The Warrior Sheep Go West

by Christopher Russell

  “Lost the picture again,” he muttered.

  “We don’t need the picture anymore, Stanley. They’re there, behind the bins!”

  But they weren’t. When Holly crept quietly around, noose at the ready, she met with nothing but the gray dawn of the desert.

  “This is awesome…” The Professor was still staring at his wrist screen. “They’re in some weird wobbly cave full of sloshy stuff!”

  Inspiration struck his wife.

  “The bins!” she cried. “They must be in these bins! Help me tip them over!”

  They tried the organic waste first. They manhandled the head-high bin against a curb and toppled it on its side.

  “Hey!” shouted the waitress from the kitchen. “What are you doing?”

  Making a horrible mess for nothing was what they were doing, and ruining Holly’s smart shoes while they were doing it. The bin was indeed full of sloshy stuff. It rolled and gushed all over the tarmac and up Professor Boomberg’s legs. But there were no sheep amid the half-eaten burgers and yesterday’s ice cream.

  As the waitress strode from the kitchen again, Holly heard an engine start. She spun around. Inspiration had struck again.

  “The trailer! Of course! They’re back in the trailer!”

  She raced after the departing bus, caught hold of the trailer doors, and yanked them open. As she threw herself inside, she turned and grabbed her husband’s outstretched arm, and hauled him in after her. The Professor landed flat on his face and the trailer turned onto the highway with his legs still sticking out of the open doors. Holly was already rummaging amongst the sports bags.

  “They’re here somewhere…” she muttered. “I can smell them.”

  The Professor could smell all kinds of things, mostly on his trousers. He wobbled to his feet and banged his head on the roof of the trailer.

  “They were here, honey,” he said through gritted teeth. “Were…” And he gazed at his wrist in wonder. The picture on the screen now looked like the inside of an active volcano.

  The bus had picked up speed and was cruising along the highway with the players inside singing:

  “We’re on our way to Aries End, Red Tongue, Red Tongue! On our way to Aries End, Red Tongue, remember the name!”

  Gradually, the players became aware of thumps and shouts from the trailer behind them. The driver pulled over to the side of the highway and they all got out to investigate.

  “We were merely looking for our sheep,” said Holly primly, as she slid out and pulled Stanley after her.

  “What’s with you and sheep, lady?” demanded the driver.

  “They were here! Can’t you smell them?” demanded Holly.

  The players sniffed.

  “That’s Dave’s socks!” one of them laughed, slamming the trailer doors.

  Stanley just had time to ask some of the players for their autographs before the driver ushered them back into the bus.

  “I’m a great fan,” the Professor whispered, taking back his pocket-sized copy of Physics For Unbelievably Brainy People.

  “Stanley!”

  His wife was already striding back along the highway toward the Bouncing Burger. The Professor loped guiltily after her.

  ***

  The warriors were marching on toward Aries End. After the bumpy darkness of the trailer, they actually enjoyed the early sun’s warmth on their backs. Except for Oxo.

  Oxo did not feel good. It was rare for him to regret eating anything, but ever since he’d swallowed the gold stud, every one of his stomachs had been churning. Eventually, he stumbled and sat on the dirt road, his sides quivering.

  “Are you all right, dear?” asked Sal.

  “Course I am,” said Oxo.

  He struggled to his hooves and staggered on, but a few minutes later he was sitting again.

  “Better stop, eh,” said Links. “There’s a bit of shade up there…”

  The small patch of shade was cast by a battered truck parked a little way ahead of them. Two men in dusty clothes and boots were digging in the desert close by. They hadn’t noticed the sheep.

  “We’re wasting our time, Gramps,” the younger man said, stopping to wipe the sweat from his face. “There ain’t no gold here.”

  The older man kept on digging. “Sure is somewhere, Brad…” he said. “Jumpy Joe’s map’s clear enough. Give or take a mile…”

  “But if Jumpy Joe never found it a hundred years ago, how we gonna find it now?”

