To Fetch a Thief

by Spencer Quinn

  I watched him go, and I wasn’t the only one: up on a ridge a kid in a sombrero stepped forward and yelled something at the goat. The goat headed toward her. The kid climbed down from the ridge, shook a stick at the goat. I liked the look of this kid and trotted toward her. She saw me, backed away, pointed the stick in my direction. I kept coming, but not so fast, and when I got close I sat down.

  She gazed at me, said something in the Mexican way. She was a real skinny kid with a runny nose and a high little voice. My tail swept back and forth in the dust. The kid lowered the stick and asked me some kind of question, no idea what, but for some reason I started panting. She asked me another question, a short one. I wagged my tail and panted. Then from a leather satchel over her shoulder she took out a plastic bottle of water and a tin cup. Oh, water! Now it hit me big-time just how thirsty I was. I needed water and right away, couldn’t wait one more single moment. On the other hand, as humans like to say, and then I had a thought: maybe if they had more hands, they would . . . but the rest of the thought wouldn’t come, so maybe it wasn’t a thought in the first place, and forget about all that anyhow. The point was that sometimes when you want something real bad, the best way to get it is to keep your mouth shut. That was a saying of Bernie’s, but it also means just sit still. So I sat still.

  The kid approached, slow and cautious, and without taking her big brown eyes off me, she knelt, set the cup on the ground and poured it full of water. Ah, the sight of that little stream, reddish in the light of the lowering sun: so beautiful.

  “Hola,” she said, backing away and pointing to the cup. “Agua.”

  Agua—I knew that one from way back, could probably do well in Mexico, given time. I rose, went to the bowl, and drank agua. Bliss. At first I drank slowly, but as I drank—kind of crazy, I know—I got thirstier and thirstier so I drank faster and faster and soon the cup was empty and I was licking the moisture off the bottom.

  “Más?” said the kid.

  I backed off a step or two. She refilled the cup. This time she didn’t move away. I drank another cupful, felt lovely agua spreading through me.

  “Más?”

  I liked this word, más. I drank some more, all I needed, than sat down by the cup. The kid reached out, still slow and cautious, and patted my head. I shifted closer to give her a better angle. She spoke to me in the Mexican way, said lots of nice things—did it matter exactly what? After a while, she noticed my tags, leaned forward to read them.

  “Jet?” she said, or something that sounded a lot like that. “Tu nombre es Jet?” I’m Chet the Jet for sure, but was that what it said on my tags? I’d always thought it would have been just Chet, why, I don’t know. Was this another thing that didn’t matter? All of a sudden we had things that didn’t matter out the yingyang. I tried to hold that thought, but it got away from me.

  The kid rose. “Ven, Jet.”

  Ven? There was Vin McTeague, but he was now up at Northern State—breaking rocks in the hot sun if there was any justice at all—so that couldn’t be it.

  “Jet,” the kid said. “Come. Is late.”

  She put the cup and the plastic bottle back into her satchel, slung it over her shoulder, and started walking. I walked beside her. The goat went on ahead, glancing back at me from time to time and doing his bleating thing. Our shadows got huge in front of us.

  TWENTY-SIX

  We hadn’t gone far—at least it didn’t seem that way, but all watered up again I was feeling pretty peppy, and distances tend to go by fast when I’m feeling peppy, which is just about always—when we came over a rise and into a little valley. I liked this little valley right away. It had trees, a few white adobe buildings that were actually pink from the setting sun, and a narrow stream with real, smellable water in it.

  “Mi casa,” said the kid. “Ven, Jet.”

  We walked side by side, me and the kid. I was getting the hang of things down Mexico way.

  We came to the biggest of the adobe buildings—none of them very big, and all of them kind of run-down—which had a shaded porch and looked like a farmhouse. The goat wandered off and nibbled at stunted plants in the yard. The kid and I walked past a hitching post—marked by a coyote, but not recently—and up to the front door.

  “Papá! Abuelita!” the kid called, adding some more I didn’t catch.

