Chapter Twenty: I Break Out of Prison

Most of your ordinary mutts would have rolled over and gone back to sleep, but, fellers, ordinary has never been part of my job description.

Before I knew it, I had risen to a standing position. Someone needed to check this out. I took a step and . . .

PLOP!

You forgot that my back legs were taped together, didn’t you? Me, too, and I landed on top of Little Alfred. I froze and waited to see what would happen next. The boy grumbled in his sleep and pushed me away, but he didn’t wake up or club me with his pillow.

So far, so good. I lifted both ears and swung them around to the west. There, I picked up the sounds of heavy breathing and . . . the call of a moose? Did we have meese here in the Texas Panhandle? No, wait, it was Slim snoring again. Say, that feller could really shake the rafters.

Well, if everyone was sound asleep . . . hmmm. Could I slip out of the tent without waking anyone and starting a riot? It was a Moment of Truth.

You know, very few dogs would have attempted such a bold escape. I mean, the odds against it were huge. Why, even an acrobat or a ballet dancer would have found it difficult to slip over and around two sleeping bodies—in a small tent, mind you, in the dark of night, and with his back legs tied together. But I had a feeling that I could do it.

See, years ago I had met a three-legged dog. They called him Tripod because he’d lost a leg in an accident. As I recall, he tried to run over a truck, and it didn’t work out too well. But you know what? Old Tripod could get around on three legs about as well as any dog with four, and he even returned to his life’s work, barking at cars.

In the back of my mind, I saw a vision of Tripod bouncing out into the street to do battle with a Volkswagen. Boink, boink, boink. That’s how he did it, putting most of his weight on his front legs and hopping along on the back one.

Suddenly I felt a rush of courage. Old Tripod was an inspiration, not only to me, but to dogs all over the world. Cut off one of our legs, and we’ll come back with three. Put us in shackles and chains, and we’ll learn to hop. We’ll never surrender, we’ll never give up, because the heart of a dog is bigger than one leg!

Could I do this? YES! I would do it to honor the memory of Tripod and all the other three-legged dogs in the world who had struggled to overcome anniversary . . . university . . . who had struggled to overcome veracity . . . phooey.

It really burns me up when I’m in the middle of an inspirational speech and can’t think of the right word, so let’s mush on with the story.

Adversity. There we go. Dogs who had overcome adversity.

I pressed my lips together in a tight line and pointed myself toward the open tent flap.

Boink.

Boink.

Boink boink boink boink. Hey, I did it! I was standing outside the prison walls, looking up at the star full of skies and breathing the sweet air of freedom! The air had never smelled so delicious and I filled my lungs with a big gulp of it and yelled . . .

You know, this wasn’t the time to be yelling, not with ten head of crabby archeologists lurking in tents, but I did think about yelling, “This one is for you, Tripod!”

And then it was time to get on with the business. I did a Broad Visual Sweep of the entire encampment to reorient myself and to make double sure that I didn’t stumble into one of the men. It seemed unlikely that anyone would be wandering around camp before daylight, but a guy in my position couldn’t afford to take any chances.

What was “my position”? Great question. I’m glad you asked because this business of the buffalo bone had grown into a huge struggle of wills and purposes. On the one hand, we had a crew of men who were digging up bones in the name of Science. What did they do with their bones? They put ’em in plastic bags and shipped ’em off to some museum where they would sit around in cardboard boxes forever and ever.

On the other side, we had an earnest, sincere, hardworking ranch dog who earnestly and sincerely worked hard every day and, well, had a special fondness for bones. And in case you’re not familiar with the care and treatment of bones, let me point out that the very best and kindest thing you can do with a bone is . . . well, eat it.

I mean, that’s why bones were put on this Earth. That’s what every bone wants, to be chewed and eaten by an honest dog. No kidding.

