The Case of the Three Rings

by John R. Erickson

  Uh oh. All eyes turned toward the north side of the house where a bunch of wet clean clothes were flapping on two clotheslines. Have we ever discussed horses and clotheslines? Bad combination. You should never ride a bucking horse through a yard with a clothesline.

  But this deal had moved way beyond Slim’s control. He had a double handful of bronc and was doing well just to stay aboard. He was making a good ride, but this appeared to be one of those situations when a cowboy can’t decide if he’s better off staying in the saddle or getting bucked off.

  When he disappeared around the back side of the house, he was still ahorseback and for several seconds I lost visual contact. I could hear some amazing snorts and grunts coming from Socks, and Slim yelling, “Whoa, Socks, easy boy!” When they came around the northeast corner of the house, Slim was still aboard…and Socks was highballing it straight toward the clotheslines.

  He hit them with a full head of steam. Wires snapped, clothes flapped, and Slim’s horse came out wearing the whole mess. He looked like a float in a parade and was pitching harder than ever. Right before he flattened another section of the yard fence, Marybelle screeched, “Watch out for my fence!”

  Well, that was a good suggestion. It just didn’t work out too well.

  By this time, Socks had left the yard and had gotten back to the gravel drive in front of the barn. He was dragging two strands of clothesline wire and all of Marybelle’s laundry, and he had somebody’s denim work shirt draped over his face. That might have been the only thing that saved Slim from a terrible fate.

  See, the horse was spooked out of his mind but also blinded by the shirt, and instead of bucking some more, he stopped in his tracks. For several seconds, nobody moved. Socks was trembling all over and heaving for air. So was Slim, and his face had turned the color of chalk.

  It was an eerie moment. As quiet as a mouse, Slim swung his right leg over the cantle and stepped out of the saddle. He staggered a couple of steps, blinked his eyes, and checked to see if he had lost his hat. Of course he had. It had come off on the first jump.

  He reached for the Leatherman tool he carried in a little pouch on his belt. It was the kind device that folded out into several tools: a pair of pliers, two sizes of screwdriver, a file, a little saw blade, and a can opener. He used the pliers to cut the clothesline wire and started removing laundry from the horse. He talked in a quiet voice and gave Socks a pat now and then, and the horse stood still, but shaking all over. When Slim removed the shirt from the horse’s face, he heaved a sigh of relief.

  Whew! It appeared that the ordeal was over, and boy, what a wreck it had been.

  Well, this seemed a good time for me to step in and take charge of the situation, and what could be more important than finding and retrieving Slim’s hat? You know how these cowboys are about their hats. Without a hat, they feel undressed, out of costume, you might say, and I was pretty sure that Slim would be thrilled if I showed up with his hat.

  It might even earn me a free turkey neck. I wasn’t wild about his turkey necks and they were no substitute for a good steak, but those neck bones were pleasant to chew and in hard times, I’ll never turn down a turkey neck.

  So I made a dash to the yard, where his hat lay in the grass. With care and tenderness, I picked it up in my powerful jaws. If an ordinary mutt had attempted this, he would have left tooth tracks on the brim, and maybe slobber marks too. Not me. Hey, cowdogs understand cowboys, and the first thing you need to know about a cowboy is don’t mess with his hat.

  You can spill paint on his clothes, shave his head, hide his boots, burn his house down, and wreck his pickup, but don’t mess with his hat. Your average cowboy spends a lot of time, shaping that hat so that it tells the world…to be honest, I’m not sure what it tells the world, but he’s very fussy about the tilt of the brim and the crease in the crown. If you change the shape a cowboy’s hat, you’re shopping for trouble.

  I knew that, so in picking up Slim’s hat, I exercised the greatest of care and handled it as though it were a crown made of gold. His face bloomed into a smile when he saw me trotting toward him, a loyal cowdog delivering his master’s most treasured possession.

  “Well, look at this! Thanks, pooch.” He took the hat, turned it around, and gave it a close inspection. “But next time, try not to slobber on it.”

