downstate for years, but now they’re moving into this area. I was on horseback the other day and rode right into the middle of a mad sow and her litter. It was a learning experience.”

  Slim: “Yeah? What did you learn?”

  Billy: “I learned that you should stay away from ’em. A wild hog is nothing you want to mess with. They’re plenty mean, and I’ve heard they’ll tear up a dog. And speaking of dogs . . . Plato! Come on, boy, load up.”

  A moment later, the Birdly Wonder came blundering in from his romp and dived into the back of the pickup. He was panting, smiling, and covered with weed seeds. I waited for Beulah to give him the bad news—that she had thought long and hard about their relationship and had decided . . . well, to give her heart to ME, you might say.

  I held my breath and waited. She gave me a glance . . . yes, yes, go on and tell the creep! She gave me a glance and then . . .

  I couldn’t believe it. The air hissed out of my lungs as the rafters of my dreams came crashing down into the hollow shell of my . . . something.

  She didn’t tell him to shove off or to get lost. She said, and I mean in a sweet, soft voice, she said, “How was your workout, Honey Bumpers?”

  “Great. Terrific. Best one in years, Bunny Cakes. And I guess you and Hank shared a nice talk, huh? Great.” He gave me a sloppy-tongue grin and waved his paw. “Great to see you again, Hank. You really ought to get into birds, you know. Bye now, and take care.”

  As the pickup pulled away, I glared ice picks and bayonets at the jerk, and heard myself mutter, “Take care? One of these days, old buddy, I’ll take care of YOU.”

  Then they were gone, and I was left alone to pick up the pieces of a heart that had not only been broken, but also pulverized. I was in the process of sweeping up the wreckage of my life when Drover came skipping up.

  “Oh darn, there she goes and I didn’t even have a chance to say hello. I guess you forgot to call me.”

  I stared at the runt. “What?”

  “You said you’d call me and I waited, but you didn’t call.”

  “Oh yes, that. Sorry, Drover, but I was busy with other matters. My life was being destroyed.”

  “Yeah, she sure is pretty.”

  “Did you hear what I just said?”

  “I love her brown eyes.”

  I stuck my nose into his face and raised my voice. “Hello? Will you stop babbling and listen to me?”

  “Oh, hi. Did you say something?”

  “Yes. I just announced that my life has been destroyed. I’d appreciate it if you could show some concern.”

  “I’ll be derned.”

  “Is that all you have to say? My whole life, my reason for living, my hopes and dreams . . . they’ve all turned to mush before my very eyes, Drover.”

  “Boy, I love mush.”

  “And all you can say is that you love mush? What kind of dog are you?”

  “Well, I’m not sure, but huskies love mush.”

  “Huskies do not love mush.”

  “Well, they talk about it all the time.”

  “They don’t talk about it all the time. For your information, Drover, mush in husky language means ‘gitty up.’ It means ‘pull the sled.’”

  “I’ll be derned. I thought it meant oatmeal.”

  “It does not mean oatmeal. If mush meant oatmeal, do you think the huskies would ever pull a sled? No, of course not. They’d go eat, and then who would pull the sleds?”

  “I don’t know. Reindeer? What does mush mean to a reindeer?”

  I gave him a withering glare. “Drover, are you trying to make a mockery of my ruined life? Because if you are, let me remind you . . .”

  At that very moment, this loony, meaningless conversation was interrupted by Slim, who had walked over to us. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out . . . what was that? A strip of tree bark? A dead mouse? He tore off a bite of it and held it up for me to see.

  “Y’all want a bite of my beef jerky?”

  My ears shot up. My tail went into Wild Spon­taneous Swings and I licked my chops. Beef jerky? Oh yes!

  “Well, let’s see if you can be mannerly about this. I mean, we ain’t slobs around here. Can you sit down like gentlemen?”

  Sit like—hey, were we going to share the jerky or not?

  “Sit.”

  Okay, I could sit. I plunked my Hinelary Region down on the ground and assumed the pose of a perfect gentleman dog. So did Drover. There, we waited for our . . .

  Slim held the jerky under my nose. My lips began . . . well, smacking, I guess you’d say. Drover’s lips were smacking too. I could hear them.

  Slim continued waving the jerky under our noses. Our heads moved back and forth with the fragrant morsel. Left, right. Left, right. He got a chuckle out of that, and then he did something really odd. I’m not sure you’ll believe this.

