Slurp slurp slurp.
His eyes narrowed into slits and he muttered, “Uh-oh, I think we have a problem.”
Problem? Of course we had a problem. I was ready to go to sleep but he was saying ridiculous things that made me lick my chops. What kind of man does things like that?
He closed his book and laid it aside, reached into his knapsack and pulled out a roll of something gray. Duct tape. “Hank, come here.”
Huh? Me? Well . . . okay. I stepped over Little Alfred’s sleeping body and crept toward Mr. Wilkens. Maybe he wanted me to . . . I don’t know, share his bedroll or something.
What a cheap trick! You know what he did? As soon as I got within his grabbing range, he grabbed me, threw a leg lock over my rib cage, and proceeded to . . . this was really unnecessary . . . proceeded to wrap duct tape around both my hind legs! I struggled against the leg irons. No luck. O treachery, I had become a captive in my own tent!
He gave me a smile—a phony counterfeit smile—and said, “There, that ought to keep you from roaming around in the night.”
Roaming around? Hey, pal, did you ever hear that dogs sleep at night?
“See, as hot as it is, I’ll have to leave the tent flap open.” He gestured toward the tent flap. “And I’d be real disappointed if you slipped out of the tent and went looking for that . . .”
Slurp.
A grin dashed across his mouth. “I didn’t say ‘bone.’”
Yeah, but you cheated.
“Now, hop over there beside Alfred and let me finish my notes. Can you hop on three legs?”
Well, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t know if I could “hop on three legs.” How many times in a normal life does a Head of Ranch Security get mugged and shackled by his friends?
I rose to my feet and took a step . . . oops . . . I staggered sideways and fell into the middle of Little Alfred’s stomach. He sat straight up and screeched, “Hankie, quit stepping on me!” He clubbed me over the head with his pillow. “Go to sleep.”
Go to sleep? How could I . . . the boy rolled over before I could explain my awkward situation, and who could explain it anyway? I hopped and stumbled and staggered my way to the foot of Alfred’s bedroll and collapsed, pointing myself toward the west so that I could blister my kidnapper with Eyes of Rebuke.
He was writing in his journal again, with a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. I glared nails and ice picks at him. After a while, he turned his head in my direction. “Look, I did it for your own good. Do you have any idea what Doug McGrubber would do if he caught you messing with that bison bone?”
Slurp. No, but it was a pointless question. For his information, I had lost all interest in the slurp. Bone.
“I don’t know either, but he sure wouldn’t be happy, after he spent all day scratching it out of the dirt. Now go to sleep and quit glaring at me.”
I would glare at him as long as I wanted. I would glare at him until the sun came up, until the chickens came home to rot, until the lion laid down with the lamb, until hogs wore roller skates, until . . . moonbeam butterball waxy spinach leaves honking banana waffles . . . zzzzzzzzz.
Perhaps I dozed. Yes, I’m almost sure I did, because the next thing I knew, I had a foot in my face (Little Alfred’s) and the tent was as dark as the inside of a crow. I sat up, yawned, blinked my eyes, and glanced around. And suddenly I realized that I had been dreaming about . . . bones.
Actually, that was nothing unusual. I often had bone dreams and they were always fun. Sometimes I saw myself chewing on steak bones, other times ham bones, and every once in a while, chicken bones. But this dream was different because it involved . . . well, an ancient buffalo bone. No kidding. I mean, in my dream I saw it lying in the middle of a square-shaped trench, and I was almost sure that . . .
I’d better not say any more because it might sound strange. I mean, bones don’t talk, right? Yet this bone seemed to be calling out to me. Oops, I said it. Okay, in my dream, this bone was calling my name and asking . . . the bone was pleading for me to come and save it from “bondage.”
See, I told you it would sound crazy. A talking bone! Ha ha. Boy, you never know what kind of stuff will show up in a dream.
Anyway, it was almost dawn and I had every intention of going back to sleep if Alfred would keep his feet out of my face. I dug around on the sleeping bag until I had it fluffed up just right. I flopped down, curled up in a tight circle, closed my eyes, and drifted out on a shimmering sea of . . .