  What? I did not slobber on it! In fact, I had gone to great lengths NOT to slobber on it. What does it take to please these people? I was so outraged, I barked.

  Oops.

  There was a moment of dead silence. Then I heard…yipes…I heard this grunting sound, and we’re talking about grunts that were DEEP and powerful and so creepy that the hair stood up on the back of my neck. At first I thought it might have been a train or a bulldozer, but…no, that wasn’t likely.

  Gulp. I had a feeling that…you know, in all the excitement of Slim’s bronc ride, I had more or less forgotten what had started it: Winkie, with the barn door on his horns. I think the men had forgotten too, but that rumble of grunts sent all our heads snapping around.

  Winkie had been standing behind us the whole time and hadn’t made a peep or moved a hair, but now…gulp…he began to stir. And all at once, in the back of my mind, I saw this flashing sign that said: “Maybe you shouldn’t have barked.”

  It appeared that Winkie had gotten tired of wearing the overhead door, and to get rid of it, he proceeded to give his head several powerful shakes. There is nothing subtle about a buffalo bull and everything he does has an exaggerated effect. Winkie had a big head that was connected to a huge muscular neck, and when he shook his head, he was also tossing around a six-foot-by-three-foot panel of sheet metal—I mean, like a cat shaking a mouse.

  At that point, things happened in a blur. The sheet metal flew off Winkie’s horns and landed right in front of Socks, who had just recovered from his first nervous breakdown and went straight into his second. His eyeballs grew as big as pies, his ears went to the top of the flagpole, and fellers, he sold out—tore the reins out of Slim’s hand and bucked a straight line into the barn.

  I had just gotten over that surprise when I noticed…WINKIE WAS STARING AT ME…and he was making those deep grunting noises again and…yipes, shoveling up dirt with his front hooves.

  Have you ever been stared at by a buffalo? There is nothing in those eyes that a dog wants to see. We’re talking about cold black eyes that can freeze your gizzard.

  In the spooky silence, Uncle Johnny whispered, “Slim, you’d better move away from the dog. I have an idea that Winkie’s fixing to come uncorked.”

  Slim began backing away from me. The grunting sound in Winkie’s throat had turned into a rumble of thunder and I could hear his front hooves tearing the ground like a backhoe and…

  You know, at once I felt…well, very exposed, and when a dog is seized by the impulse of fear, he naturally wants to…well, seek the warmth and companionship of his human friends. Drawing my tail up between my legs, I began edging toward…

  “Hank, get away from me!”

  …the man I had loved and admired for so many years.

  “Meathead, get back!”

  You know, there’s a very special bond between a cowboy and his dog. I mean, we guard his porch, ride in his pickup, sleep in his bed, drink out of his commode, share his sorrows…

  “Hank!”

  Why was he backing away from me, and screeching? Hey, that buffalo had a BAD look in his eyes and I needed a friend and a place to hide, so I went to Full Flames on all engines and took refuge behind…uh…the legs of my friend.

  Chapter Seven: Winkie Does Some Damage

  Okay, let’s get something straight before we move into the dark and scary parts of this story. If I’d had time to think about the situation, I wouldn’t have taken refuge behind Slim’s legs.

  In the first place, he had skinny legs that offered about as much protection as a pair of too
thpicks. If you’re running from a buffalo, take refuge behind something made of concrete and rebar, not the bird-legs of a cowboy.

  In the second place, I never dreamed that Slim would…well, trip over me and fall to the ground. Honest. It never entered my mind, and when he hit the ground, I felt terrible about it—so bad that I forgot about everything else and rushed to administer Healing Licks to his…

  “Get away from me!”

  Why was he pushing me away? And screaming? Gee, had all our years together come down to this? I was crushed. Hey, I’d invested my whole life in this guy and it just about broke my heart when he…

  Huh?

  The earth beneath my feet seemed to be trembling. I cocked one ear and heard…that was odd. Did we have trains around here? I didn’t think so, but I was almost sure that I’d heard…

  Gulk.