  You know what he did? After he’d
noticed that our heads moved back and forth with the hand that held the fragrant jerky, he started conducting us—you know, he held both hands in the air and moved them back and forth as though he were conducting a symphony orchestra. He whistled and hummed a little tune (“Blue Daniel’s Waltz,” in case you were wondering) and conducted our heads.

  I thought it was just a little WEIRD.

  Hey, I knew what he was doing. He was using our powerful hunger as an . . . I don’t know what, but it was an underhanded trick that made us look . . . well, ridiculous. I mean, in my deepest heart, I knew that we looked silly, moving our heads back and forth with the jerky, but somehow I wasn’t able to control my . . .

  Oh, he made a big deal out of it, standing in front of us and waving his arms back and forth, why you’d have thought he was . . . I don’t know, some famous conductor. And did I mention that he provoked us into snapping our jaws in time with the music? It’s true, he did.

  He even came up with a name for this . . . whatever you may call it . . . this musical experience, I suppose. He called it “Jerky Symphony in Nothing Major.” No kidding.

  Yes, this was very weird. It was weird that a grown man would do such a thing with his loyal dogs, but it was even weirder that we dogs went along with it. I don’t know how to explain it, except to say that . . . well, if you wave a piece of jerky in front of a dog’s nose, his nose will follow, no matter how badly his heart is broken and how absurd it makes him appear.

  Well, old Slim was having the time of his life, conducting his dogs and humming a song, and there’s no telling how long it might have gone on if someone hadn’t walked up right then—and caught the three of us right in the middle of this silliness.

  Chapter Five: Beulah Returns

  It was Loper. The boss. The owner of the ranch on which we were . . . uh . . . doing these peculiar things.

  Slim didn’t see him, but I did. I rolled my eyes in Loper’s direction, went to Slow Embarrassed Taps in the tail section, and squeezed up a grin that said, “Oh. Loper. I guess you think . . . hey, I’ll bet this looks a little bit . . . we were just . . .”

  Slim must have sensed that my attention had wandered. His hands froze in the air and he followed my gaze until he saw Loper, who was scowling at us. He pushed his hat down to the bridge of his nose and nodded his head.

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  Slim’s hands dropped to his sides and he began rocking up and down on his toes. “Oh no. Me and the dogs was just . . . funnin’.”

  “Funnin’. Well listen, Slim, don’t worry about all this work we need to get done. What’s important is that you and the dogs have a good time out here. I think that’s wonderful, a heck of a lot more important than, let’s see, welding those feed bunks, hauling in the last cutting of hay, checking those heifers in the Dutcher West pasture . . .”

  Slim’s face turned red. “You reckon we could just skip over this and go straight to the point?”

  A smirk twitched at the corners of Loper’s mouth. “The point? Why, what could be more important to the success and survival of a ranching operation than for the hired man to spend quality time with the dogs?”

  “Loper, there’s times in a feller’s life when he’d rather not . . .”

  At that moment, my interest in the conversation came to an abrupt end. You know why? Heh heh. Because I had just noticed that Slim’s right arm was hanging limp at his side, and his right hand was still holding that strip of jerky.

  Heh heh.

  I scouted their faces. They weren’t watching me, so I, uh, crept forward on silent paws and . . . SNARF . . . suddenly the jerky vanished, shall we say.

  I chewed it twice and . . . gulk . . . tried to swallow it, but it was dry and stiff and got hung up in my throat, so I switched my swallowing muscles over to an emergency procedure we call Cram It Down.

  Okay, maybe I should have chewed it up a few more times, but after he’d held it under my nose and made me wait so long, hey, I was about to die of Jerky Lust and . . .

  HARK!

  I, uh, was forced to . . . cough it up, as you might say, before I choked to death. It landed on the ground. I lifted my gaze and noticed that . . . oops . . . all eyes had turned to ME, you might say.

  Slim stared at me, then turned back to Loper. “See? Because of you, Hank stole my breakfast.”

  Loper was forced to laugh. “Some breakfast. Even the dogs won’t eat it. Was that some of your homemade jerky?”

  “Heck, yeah, and it’s good too, the best I’ve ever made. Dumb dog.”

  “Well, I guess you could always take it back.”

  “I think I’ll pass on that.” He beamed a glare down at me. “Hank, you wasted a piece of my home­­made jerky.”

  Wasted? Ha! Little did he know. If at first you don’t succeed, lap it up again. That’s my motto, and that’s just what I did, fellers. I licked it up out of the dirt, chewed it seventeen times, and rammed it home to the old stomach. It scratched a little bit going down, but I got ’er done.