  The door opened. I glimpsed a tiny old woman at a stove. Then a man came out. He was a little guy in a torn shirt, had deep lines in his face, and hands that were too big for someone his size. He looked at me, frowned, and spoke to the kid in a way that sounded annoyed. The kid moved closer to me and spoke back to him in a way that also sounded annoyed. I liked this kid.

  The man—her father, I had that down—stepped off the porch and came toward me. I backed away; didn’t like his smell or those big hands. Bernie has big hands, too, but he’s a big man and they look right. The kid’s father didn’t look right. Also Bernie’s hands are beautifully shaped and this guy’s hands were ugly, fingers twisted, knuckles swollen. He paused, said something to the girl.

  “Jet,” she said. “Es Americano.”

  “Sí?”

  “Sí.”

  The man turned to me and smiled. Whoa! He had silver teeth. Never seen that before and I didn’t like it, not one bit. I backed away some more. “Hey, Jet,” he said, holding up his hands the way some perps do to show you there’s nothing in them; but that wasn’t the point—the hands themselves were the problem. “You nice dog,” he said. “I like you.”

  Uh-huh.

  “You want food?” he said.

  Sure. But I didn’t go any closer.

  He went back into the house. The kid gave me a pat, so gentle I could hardly feel it. Have I mentioned her big brown eyes, just about the nicest human eyes I’d ever seen?

  “Eres guapo,” she said. “Muy, muy guapo.”

  No idea what that was about. The kid’s dad came out of the house holding a bone, a real nice one with a bit of meat still on it. And what a powerful smell, wiping out all other smells! He approached, offered the bone. I didn’t take it, didn’t back away, didn’t do anything except try to make up my mind. But what a bone! He smiled his silvery smile, said something to the kid, and gave her the bone.

  “Take, Jet,” he said, “take.”

  The girl held the bone right in front of my face. Who could have resisted? Not me. I took the bone, careful not to hurt her hand, so tiny and pretty compared to the hands of her dad. And at that moment, when we were finishing up with the exchange of the bone, me concentrating to get it just right, the man came fast from the side and tried to loop a lasso over my head.

  I writhed away from that lasso and took off, running and running and—

  And then—oh, no! Something squeezed tight around my neck, stopping me dead. My feet flew out from under from me and I got stretched out to my fullest in midair—upside down and tail first—for what seemed like a long time. And then—thud!—I came crashing down on the ground. I scrambled up right away, or almost right away, and tried to run. But at the same moment the man yanked hard on the other end of the lasso and took all my breath away. Even worse, he seemed to be smiling: his silver teeth glinted in the fading light.

  “Papá!” the kid cried, and reached for the rope. He raised the side of his hand to her. The kid flinched even though he didn’t hit her, then turned and ran into the house. I sank to the ground, no air at all, and things turning black. Meanwhile, the man was tying his end of the lasso to a ring in the hitching post. The squeezing around my neck slackened a bit. I breathed in some air and the blackness cleared. This was my chance! I had to bring him down before he got me tied to the post. I charged. He looked up, saw me coming, his big hands working frantically at the knots. Then he jumped up and darted toward the house. I leaped onto the porch, dove at his back. But too late: the door closed in my face.

  Anger took over. I tore at the door with my front paws, barking and barking. At some point I heard the man laugh, safely inside the house. I went q
uiet, backed off. The kid said something. Then came a smacking sound. The old lady said, “No, no, no.” The man yelled at her. But there was no more smacking, just silence.

  I left the porch, walked across the yard, kept going until the rope drew me up short. I pulled the other way, pulled harder and harder, but all that did was bring the blackness, so I stopped. I went back to the hitching post and gnawed at those knots, but got nowhere even though I’m a pretty good gnawer; the rope was thick and the knots were big and hard.

