. . . crowding pen and shut the gate. At that point, the steers have no place to go except down the alley, up the loading chute, and into the truck. Once that compartment is filled, the driver calls out the next number: “Thirty head.” This time, instead of sorting off ten head, as we did before, we sort off thirty head and . . .
“Hank, get out of the dadgum gate!”
. . . and shoo them into the crowding pen and go through the same process of running them down the alley and up into the truck. Good system, huh? You bet, and once they start moving down the alley, that’s when a cowdog really earns his pay.
What we do is station ourselves outside the alley and coax the dumbbell steers into the truck. We do this by marching up and down the alley, darting our noses between the boards of the corral fence, and biting the steers on the flank.
If you don’t know what you’re doing here, it can be dangerous. Those steers will kick, you know, and those kicks on the nose can hurt. Your better grades of cowdog will take their lumps and go right on, while your lower run of mutts will do what Drover does—disappear until the work is done.
Not me. I jumped right into the middle of the action. Sure, I got my nose rattled a time or two, but the steers who did it paid a terrible price. I always get the last bite.
The best part comes when we load the last bunch. On the last bunch, I actually move inside the alley with the cattle and personally follow them up the chute and into the truck, where I stand guard at the door until the driver gets it shut. There’s something kind of satisfying about standing there in the door and, you know, basking in the glory of a job well done.
Sometimes I take this opportunity to say good-bye to the cattle and wish them a safe journey.
“Well, good-bye, you morons. It was nice having you here at the ranch, but it’ll be even nicer having you gone. You ate all our grass and taking care of you was a pain in the neck. Good-bye, good riddance, and don’t ever come back.”
Something like that. Just a few words, heh heh, to let them know . . .
SLAM!
Huh?
Someone had . . . the driver had shut . . . Hey! Open the door!
Wait a minute, there’d been a big . . .
I felt the truck moving. I barked the alarm but the stupid steers were bawling and carrying on, and nobody heard me. We gathered speed. We were moving past the house. Through the slats in the side of the trailer, I could see Sally May out in her yard. Little Alfred was standing beside her. They waved good-bye to the driver.
Hey! Help! I was trapped!
They didn’t hear. But surely they would notice, someone would miss me, they would sense that the Head of Ranch Security had mysteriously vanished. Of course they would, and then Sally May would leap into her car and . . . no, she wouldn’t do that, she wouldn’t even care.
But Slim would notice. He would leap into his pickup and leave headquarters, spinning tires and throwing up gravel, and flag down the truck driver. Of course he would. It was just a matter of . . .
Time passed and nobody came. What the heck were they doing? The Head of Ranch Security had just been kidnapped and . . .
The truck went through its gears and gathered speed.
Gulk.
A feeling of panic began moving throughout my body. Holy smokes, I was locked inside a cattle truck with sixty-five head of . . . Ranch headquarters faded into the distance. So did my hopes and plans.
Slowly, I moved my gaze to the steers. They were staring at me. I swallowed hard. They seemed to be waiting for me to . . . well, say something, and perhaps to explain my presence on their, uh, truck.
“Hi. I’m the Head of Ranch Security. The, uh, owners of the ranch felt that you guys needed a . . . well, a guard, you might say, an escort to, uh, make sure you had a safe trip . . . a happy trip, a comfortable journey, so to speak. So . . . well, here I am. How’s the trip so far?”
They stared at me.
“Oh, I get it. You’ve never been on a guarded truck before. Ha, ha. Yes, it’s a little unusual, but you know, the owners felt . . . guys, they felt that you were such an extra special bunch of steers, they wanted to make sure you had a safe and pleasant trip to town. So they . . . well, they chose the Head of Ranch Security to go along. That says something right there, doesn’t it?”
No response. My mouth was suddenly very dry.
“Sure it does. I mean, they could have sent some ordinary little mutt to do the job, but that’s not what they did. No sir. They went straight to the top and . . . I mean, I’m a very busy dog, I had many things to do today, but when they offered me this assignment . . . hey, I wanted to come, because, fellas, riding to town with you is just about the . . .”
