Chapter Four: I’m Accused of Terrible Crimes

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that being left alone with Slim and Alfred was better than some of the alternatives, but still, this didn’t show much promise of being a happy occasion. Slim wasn’t thrilled with his assignment. I could tell.

I mean, right away he curled his lip at me and said, “You dufus dog, couldn’t you find anything better to do last night?”

I thumped my tail and gave him Hurtful Looks. Wait a minute, I was innocent, perfectly . . . okay, I’d salvaged a couple of measly chicken bones and maybe that hadn’t been such a great idea, but . . . coons, it was the coons, and all I’d done was . . .

Nobody wanted to hear my side of the story! Even Slim, who’d always been a great pal of mine, even Slim had rushed to judgment and convicted me of crimes I didn’t commit! Hey, for their information, I had risked my life to defend the ranch against a gang of . . .

“Get out of the barrel, Muttfuzz, unless you want to spend the rest of your life in there—which might not be such a bad idea.”

He raised up the garbage barrel and, fine, I could move. And no, I sure didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in a trash heap, but the point here, the tragic point, was that nobody was listening to my side of the story.

Why didn’t he look down at the ground! The evidence was right there in front of his nose: coon tracks, dozens of them. Did I leave coon tracks? Heck no, but did he bother to look for clues? Had it ever occurred to Loper or Sally May that . . .

What a fool I’d been for helping Eddy the Rac escape! If I’d just left him sleeping in the barrel, he would have been caught lefthanded and charged with the crime. Instead, I had to sit there and listen to Slim gripe and grumble.

And he did plenty of that. Every time he bent over to pick up a piece of rubbish, he shot a glare at me and muttered something under his breath. I didn’t catch all of it, but I heard enough to know that I had already been tried and convicted.

So there I was, thinking about all the injustice in the world, when who should show up but my least favorite character on the ranch. Pete the Barncat. I saw him at a distance and hoped he would stay out of my way. Did he? Of course not. Pete is a genius when it comes to showing up at exactly the wrong time.

Have I mentioned that I don’t like cats? I don’t like cats, and Pete is at the head of the list of Cats I Don’t Like.

He was sliding along, see, purring like a little . . . something . . . chain saw, motorboat, refrigerator . . . and rubbing up against everything in sight. Oh, and he was grinning. Why would a cat be grinning at that hour of the morning? I wasn’t sure, but I knew that he was up to no good. I tried to ignore him, in hopes he might go away. He didn’t. He came up and started rubbing on my legs, and then he grinned up at me and said, “Hi, Hankie,” in that simpering, whiny voice of his.

I hate that. It drives me nuts. My ears jumped. My lips rose into a snarl and a growl began to form deep in the missile silo of my throat. “Kitty, I must warn you that I’m having a bad day, and seeing you only makes it worse. You might want to move along.”

He continued to rub. “Poor doggie! What seems to be the trouble?”

“I don’t discuss my troubles in front of cats. Sorry. We have rules against that.”

“Do you really? Then let me guess.”

“I’m sorry, but we have rules against cats guessing.”

“My goodness, Hankie, you have so many rules.”

“That’s right, Kitty, and that happens to be one of the major differences between us dogs and you cats. We live by rules. You cats live by nothing but your own selfish desires.”

“Oh, I think you have it wrong, Hankie.” He batted his eyes and smirked. “Dogs live by rules, but cats just . . . rule.”

I glared down at the little pest and tried to think of a scorching reply. I couldn’t think of anything really special, so I said, “Pete, that’s the dumbest thing you’ve said since the last dumb thing you said. And stop rubbing on my legs.”

“My goodness, Hankie, do you have rules against that too?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, we do. Rule Twelve in the Cowdog Manual of Conduct states in no un­certain terms that cats ‘shall keep their distance and never rub on dogs.’ There, take that.”

“Ooo, how serious.”

“You got that right, Kitty, and if you keep it up . . .”

His weird yellow eyes popped open. “Yes? Go on, Hankie. What might happen? I’m dying to hear this. I mean, it’s not even eight o’clock yet and already you’re in a world of trouble for,” he gave me a wink, “tipping over the garbage barrels and scattering trash.”

“I didn’t do that, Pete. I was an innocent grandstander. Bystander. I was standing by innocently and did nothing wrong.”

He moved up from my legs and began rubbing on my chest. “I know that, Hankie. I watched the whole thing from the iris patch. It’s so sad that you got caught and blamed for what the coons did. I know it makes you angry.”

“You bet it does. It was totally unjust and unfair.”

“Uh-huh, and what makes it even worse is that . . .” He flicked his tail under my chin. “. . . what makes it really bad, Hankie, is that now I can do almost anything to you . . . and get by with it.”

The growl in my throat increased in strength. “What do you mean by that, Kitty? Out with it. Let’s get right to the point, if you have a point.”

