Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

by John R. Erickson

  In some respects, the confrontation with Sally May turned out to be a, shall we say, negative ex­perience for me personally. Yes, I took a few lumps. But throbbing ribs and a tongue-lashing were a small price to pay for a triumph on the strategic side of the ledger.

  For once again, I had beat Pete the Barncat at his own shabby game.

  Chapter Four: Terminal Rootabegga and Another Murder

  Well, in just a few short hours I had knocked out several pieces of work. Not only had I notched up a moral victory over Pete, but I had solved The Case of the Moving Garden.

  Your ordinary run of ranch dog would have gone back to bed, figgering he had already put in a day’s work. But me? No sir. Even though I had stayed up half the night sifting clues, it never occurred to me to go back to bed.

  All right, maybe it occurred to me, but iron discipline prevailed.

  I laid low in the sick pen while Sally May rumbled over her tomato plants and tried to keep Little Alfred from wandering down to the creek.

  When I heard the slap-slap of rubber thongs against her feet, I peeked out and saw her walking back to the house. The coast was clear and I made a dash for the sewer.

  This was the spot where the septic tank overflowed, don’t you see. It held the magic green waters that healed the sick and impressed the women. Not that I was particularly sick or planning to sweep any women off their feet, but while we’re on the subject of women, it had been a while since I had seen the lovely Miss Beulah.

  Oh, be still, my heart! She had visited my gunnysack many times at night, a scented phantom in my dreams that troubled my sleep and left me calling her name in the darkness. Couldn’t get that woman off my mind. Why she wasted her time with Plato the Bird Dog, I just didn’t know. Imagine the torment that must have caused her!

  Anyway, where was I? Sewer. A regular course of mineral baths was part of my overall fitness program, and I tried not to think of Beulah during working hours.

  I climbed out of the sewer, gave myself a good shake, and headed down to the creek to study the scene of the murder one more time. That case had me stumped. I had reached a dead end. I hoped I might find some little piece of evidence I had missed the first time.

  If I had found a new piece of evidence, it would have been little. There just wasn’t much left of the victim—maybe a double handful of feathers, four of five toenails, and a beak.

  I tried to put the clues into a pattern and build a profile of the murderer. He had a taste for young, plump chickens but obviously he didn’t care for beaks, toenails, or feathers.

  Hmmmm. Not much of a profile there. That description fit a wide range of characters, including, well . . . me. I was no fiend, you understand, but no fool either. In the unlikely event that I had decided to break the law and eat a young, plump chicken, I would have devoured everything but toenails, feathers, and the beak.

  There’s no chance that I would have risked my career for the momentary delight of eating a young, plump, tender, juicy chicken. But if I had, and I repeat, this is strictly a hypogorical example, I would have left the aforementioned parts.

  So I was back to Point Zero. I checked for tracks but found only mine and Drover’s and a few smudged prints that I couldn’t identify. Maybe the killer had smudged feet. Then again, maybe he didn’t.

  I was deep in thought, following each lead until it vanished into thin air, when something strange occurred. I sort of passed out, fainted. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. One minute I was sitting there beside the creek, and the next thing I knew, I woke up near some willows, maybe fifty feet downstream.

  Kind of scared me, to be honest about it. I knew I’d been working hard, staying up late at night, burning the flashlight at both ends, you might say, but I hadn’t realized that it had taken such a toll on my body.

  I mean, to some of us overwork is just a normal condition. You get used to a grinding schedule, sacrificing everything for the ranch, giving up your private life for something you believe in, and you just don’t notice that it’s chipping away at your physical and psycho-mechanical whatever.

  This is especially true, I might point out, when a guy starts out with a rather magnificent array of physical gifts: eyes that see in the dark, ears that can hear a prairie dog in its hole, a heart that pumps blood twenty-four hours a day, rain or shine, and finally, an overall body that causes monsters to shrink in fear and women to faint.

