Chapter Eight: Don’t Forget: I Volunteered
Slim carried me into the bathroom and closed the door behind us.
That really wasn’t necessary. Did he actually think that I might . . . hey, I had volunteered for this mission! He didn’t need to treat me like a common crinimal.
I resented that. It really hurt.
On the other hand, I did happen to notice that he had left a little crack in the door, and I wondered what might happen if I hooked my paw around . . .
SLAM!
He couldn’t take a joke, that’s all. No sense of humor.
He left me alone in that prison cell and returned a few minutes later. He was holding an old boot top that had been stitched at one end so that it would hold cow medicine.
He shoved the bottle of cough medicine inside the boot top, rigged up a kind of harness device out of whang leather, and tied it around my neck.
This deal showed every indication of getting out of hand. I mean, it appeared that he might actually go through with it.
He left the room again, and when he came back, I was sorry to see that he was dressed for cold weather. The worm of fate had crawled another step toward the apple of . . . something.
Disaster, probably.
“Well, Hankie, all these years we’ve been a-saying that you ain’t worth eight eggs. I guess this is your big opportunity to prove us wrong. Or maybe right. You ready?”
You bet I was ready—so ready that I tried my very best to crawl into the cabinet where he kept his towels and wash rags. He grabbed me and I sank my claws into the nearest towel and went to digging.
He got me out of there, but he knew he’d been in a struggle. And I carried one of those towels all the way to the front door.
As we passed Drover, he raised his head and gave me a grin. “Good old Hank, what a guy! I’d sure like to go with you, but this old leg of mine . . .”
I wasn’t able to come up with words to express the thoughts that marched across the vast expanse of my mind. So I just glared at him and hoped that the cruel slant of my eyes would convey the message.
Suddenly we were outside in the raging ferocious blizzard. I could hear the wind roaring like a freight train through the cottonwoods. Frozen limbs creaked. The snow swirled before my snow-blinded eyes. I gasped for breath.
Surely Slim wouldn’t . . . it was time for Heavy Begs. I moaned and whined and tried to kick my legs. No luck.
Slim didn’t put me down at this point, which struck me as a shabby cheap trick and a vote of no confidence. I mean, did he think I would try to scramble back into the house or hide behind the wood pile or make a run for the feed barn?
Yes, apparently that’s what he thought, and come to think of it . . . but I didn’t get the opportunity because he carried me away from the house, out into the storm, and down the road, which wasn’t there anymore because it was buried under six inches of snow.
Oh yes, and along the way he pulled a limb off a tree and I couldn’t imagine what he might . . .
At last he stopped and dropped me into the snow. It would be hard for me to express just how awful that snow felt as it closed around my nice warm paws and invaded the inner warmth of my inner being.
Let’s just say that it felt awful, and that I looked up into his eyes and switched my tail over to the I-Don’t-Believe-You’re-Doing-This-to-a-Loyal-Friend Mode.
That didn’t work either.
“Go home, Hank. Take the medicine to Molly. Double dog food if you make it.”
Oh yeah? And what if I didn’t make it? It would be double dog food for the buzzards, right?
“Go on! Go to the house. Find Loper.”
I whimpered and moaned and howled and cried and tried to . . . but he raised his stick in a threatening manner, almost as though he planned to . . .
“GO HOME!”
Okay, all right. I just hadn’t understood his . . . he wanted me to find my way back to the house, it appeared, and perform a very dangerous mission of mercy, which was sort of my specialty, and there was no need to yell and threaten and . . .
GULP.
It seemed that heroism had been thrust upon me, and as I’ve said many times before, when all else fails, a guy might as well go ahead and do what’s good and right.
Yes, they had definitely chosen the right dog for this job. Or, to put it another way, they were very lucky that I had volunteered for this mission.
I glanced up into Slim’s face one last time, just in case he might have thought it over and changed his . . . drawing back the stick? That was uncalled for, I mean, it’s not necessary to bully and browbeat the Head of Ranch . . .
“Go home, Hank, go home!”
All at once I felt a powerful urge to go home. Yes, and to deliver the precious healing medicine that would cure Baby Molly of the cough that had tormented her sleep.
The words of my Cowdog Oath returned to me: “. . . to protect and defend all innocent children against all manner of monsters and evil things, regardless of the consequences.”
And with those words fresh in my mind, I turned my back on the comfort of the house and the warmth of the stove (Drover would pay for this) and went plunging into the Great White Unknown.
The tracks we had left in the snow half an hour before had already vanished, but I had no trouble finding my way back to the cattle guard. That was the easy part—traveling with the wind at my back and following my own scent in the snow.
I reached the cattle guard in good shape and in record time. But once I had conquered the easy part, the part that remained to be conquered promised to be less than easy.
Hard.
Very difficult.
Somewhere between impossible and ridiculous.
At the cattle guard, I negotiated a 90 degree turn into a crosswind that was running about 40 degrees below zero, and began stumbling through snow that had drifted much deeper than I might have wished.
This was tough going, fellers. I mean, every step in that deep snow required a terrible effort, and after fifteen or twenty of those lunging steps, I was already shot.
But I couldn’t stop. The words of my Cowdog Oath kept me going. Also the knowledge that if I stopped, I would become a doggie Popsicle. I mushed on.
After what seemed hours, I reached the flatbed pickup, which we had left abandoned in the ditch. The hood had already disappeared beneath a drift.
I paused for a moment to catch my breath, then plunged onward into the storm. I reached the top of that hill just south of the alfalfa field. So far, so good. But the last mile to the house would be the most treacherous, for there were no trees or haystacks or fences or other landmarks to mark the land.
Up ahead, I saw nothing but a huge white blank. Up until recently, it had been my policy to avoid huge white blanks, but there appeared to be no way of avoiding this one.
Gulp.
I decided that my best hope in this hopeless situation would be to leave the road—or what used to be the road—and follow the creek in a westerly direction. That would give me some protection from the wind and a trace to follow.
There was only one small risk in this approach. On our way down to Slim’s place, we had seen several coyotes dash across the road. Where do you suppose a coyote would go if he got caught out in a blizzard?
To the low ground, to the creek bottom, to the shelter of trees and bluffs.
Fellers, the thought of bumping into a band of hungry cannibals didn’t exactly warm my heart, but neither did the thought of getting lost in the blizzard.
So I stopped thinking about it and staggered down the hill toward the creek bottom. It was much better down there. The snow wasn’t nearly as deep and I made good time, traveling right on the edge of the water where the snow had melted away.
Yes, this was fine. I increased my pace from a slow walk to a rapid walk, and then to a trot. I began calculating my Estimated Time of Arrival and figgered that if all went well, I would reach the house in about . . .
HUH?
Rip and Snort? Blocking my path? Surely this was a tropical illusion, sometimes when you’ve been traveling for a long time through snow, you become snow-blind and your eyes begin playing . . .
Licking their chops?
Uh-oh. Fellers, I had just blundered into the winter camp of a couple of dog-eating coyotes. That’s not something you want to do when you’re out on an important errand of mercy.