  We call this procedure Jerky Reruns, and it sure works.

  Slim and Loper curled their lips and looked away. Slim shook his head. “Hank, have I told you lately that you’re disgusting?”

  Well, I . . . no, but what did he expect me to do? Leave a perfectly good jerky breakfast and let it go to waste? Forget that.

  Loper gave his head a shake and started walking away. “If it’s not too much trouble, why don’t you saddle a horse and ride through those heifers in the Dutcher West pasture?”

  Loper walked up to the machine shed and left us there. A great silence moved over us. I became aware of Slim’s harsh glare. “That’s what I get for hanging out with a couple of moron dogs. I try to teach y’all couth and culture, and you get me in trouble with the boss.” He heaved a sigh. “Well, let’s saddle old Snips and check them heifers.”

  He went into the saddle lot to catch his horse, leaving me alone with Drover. “Why are you staring at me?”

  “Well, I didn’t get any jerky. I sat here like a good little dog, and then you gobbled it all down. It wasn’t fair, and I’m starving.”

  “You’re not starving, and life is often unfair, Drover. The sooner you learn that, the less you’ll eat.”

  “I had my heart set on that jerky, and now my heart’s broken.”

  “You’re heart’s not broken. MY heart’s broken. Had you forgotten that? I was in the midst of telling you about my broken heart and shattered life, and somehow you got us on the subject of oatmeal.”

  “No, it was jerky, and you hogged it all.”

  “It was oatmeal, Drover, or mush, to be more specific. My life has turned to mush, and do you know why?”

  “You’re a husky?”

  “No. Because Beulah loves Plato instead of me. Because she chose a bird dog over a cowdog. That’s why my heart is droken, Bover, and you don’t even care.”

  “Yeah, but my name’s Drover.”

  “That’s the kind of friend you turned out to be, and I know perfectly well what your name is.”

  “Yeah, but you called me Bover.”

  “Sorry. My mistake. I should have called you meathead. Do you know why?”

  “Well, let me think here. Because I love jerky?”

  “No! Because you’ve finally succeeded in driving me insane.” I marched over to the nearest tree and banged my head against it. BAM! BAM! “There! I feel much better now, and I hope you’re happy.”

  “Well . . .”

  “Now, I’m going back to bed. I’m going to sleep and I don’t wish to be disturbed. Hold my calls and, most important, don’t ever speak to me again. Good-bye.”

  I whirled away from the little lunatic and started to leave. It was then that I heard him say, “Well, okay, but are you sure that mush really isn’t oatmeal?”

  I froze in my tracks. For a moment I gav
e serious thought to going back and wringing his neck. Instead, I hit Full Throttle on all engines and got myself out of the swamp of his mind. I went roaring down to the gas tanks, screeched to a halt, and threw myself into the warm embrace of my gunny­sack bed.

  Plato had shot me out of the saddle. Beulah had rejected my love. Drover had turned out to be just as worthless as I had always thought he was. Pete had . . .

  Wait a second. Remember that story Pete had told me about the Deadly Moonbeams? All of a sudden it occurred to me that it was all garbage, a typical cat trick, nothing but lies. Yes, I had fallen for it, and Kitty would pay a terrible price for his . . .

  I dropped onto my bed, my dear old gunnysack bed, the last friend I had in the world. I had failed in the Department of Love, but I would never fail in the Department of Sleep. Sure enough, sleep came and swept me away from the cruel world.

  I had dreams, powerful dreams full of meaning and purpose. I saw myself transported to a better place, a kinder world where there were no cats or bird dogs—just me, all alone with a steak bone as big as a utility pole. It was delicious and I was in the process of gnawing my way through it, when . . .

  Huh? The sound of an approaching vehicle? How could that be? Steak bones weren’t vehicles and they never drove into our ranch compound. Therefore it followed from simple logic that . . .

  I lifted my head and cracked open my eyes. A terrible sight greeted me. Drover. He was sitting on his gunnysack and giving me a silly smile.

  “Oh, hi. Guess who’s here.”

  “My steak bone, and don’t get any big ideas about sharing it.”

  “No, I think it’s Billy. He’s back.”

  “His belly’s on his back? What are you talking about, Drivel?”

  “My name’s Drover.”

  “I know your name. I’ve always known your name. Why do you keep repeating it?”

  “’Cause you keep getting it wrong.”

  I cut my eyes from side to side. “Wait a minute. You’re Drover, right?”

  “That’s what I said.”