Oh, and because his leg was giving him fits, or so he claimed. But that was okay with me. I’d had all of Drover I could stand for one day.
You know why Drover is always bored? Because he’s locked inside a body with himself.
Slim trotted his horse for a few hundred yards, until we came to a little bunch of steers, and then he slowed Snips to a walk.
He got a good count and wrote the number down in the palm of his left hand. We moved on to the next bunch, and he went through the same procedure. By that time, he had tallied 187 steers, and all we had to do was find the remaining ten. Twelve. Thirteen.
We mushed on to the east. There, under a little rise, we found a bunch lying in some tall grass and sunflowers.
I knew my part in this deal and did it. I trotted into the middle of the steers and started growling orders. “Okay, you lazy bums, stand up and face inspection. Anybody sick? Bloated? Got pinkeye? Move around, let’s get a good look at you.”
Pretty impressive, huh? You bet it was. I doubt that Slim could have done the job without me there to help him.
I growled ’em up and stirred ’em around, and Slim got his count. The only problem was that he came up one short. We rode through the whole pasture again and he made another count, and he was still one short. He leaned back in the saddle, tipped his hat to the back of his head, and chewed on his lip.
“I guess we’d better ride out this draw. Hank, walk through them tall weeds and check ’em out. If you find that missing steer, there’s liable to be a bonus for you.”
Bonus? All right, heck of a deal. Let’s see, what would it be? A big, fresh sirloin steak? Yes, that would be nice. Slim knew my position on sirloin steaks: I love ’em. Or maybe . . .
“Hank, quit daydreaming and get to work. In this heat, I’m a-losing my ambition.”
Okay, fine, only I wasn’t “daydreaming.” I was merely . . . planning out my strategy for finding the steer. Hey, we dogs don’t just blunder into our work. We need a little time to plan and think through our, uh, business.
Sirloin steak would be fine.
I put my nose to the ground and plunged into the heavy growth of sunflowers, weeds, and other varieties of vegetation that grew in the bottom of the draw. In this kind of situation, we usually switch our targeting mechanisms over to Smelloradar, for the simple reason that . . . ACHOO! . . . those weeds were covered with dust and pollen and . . . ACHOO! . . . and that stuff can sure mess up our . . . ACHOO! . . . Smelloradar.
See, toward the middle of summer, certain varieties of weeds . . . ACHOO! . . . give off large amounts of pollen. You have your ragweeds, your pigweeds, your . . . ACHOO! . . . sunflowers, your bindweed, and all those other . . . ACHOO! . . . stupid, stinking weeds whose names I don’t . . . ACHOO! . . . know, and don’t care to know.
ACHOO!
And as I say, when a dog dives into the middle of ’em and goes into Deep Sniff on the . . . ACHOO! . . . Smelloradar, they can sure mess up his . . .
Through watering eyes, I noticed that Slim was grinning down at me. “Heh. Are them weeds a little dusty?”
Of course they were dusty. I wasn’t sneezing just for the fun of it. They were also loaded with pollen.
“Well, hurry up. The ranch ain’t paying you to sneeze, and I’m getting hot.”
Oh brother. You see how much sympathy we get? None. Zero. You volunteer for a hazardous job and then . . . never mind.
I plunged back into the jungle of poisonous weeds and resumed my Search Procedure, only this time I cancelled the Deep Sniff. See, by this time I had figured out that if a guy breathes through his mouth instead of his nose, he won’t be attacked by the . . . COUGH, COUGH . . . sneezing viruses or by the clouds of obnoxious . . . HARK, HACK . . . dust particles.
Sneezing, don’t you know, is triggered by the noselary region, so if a guy starts breathing through his mouth . . . HARK, HACK, HONK . . . he can die of lung rot instead of nose rot, and I’d had just about all the stinking weeds I could stand for one day.
If Slim wanted someone to check out those weeds, by George he could climb off his horse and do it himself.
I pointed myself toward daylight and staggered through the . . .