A big black white-faced steer stepped forward. “Aren’t you the dog that bit me a while ago?”
“Me? Oh, I don’t think so. Surely not. No.”
“You stuck your head through the fence and bit me.”
“No, you’re thinking of . . . uh . . . Drover, the other dog. He looks a lot like me, people are always getting us confused, and yes, he’s bad about . . . uh . . . biting. Bad biter. I’ve tried to talk to him about that, and by George, as soon as I get back to the ranch, I’ll sure . . .”
“It was you, bud.” The other steers nodded.
Gulp. “It was? Are you sure?”
They all nodded.
“Okay, let me explain.”
“And you called us a bunch of morons, didn’t you?”
“Oh no. I would never . . . Morons? Ha, ha. What an outrageous . . . No, fellas, I’m pretty sure . . .”
“It was you, bud.”
Gulp. “It was?” They nodded. Yipes. My mind was racing. “Okay, fellas, just simmer down. I think I can explain everything. Honest. See . . .”
“Shaddup.”
“Yes sir.”
“You ever been trampled to death?”
“Uh . . . no, never have.”
“You ever been used for a soccer ball and kicked from one end of a cattle truck to the other?”
“Uh . . . no sir.”
“Anybody ever used your face to mop up the floor of a cattle truck?”
“I don’t think so. No.”
He stuck his nose right down into my face. “If I was you, I’d curl up against that door and keep my mouth shut all the way to town.”
“I was just thinking about . . . uh . . . doing that. Great idea.”
“’Cause if you don’t, all those bad things could happen to you all of a sudden.”
“Right. Good point. But let me hasten to add . . .”
“Shaddup.”
I shutted up. Shut upped. Whatevered. I curled up in a ball and huddled against the door. I could hear them muttering and laughing, like . . . I don’t know what. Like a bunch of pirates, a bunch of bloodthirsty pirates plotting a mutiny.
“What a jerk.”
“Yeah, and he’s a dumb jerk.”
“Got trapped on a load of cattle. Har, har. How dumb is that?”
“That’s off-the-chart dumb.”
“That’s cowdog-dumb. Har, har.”
I listened to their mockeries and felt a growing sense of indignation. At one point I seriously considered leaping right into the middle of ’em and whipping the whole bunch, but I managed to, uh, keep control of myself and chose instead to take the Higher Road—to be a mature dog and to ignore their sticks and stones.
That was the longest ride of my life. I thought it would never end. I didn’t dare sleep, and I hardly dared even to breathe. I mean, who could relax with those big lugs yucking it up and plotting meanness? Not me.
At last the truck began to slow and we coasted into town. Through the slats in the side of the truck, I was able to see cars, people, stores, Main Street. Thank goodness, we had finally made it to Twitchell!
We turned off of
Main Street, went three blocks, and made another turn. We had arrived at the Twitchell Livestock Auction. As we were backing up to the loading chute, that same smart-alecky steer bent down and said, “How’s the trip so far, bud?”
“Swell. Wonderful. I can’t tell you how much fun this has been.”
They roared and mooed with childish mocking laughter.
The door opened and I found myself staring into the astonished eyes of the driver, and at his oversized black hat, which pushed his ears out and made him look like a monkey, and at his miserable little excuse for a mustache.
“You? What are you doing here?”
That was for me to know and for him to figure out. I shot through his legs, scrambled through the corral fence, and got the heck out of there.
Chapter Five: I am Arrested on False Charges
Boy, what an exciting escape! I got out of there just in the nickering of time, and then I went right to work, plotting my revenge on those big lugs who had . . .
Well, they hadn’t actually done much of anything, except they had mocked and laughed at me, and if you’re a cowdog, that’s a big deal. Pride, cowdog pride. We don’t take trash off the cats or the cows or the steers, and setting the record straight is pretty derned important to us.