  Did you forget about Winkie? I did. How could an intelligent dog forget about a snorting killer buffalo that was back-hoeing dirt only ten feet away from him? That’s a great question and I have no great answer. All I can say is that…well, we cowdogs have tender feelings, even though we try to hide them most of the time, and when our friends take a tumble…uh oh.

  HERE CAME WINKIE!

  Just for an instant, time seemed to stop and my mind held a snapshot of something huge, shaggy, mad, and dangerous coming straight at me. And I heard this voice inside my head: “Bud, you’d better get out of here…fast!”

  Out of the cornea of my eye, I saw Slim roll up into a ball and cover his head with his arms. I also saw an enormous animal with sharp horns and a real bad attitude about dogs. I pushed the throttle to the floor and went to Full Afterburners.

  Behind me, I heard Uncle Johnny yell, “Winkie, come back here! Be nice!”

  Yeah, right. Be nice. What a joke.

  You know, in many ways buffalo look and act like cows, but we should point out a few important differences. First, buffalo have amazing acceleration. They can go from a dead stop to full gallop in the blink of an eye.

  Second, over a short distance they can run as fast as a horse. Your average ranch dog can stay ahead of a cow without a whole lot of effort, and can even look back and bark a little trash. With buffalo, you run for your life and don’t even consider barking trash.

  Third, this buffalo had some kind of twisted hatred of dogs. I mean, cows don’t like dogs, but multiply that times ten and you get Winkie. What had I ever done to him? Nothing. I’d never even seen him until today, but fellers, he hated my guts and wanted to wear a few of them on his horns. And he wasn’t kidding.

  While I ran circles around the gravel drive in front of the barn, Slim and Uncle Johnny took to their heels and scattered like chickens. I mean, Winkie cleared the arena and was gaining ground on me and I could feel his blow-torch breath on my tail, so I feinted left and turned right, and went sprinting north down the lane.

  I headed straight for Slim’s pickup-trailer rig that was blocking the road. That would be my salvation…if I could stay alive that long.

  Oh, what a chase! You should have seen it. I had become Rocket Dog. Grown trees bent to the ground in the wake of my jet engines. Dust swirled, fence posts shuddered, birds fell from the sky, stunned by the sonic booms.

  Even so, Winkie was closing the gap on me and I could feel his blow torch burning the hairs on my tail. My legs ached and my lungs burned, my entire body begged for relief.

  But fifty feet away from the pickup, I knew I was going to win this deal! If the race had gone another hundred feet, he would have rolled me and…I didn’t even want to think about the rest of what might have happened. But the important thing is that I made it to the pickup and went sailing through the open window.

  Oh yeah! I’d made it! I was alive!

  And at that point, I did what any normal American dog would have done. I whirled around and cut loose with a withering barrage of barking. “Hey Winkie, you’re pathetic! What a loser! I saw your momma walking down the street the other day and she was so ugly…”

  CRASH!

  I never would have dreamed that a buffalo would try to jump through a pickup window, but THERE HE WAS!

  You’ve seen stuffed buffalo heads hanging on walls, right? That’s what I was looking at, only this one wasn’t stuffed. Lucky for me, he didn’t get all the way inside the cab. I mean, the shoulders and hump of a buffalo won’t fit through a pickup window, but he’d gotten enough of his head inside to scare the living bejeebers out of me.

  “Hey, Winkie, what I said about your mother…it was childish and cruel and I’m really ashamed…”

  He let out a thunderous, bellowing ROAR. I hit the floor and against the door. Hey, that rhymes, doesn’t it? Roar, floor, door. Never mind. All I cared about was getting as far away from that dragon as I could.

  For a long moment of heartbeats, I waited to see if he would come through the window. If he did, he would have no chance to kill me because I would already be dead from fright. He didn’t come into the cab (whew!) but he sure messed up the pickup. When he backed out, things made out of glass and metal made a bunch of bad sounds.

  Well, there stood the fifteen hundred-pound Winkie. He snorted, flicked his ears, swished his tail, and glanced off to the north. This next part was hard to believe but I was there as a witness. He jumped onto the hood of the pickup, mashed it like a bean can, jumped off the other side, and headed north in a trot.