“Oh, I do, I do. See, you’re already in so much trouble, Hankie, that you don’t dare get mad at me. What would Sally May think if I cried out in pain and started dragging my leg, hmmm?”

“She’d . . .” I drilled him with my gaze. “Pete, you’re a despicable little creep.”

“Yes I am, and I just love it.”

“But I’m afraid it won’t work.”

“But it is working, Hankie. You’re just aching to beat me up, aren’t you? But you can’t, can you?”

“Ha! That’s what you think. I don’t have to sit here and take trash off a cat. Do you know why, Pete? Because I can move.”

“Try it.”

“Sure, fine. I’ll not only try it, I’ll do it. Good­bye, I’m leaving.”

And with that, I squared my shoulders and held my head at a proud angle and marched my­self up to the machine shed, leaving Kitty Kitty in the shambles of his own rubble. By George, if I couldn’t beat him up and chase him up a tree, at least I could walk away and claim a moral victory. Ha! Imagine him thinking that . . .

He followed me. The cat followed me!

At that very moment, Drover stuck his head out of the crack between the big sliding doors of the machine shed. He saw me and grinned. “Oh, hi, Hank. Sorry I had to leave the big fight, but you know, this old leg went out on me and . . .”

“And so you left me to be blamed for the whole garbage mess, right? What a friend you turned out to be.”

“Yeah, I was afraid that might happen, and I’ve been feeling pretty bad about it.”

I shot a glance at Pete. He was still coming. “Uh, Drover, just how badly do you feel about it? I mean, running away from a combat situation and leaving a friend in his moment of greatest need?”

“Terrible, awful. The guilt has just been eating me up.”

“No kidding. That bad, huh? Well, I know just the thing to solve this terrible problem of your guilt.”

“You do? Oh good. How hard will it be?”

“Easy as pie. You see that cat coming in our direction?”

He turned his eyes to the east. “Oh yeah, that’s Pete, good old Pete.”

“Actually, Drover . . .” I studied the clouds for a moment. “. . . that’s not Pete. It’s a stray cat, an im­postor, a cat that resembles Pete in many ways.”

“Boy, you could have fooled me. He looks just like Pete.”

“Uh-huh, I know, Drover, but he’s not.” I dropped my voice to a whisper. “He’s a stray cat who’s impersonating Pete.”

“No fooling? Gosh, why would he do that?”

“We’re not sure at this point, Drover. All I can tell you is that Pete has asked us, the elite members of the Security Division, his, uh, good friends, to beat up this impostor and run him off the ranch.”

“I’ll be derned.”

“And we’re looking for volunteers to, uh, do the job, so to speak.”

“I’ll be derned.”

“And your name came to mind. It’s a great honor. Congratulations.”

“Yeah, but . . . I’m scared of cats.”

“No problem, Drover. This cat is a patsy. You could whip him with one paw tied behind his back.”

He grinned and stepped out of the machine shed. “Gosh, you really think so? I never whipped a cat before.”

“This is your lucky day.” I shot another glance at Mister Kitty Moocher. Heh, heh. He suspected nothing, had no idea that he was walking into the jaws of my trap. “Okay, here’s the deal, Drover. You walk up to that cat and say, ‘What’s your name?’ If he says his name is Pete, we’ll know for sure that he’s the impostor. I mean, what else would an impostor say?”

“Well, gosh, I never thought about that.”

“It makes perfect sense. He wants us to think he’s Pete, right? If he says he’s Pete, he’s lying. Jump right into the middle of him and beat the stuffings out of him. Don’t hold anything back. And remember, this is for our friend Pete, good old Pete.”

The little dunce jerked himself up to his full height. “You know what, Hank, I think I can do it, and I’m glad to do it for old Pete.”

“That’s the spirit. Go get ’im, Drover. There’s liable to be a promotion in this.”

“Oh goodie. Here I go.”

I sat down to watch the show. Drover marched straight over to the cat and stuck his nose in Pete’s face. I strained my ears to hear what he said. I could hardly wait.

“Hey, you,” said Drover, “what’s your name?”

Pete gave him a puzzled look, shot a glance at me, and turned his eyes back on Drover. And then he said—you won’t believe this—with a big grin on his face, he said, “Genghis Khan.”

HUH? The little dope. How could he have . . .

Drover beamed a smile and began wagging his stub tail. “Oh, hi, Pete. Gosh, there for a minute we thought you were someone else, but you’re not and I don’t have to beat you up. Come on, let’s tell Hank. He’ll be so proud.”

And so the runt came rushing back to tell me the wonderful news. I ignored him. My eyes were on Pete. He was still grinning and purring, and he came straight to me and started rubbing on my legs.

“Hi, Hankie. It didn’t work and I’m back.”

Yes, he was back. It was my second defeat of the morning. You’ll never guess what I did about that.