  But what a guy tends to forget is the joker in the deck of life: time. Time not only marches on, it marches right over the top of a guy, steps on his nose and tail and leaves boot prints up and down his back.

  Maybe the years were catching up with me. Maybe I’d been pushing myself too hard. Maybe all the cares and worries of running the ranch had begun to grind me down. Maybe I had hardening of the asteroids or high blood pressure or low blood pressure or terminal rootabegga.

  I had seen other dogs go down with those afflictions. Maybe it was my turn. Maybe, after a long and glorious career in security work, I had finally burned myself out.

  I was in the midst of these depressing thoughts when Drover came streaking down from the corrals. He was yip-yip-yipping and obviously in a state of excitement, if not sheer panic.

  “Hank, oh Hank, they’re back, come quick, Mayday, help, blood, murder!”

  There are no holidays at the top. I pushed myself up to face the latest crisis on the ranch. Drover was there in front of me, jumping up and down and squeaking. “Drover, please don’t squeak.”

  “Okay, Hank, but . . .”

  “And quit hopping up and down. Hold still, try to get control of yourself.” He quit hopping and squeaking, which helped a bunch. “Now, I don’t expect you to care that I’m showing early symptoms of terminal rootabegga, but you might as well know about it now.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a rare and dreaded disease. One minute you feel great; the next, bingo, you’re down, with one foot in the grave.”

  “Well, that still leaves you with three.”

  I gave him my most patient glare. “That’s true, Drover, and I’m touched by your concern. It’s times like these that make a guy appreciate all the wonderful friends he doesn’t have.”

  “That’s what friends are for.”

  “Yes, I know, and what I wouldn’t give to have just one!”

  “Oh, you’ve won plenty, Hank, but you can’t win ’em all.”

  “That may be the smartest thing you ever said, Drover.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And it’s complete nonsense. Now, tell me why you came down here—slowly, calmly, without your usual hysterics.”

  His eyes blanked out. “Let’s see, why did I come down here?”

  “You were excited about something. You were yipping and hopping.”

  He shook his head. “Must have been pretty im­portant.”

  “Are you telling me you’ve forgotten?”

  “Heck no.You might get mad.”

  “Something about blood.”

  “Blood?”

  “And murder.”

  “Murder? Sounds awful. Sure wish I could . . . oh Hank, blood and murder, they’re back on the ranch!”

  I poked him in the chest with my paw. “Who’s back on the ranch? Spit it out, you’re burning daylight.”

  “The killers! They struck again, in broad daylight!”

  “HUH? You mean, there’s been another murder?”

  “Yes! Oh, it’s awful and I’m scared.”

  Well, that bit of news sent a shock clean out to the end of my tail. Never mind that I was on death’s front porch, I had to get cracking again and protect the ranch.

  I went streaking up the hill. “Come on, Drover, follow me!”

  “Do you know where you’re going?”

  I stopped and waited for him to catch up. “Drover, you neglected to m
ention one small piece of information. Where are we going?”

  “Well, let’s see . . . you know, I can’t remember.”

  “Oh for crying out loud!”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute, I’ve got it! Behind the machine shed.”

  We went tearing up the hill, me in the lead and Drover bringing up the rear. In the middle of those dead weeds behind the machine shed, five paces east of the one-way plow, I found the evidence. And I was astonished at how little evidence there was. Nothing but three white feathers!

  “Holy cats, Drover, the killers not only ate all the meat and bones this time, they are the beak and toenails and most of the feathers. And there’s no blood whatsoever.”

  He came up and looked at the scene. “Kind of scary, ain’t it?”

  “It certainly is, but I’m beginning to see a pattern in these killings.”

  He nodded his head. “Yeah, and there’s an even better pattern over here where the chicken got killed.”

  “Huh?”

  He moved six paces to the east and stood over a familiar sight: a double-handful of feathers, toenails, a beak, and bloodstains in the dirt.