And it just happens that the very best bones in the world are the ones that have been aged. Maybe you’ve seen dogs digging holes and burying bones? Well, there’s a reason for that. We don’t do it because we’re bored. We do it because, while fresh bones are good, aged bones are good-times-two. Aged bones are wonderful. We’re talking about flavor and tenderness. Put some age on a bone, fellers, and it becomes the kind of object that a dog thinks about in his wildest dreams.

And don’t forget that I’d just had a wildest dream about bones. That’s an important piece of evidence.

Do you see where this is heading? We’re talking about a bone that had been aged for seven hundred years—not seven hundred minutes or days, but seven hundred years! I had smacked my lips over a few bones that had been aged for a week or ten days, but I couldn’t even imagine the kind of deep, rich flavor you’d find in a bone that had been in the ground for seven hundred years.

So there we are. This bone deal had grown into something big and all at once we had all the ingredients of a classic You-Want-It-but-I-Want-It-More Struggle. On one side, we had Science. On the other, we had . . . well, ME.

And suddenly we find ourselves at the Bottom Line: I was awake and on the prowl, heh heh, while the Agents of Science were in their respective tents, sleeping like logs and snoring like hogs.

You be the judge here, and be honest. Which side should receive the Ancient Bone Award, the dog or the Agents of Science? Come to think of it, don’t bother to give your opinion because I really don’t care. See, I had already made up my mind. I was going to give the coveted Ancient Bone Award to the most deserving dog I had ever known.

ME.

Yes, I was aware that I might lose a few friends in the process. I had already noticed that archeologists were pretty narrow-minded and I had every reason to suppose that they would be sore losers, especially Doug McGrubber, the same guy who had claimed that he could read my mind.

Heh heh.

Maybe he’d read the first page of my mind and maybe he’d been right about the peanut butter, but he had no idea what was fixing to happen in the next chapter. Heh heh.

He would be upset. No, he would be worse than upset. He would be badly hacked and bent out of shape. He would scream, throw his trowel, foam at the mouth, and call me hateful names . . . only I wouldn’t be there to hear any of it. Heh heh. I would be long gone, like a puff of smoke in a roaring wind—me and my Ancient Bone Award.

But that brought up a small problem. Could I make my escape in leg irons? Actually, I hadn’t thought that far ahead and maybe I should have. Gulp. It was quite a distance back to the ranch, and coyotes might be lurking behind every bush, but somehow I would find a way. If old Tripod could do it, so could I.

Pretty shrewd plan, huh? You bet, but don’t forget who did the planning. I didn’t get to be Head of Ranch Security just because of my good looks . . . which brought to mind a certain lady dog who had once enflamed my heart.

Sardina Bandana. I felt a ripple of sadness but it was just as well that we ended it like this, without a last tearful good-bye. We had enjoyed a few fragrant moments together and we would always have those memories. She would weep for me, but that couldn’t be helped.

I turned my thoughts back to the mission that lay before me, the bone rescue of the century. Was I ready? I did one last scan of all the many gauges on the console of my mind and began creeping through the darkness.

I’d better not tell you what happened next. It might scare you out of your wits.

You think you can handle this? Okay, grab hold of something solid.

I began creeping through the darkness before dawn. Boink. Boink. I began hopping through the so-forth, and it wasn’t as easy as you might suppose. Remember all those string lines? I found two of them, but I’m no quitter. I was on a mission and nothing could stop me now.

Following the GPS reading on the illuminated screen of my mind, I inched closer and closer to the trench that held the Most Ancient of Bones.

Three feet.

Two feet.

One feet.

HUH?

You know, when a guy is out for a stroll in the moonlight, the last thing he expects to find . . . you won’t believe this. I mean, it scared the living bejeebers out of me, sent a jolt of electricity down my spine, throughout my body, and almost burned off the end of my tail.

When I turned my gaze toward the Most Ancient of Bones, I saw . . .

Yipes!

My ears flew up and my eyes popped wide open. I didn’t see the bone. I saw two big scruffy cannibals standing over it, staring at it with glittering eyes and licking their chops. THEY WERE ABOUT TO STEAL MY BONE!