When they came off the truck, I was waiting outside the corral to give them the full load of Score Settlers and Mockery Countermeasures. You’ll be impressed by this. As each moron passed down the alley, I stuck out my tongue at him and yelled, “I should have whipped you galoots when I had the chance! And your mother was nothing but a fat cow, so there!”
Heh, heh. Boy, that ripped ’em, just tore ’em to shreds, and there wasn’t a thing they could do about it, since I was outside the corral and they were inside. In the face of such wit and intelligence, all they could do was hang their heads and trot on down the alley and say to themselves, “Gosh, what a brilliant dog! He’s right, we’re just a bunch of big dumb galoots, and now we’re sorry we said all those hateful things to him.”
See? Sometimes a guy has to wait for justice, and sometimes he has to help it along its rocky path, but justice always comes.
Well, having served the Cause of Justice and having won a huge victory over the forces of brutish ignorance, I was feeling pretty proud of myself. Why not? I had earned it in a match of wits and so forth, and don’t forget that I had been outnumbered sixty-five to one. So yes, I was feeling pretty . . . well, not cocky exactly, but proud and fulfilled.
Oh, and don’t forget this part. I had a strong suspicion that Loper and Slim would be just as proud and fillfulled when they heard all the facts in this case—namely, that I had guarded and escorted their investment of cattle all the way to town, and had even fought off two gangs of cattle rustlers.
Did I mention that part? Maybe not, but yes, along the road, we had been jumped, attacked, and amwhacked by two gangs of bloodthirsty cattle rustlers. Ambushed. Bushwhacked. At sixty miles an hour, we shot it out, right there on the public highway. It was a close call, but I managed to disable them with bursts of High Energy Microwave Barking.
Boy, what a fight! The thunder of horses’ hooves, yelling, the zing of bullets in the air, the whole nine yards of scary and exciting stuff.
So, yes, I was feeling so good about all these triumphs, I did what any normal American cowdog would have done. I marched around to the right side of the cattle truck and lobbed a load of Secret Chemical Agent into the middle of that tire Drover had missed at the ranch.
There! Now when that hateful monkey-eared little truck driver tried to pull away from the loading chute, he would find, heh heh, that all his hubs and bearings had melted down. His truck would have to be removed in parts and pieces, and the next time he felt the urge to chunk a cup of ice at a hardworking ranch dog, he would think twice about it.
With these triumphs glowing in the theater of my mind, I pranced up to the office building. See, your livestock auctions consist of a big “yard” of pens and corrals, and also a main building, inside of which they keep an office, the sale ring, and a small cafe. The sale ring is a kind of pen with bleachers on three sides, where the cattle buyers sit.
How did I know so much about livestock auctions? Hey, I was an old hand at this business. Maybe you didn’t know it, but I had come here as a pup and had taken my first job at these very stockyards. That’s where I met Slim Chance, but that’s another story.
Where were we? Oh yes, feeling great and triumphant, I marched past the office and caught the scent of something . . . hmmm, fragrant and delicious. I called a halt to my march and switched on Smelloradar. The fragrant waves seemed to be coming from . . . hmmm . . . several garbage barrels near the back door of the cafe.
I tossed slow glances over all shoulders and in all directions. Nobody was watching. Nobody was even close to watching, because nobody was around. Heh, heh. And nobody would ever know how those barrels got . . . well, overturned, shall we say.
THUNK! THUNK!
Just as I had suspected, the barrels contained a gold mine of great stuff: cold greasy french fries, pieces of bread, bits of hamburger, and half a tuna fish sandwich. What a find! I went right to work and began eating my way through these treasures. Great stuff!
But then, all at once, I heard a roar outside the barrel and poked out my head to see . . . hmmm. It was the cattle truck, pulling away from the loading chute. It appeared that . . . okay, I figured it out. On that last wheel—remember the last wheel?—on that last wheel job, I had forgotten to properly stir and shake up the Secret Chemical Agent, and if you don’t . . .
Oh well, who cared? I was knee-deep in delicious restaurant food, so I decided to let him go—this time. But if he ever . . .
