“Where would you go to find a beggar in this weather?”
“Well, you’d just . . . how should I know? Quit asking silly questions and catch some mice.”
“I don’t even know what a beggar is, and I’m too cold to care.”
“A beggar, son, is one who begs.”
“One what?”
“One beggar. A beggar is one beggar who begs. That’s simple enough.”
“Why are they going to town?”
“Because they . . . I don’t know. They need a horse, I guess.”
“I thought horses lived in the country.”
“They do live in the country but . . . never mind, Drover, just never mind. I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“Oh, that’s okay, but I’m still freezing.”
After that, I stayed as far away from Drover as I could. Just being close to him made me feel goofy.
Little Alfred arrived on the scene just then. He was all dressed up in a red snowsuit, red mittens, snow boots, and a wool stocking cap.
Slim got the hay loaded, just about the time Loper and Sally May and Baby Molly arrived. Alfred had been cleared by Headquarters to go with us to the Hodges’ Place, but Sally May still had quite a bit of advice to give Slim about being careful.
Then we all said good-bye and went our separate ways. Loper and his bunch went north to feed hay, and Slim and our bunch loaded up in the old blue pickup and headed south.
When we passed Miss Viola’s house down the creek, Slim honked his horn and said, “That’s where my petunia lives.” We didn’t see his petunia, but her two dogs, Black and Jack, came ripping out of the driveway and barked at us.
Well, you know me. I don’t take such things lightly. I sprang to the window and barked back at them, and if the window glass hadn’t been rolled up, I probably would have thrashed them both, right there in the middle of the county road.
Nothing makes me madder than . . .
Hmmm. Slim stopped the pickup and opened his door, and then he said to me . . . I think he was addressing me . . . he said, “You really want a piece of those dogs?”
I, uh . . . no, that was okay. There was no actual law against . . . heck, as long as they just barked and didn’t . . . no, we’d let it slide this time.
In other words, no thanks.
“Then hush.” He slammed his door and started off again.
Fine. I could handle that. Hushing had never been a problem for me.
Chapter Three: We Meet the Weirdest Cat You Ever Saw
Have I mentioned that Loper had taken a lease on the Hodges’ ranch? Maybe not, but he had, and we were wintering a bunch of cows on it. It was a dandy place to winter cows, because all the canyons and rough country gave them protection from storms.
But it wasn’t such a dandy place to reach in a two-wheel-drive pickup, in a snowstorm. Once you left the blacktop highway up on the flats, you faced nine miles of long, lonesome road, without a single house to mark the way or give you the feeling that you could get help if you needed it.
And there were spots in that long, lonesome road where a guy could get himself stuck. Slim came pretty close on several occasions. The road was bad and getting worse.
The road came to an end at the little camp house. When we got there, Slim shut off the pickup and took a deep breath.
“Whoo boy! I wasn’t sure we were going to get here. We shouldn’t have tried to make it down here without a four-wheel-drive. It’s a good thing we’ve got the Cammo-Stealth army truck down here. Let’s see if she’ll start.”
We all piled out of the blue pickup and moved over to the Cammo-Stealth army truck. What was the Cammo-Stealth army truck? A 1953 Dodge 4 x 4 with big mudgrip tires all the way around, a six-cylinder engine, and a four-speed transmission. It had a canvas top and was painted camouflage colors.
That’s where the “Cammo” part of the name came from. The “Stealth” part came from . . . let’s see if I can remember what Slim told Little Alfred . . . the old truck was so well camouflaged that it was “invisible to enemy radar.”
That’s what he said, and if you want to know who the “enemy” was and why they were using radar on the ranch, you’ll have to ask Slim.
Actually, I think it was some kind of joke.
Anyways, we hiked over to the Cammo-Stealth, which was parked on the west side of the camp house. Slim climbed in under the wheel and called Little Alfred over to watch.