  Night fell and stars came out. I was still gnawing, but not at the knots around that hitching post ring. Instead, I was off in the shadows and on my back, working on the part of the rope closest to the loop around my neck. The smell of food cooking over a fire came drifting from the house and, yes, I was hungry, but gnawing always takes the edge off hunger. And was I getting anywhere? I thought so: when you gnaw on a rope for a while you realize that it’s actually not one solid thing, like a bone; a rope turns out to be made of many many thin strands, thin strands that parted if you gnawed hard enough. Was I gnawing hard enough? Better believe it. I could feel those thin strands giving way against my teeth, one after another. It wouldn’t be long before—

  Headlights appeared on a hillside above the house. They swept down in one long curve and then a truck, kind of like a UPS truck, drove into the yard, and stopped. A man—oh, no, could it really be him?—got out, stepped onto the porch, and knocked on the door.

  I gnawed that rope as hard and fast as I could. But gnawing isn’t one of those things that can be speeded up much. I tried to speed up anyway. One strand split, and another, and one more, and—

  The front door opened and light spilled out. In the light stood the kid’s father—this farmer or whatever he was—and another man, a much bigger man with sideburns, bandanna, a big crooked nose: Jocko, for sure. The kid appeared between them. Her father pushed her back inside.

  I rolled over, jumped up, bolted right out to the full length of the rope, strained against it with all my might. It began to give, the tiny strands breaking and breaking, the rope weakening. Any moment now I’d be free! Free and gone. I dug my claws deep into the dirt for better traction and was giving it all I had, the strands snapping apart so hard and fast I could hear them, when out of nowhere this strange thing came down over my face. I jerked my head to get away from it, but couldn’t. Something clicked, like a buckle snapping into place, and someone very strong jerked on the rope around my neck, lifting the front part of me right off the ground. I twisted around, tried to bite whoever had me.

  But biting wasn’t possible. Some kind of cagelike thing was clamped around my nose and jaw. I could barely open my mouth. Jocko held me up, just my back paws on the ground.

  “Will you look at that,” Jocko said. “Practically gnawed his way through the goddamn rope.” He tugged at it with his free hand and the last strands gave way, the long rope end falling to the ground. I’d come so close.

  “Es muy malo,” said the farmer.

  “Talk English, for Christ sake.”

  “He very bad.”

  Muzzle: the name came to me. No one had ever muzzled me before, but I’d seen muzzles on others of my kind, always felt bad. Biting was now impossible, but why should that mean I couldn’t fight? I barked—not much of a bark with that muzzle on, mostly trapped in my throat—and went at Jocko with my front paws.

  I got him a good one right on the side of the face, a good one that brought blood. Jocko staggered back but didn’t let go of the remaining short end of the rope, still around my neck. I pawed him hard again, this time on the throat, and the rope began to slip from his hand. I was twisting away from him, wrenching the rope free, when the farmer sneaked in from the side, raising a big stick, or something like a big stick; I saw him coming, but too late.

  San Diego: what a place! It takes a while before I stop trying to herd Bernie back to the beach. “Chet, for God’s sake—I can swim.” After that we paddle out with the surfboard. “Think you can stand up on this, big guy?” Turns out I can! A wave rises up and I ride and ride, higher and higher, having the time of my life, till I fall off, a long long fall followed by a hard hard landing on the desert floor.

  The desert floor? My head hurt. I opened my eyes, saw only blackness. Maybe I was a bit confused, but I knew one thing for sure: I wasn’t in San Diego. No surf sounds. Couldn’t miss surf sounds; they were surprisingly loud—I’d learned that on our trip to San Diego.

  Bernie!

  Things—none of them good—came back to me in a jumble. As for the here and now—another saying of Bernie’s, the here and now—I couldn’t see or hear anything, but smells were in the air, one in particular—rich and powerful. I tried to place that smell and got very close to actually remembering.

  I rose. My mouth sometimes needs a good wide stretch when I wake up, so I opened it wide and—only I couldn’t. The muzzle! That part hadn’t come back with the rest of the jumble. I shook my head from side to side, tried to shake off that horrible muzzle, but it wouldn’t even budge. I went at it with one of my front paws, then the other, felt metal bars, straps, some kind of buckle behind my head, and attacked them all, with no result. I sat down, tried again with my back paws, found the angle much better but the ending was just the same. The next thing I knew I was charging around frantically, banging into walls of some kind, falling, getting up, charging around harder, at the same time doing my best to bark and bark, although I could hardly make a peep. I was out of my mind.

