Chapter Five: Miss Viola’s Peculiar Eating Habits

In our part of the world, when the sun goes down in October, it gets cold. And when you’re riding in the back of the pickup, it’s colder yet. By the time we made it back to Slim’s place, I was near froze.

Now, I had a suspicion that Slim planned to leave me outside—not because I had done anything wrong, don’t you see, but just because I had gotten myself involved in an incident with Miss Viola’s hoodlum dogs, and I want to emphasize that they had started the whole thing.

The point is, I wanted to spend a quiet evening in front of the stove, so when Slim opened the front door for Miss Viola, I sort of slithered past her legs and made a dash for the stove, hoping that maybe Slim wouldn’t . . . 

“Hank, get out of here! We’ve got a lady in the house.”

Miss Viola came inside, holding The Invalid in her arms. I established eye contact with her right away, gave her my most pitiful look, and whapped my tail against the hearth.

She had a good honest face, friendly eyes, and a nice smile. I had a feeling that she liked dogs and that we could do business together. I mean, here was a good old country gal who had growed up around dogs.

“Slim, it’s not going to bother me if you let him stay inside. He can’t be any worse than those two dogs of mine.”

See? I had her pegged. Me and Miss Viola were going to get along just fine.

Slim chewed on his lip and frowned at me. “Well . . .” 

“It’s awfully cold outside. If I were a dog, I’d want to be in here by the stove.”

“Well . . . all right.” He came over to the stove and pointed a bony finger at my face. “You mess up one more time, and I’ll pitch you out of here in a New York minute, you got that?”

Yes sir! No more messing up for me . . . even though I hadn’t messed up the first time.

While Slim was busy with me, Miss Viola removed her coat and headed for the closet door. Old Slim’s eyes got big and he went dancing across the room.

“Whoa now, Miss . . . you better not . . .”

Too late. She twisted the knob, the door flew open, and she came within an inch of getting buried under an avalanche of saddles, blankets, boots, and so forth.

She stared at all the stuff. Slim stared at it too. His face got a little red around the edges and he tried to smile.

“That’s my junk closet.”

“Oh.”

“Let’s put your coat on the chair.”

He took her coat and then she took off her hat. It was a black hat with red things around the crown. They might have been grapes, cherries, wild plums, or small tomatoes.

Ordinarily I would have sniffed it out, because it seemed a little peculiar to me. Why would anyone decorate a perfectly good hat with vegetables? But under the terms of my probation, I didn’t dare leave the stove. Wild horses couldn’t have dragged me away from that stove.

So the Mystery of the Vegetables on the Hat remained a mystery. All I could figger was that Miss Viola had brought some extra food, just in case what Slim fed her wasn’t fit to eat.

Not a bad idea, actually.

Miss Viola brought The Invalid over to the hearth and set him down beside me. She rubbed him behind the ears and said, “There, I think you’ll be all right.” And then she went into the kitchen where Slim was putting the grub together.

I turned to Drover and gave him a withering glare. “I can’t believe you did what you did.”

“What did I do?”

“First off, you got those hoodlum dogs so stirred up they were ready to kill somebody.”

“I was only bluffin’. That’s what you said to do.”

“And then, when you had ’em tuned up for murder and mayhem, you took the chicken’s way out and fainted.”

“Well, I have these spells . . .”

“For that performance, Drover, you win the Chicken Award of the Month.”

“Gosh, thanks, Hank.”

“Don’t thank me. It’s no honor. It’s a disgrace, and I must warn you that this will go into your dossier.”

“Oh darn. But it sure was nice, riding home with Miss Viola. Makes a guy want to faint more often.”

I stared at the runt. He had missed the point of my lecture. He had missed the point of every lecture in the entire world. Lectures were wasted on such a brick-head.

At that very moment, I heard a woman scream in the kitchen. Well, you know me. When it comes to protecting women and children, I get very serious, and before I could even think about it, I leaped up from the hearth and made a dash for the kitchen.

As you might have surmised, the scream came from Miss Viola, seeing as how she was the only . . . Miss Viola had screamed. That much was clear. What wasn’t so clear, and what I had to determine right away, was what had caused her to scream.