“Hank! Hank the Cowdog!”
I sat straight up and lefted my lift ear . . . lefted my left ear . . . lifted my left ear, shall we say, because . . . well, I was almost sure that someone had called my name. Did you hear it? Maybe not, since you weren’t there, but I did . . . or thought I did.
I switched on Earatory Scanners and did a sweep of the whole area. Nothing, not a sound . . . well, I did pick up some strange noises coming from outside the tent. I perked my ears and listened. Slim. Snoring.
False alarm. I snuggled back into my bed and rolled down my eyelids.
“Hank! Hank the Cowdog! Save me, please! They’re going to lock me up in a museum!”
My head shot up. Okay, what was going on around here? I cut my eyes from side to side. Somewhere out in the darkness of night, a bone, an ancient bone, was calling me. Would I answer the call?
Hang on. It’s fixing to get pretty exciting around here.
Chapter Twenty: I Break Out of Prison
Most of your ordinary mutts would have rolled over and gone back to sleep, but, fellers, ordinary has never been part of my job description.
Before I knew it, I had risen to a standing position. Someone needed to check this out. I took a step and . . .
PLOP!
You forgot that my back legs were taped together, didn’t you? Me, too, and I landed on top of Little Alfred. I froze and waited to see what would happen next. The boy grumbled in his sleep and pushed me away, but he didn’t wake up or club me with his pillow.
So far, so good. I lifted both ears and swung them around to the west. There, I picked up the sounds of heavy breathing and . . . the call of a moose? Did we have meese here in the Texas Panhandle? No, wait, it was Slim snoring again. Say, that feller could really shake the rafters.
Well, if everyone was sound asleep . . . hmmm. Could I slip out of the tent without waking anyone and starting a riot? It was a Moment of Truth.
You know, very few dogs would have attempted such a bold escape. I mean, the odds against it were huge. Why, even an acrobat or a ballet dancer would have found it difficult to slip over and around two sleeping bodies—in a small tent, mind you, in the dark of night, and with his back legs tied together. But I had a feeling that I could do it.
See, years ago I had met a three-legged dog. They called him Tripod because he’d lost a leg in an accident. As I recall, he tried to run over a truck, and it didn’t work out too well. But you know what? Old Tripod could get around on three legs about as well as any dog with four, and he even returned to his life’s work, barking at cars.
In the back of my mind, I saw a vision of Tripod bouncing out into the street to do battle with a Volkswagen. Boink, boink, boink. That’s how he did it, putting most of his weight on his front legs and hopping along on the back one.
Suddenly I felt a rush of courage. Old Tripod was an inspiration, not only to me, but to dogs all over the world. Cut off one of our legs, and we’ll come back with three. Put us in shackles and chains, and we’ll learn to hop. We’ll never surrender, we’ll never give up, because the heart of a dog is bigger than one leg!
Could I do this? YES! I would do it to honor the memory of Tripod and all the other three-legged dogs in the world who had struggled to overcome anniversary . . . university . . . who had struggled to overcome veracity . . . phooey.
It really burns me up when I’m in the mid
dle of an inspirational speech and can’t think of the right word, so let’s mush on with the story.
Adversity. There we go. Dogs who had overcome adversity.
I pressed my lips together in a tight line and pointed myself toward the open tent flap.
Boink.
Boink.
Boink boink boink boink. Hey, I did it! I was standing outside the prison walls, looking up at the star full of skies and breathing the sweet air of freedom! The air had never smelled so delicious and I filled my lungs with a big gulp of it and yelled . . .
You know, this wasn’t the time to be yelling, not with ten head of crabby archeologists lurking in tents, but I did think about yelling, “This one is for you, Tripod!”
And then it was time to get on with the business. I did a Broad Visual Sweep of the entire encampment to reorient myself and to make double sure that I didn’t stumble into one of the men. It seemed unlikely that anyone would be wandering around camp before daylight, but a guy in my position couldn’t afford to take any chances.