HUH?
I hadn’t noticed the pickup. Or the man leaning against the fender, watching me. It was a white pickup with . . . what was that thing? A wire cage in the back, it appeared, and on the side of the pickup door was written in big red letters, city of twitchell animal control.
Animal control? What was animal control? I’d never heard of it. I mean, what kind of animals did they have in Twitchell that needed . . .
The man was staring at me. Glaring at me, actually, and he held a lariat rope in his hands. I wondered what he had in mind . . . I mean, why would he be holding a . . .
I stopped chewing my greasy french fries. My mouth stopped in mid-chew.
Animal control? Surely that didn’t mean . . . dogcatcher, did it?
Swish!
Yes, by George, it sure did, and right then I figured out why he was carrying a catch rope.
He was the city dogcatcher and he used the rope for capturing stray dogs!
He caught me, is how I figured it out, and I mean the guy was so fast with that rope, I never saw it coming. He really nailed me, and at that point, I had no choice but to hit Turbo Five and break the . . .
Gulk!
. . . rope, only it was stouter than you might have supposed, and I ended up lying on my back and staring up at the blue summer sky and the dogcatcher’s face. He appeared to be looking down at . . . well, at ME.
He had a toothpick parked in the side of his mouth. “No collar, no tags, and tipping over trash barrels. Pooch, you’re about as illegal as a dog can be, and we’ve got a place for mutts like you.”
Hey, wait, I could explain everything. See, I wasn’t a mutt. Honest. And I had come to town on a very important assignment, guarding a load of . . . and about those trash barrels, a sudden gust of wind must have . . .
SLAM!
He wasn’t interested in my story, and the next thing I knew, I had been pitched into the prison cage in the back of the pickup. I was on the inside, looking out . . . at the dogcatcher and his toothpick.
He studied me with narrowed eyes. “You know, I think we’ve met before.”
Me? Oh no, I didn’t think so. See, I didn’t live in Twitchell. I was f
rom the country, a . . . uh . . . foreign country. England. Yamoslovia. One of those foreign lands. I was just visiting. On my way home. There was no way . . .
He didn’t listen. He walked away, got into the pickup, and off we went. Unless I was badly mistaken, he was hauling me to the . . . gulp . . . dog pound. Prison. Devil’s Island for dogs.
It was then that I noticed another dog in the cage. I hadn’t seen him until that very moment. He was curled up—asleep, if you can believe that.
“Hey you, wake up. A terrible injustice is being done here. I’ve been arrested on false charges. I’ve been kidnapped and shanghaied. My rights as a dog have been trampled, and all you can do is lie there and sleep. Wake up!”
His head came up. He was . . . some kind of hound dog. A basset. Description: big baggy sad eyes, drooping jowls, front feet that pointed outward, and an incredibly long set of ears.
He stared at me, then spoke. “Did you get caught?”
“Yes, I certainly did, and this is an outrage.”
“Uh-huh. That’s what they all say.”
“I’m a law-abiding dog. I was doing nothing, almost nothing at all, and your town dogcatcher arrested me on false and trumped-up charges.”
“Uh-huh. That’s what they all say.”
“I demand to speak to the mayor.”
“You already did.”
“I did not. I had a brief, unpleasant conversation with your stupid dogcatcher, but . . .”
“The stupid dogcatcher’s our mayor.”
I stared at him in shock and disbelief. “How can one man be both?”
“Small town.”
“Well, there’s another outrage. Okay, I demand to speak to the governor.”
He shrugged. “Well, there’s no law against demanding, I guess.”
“Is that all you can say? Listen, pal, I’m an innocent dog and . . .” I gave him a closer look. “Wait a minute. Don’t I know you?”
He yawned. “Could be, don’t recall. Name’s Ralph.”
“Yes, of course, it’s all coming back to me. You’re Dogpound Ralph! You’re the dogcatcher’s pet. You live at the pound. Don’t you remember me?”
The Fling Page 3