  I joined him. “Yes, I see what you mean. This pattern is better. And what’s more important, it matches the M.O. of last night’s killing.” I started pawing up dirt and throwing it on the feathers, etc.

  “Hey, be careful, you’re covering up the evidence.”

  I finished the job and turned to Drover. “Of course I was covering the evidence. And I suppose I have to explain why.”

  “Might be a good idea.”

  “Very well, listen carefully.” I tossed a glance over both shoulders and lowered my voice. “We have studied the evidence and found a pattern, right? What’s to keep the killer from coming back, studying the same evidence, and discovering the same pattern? And then using it? Had you thought of that?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, there you are. We can’t allow our evidence to be used to encourage criminal behavior, and furthermore, if Loper and Sally May find out they’ve lost two pullets in two days, they’re liable to think we’re not doing our job.”

  “Never thought of that.”

  “Which might contain a germ of truth, and I don’t need to tell you how dangerous germs can be.” Drover is so predictable. He sneezed. “There, you see? Through a process of simple deduction, we’ve proved my original point. For now, the best thing we can do is forget we ever saw this evidence and try to build up our resistance to germs.”

  And with that, I put The Case of the Vanish­ing Chickens on temporary hold.

  Chapter Five: The Mailman Gets It

  We left the murder scene and moved around to the front of the machine shed. Drover went straight to the upside-down Ford hubcap which serves as our food bowl and started crunching the latest offering of Co-op dog food.

  Funny, I wasn’t at all hungry, even though I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. Should have been hungry. I went over and sniffed the grub. It just didn’t excite me. Maybe I was getting tired of Co-op.

  At that moment my ears shot up. I heard a vehicle coming down the county road and suddenly I had a terrible thought: we had gotten so bogged down in cases and investigations, we had let the mailman go four or five days without a good barking.

  Now I’m well aware that in the world of murders and so forth, easing up on the mailman might not sound like a catastrophe. But let me tell you something about these post office people. If you let ’em go too long without a good stiff challenge, they start getting some funny ideas.

  My Uncle Beanie, one of the all-time greats at mail truck barking, used to say that the first thing he did every morning was to ask himself the question, “Whose ranch is this?” He claimed that a cowdog’s first job is to clear up the matter of ownership.

  Your cocker spaniels and your poodles and your other inferior breeds might not care whose ranch it is, but it’s priority number one for us cowdogs. It’s OUR ranch, period. We try to be big about it. We try not to rub it in. We try not to become overbearing. But there’s a limit to how nice you can be in saying, THIS IS MY RANCH.

  I mean, as long as everyone respects our country, we get along fine. We don’t mind people looking, don’t you know, but if they drive or walk or fly across our country, we want to know the reason why.

  And post office people are notorious for driv­ing up and down the roads without permission. They’ll sneak onto the ranch, slip up to the mailbox, make some suspicious movements which no one has ever bothered to explain to me, and then hurry away.

  Why are they so sneaky? What are they actually doing in that mailbox? And why do they drive away in such a hurry? Until a dog gets a few answers to these questions, he can’t afford to take any chances with the mailman.

  “Drover, I’m going up to intercept the mailman. Can you hold things down here until I get back?”

  He was still crunching his Co-op. Sounded like he was eating rocks. He nodded his head and gave me a silly grin. “Sure, Hank. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  “All right, and don’t talk with your mouth full. You just spit some crumbs on me. I should be back within half an hour.”

  He nodded and waved good-bye. And with that, I swaggered out to intercept the mailman, singing the cowdog song for the occasion, “Bark at the Mailman Battle Hymn.” (The tune is the same as “God of our Fathers,” if you’d care to sing along.) To do the song properly, you need a full orchestra and chorus in the background, but that isn’t always possible under pasture conditions.

  Bark at the Mailman Battle Hymn

  Bark at the mailman, give him the full load.

  He has no business driving on my road.

  I am in charge of Ranch Security.