“Pay attention, Button. I may get hurt down here one of these days and need you to drive me to town. I want you to know how to start this old thing.”
The boy climbed up on the running board. “Okay, Swim.”
“First thing you do when you drive any vehicle is check the gas gauge, only the gas gauge don’t work on this truck, so you run a shovel handle into the tank. Here, I’d better show you.”
He got out and ran a shovel handle into the tank. He pulled it out and showed the boy the wet mark. “That means you’ve got about ten gallons of gas.”
He got back inside and went through the whole starting routine: put the gearshift into neutral; pull out the ignition switch; pull out the choke as far as it will go, but don’t press on the gas pedal, “’cause this thing will flood if you even say ‘gas pedal.’”
“What does ‘fwuud’ mean?”
“It means the motor won’t start because . . . I don’t know why. Just do what I tell you and never mind the how-come.”
It was then that the cat appeared. Description: female calico, medium height and weight, longhair, pink nose, long white cat whiskers, and a pair of eyes that were something between greenish and yellowish.
They called her Mary D Cat.
She crawled out from under the house and came running toward us—yowling. Now, most of your ranch cats will yowl once in a while but not all the time. This one, once she started a yowl, she hung on to it and didn’t quit.
It wasn’t a short and simple “meow.” It was more like “Meeeee-yowwwwwwwww.”
Well, Drover and I were standing there beside the Cammo-Stealth, listening to Slim’s lecture. The cat came bounding over to us, and right away I noticed that she didn’t have much respect for a dog.
I mean, most of your ranch cats will approach a dog with some caution. They should. Not only is that the proper and mannerly thing to do, but it is the smart thing to do.
See, some dogs don’t need much of an excuse to thrash a cat. You might even say that we . . . uh, they . . . you might even say that they consider pounding cats part of their job. Or even a form of sport—a good, clean, wholesome sport that all the family can enjoy.
And for that reason, your smart cats . . . or to put it another way, your cats who are less dumb than the dumber ones will NOT come bounding up to a dog they’ve never met before, because that is a really stupid thing to do and it can get a cat into deep trouble.
But this one? Here she came, bounding straight toward us and yowling.
“A crust of bread? Baloney, cheese?
Spare a morsel, if you please.
Marooned, I am, oh hateful place!
At last I’ve found a friendly face!”
Well, this was very strange. She came right up to me and began rubbing on my leg and yowling in my face. I guess you know how much I love being rubbed on by cats. I don’t. But there she was, all over me, just as though we were old friends, and we weren’t. Not yet and maybe never.
“A crust of bread? Baloney, cheese? Spare a morsel, if you please.”
I pushed her away. “Uh, Kitty, I think there’s been some . . . I don’t have any cheese. No cheese, no baloney, no bread, and would you please stop rubbing on me!”
She went right on. “Marooned I am, oh hateful place! At last I’ve found a friendly face!”
I backed up several steps to get away from . . . fellers, this was a weird cat! I’d b
een rubbed on by cats before, but nothing like this. I backed up to get away from her, but there she was again—rubbing, purring, and yowling about cheese.
“Kitty, I’m sorry you’ve been marooned and I guess you think you’ve found a friendly face after all these years, but . . . get back, will you? I think you’ve made a slight error. That is, I think you’ve mistaken my face for . . . WILL YOU STOP RUBBING ON ME!”
“Cheese, just one little piece of cheese. I dream of cheese, you know. And baloney. And Vienna sausage. And sir, you have such a friendly face, I just know you won’t turn me away.”
I was baffled. I mean, what can you do with a cat that is half-starved, half-crazy, and trying to love you to death? You can’t just beat her up and go on about your business.
I solved the problem by surrendering my spot. I ran around to the other side of the army truck and waited to see what Drover would do. When I left, Kitty didn’t miss a beat. She moved right in on Drover and started the same routine about cheese and a friendly face.