There he was. The steer, the missing steer. He was lying in the weeds, directly in front of me, and you won’t believe this part. You thought he was sick? Had pneumonia? Pinkeye? Scours? No sir, what he had was a bucket over his head! Because of the bucket he was not only blind, but he couldn’t see, and he had wandered away from the other cattle.
And I had found him. Pretty impressive, huh? You bet it was. Slim pulled the bucket off, released the little dummy, and we were done.
We were a pretty good team, Slim and I, and I had decided to forget about the Water Incident of the previous night. I could hardly wait for my bonus. Did he have a steak tucked away in his pocket? Maybe not, but . . . okay, a nice strip of beef jerky. Jerky is made of steak, right? Jerky would be fine.
He saw me waiting for my reward. He reached into his jeans pocket . . . yes, yes, this was going well, it would be a nice hunk of . . . my whole body quivered with antsipitation . . . anticipation, shall we say, and my tail began to whack itself on the . . .
He gave his head a shake. “I’m out of beef jerky, pooch. How about a nice fat grasshopper?”
I stared at him in disbelief. A nice fat grasshopper! What kind of crooked deal was this? Dogs didn’t eat . . .
He climbed into the saddle and headed back to the pickup. That was it. No steak, no jerky, not even a “thank you, buddy.” Sometimes I think this job is . . . oh well.
Upon reaching the pickup, we made a shocking discovery. The pickup had a flat tire. Slim moaned and groaned about having to change a flat tire in the heat, but there was nobody else to do it, so he grabbed the highlift jack and the spinner tire tool and went to work. I sat in the shade and enjoyed every moment of his suffering. It served him right for cheating me out of my reward.
At last he got the spare tire put on and loaded the jack and the flat tire on the pickup bed. He wiped the sweat out of his eyes and took a gulp of air.
“Now, we have to go into town to get this flat fixed, or we won’t have a spare. I’ll expect you boys to be on your best behavior, you hear? Don’t run off, don’t goof off, don’t do anything foolish. Just stay in the back of the pickup and be nice.”
That’s all the bonus I got. A ride into town.
Fine. I could wait. Being nice in town was second nature to me, but I would try to keep a close eye on Drover. Drover was the problem, see. You never knew what the little goof might do next. I would hock him like a watch.
Watch him like a hawk, shall we say.
We set out for town. After driving over three miles of dusty roads, we turned left on the highway and picked up speed. As you might expect, I occupied my place of honor on the spare tire, which was now a flat spare tire, and enjoyed letting the wind blow my ears around. I reached a very peaceful state of . . . well, peacefulness and contentment, and had just about forgotten about the Phony Bonus, when I heard Drover’s voice.
“Hank, look who’s behind us.”
I opened my eyes and saw . . . well, a pickup, an old blue pickup. “Yes? And so what?”
“Don’t you recognize it?”
“No, I . . .” Wait a minute. Hadn’t I seen that pickup before? There was something familiar about it. I sat up, narrowed my eyes, and studied it. “Drover, do you see who’s behind us? That’s Joe McCall.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Don’t you see what this means? If that’s the same pickup, then it’s probably got a big, ugly rottweiler in the back.”
“Yeah, I know. Bruiser.”
“Let’s see, what did they call that mutt?”
“Bruiser.”
“Ah, yes, Bruiser. And notice, Drover, that he’s looking at us from around the cab!
”
“Oh my gosh, don’t make him mad.”
“Relax, son. He’s in a moving pickup. He can’t touch us. Watch this.” I left the spare tire and swaggered toward the back of the pickup. I stuck out my tongue and crossed my eyes.
“Hank, I think he’s getting mad. He’s making fangs and I think he’s barking.”
“Good. Great. That’s just what he deserves, the big creep. Now watch this.” I turned around and showed him my backside. I even moved my hiney back and forth. “What does he think about that?”
“Oh my gosh, he’s really mad now. Are you sure he can’t jump into our pickup?”