What was “my position”? Great question. I’m glad you asked because this business of the buffalo bone had grown into a huge struggle of wills and purposes. On the one hand, we had a crew of men who were digging up bones in the name of Science. What did they do with their bones? They put ’em in plastic bags and shipped ’em off to some museum where they would sit around in cardboard boxes forever and ever.
On the other side, we had an earnest, sincere, hardworking ranch dog who earnestly and sincerely worked hard every day and, well, had a special fondness for bones. And in case you’re not familiar with the care and treatment of bones, let me point out that the very best and kindest thing you can do with a bone is . . . well, eat it.
I mean, that’s why bones were put on this Earth. That’s what every bone wants, to be chewed and eaten by an honest dog. No kidding.
And it just happens that the very best bones in the world are the ones that have been aged. Maybe you’ve seen dogs digging holes and burying bones? Well, there’s a reason for that. We don’t do it because we’re bored. We do it because, while fresh bones are good, aged bones are good-times-two. Aged bones are wonderful. We’re talking about flavor and tenderness. Put some age on a bone, fellers, and it becomes the kind of object that a dog thinks about in his wildest dreams.
And don’t forget that I’d just had a wildest dream about bones. That’s an important piece of evidence.
Do you see where this is heading? We’re talking about a bone that had been aged for seven hundred years—not seven hundred minutes or days, but seven hundred years! I had smacked my lips over a few bones that had been aged for a week or ten days, but I couldn’t even imagine the kind of deep, rich flavor you’d find in a bone that had been in the ground for seven hundred years.
So there we are. This bone deal had grown into something big and all at once we had all the ingredients of a classic You-Want-It-but-I-Want-It-More Struggle. On one side, we had Science. On the other, we had . . . well, ME.
And suddenly we find ourselves at the Bottom Line: I was awake and on the prowl, heh heh, while the Agents of Science were in their respective tents, sleeping like logs and snoring like hogs.
You be the judge here, and be honest. Which side should receive the Ancient Bone Award, the dog or the Agents of Science? Come to think of it, don’t bother to give your opinion because I really don’t care. See, I had already made up my mind. I was going to give the coveted Ancient Bone Award to the most deserving dog I had ever known.
ME.
Yes, I was aware that I might lose a few friends in the process. I had already noticed that archeologists were pretty narrow-minded and I had every reason to suppose that they would be sore losers, especially Doug McGrubber, the same guy who had claimed that he could read my mind.
Heh heh.
Maybe he’d read the first page of my mind and maybe he’d been right about the peanut butter, but he had no idea what was fixing to happen in the next chapter. Heh heh.
He would be upset. No, he would be worse than upset. He would be badly hacked and bent out of shape. He would scream, throw his trowel, foam at the mouth, and call me hateful names . . . only I wouldn’t be there to hear any of it. Heh heh. I would be long gone, like a puff of smoke in a roaring wind—me and my Ancient Bone Award.
But that brought up a small problem. Could I make my escape in leg irons? Actually, I hadn’t thought that far ahead and maybe I should have. Gulp. It was quite a distance back to the ranch, and coyotes might be lurking behind every bush, but somehow I would find a way. If old Tripod could do it, so could I.
Pretty shrewd plan, huh? You bet, but don’t forget who did the planning. I didn’t get to be Head of Ranch Security just because of my good looks . . . which brought to mind a certain lady dog who had once enflamed my heart.
Sardina Bandana. I felt a ripple of sadness but it was just as well that we ended it like this, without a last tearful good-bye. We had enjoyed a few fragrant moments together and we would always have those memories. She would weep for me, but that couldn’t be helped.
I turned my thoughts back to the mission that lay before me, the bone rescue of the century. Was I ready? I did one last scan of all the many gauges on the console of my mind and began creeping through the darkness.
I’d better not tell you what happened next. It might scare you out of your wits.
You think you can handle this? Okay, grab hold of something solid.