  “By believin’, boy,” puffed Gramps. “You gotta have faith. And dig. Go get the map again.”

  Brad dropped his shovel, turned toward the truck, and stopped.

  “Hey, Gramps…” he said in amazement. “Looks like lunch just arrived.”

  Both men stared at the little group of sheep.

  “Well blow me to San Francisco…” laughed Gramps. “Where did you all come from?” Then he stopped smiling. “One of the poor critters looks sick,” he said.

  The biggest of the sheep was staggering badly. It just reached the shade of the truck before it keeled over and collapsed.

  20

  Gold Fever

  As Oxo lay panting in the shade, he knew he was going to be sick.

  “Scuse me…” he mumbled and dragged himself to the other side of the track.

  The gold stud came up in a sticky, smelly mess of half-chewed plastic grass.

  “Here, fella, have a drink…”

  Oxo suddenly found an old man squatting beside him. He’d poured some water into his upturned hat and was holding it out. A younger man was standing close by. Oxo gratefully slurped a few mouthfuls then tottered back to the other sheep.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “All gone.”

  The young man was still standing by the pile of sick. He slowly bent forward to peer at the recent contents of Oxo’s stomach. Something had caught his eye.

  “Gramps…” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “Look at this.” He crouched and picked the gold stud from the soggy pile. “Gold…a nugget of gold!”

  He wiped the lump of chewed metal on his sleeve and held it up. Gramps stared and then snatched the stud, put it between his front teeth, and bit it.

  “Well?” asked Brad anxiously.

  Gramps cackled and creaked to his feet, waving the stud.

  “It’s gold, sure enough!” he cried. “A hungry ole ram’s found Jumpy Joe’s gold! What did I tell you, boy?” He grabbed his shovel and began digging maniacally at the road. “Tell Uncle Silas,” he said. “But no one else. This is our find, boy! Ours!”

  Brad ran across to the campfire smoldering beside their truck. He held his hat over the flames for a moment, then moved it aside. A puff of white smoke rose into the still desert air. He did it again and another puff of smoke rose. When he’d finished sending his message, he spat on his hands, seized a pickaxe, and attacked the road beside Gramps.

  The warriors had been watching with interest.

  “Sometimes,” said Oxo, “it’s very hard to understand humans.”

  “Are you all right to go on now, dear?” asked Sal.

  “I’m right as rain now I’ve got rid of that,” said Oxo.

  “Oh wouldn’t that be nice,” sighed Jaycey. “Some rain!”

  They each took a quick sip of water from Gramps’s upturned hat, then trotted away.

  ***

  The Boombergs had hoped to rent a truck when they got back to the Bouncing Burger, but there was none to be had so they were forced to make do with a motorbike. While it was being filled with fuel, Holly looked around for clues.

  “That’s the way they went,” she said, pointing at hoofprints on the track behind the rubbish bins.

  Apart from saying “Shortcut,” the sign to Aries End said “No Trucks, No Autos, No Bikes” but Holly Boomberg didn’t do no
. She sped away into the arid hills, doing a wheelie, with Stanley clinging on behind.

  Peering ahead, Holly could see puffs of white smoke in the distance. It soon became obvious that she wasn’t the only one who ignored road signs. A four-by-four swept past the motorbike in a cloud of fumes and dust. Then another…and another. All kinds of vehicles, motor and horse-drawn, appeared from nowhere, jostling for position on the narrow track.

  Gramps and Brad stopped digging and gazed at the fast-approaching swarm of uninvited fortune hunters.

  “I’m always tellin’ you we should get ourselves a cell phone, Gramps,” said Brad.

  “Maybe you’re right, son,” agreed Gramps. “Smoke signals ain’t that private nowadays.”

  He fumbled for a match, then lit a fuse and stuck his fingers in his ears. The explosion that followed was a tad bigger than he’d anticipated; he was a bit rusty when it came to dynamite. It blew out a huge crater of sand and rock, which, though it didn’t reveal any gold, did entirely block the track.