“It’s impossible, Drover. We’ve got him just where we want him.”
Joe McCall pulled out into the other lane, stomped on the gas, and passed us. He honked and waved at Slim, and as they went around us, I found myself looking directly into the . . . oooo boy . . . into the hideous, angry, ugly face of Bruiser himself.
I gave him a little grin and a wave. “Hi. How y’all doing? You sure are ugly. I’ve seen toads with prettier faces than yours. If I was as ugly as you, I’d wear a sack over my head.”
They zoomed passed us. Chuckling to myself, I made my way back to the spare tire. Drover was lying flat, with his paws pulled up over his eyes. He was moaning and quivering, and you know what else? He started singing this song. After a moment, I couldn’t help but join him. Here, listen.
It’s Not Smart to Show Your Hiney to a Bear
Drover
Hank, you’re giving me a bad case of the shivers,
And this leg is really causing me some pain.
’Cause that dog is mean enough to eat our livers.
All that’s stopping him is just a piece of chain.
If he ever took a notion he might break the chain in half,
And I think that I would perish from the fright.
Would you please show some restraint,
Before I up and faint?
Just sit down before you get us in a fight.
Hank
Drover, what is the nature of your problem?
So I taunted him and had a little fun.
Heck, he’s just a dog and not some awful goblin.
If he jumps us, I’ll just whip him. You can run.
See, when you’re hanging with the Head of Ranch Security,
You don’t need to have a plan or hedge your bets.
Sure, I guess he’s kind of large,
But Drover, I’m in charge,
So relax, enjoy the ride, and cool your jets.
Drover
Yeah, but Hank, I really wish you wouldn’t do this.
Making enemies is not a funny joke.
See, I really would prefer that I lived through this,
And if he jumped into our pickup, I’d just croak.
What goes around will come around, I’ll bet the day will come
When you’ll wish that you’d resisted just a hair.
You say, “What the heck,”
But I’m a nervous wreck.
It’s not smart to show your hiney to a bear.
When the song was over, I gave the runt a smile. “Relax, Drover. We’ll never see that creep again.”
“Yeah? How can you be so sure?”
“Because it would be too much of a coincidence. All the odds are against it. Things like that just don’t happen in the real world.”
And sure enough, we didn’t see the big oaf again.
Until twenty minutes later.
Chapter Ten: I Impress All the Lady Dogs in Town
When I heard the pickup slowing down, I sat up and looked out. Sure enough, we were approaching the town of Twitchell.
This was where Slim and Loper came to buy windmill parts and ranch supplies, and where Sally May came to shop for groceries and clothes. It was a huge and exciting place. Hundreds of people lived here, maybe even thousands.
Main Street was long and wide, crawling with cars and people, and it had every kind of store and shop you could imagine: two drugstores, a five-and-dime store, three hardware stores, and several stores that sold clothes and stuff. Oh, and there was even a livestock auction on the north end of town, near the grain elevator.
The grain elevator was the tallest building in town, a big, round white structure that you could see from miles away. It was a building for grain, not people. They used it for storing wheat, don’t you see, after it was harvested in the summer.
We dogs didn’t get to come to town very often, and for us it was a pretty big deal. It gave us a chance to see new sights, to bark at new dogs, and . . . well, there was always the chance that, while motoring down Main, we might even catch a glimpse of a lady dog or two.
Pretty exciting, huh? You bet it was, and as we made our way down Main Street, I found myself sitting a little higher in the spare tire, holding my head at a prouder angle, and, you know, putting on my best appearance, just in case we saw one. Lady dog, that is.
The lady dogs are very impressed by any dog who rides in the back of a pickup. Maybe you didn’t know that, but they are, and the kind of pickup that impresses them most is the very kind we were riding in—a big four-wheel-drive ranch rig with mud flaps on the back, that’s pulling a stock trailer.
I don’t know what it is about mud flaps, but the women just go nuts over a dog who owns a big four-wheel-drive pickup with mud flaps.