Drover wasted no time with niceties or small talk. He didn’t know what was wrong with this cat but he knew something was screwy, and he wasn’t going to take any chances. You’d have thought he was facing a python or a boa constrictor or a ghost.
Zoom! He vanished. Kitty had just lost another friendly face. Not one to be discouraged, she went straight to the Cammo-Stealth and jumped up on Slim’s lap. He was deep into his lesson on starting the truck.
“Okay, you pull out the choker, let ’er sit for a minute, then . . .” He pitched the cat away. “Then you mash down on the starter . . .” The cat was back in his lap. “. . . with your foot, like this here.”
He pitched the cat and pushed on the starter. It turned over with a growl. The cat jumped back on his lap. He pitched her again. The motor continued to turn. Then it fired once. The cat was back in his lap.
Slim stopped what he was doing and looked down at her. She rubbed her ear across his chin and then flicked her tail over his nose.
“Kitty, I know you love me and I don’t blame you ’cause I’m so wonderful, but we’re fixing to have a problem. I can’t start this truck with your tail in my face. Now scram.”
He pitched her out, and two seconds later, she was right back. “Button, will you get this love-crazed cat out of here? ’Cause if you don’t, I’ll be forced to break her heart and possibly her neck.”
Little Alfred took charge of the cat problem, and right away I could see that he had just the right approach. Holding her in a loving headlock, he began dragging her around through the snow. And it worked. The cat just went limp, didn’t fight or scratch or struggle or make any kind of protest.
Well, with the cat under control, Slim turned back to the problem of starting the truck, which sounded as though it didn’t want to start. He hit the starter again and the motor turned over and over, until at last it kicked off.
I had the misfortune of standing near the exhaust pipe when the motor kicked off, and it may be years before I get all of that blue smoke out of my lungs. Boy, that was quite a . . . COUGH, HARK, ARG . . . quite a cloud of smoke, and I decided to move my business around to the front.
Slim revved up the motor and adjusted the choke and told Alfred to get in—without the cat. Then they pulled around to the cake house and started loading sacks of feed.
I followed and heaved a sigh of relief. At last we were rid of the . . .
You’ll never guess who went streaking past me and headed straight for the cake house. I’ll give you a hint. She was calico-colored and weird.
Yes, it was the cat.
Perhaps you know where I stand on the issue of letting cats pass me on the way to the cake house. I don’t allow it. It sets a bad example, don’t you see, and can lead to trouble later on. Cats should always be last.
So I reached for the afterburners and hit full-throttle and went streaking through the snow. And she beat me to the cake house.
Hmmm. That was a pretty fast cat.
Chapter Four: The Kitty Is Lured into My Trap
But of course we mustn’t forget that there were other circumstances involved.
Did I think to mention that I pulled a muscle in my right hind leg? Oh yes, bad muscle pull. I hadn’t warmed up, see, and the cat had probably spent all morning warming up and preparing for that sprint to the cake house, so one interpretation of the facts is that she, well, cheated.
Or if she hadn’t actually cheated, she had certainly taken unfair advantage of the situation. Hey, I had a steady job, many things to do besides warm up for a silly little race to the cake house, which, in the larger scheme of things, meant almost nothing anyway.
I mean, who cared, really? Life is filled with challenges, and racing a rinky-dink cat ranks very far down the list.
And did I mention about the cockleburs? Yes. Not only was I slowed by a tragic injury to the Greater Boogaloo muscle in my right posterior thigh, which would have put most dogs out of the race right there, but once the race began, I found myself running over gobs and gobs of dangerous cockleburs.
You ever try to run a hard race on cockleburs? It’s virtually impossible. You talk about pain! No ordinary dog could have stayed in that race. I not only stayed in the race but finished a respectable second, and might very well have won if it had gone on another twenty feet.
And if the cat hadn’t cheated and used underhanded tricks to . . . but the important point is that the race meant nothing to me, and finishing second to a stupid cat sure didn’t damage my self-esteamer, and just to prove how insignificant the whole thing was to me, I went over to the cat and gave her my congratulations for a race well run.