  Trespassers must have permits cleared by me.

  Postal employees just don’t understand

  Dangers they risk when slipping on my land.

  What are you doing at my mailbox, sire?

  Get off my ranch or I shall bite your tires!

  Pretty good song, huh? You won’t find too many songs that will inspire a cowdog more than “Bark at the Mailman Battle Hymn.” After a couple of verses, I’m ready to go out and by George do some damage.

  I loped out into the pasture and watched the approach of the trespasser. He crossed the bridge there at Spook Canyon and rattled over the cattle guard between the horse pasture and the home pasture. He had entered Security Zone Alpha (that’s sort of a code name we use for the home pasture) and I couldn’t be held responsible for anything that followed.

  I went into my combat configuration. First, I stretched out flat on the ground, giving myself such a low profile that I became almost invisible. Second, I pinned back my ears. Third, I stiffened my tail to its full-alert position. Fourth, I initiated my Growling Mode. Fifth and finally, I unsheathed my fangs, which is something I can do by tensing the monosodium pectorus muscles in my cheeks.

  (Don’t bother to memorize these technical terms. Unless you’re involved in security work on a daily basis, you won’t have much call for them.)

  As the pickup pulled off the road and bounced to a stop beside the mailbox, I began creeping forward. By the time the mailman had lowered the flag on the box and snapped the door shut, I was up on my feet, gliding across the pasture. The instant I saw the pickup pull away, I hit full throttle.

  And fellers, the attack was on! First I barked the tailpipe and the right rear tire. Then I zoomed around and barked the left rear tire. Then I executed a very tricky maneuver which most dogs won’t even attempt. Running at full tilt, I swooped in and bit the left front tire!

  And I should point out that I did this in full view of the mailman—a big, tall, ugly guy who had lost most of the hair on top of his head but wore a Farm Bureau cap to cover it. And did I mention the tumor on his left cheek? Had a big tumor on his left cheek,
some kind of deformity that made him look extra mean.

  Most dogs would have been scared. Me? No sir. The way I look at it, the bigger the mailman, the slower the truck. Glancing up as I dived at the tire, I could see lines of fear etched on his face. By then he must have known the extent of his peril.

  I mean, let’s face the brutal fact. On a good run, when conditions are just right, I can tear the tread off a steel-belted radial tire, just bust it like a child’s balloon. And on a few rare occasions, I’ve been known to tear the wheel off the . . . whatever it is the wheel is bolted to, axle I guess, shearing off lug bolts as though they were toothpicks.

  So who could blame the mailman for showing fear? Terror is the proper response to the terrible. He made the only sensible decision under the circumstances: he cobbed that pickup and went roaring away.

  It was a nice move, made just in the nick of time. I had been unable to sink my teeth into his tire or get the kind of penetration I needed to cause a blowout, so he escaped pretty muchly unh­armed. Another thirty seconds and . . . well, he lucked out this time.

  On your short sprints and your lightning dashes, I can equal or beat any breed of pickup, but on your longer hauls they can wear me down after, oh, two-three hundred yards. The mailman pulled away from me, but I barked him all the way to the next cattle guard. And just to be on the safe side, I stood in the middle of the road for another five minutes, waiting to see if he dared come back.

  He didn’t. My guess is that he lit a shuck back to the post office, turned in his uniform, and went looking for a safer job.

  By the way, I solved the Case of the Left Cheek Tumor. Turned out to be chewing tobacco. I know, because before he left he spit at me (he missed). Also yelled something about an “ignert sunny bridge.” Exactly what he meant by that I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t care for his tone of voice, and I made a mental note not to let him off so easy next time.

  Well, that was a nice piece of ranch work, the kind of job-well-done that makes a dog feel a little glow of pride. I was making my way back to headquarters, walking down the center of the road (it was my road, after all, and I figgered I might as well use the whole son of a gun), when I heard the sound of a motor in the distance.