  As the greedy army of vehicles began arriving, a couple on a motorbike skidded to a halt in front of Gramps and Brad.

  “Clear the road!” shouted the woman, glaring at the mountain of impassable rubble behind Gramps. “We have to get through!”

  Gramps shrugged. “Not today you ain’t, lady, leastways, not on that.” He eyed the motorbike. Brad had always wanted one. “But I’ll swap you my mule for that there thing.”

  Holly quickly made up her mind.

  “Come on, Stanley,” she snapped, and scrambled off the bike.

  “Mind she don’t bite now,” Gramps called after her, but not loud enough for Holly to hear.

  ***

  Tod and Gran had been locked up for one whole day and a night, which was long enough for them to have excavated a tunnel under the jailhouse wall. Tod had done the digging while Gran carried away the dirt in her hat and found places to hide it. The sun had just come up on the second day of their imprisonment and they were getting excited.

  “We’re nearly there,” said Tod, wriggling backward out of the tunnel and handing another shovel-load of dirt to Gran. “I can see daylight—it must be from the street.”

  Gran had filled the little stove and both bunk beds, and was just starting to top up her handbag with Tod’s latest load when they heard Sheriff Tiny arriving in the outer office.

  The prisoners scurried to their beds, jumped in on top of their piles of dirt and stones, and pulled the blankets up to their chins. The overloaded mattresses sagged and groaned beneath them. Sheriff Tiny was whistling and carrying a breakfast tray.

  “I hope you slept well, ma’am?” he said courteously.

  “Like a rock,” replied Gran.

  “A pile of rocks,” confirmed Tod.

  “I have to do my rounds,” said Tiny, sliding the tray beneath the bars into the cell. “When I come back, we’ll have a proper chat about your friend Mr. Rhubarb.” He gave Gran a stern look. “Maybe you’ll have seen sense by then.”

  “And maybe you’ll have seen our sheep,” she replied.

  When the sheriff had gone, Tod and Gran devoured the breakfast. After all the hard work, they were starving.

  “I’ve never thought of putting syrup on my bacon,” said Gran as they munched. “Lovely. One to try when we get back home. Maybe with a couple of chillies.”

  Tod just nodded. Home seemed an awfully long way away.

  They’d just started digging again when the new day’s first group of tourists wandered into the sheriff’s office.

  “Great show,” said one of them.

  “Glad you’re enjoying it,” replied Gran, thrusting a hatful of stony dirt through the bars. “Get rid of that, would you?”

  ***

  Back in gold-fever country, the warriors had heard the dynamite explosion behind them but they had more urgent things to worry about. Wills was afraid they might be going the wrong way. There were no more signs to Aries End, and the track they were following had become narrower and was descending sharply now, with the steep red hills on either side becoming cliffs, hemming the sheep in. If anything ahead blocked their way, there would scarcely be room to turn round. They would be trapped.

  And then Jaycey, who was in front for once, suddenly stopped.

  “Ohmygrass…” she whimpered. “He’s here. We’ve foundhimfoundhimfoundhim…”

  The other warriors crowded as close as they could to see. There, on the sandy track before them, was the biggest claw print they had ever had nightmares about.

  21

  The Devil’s Stovepipe

  Why’ve you stopped?” cried Holly, kicking the mule.

  It didn’t respond. It just stood where it was, quivering with fear. The Boombergs were at the top of the steeply descending track behind the sheep, and Holly could see them some way below.

  “They’re just standing there,” she said, twisting around to talk to Stanley, who was riding pillion just as he’d done on the motorbike.

  “Maybe there’s something stopping them going on any farther,” said the Professor, peering over his wife’s shoulder.

  There was. And not only the claw print. The track in front of the warriors widened out slightly into a tiny clearing, which was littered with boulders and branches, ripped from the hills above by the recent sandstorm. Filling the narrow clearing between the cliffs, standing on its hind legs like a human, poised ready to attack, was a monster. It had black fur, black eyes, bared yellow teeth…and a red tongue.