“Kitty,” I said between gulps of air, “as a small token of my admiration for your athletic ability, I am going to make sausage patties out of you.”
A lot of cats will run when you, uh, offer them such a small token. This one whirled around, humped up, hissed, stared at me with those strange yellowish eyes, and said, “Listen, clown, you lay a paw on me and I’ll take out your eyeballs and feed ’em to the crows!”
“Huh?”
“And don’t think I can’t do it.”
I, uh, took several steps backward. “Settle down, sister. I think perhaps you . . .”
“I’ve been marooned on this ranch for two long years. I’ve survived coons, coyotes, bobcats, skunks, badgers, hawks, eagles, and rattlesnakes.”
“Well, sure, and I admire that . . . in a certain limited sense.”
“You may think you’re tough, potlicker, but you won’t know what that word means until you lay a paw on me.”
I cleared my throat. “You know, I sense that we’re barking up the wrong road here, and perhaps you misappropriated my meaning. All I meant to say was that, well, you run a pretty good race . . . for a cat.”
She studied me with those unblinking cattish eyes. “What about the sausage business?”
“The sausage business? Oh that. Ha, ha. It meant nothing, almost nothing at all, just a little attempt at humor. Ha, ha.”
She heaved a sigh and relaxed the hump in her back. “It’s been so long since I tasted sausage!”
“Right, exactly, and that was my whole point, you see. I was just saying, wouldn’t it be nice to have a bite of sausage and . . .” I leaned forward and whispered, “. . . cheese.”
The word had a dramatic effect on the stupid . . . on Miss Mary D Cat. All at once her pink little mouth curled up in a smile. She closed her eyes, began to purr, and started rubbing on my leg.
“Cheese! Oh, what I’d give for a piece of cheese! I dream of cheese, you know, and . . .
“A crust of bread? Baloney, cheese?
Spare a morsel, if you please.
Marooned, I am, oh hateful place!
At last I’ve found a friendly face!”
Hmm, very interesting. It appeared that I had stumbled onto a
classic case of Skipsofrazzled Personality, and in case you’re not familiar with these heavy-duty technical terms, let me explain.
Your typical Skipsofrazzled Personality skips from one mood to another, don’t you see. They’ll be chirpy one minute and the next minute they’ll be yowling and hissing, and in your extreme cases, they’ll even make boastful threats such as “I’ll tear out your eyeballs and feed ’em to the crows.”
Another trait or characteristic of your Skipsofrazzled Personality is that the skipping mechanism can be activated by a certain code word. And you will notice that it took me only a matter of seconds to sniff out and discover Mary D Cat’s code word.
Heh, heh.
Cheese.
Heh, heh.
Pretty clever, huh? And now I can reveal for the first time that the so-called “Race to the Cake House” was just a ploy I had used to gather important information about this weird little cat.
That’s correct. I had planned it from the start, and losing the race was just part of the overall stragedy.
Are you shocked? Surprised? Heh, heh. Don’t ever underestimate the cunning of a Head of Ranch Security, and don’t forget that we spend a good part of our time operating underground. And don’t forget that staying at least one step ahead of the kittens is just part of my job.
Okay, where were we? Oh yes, I had just outsmarted and outflanked Mary D Cat and had gathered crucial information I needed. And now she was purring and rubbing on my legs and driving me nuts, and once again I found myself thinking, “GET AWAY FROM ME!”
But rather than coming right out and saying that, which would have been tacky and unfriendly—and, well, might have caused her to skip back over to the “Tear Out Your Eyeballs” skinario—I elected to, well, flee.
Surrender my spot.
Run around to the back of the cake house. And guess who or whom I found hiding back there. Mister Shivers.
He greeted me with his usual simple grin. “Oh, hi Hank.”
The Case of the Vampire Cat Page 2