  As I watched him trotting away, the windshield through which I was looking began to crack and disintegrate, and I absorbed a powerful lesson that had come from this experience. When herding a buffalo, don’t ever assume that you can stop him by blocking the road with a pickup and trailer. It won’t stop him and he might destroy the pickup.

  With broken glass falling like snow, I stood there, shaking from head to toenail. I heard footsteps approaching. It was Slim, running as fast as he could in his chaps and spurs. The man was obviously worried sick that his loyal companion had been maimed or killed. He would be SO GLAD to find that I was okay! I would have leaped out of the pickup and rushed out to meet him only I wasn’t sure my legs would work.

  Thirty feet away, he slowed to a walk, then stopped. His mouth dropped open as he leaned forward and stared at…well, what was left of his pickup, I guess. Uncle Johnny arrived just then, huffing and puffing.

  He shook his head and heaved a weary sigh. “Well, I guess that settles it. You’d better rope him.”

  Slim’s head snapped around and for a long moment, he stared at Uncle Johnny. “Rope him!”

  “Well, yes. I hate to do it, but we’ve tried everything else.”

  Slim started laughing and couldn’t stop. He laughed so hard, his face turned red. Finally he was able to speak. “Johnny, let me see if I can explain this. First of all, that horse of mine will never get within half a mile of a buffalo for the rest of his life, and if he does, he’ll be bucking wide open in the opposite direction. In the second place, I might look dumb enough to pitch a loop on something that wrecks pickups, but I’m not.”

  Johnny shrugged. “Well, you read about men roping buffalo.”

  “Yes, and the message is always the same. Don’t try this!”

  “What about Winkie? He’s going right back to those cows and my neighbor’s sure going to be unhappy.”

  “Johnny, the only way you’re going to get that buffalo gathered is to take all the cows with him. Hire five good cowboys to do it.”

  Johnny squinted at the pickup and flinched. “Boy, he done a number on your pickup.”

  “The pickup belongs to your niece’s husband and I can guarantee that when he sees it, he won’t be proud of me or you or Winkie. In fact, he may have trouble deciding which one of us he wants to kill first.”

  Johnny gave his head a sad shake. “I just don’t understand what got into Winkie. He’s never acted this naughty.”

  Slim’s gaze turned to h
im, and it seemed none too friendly. “What got into Winkie is that he’s a buffalo. He ain’t a goldfish or a parakeet. He used to be a bottle calf, but now he’s a wild animal that weighs fifteen hundred pounds.”

  Johnny pushed his hat back and scratched the top of his head. “Well, he was fine till your dog barked.”

  “Johnny, turn up your hearing aid and listen. Before my dog made a sound, your buffalo flattened a steel corral panel, jumped a five-wire fence, and walked through your barn door. We’re lucky to be alive. Winkie needs a new home. Give him to a zoo. Tell ‘em to send a fully covered, reinforced stock trailer that he can’t destroy. Or I can come back tomorrow and we’ll gather him with a .30-.06.”

  I think Slim was joking, but Uncle Johnny didn’t laugh. He rocked up and down on his toes and chewed on his lip. “I hate to say this, but Marybelle’s been telling me this for six months.”

  “Marybelle was right. What time is it?”

  Johnny held his wrist as far away from his eyes as he could and squinted at the watch. “I don’t have my glasses.”

  Slim looked at the watch. “I hate to leave you in a mess, but I have to be somewhere. If this pickup will start, I’m leaving.”

  Johnny gave his head a sad shake. “He was always the sweetest calf.”

  When Slim started the pickup, we heard a high-pitched whine coming from the motor. He tried to open the crumpled hood to check it out, but the hood release was messed up.

  Back inside the cab, he shook his head and growled, “That stinking buffalo mashed the fan housing and now I have to listen to that thing screech all the way home.”

  When we drove back to the barn, we saw Marybelle gathering up what was left of her laundry. She shot a glare at Uncle Johnny that would have skinned a hog. All at once he “thought of something he needed to do” in the corrals and vanished.