So I was definitely on the alert, and sure enough, when we stopped for a red light in the middle of town, I glanced to my left and saw . . . mercy! She was a golden retriever, sitting up in the front seat of a yellow car.
A green car. Who cares? It was a car.
She was gorgeous. Long flowing ears, deep brown eyes, a shiny coat of hair, and a wonderful long nose. Her window was down halfway and I noticed that she tossed a glance in my direction.
No, it was even better than that. She tossed a glance at me, looked away, and then turned her adoring eyes back on me and stared. I, uh, wiggled my left eyebrow at her, and, oh, you should have seen her response! She lifted her ears, ever so slightly, and smiled.
Well, that told me all I needed to know. I heaved myself up from the spare tire, tossed a wink at Drover (he’d been watching the whole thing), and swaggered over to the side of the pickup.
“Howdy, ma’am,” I said in my deepest, most malodorous voice. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you at this stoplight before.”
Her response caused my old heart to swell up like . . . something. Red beans soaking in a bowl of water, I suppose. She said, and this is a direct quote, she said, “Oh?”
Wow!
I went on. “Yes ma’am. You see, I own a big ranch south of town. I seldom come to Twitchell, and when I do, I don’t get many opportunities to . . . well, chat with the ladies at a stoplight.”
And she said—check this out—she said, “Oh?”
Wow!
I had her going, fellers. I could see the light in her eyes and hear the quiver of romance in her voice. I didn’t slow down or back up. No sir, I plunged on and went straight to the Big Ticket.
“I noticed you . . . admiring my mud flaps.”
Her eyes seemed to . . . well, blank out, I guess you would say. “Your what?”
She was being coy. I had caught her stealing glances at the mud flaps, see, and she didn’t want me to know. I guess. With these women, it’s hard to tell what’s really going on. They give you a sign and pretend they didn’t. They say one thing and mean another.
It’s kind of confusing, to tell you the truth, but I was pretty sure I had her going in the right direction. I plunged on and showed her a wolfish smile.
“My mud flaps. They’re pretty nice, huh? They’re heavy duty. Only the biggest and . . .”
Oops. The light changed and we were moving forward. It caught me off guard and
I had to do a little scrambling around to keep my balance, but fortunately the lady’s car stayed beside our pickup.
I continued, speaking louder to be heard over the roar of the pickup. “Only the biggest and best of your ranch pickups have these heavy-duty mud flaps. The women really seem to like them. And I noticed you . . .” Slim let off the gas and shifted gears, causing me to stagger. “I saw you admiring them.”
She shook her head and said—I’ll keep these words close to my heart forever and ever—she said, “Leroy, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you don’t sit down, you’re going to fall out and get yourself smashed all over Main Street.”
The car pulled away, leaving me alone with my pounding heart and the glowing memory of her lovely face. My whole body tingled. She had called me . . . Leroy. No doubt that was some kind of code word which meant “Lover Boy” or “You Handsome Rascal.”
And her concern that I might get “smashed all over Main Street” proved, beyond the shallow of a doubt, that she really cared.
Sigh!
I never saw her again, and she never saw me again, but we’d enjoyed our precious moment together. I would keep the memory of it forever in the little cigar box of my heart.
I heaved a sigh and waved a farewell, just as Slim turned a corner and almost threw me out. Did he have to turn corners at thirty miles an hour? With my claws scraping on the bed of the pickup, I fought my way back to the spare tire and collapsed.
Drover was staring at me. “What was that all about?”
“She loves me, Drover. I could see it in her eyes.”
“I’ll be derned. I thought you were talking about trucks.”
“We were talking about love, Drover, but with these women, you don’t go straight to the point.”
“How come?”
“Because . . . because you don’t, that’s all. You don’t just run up and kiss ’em. You surround ’em, so to speak, with intelligent, witty conversation, and before they know it, they’re madly in love.”
The Case of the Raging Rottweiler Page 6