  Jaycey was speechless. She wanted to squeal her loudest-ever squeal but she couldn’t. Her voice, like the rest of her, was melting into a jelly of fear.

  The great beast raised its head and roared. It lashed out, its claws slicing the air, and the warriors jumped back. To Wills’s amazement, the beast didn’t follow. It just stood there, swaying and roaring and slashing the air in frustrated anger. And pain.

  Wills was trying to remember the pictures he’d seen in Tod’s school books.

  “I think it’s a bear,” he said.

  “IsthatbetterthanRedTongue?” blabbered Jaycey. “Dobearseatsheep?”

  “Man, it’s big enough to eat a horse,” gulped Links.

  The bear roared again, and this time they all heard the pain.

  “What’s the matter with it?” asked Oxo. “Why doesn’t it come for us?”

  “Stuck, eh.” Links nodded and for the first time the other sheep noticed the fallen tree trunk lying in front of the bear. The animal’s hind paws were trapped beneath it.

  “Well that’s all right then,” said Oxo briskly. “Onward?”

  “We can’t just leave it!” cried Sal. “It’ll die of hunger!”

  “Oh,” said Oxo, for whom dying of hunger was the worst fate imaginable. “Right.”

  “But it could kill us all, man,” pointed out Links. “And we ain’t never gonna find the Red Tongue dude if we’s dead.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Sal, taking a deep breath, “it is a fellow creature. Jaycey, stay here and do something.”

  “Do something?” squeaked Jaycey.

  “Yes, dear, distract it. While the rest of us move that log.”

  With her body pressed against the cliff, Sal began to edge past the bear. The others followed. The beast snarled and growled and twisted from side to side, and they all felt the rush of air as its fearsome claws swept past their heads.

  “Ohmygrassohmygrass…” Jaycey tried to be distracting. She tossed her pretty head and examined her front hooves. “Um…how d’you keep your claws sharp?” she inquired.

  The others lined themselves up behind the bear, which had now turned away from them and was growling suspiciously at Jaycey.

  “Ready!” cried Sal. “Charge!”

  Oxo was a bit cross that she’d used his word but this was no time for petty jealousies. The warriors l
owered their heads and charged the fallen log. The bear swiveled its head to see what they were doing and lashed sideways with a paw.

  “Again!” shouted Oxo before Sal could speak.

  The sheep ignored the huge teeth and the hot breath on their shoulders and rammed the log a second time. It rocked and rolled, but with their heads down, they didn’t see the bear writhing free.

  “One more…” shouted Oxo. “A longer run-up this time.”

  Jaycey was still bravely bobbing about and chattering about keeping claws and hooves trim when the huge creature lurched toward her.

  “Ohmygrass!” she screamed. And then, “Ohmygrass…” again, as the ground behind the bear seemed to open up and swallow her fellow warriors.

  They’d done as Oxo instructed and backed away a little farther to get a longer run-up at the log. And since they were moving backward, they hadn’t seen the huge hole behind them.

  “Ohmygrassgrassgrass…” whimpered Jaycey.

  She’d heard her friends’ cries as they disappeared. Now she could only hear the snuffling, grunting noise as the bear leaned forward and closed its huge jaws around her neck.

  Jaycey became speechless again. Frozen. But there was no bite. No pain at all. Jaycey felt herself being lifted off the ground and carried very gently in the bear’s mouth. Then she was looking down into a deep, dark nothingness. The bear opened its jaws and Jaycey’s hooves scampered in thin air.

  ***

  From their seat on the mule, the Boombergs had watched the sheep’s rescue of the bear in open-mouthed wonder. Stanley was impressed and alarmed in equal measure.

  “Honey, maybe these creatures are really really too clever? I mean, we wouldn’t want them kind of taking over the project. Messing up the experiments or anything.”

  His wife was sitting bolt upright, only half listening, her mind racing.

  “I don’t think we need worry about that, dear,” she said. “Don’t you see where we are?”

  Stanley gazed vaguely around. He hated questions he couldn’t answer.

  “Arizona’s where we are, dear,” he said.