Slim was standing over the stove, taking up the weenies with a fork. When he heard the scream, he dropped the fork and whirled around.

“Why Miss Viola, what’s wrong?”

She held one hand up to her mouth, and her eyes were wide with fear. “Oh . . . I thought I saw . . . a mouse!”

Slim swallered, and that thing on his neck, adam’s apple I guess you call it, jumped up and down. “A mouse? Why, that don’t seem right. We’ve never . . . Hank, you stay in here and watch. We may have a mouse in here.”

We may have a mouse in here?

Fellers, I’d spent a good part of the afternoon herding mice in that place, and I had reason to suspect that Slim wasn’t telling . . . oh well. I just work here.

I sat down beside Miss Viola and concentrated on protecting her life from “a mouse,” so to speak.

Old Slim had turned his back on the food, and by the time he got himself turned around again, everything on the stove was either boiling over or on fire. You never saw such smoke! Blue smoke, gray smoke, white smoke.

He shut off the burners and opened the back door and fanned the air with his hands. “Got a little smokey in here,” he laughed.

I think he was the one who said it. It was hard to tell since we couldn’t see the top half of his body.

I glanced up at Miss Viola. She had a kind of cement smile on her mouth, and she coughed into her hand.

Slim took up the weenies on a plate and put the plate in the middle of the table. While he was dumping the can of beans into a bowl, Miss Viola leaned over and studied the weenies.

They did look a little strange: something black and red and yeller, with smoke still curling up from them.

“What is that?” asked Miss Viola.

“That’s Cowboy Round Steak, one of my best recipes.”

“No, I mean that.”

Slim’s eyes followed her finger. He leaned over and stared at the plate.

“Is it . . . is it a roach?” she asked.

“Oh no. No, it’s not a roach. Cricket, maybe.” He picked it off the plate and pitched it out the door. “Must have hopped into my grease. I save my grease and sometimes . . . it’s all right now. Let’s eat.” They sat down and bowed their heads, and Slim asked Miss Viola to say the blessing.

“. . . and Lord, help us through our times of testing, for Thou knowest that we’re not as strong as we need to be. Help us to find order in chaos, help us to find the good in all things. Bless this . . .” She coughed. “. . . food to the nourishment of our bodies and we’ll give Thee the praise. Amen.”

“Amen!” said Slim, as he shook out his napkin and spread it across his lap. “Well, dig in, Miss Viola. We’ve got meat, beans, and bread. Who could want more?”

She smiled, and took small helpings of weenies and beans.

“Now, we’ve got plenty, so don’t be bashful.” Miss Viola had a little trouble cutting her weenie with the fork, so she sawed off a piece with her knife.

“Oh, Slim, did you do that drawing on the wall?”

Slim turned around and looked, and suddenly . . . HUH?

Say, this was very strange. All at once Miss Viola was holding a weenie in front of my nose. Well? I ate it, of course.

“No, no, that’s my Ace Reid calendar. They give ’em out at the feed store.”

“Of course. I see now.”

“Say, you’re out of round steak. Have some more.”

He rolled another weenie onto her plate, She thanked him and sawed off a chunk.

“But Slim, isn’t that calendar out of date?”

He turned around again and . . . another weenie in front of my nose?

“By gollies, you’re right,” said Slim. “These years come and go, don’t they? It’s kind of hard for a guy to keep up.”

I ate the weenie. Sure had a load of garlic in it.

No sooner had I swallered the weenie than there was a piece of bread in front of my nose. Well heck, I wolfed it down, and Miss Viola gave me a good petting behind the ears.

Slim glared at me, then set his knife and fork down on the table. “Hank, I think it’s time for you dogs to go outside. How can a poor lady enjoy her supper with you hanging around and begging for food? Come on, Drover, you too.”

Little Drover came padding around the corner. He was wearing his usual simple grin and blinking the sleep out of his eyes.

Slim opened the back door and pointed out into the darkness. As I was leaving, I glanced back at Miss Viola. Unless my eyes played tricks on me, I saw her wrap up the rest of her weenie in a napkin and slip it into her purse.

She was a mighty nice lady, but she sure had some strange eating habits. Very strange.