I began creeping through the darkness before dawn. Boink. Boink. I began hopping through the so-forth, and it wasn’t as easy as you might suppose. Remember all those string lines? I found two of them, but I’m no quitter. I was on a mission and nothing could stop me now.
Following the GPS reading on the illuminated screen of my mind, I inched closer and closer to the trench that held the Most Ancient of Bones.
Three feet.
Two feet.
One feet.
HUH?
You know, when a guy is out for a stroll in the moonlight, the last thing he expects to find . . . you won’t believe this. I mean, it scared the living bejeebers out of me, sent a jolt of electricity down my spine, throughout my body, and almost burned off the end of my tail.
When I turned my gaze toward the Most Ancient of Bones, I saw . . .
Yipes!
My ears flew up and my eyes popped wide open. I didn’t see the bone. I saw two big scruffy cannibals standing over it, staring at it with glittering eyes and licking their chops. THEY WERE ABOUT TO STEAL MY BONE!
Chapter Twenty-One: The Cannibals Try to Steal My Bone
We had cannibals in camp and that was bad news. The badder news was that they saw me. I mean, I’d hardly made a sound yet their ears had picked it up, and their yellow eyes came up and locked on me like laser beans.
It was Rip and Snort, the two guys you never want to meet on a moonlight stroll, especially if you’ve recently played a nasty trick on them and mouthed off about it. Suddenly a flood of memories washed over my mind. I heard a mocking voice say, “So long, suckers!” That was my voice, in case you’ve forgotten. Bad idea. Very bad idea.
Gulp.
Well, what’s a dog to do? In my first encounter with them that afternoon, I had tried the path of reason and friendship. This time, I had every reason to suppose that reason and friendship wouldn’t interest them much (it hadn’t the first time either), so I flipped a switch that brought up the Urgent Measures program. Near panic, I skimmed through the list of U.M.s until I came to one called Back to the Tent.
Yes, Back to the Tent would work: go streaking back to the tent, dive inside, burrow under the nearest sleeping bag, and hope that the brothers wouldn’t follow. Don’t forget that coyotes avoid all contact with humans, so they wouldn’t dare chase me into the tent.
In a flash, I turned my aircraft into the wind, closed the overhead
canopy, took a deep seat, and pushed the control lever as far as it would go, up to Turbo Seven. Glancing over my shoulder at the cannibals, I shot them a grin as the rocket engines let out a scream of fire and . . .
Boink. Plop.
Okay, we had a problem. Remember the duct tape? It’s impossible to launch a dog when his landing gear has been tampered with. What happens is that you get a tremendous burst of power and zero acceleration, causing the dog to, uh, crash nose-first into the ground.
That was a bad place to be, sprawled across the hard ground with my nose in the dirt, and before I could pull myself out of the wreckage, I was surrounded on all sides by grinning cannibals.
Snort seemed beside himself with glee. “Aha! Rip and Snort find dummy ranch dog away from house and boom-boom. Berry foolish you get caught by coyote brothers who feel madder and maddest about root beer trick.”
After some pulling and tugging, I managed to pull my nose out of the ground. Did it hurt? You bet it hurt, but at that moment, my nose was the leets of my waries. I sat up and studied the faces of my captors. A guy never wants to make too many judgments based on first impressions, but if he did, he would say that my chances of survival looked pretty bad.
These coyotes didn’t look friendly at all. We’re talking about angry and stirred up—and enjoying it, too.
I tried to hide the quiver in my voice. “Listen, guys, about that root beer deal. Did I mention that sometimes you don’t find it until you get down, oh, ten or fifteen feet? It’s true. See, root beer is heavier than water and it sinks, so drilling for root beer is always risky. That’s why we call it ‘wildcatting.’ Maybe you didn’t know that.”
Snort curled his lip. “Coyote eat wildcat in two bites, ho ho.”
“Right, but eating cats has nothing to do with drilling a wildcat root-beer well.”
“Rip and Snort not want to hear big hooey about root beer. Brothers still not believe in root beer.”
The Case of the Most Ancient Bone Page 12
