Chapter Three: The Case of the Lumber-Pile Bunny

As you might expect, old Pete was shaking in his tracks, and we’re talking about worried sick and scared to death.

I guess he’d finally figgered out that he’d bet his entire future on this deal and that his chances of winning had come down to Slim and None.

Slim Chances, not Slim the Cowboy. There are several Slims around here, don’t you see.

Anyways, I headed down to the gas tanks to find the Lumber-Pile Bunny.

Did I mention where he got his name? Maybe not. Okay, here we go.

One of my jobs on the ranch was to identify and track the movements of every rabbit within the perimeter of ranch headquarters. At that particular time, I was following the movements of three alleged rabbits: the one we called the Cake-House Bunny, who stayed under the cake house; the Cattle-Guard Bunny, who lived in the cattle guard just north of headquarters; and the Lumber-Pile Bunny.

I knew them all on sight, had memorized their markings and habits, and had been keeping all of them under pretty close surveillance for months and months.

“How could one dog keep track of three rabbits at the same time?” you ask. Good question. All I can say is that I did it. A lot of dogs would have found it difficult, if not impossible, but for me, it was just part of the job.

The next thing you’re probably asking yourself is, “Where did the Lumber-Pile Bunny get his name?” Another good question.

I had assigned the code name “Lumber-Pile Bunny” to this particular rabbit because . . . well, because he lived in a lumber pile, and maybe that was fairly obvious. But there was nothing obvious about where the lumber pile came from.

Here’s the scoop on that. Back in the spring, the cowboys became so embarrassed by the appearance of their corral fence that they took the drastic step of replacing twenty or thirty rotten, warped, moth-eaten boards with new lumber.

Any time those guys give up on using a baling wire patch the action can be regarded as drastic. Yes, they did in fact replace the old boards with new boards, but did they haul off the old boards?

No sir. Throwed ’em in a pile on the west side and drove away, saying, “We’ll haul that lumber off when we get caught up with some of this other work.” But did they? No sir.

That’s a pretty sorry way to run a ranch, seems to me, but did anyone ask the opinion of the Head of Ranch Security? Again, NO. I’ll say no more about it.

Except that lumber piles attract rattlesnakes and skunks and provide a place of refuse for sniveling little rabbits, speaking of whom . . .

Would you care to guess who took up residence in the lumber pile? That’s correct, a certain cottontail rabbit, to who or whom I assigned the code name “Lumber-Pile Bunny.” This was the guy I was after.

Okay. Some ten feet north of the gas tanks, I throttled back to a slow gliding walk, switched my ears over to Manual Liftup, began testing the air with full nosetory equipment, and directed my VSD’s (Visual Scanning Devices; in ordinary dogs also referred to as “eyes”) toward a patch of grass directly west of the gas tanks.

This procedure soon bored fruit . . . bared fruit . . . produced results, as my instruments began picking up the telltale sounds of a rabbit munching grass.

It was the Lumber-Pile Bunny.

He was munching tender shoots of grass some 25 or 30 feet to the west of my bedroom. The foolish rabbit seemed unaware that he had entered a Secured Area and that the Dark Shadow of Doom was slipping toward him like a dark shadow in the night.

Well, maybe not in the night. You wouldn’t be able to see a dark shadow in the . . .

Even though I had switched over to Silent Mode, the bunny heard me coming. They have pretty good ears, don’t you know, and it’s hard to slip up on one.

But get this. Instead of running away, he stood up on his back legs, looked straight at me, and wiggled his nose in what I would describe as “a provocatory gesture.”

Okay, what we had here was a rabbit who had never been taught his place on the ranch. Or else one that had lost his mind. He wanted to play with fire, so he was fixing to learn about fire.

Well, this was it. I glanced back to be sure that Pete was watching (he was), took a deep breath, and rolled my shoulders several times to loosen up the enormous muscles that would soon propel me at speeds unknown to ordinary dogs.

I turned back to the rabbit, locked in all guidance systems, and began the countdown procedure, which goes something like this, in case you’re not familiar with technical stuff:

“Five! Four! Three! Two! One! Launch, liftoff, charge, bonzai!!”

And in a puff of smoke and a cloud of dust, I went streaking toward the target.

Rabbits are famous for their speed, right? What many people don’t know is that your better grades of cowdog are every bit as fast as a rabbit, and in a few rare cases (me, for example) are even faster.

I’m not one to boast, but speed was just built into my bloodline.

In other words, the Lumber-Pile Bunny was in big trouble from the very beginning. I closed in on him fast and was only inches away from snapping him up in my jaws when . . .

Let’s call it luck. He got lucky, that’s all. And why not? After all, he was carrying around four lucky rabbit’s feet.

Luck kept him a couple of feet ahead of me as we went streaking out into the home pasture. Inches, actually. We made a wide loop, some 25 yards in front of the corrals, and then I realized that Bunny had changed directions and was high-balling it straight to the lumber pile.

It was an old rabbit trick. I recognized it right away and took appropriate measures. I went to Incredible Speed and . . . like I said, he was carrying four lucky rabbit’s feet.

I never denied that rabbits are pretty swift and, okay, maybe he beat me to the lumber pile, but not by much. If the chase had gone another ten feet, I would have nailed him.

I returned to the gas tanks to wait for him to come out again, as I knew he would. Off to the north, I heard a familiar whiny voice say, “Mmmm, that’s one, Hankie.”

“Don’t worry about it, Kitty, that was just a warm-up.”

I waited. And waited. The minutes dragged by. Perhaps I dozed. Then . . . the munching of grass reached my ears. He was back, same place. Munching grass right in front of my bedroom. Foolish rabbit.

Within seconds I had gone through the launch procedure and was back on the chase. You should have seen me! Made that loop out into the pasture and virtually destroyed three acres of good buffalo grass and virtually had that bunny trapped in the deadly vice of my jaws, and if the chase had gone another five feet, that little feller would have been a stasstistic.

Stasstisstic.

History.

Real close race, almost got him, a huge im­provement over the first run, and as long as a guy can see improvement, he knows that he has won a moral victory. And so, with a victory hanging in the trophy room of my mind, I returned, triumphant and victorious, to the gas tanks.

A little winded, yes, but beneath the huffing and puffing was the warm glow of satisfaction that comes when a dog knows he’s done his job right.

“Mmmm, that’s two, Hankie,” said the cat. “Only one shot left.”

I chuckled and didn’t bother to reply. I knew what the cat was trying to do—put pressure on me so that I would choke. What he didn’t know was that some dogs thrive on pressure, I mean, it’s like throwing gasoline into a . . .

CHOKE! GASP! ARG!

On the other hand, I was beginning to feel a small amount of . . . I mean, my job, my position, my entire career was riding on the next . . .

WHEEZE! ARG! GASP!

Holy smokes, if I didn’t catch the rabbit on the next run, Pete the Barncat would be the next Head of Ranch Security! Not only would that be a personal disaster for me personally, but it would be disaster for the entire ranch.

Gulp.

Pressure. It weighs heavy on the mind, smashes creative impulses, crushes the little flowers of courage that try to bloom in the warm soil of . . . something.

I was curled up in a ball, in the process of pretending that I was a puppy again, back in the sweet days before I had assumed all the crushing responsibilities of running a ranch, when all of a sudden . . .

I lifted my eyes and narrowed my head . . . lifted my head and narrowed my eyes, I should say, and there sat the Lumber-Pile Bunny, not ten feet in front of me.

Okay, this was it. My whole career had come down to this moment, this last chase.

I arose from my gunnysack bed and prepared myself for what was sure to be the most important mission of my life.