  THROOMPH: a strange sound and all at once came light, so bright it blinded me. I went still. Soon my eyes adjusted and the first thing I saw was a man watching me, a small man like the farmer, except he wore a gun on his hip; a big tarp lay rumpled at his feet. The next thing I noticed was the steel cage all around me. I barked at the man, made that puny muzzled sound. The man laughed. I dove at him. Why did I bother when I’d already seen the cage, knew it was useless? I don’t know.

  I smashed my body against the steel bars.

  “Loco,” said the man. He folded the tarp, carried it toward a big, low building that looked like a warehouse, and disappeared around a corner. The sun beat down.

  I sniffed my way around the cage, sniffed no way out. This had happened before: certain humans—and they’d all paid eventually—had a thing about trapping me in cages. But what hadn’t ever happened was the second cage, the small one over my face. These particular humans had me in two cages at the same time. That enraged me. I threw myself around some more.

  Easy, Chet. Everything’s going to be all right.

  Bernie! I heard him! I hurried to the bars, looked out. No Bernie. I waited for the sound of his voice to come again. It did not. But I felt calmer just the same. Also my head didn’t hurt so bad. I hated being in a cage, and I hated the muzzle so much I had to force myself not to think about it or else I’d go crazy, but I felt calmer.

  What did Bernie always say when we were in a new place? Get the lay of the land, big guy, that’s step one. Bernie was always right about things like that, one of the reasons the Little Detective Agency was so successful. I looked around. The back of the cage stood against an adobe wall. From the front I saw a flat plain with a road crossing it, and beyond that some steep hills. Right away I had a plan: get out of the cage and into those hills. That was what happened when you did things Bernie’s way. Ideas came out of the blue.

  Getting out of the cage had to come first. I sniffed around again for a way out. Didn’t find one, but I picked up that rich smell again, so strange and powerful. And this time—now that I was calmer—I placed it. It was Peanut’s smell, for absolute sure.

  I thought to myself: Chet the Jet! You go!

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  G et the lay of the land, big guy, that’s step one.

  I already had the lay of the land down pat: the back of the cage against the adobe wall, the big warehouse, the road cutting across the plain, the steep hills in the distance. Nothing moved except the sun, and you couldn’t really s
ee it moving, but it had to be, because the next time you looked it was somewhere else.

  Down pat: that expression stayed in my mind. A pat from Bernie would have been real nice long about now; even a pat from just about anybody. Meanwhile, heat was building up in the cage, pressing down on me from the tin roof. No water to be seen, and how would I have drunk it anyway, wearing that horrible muzzle? I tried to stay calm, and during the staying-calm period, I spotted something up on a ridge in the steep hills, a strange kind of something, like a skinny fire hydrant with an umbrella on top. Once some stray bullets hit a fire hydrant in Los Olas, and water came shooting out. I was thinking about how much fun that had been, and feeling more and more thirsty, when a long tractor-trailer—the kind they call an eighteen-wheeler but don’t ask me to count them—appeared on the road, raising a long cloud of dust. It came closer and closer, went right by me, and parked by the warehouse. The red roses on the side panel were hard to miss.

  I heard the cab door slam shut but couldn’t see who got out. Silence fell. I explored the cage, searching for some little gap I could work on, or some weak spot, but there were no gaps, no weak spots. I found myself just standing there, poking my muzzled face through the bars. Up on that distant ridge the skinny fire hydrant with the umbrella top seemed to be on the move.

  Another dust cloud appeared on the road, smaller than the first, with a white dot out in front. The white dot grew, changed shape, became a car, a long, white convertible I thought I knew, and when it turned off the road and parked in front of the warehouse I was sure.

  Colonel Drummond, a cigar in his mouth and a straw hat on his head, got out of the car and entered the warehouse. After that nothing happened except that the umbrella-topped hydrant thing was still on the move, coming down the distant slope. Also I was getting hotter and thirstier.