Chapter Six: The Very Bad “Something” That Happened

Here’s what happened:

I had moved my business from the spare tire to a position near the back of the truck bed, in order to make my communication with the coyote brothers somewhat easier, don’t you see, and I sure wasn’t expecting Slim to jerk the truck hard to the left.

But he did and suddenly I found myself hung out to dry, you might say. The truck went left and I went right—over the side and into a snowbank, which wasn’t too funny, since I had just been mouthing off to . . .

Yikes! Slim was speeding up, shifting gears, driving away!

“Hey, wait a minute, what about me! Drover, don’t just sit there. Do something!”

He was running in circles in the back of the truck. “Oh my gosh, Hank fell out, stop, murder, oh my leg!”

I chased them for a hundred yards or so and gave up. Slim never looked back, never saw a thing. He must have been yakking to Little Alfred. Or singing. He often sings when he’s feeding cattle.

Oh well, the situation wasn’t really as serious as I had first thought. Yes, it was a little scary to get dumped out in the middle of that wild canyon country, but Slim still had two more pastures to feed before he headed back to Wolf Creek.

When he got out to feed the cows in the Picket Canyon pasture, he would notice the huge silence and vacancy created by my absence.

No doubt he would gasp and recoil in horror, and say something like, “Holy smokes, I’ve lost my dog, and that dog’s worth hundreds and thousands of dollars. No, he’s priceless. You can’t put a price on a dog like Hank.”

True, very true.

And then he would say, “I can’t believe I was so careless with the Head of Ranch Security. I should have let him ride up front, but I didn’t, and I could kick myself for taking chances with a dog that’s worth more than gold or silver.”

Exactly. Or diamonds or rubies, for that matter.

“Well, I’ll just have to backtrack until I find him. We can’t go home until we find our Hank.”

Right, because if he did, Little Alfred would be heartbroken. Loper would be furious. Sally May would be . . . well, we needn’t speculate on that, but I was pretty sure that she would be upset.

It would all work out. I would just hike back to the house and wait for the crew to come looking for me. Then we could all have a joyous reunion and laugh about it—although I would have to give Slim a few hurtful looks, so as not to let him completely off the hook.

It WAS pretty careless of him to throw me out of the truck, as he himself had admitted.

I trotted up the hill, thinking that when I reached the crest, I would look down into the valley and see the Cammo-Stealth streaking back to find me.

I reached the top of the hill and stopped for a breather. I looked off to the west and saw . . . hmm, lot of snow. Oh well, it would take ’em a while to discover the tragedy. A guy just had to give ’em a little time.

I walked across the cattle guard and started down the hill, and noticed . . . dog tracks in the snow? Hmm, that was interesting. Had I walked down this hill earlier in the day? No. Had Drover? No.

Hmmm. Then apparently we had some stray dogs on the place, and you know where I stand on the issue of stray dogs. I don’t . . .

Coyote tracks?

Suddenly I remembered my passing remarks to the coyote brothers, something about their mother wearing . . . what was it? Gunnysack under­­garments?

I, uh, suddenly became aware of the fact that I was walking down the middle of the road, exposed for all the world to see. Very shortly after this thought occurred to me, I found myself creeping through the taller forms of vegetation in the vicinity, such as the clumps of little bluestem grass, Indian grass, skunkbrush, mountain mahogany, and wild plum thickets.

No, I certainly didn’t need another encounter with those guys. I’d learned just about all I needed to know about cannibal life . . . and there they were!

Fifty yards ahead of me and I almost had a heart attack. I stopped in my tracks and sank down to my belly and watched them through the little bluestem—which, by the way, was a reddish-brown color, not blue or even close to blue, so why did they call it bluestem?

Not that I cared, you understand, because I had bigger problems on my hands. I watched them through the grass. They trotted across the road some fifty yards ahead of me. I could hear them laughing and belching, which is fairly typical behavior for happy cannibals.

Lucky for me, the wind was coming straight out of the north, so it carried my scent away from them. Otherwise, I might have been a cooked goose, because those guys have noses like you won’t believe.

They crossed the road, just about where we had seen them earlier, and disappeared up a short deep canyon to the north. I waited for a long time, just to be sure they had gone. Then I switched over to Ultra-Crypto Creeping Mode and moved out on silent paws.

I hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards when . . . holy smokes, a branch snapped and I whirled around to face . . .

Okay, the wind had caused a branch to creak in a hackberry tree to my right and that was no big deal, but I had enjoyed about all of that creeping I could stand, and I went to Full Throttle on all engines and zoomed the rest of the way back to the camp house.

It would have been very nice, very satisfying if I had found the truck there waiting for me. That would have closed out the day on a happy note. But the truck was not there.

Instead of being greeted by Slim and all my old friends, I was greeted by this . . . this long-haired yowling thing that came bounding out of the yard.

“A crust of bread? Baloney, cheese?

Spare a morsel, if you please.

Marooned, I am, oh hateful place!

At last I’ve found a friendly face!”

Would you care to guess what she did immediately? She started rubbing on me, of course, and babbling.

“Did you happen to bring some cheese? Just a little bite would be fine. I crave cheese, I dream of cheese, and maybe you could take me away from here. I’ve been marooned these two long years.”

I backed away from her. “No, I don’t have any cheese. And no, I can’t take you away from here.”

She followed me and continued to rub and purr. “You’ll stay a while, won’t you? We have so much to talk about.”

“I’d love to sit and talk, Kitty, but I’m afraid I won’t be here that long. My ride will be arriving any minute now, and we’ll have to say hors d’oeuvre until another day.”

I backed up another three steps. She followed. “Where there’s an hors d’oeuvre, there’s a piece of cheese.”

“Uh, no. I’m afraid you’ve missed the translation. Hors d’oeuvre is French for ‘good-bye.’ I speak many languages, you see, including French, Italian, Thousand Island, and Ranch, so I have many ways of saying good-bye.”

“Don’t say good-bye. You just got here and we haven’t talked.”

“Yes, and I can’t tell you how much I regret that, because I don’t regret it.” I trotted away from her again. “We haven’t talked and we never will talk. In the first place, you’re a cat and I make it a habit not to talk with cats.”

Here she came again. I kept moving.

“Talking with cats is not only a waste of time, but it’s also a violation of the Cowdog Code. We’re not allowed to mingle with cats on the job. Or off the job. Or anywhere else. Nothing personal, but you’re a cat.

“In the second place, my ride will be here any minute now.” I stopped and scanned the horizon in all directions. Nothing. Not a sound except the soft tinkle of snowflakes. “My business associates will be picking me up soon and . . .”

She had caught up with me. I crawled under a barbed wire fence and trotted out into the horse pasture.

“And in the third place . . . I hate to put it this way, Kitty, but you are absolutely driving me nuts with all that rubbing and purring!”

“But I haven’t seen a friendly face in so long!”

“Yes, and it’s made you a lunatic. That’s what you are, a lunatic cat, and nobody could stand to be around you for more than a minute.”

All at once her whole manner changed. Her eyes widened. Her jaw began to tremble. Tears slid down her cheeks. “You called me a lunatic cat!”

“Yes ma’am, I did.”

“You don’t care about me.”

“Yes ma’am, that’s correct. In my deepest heart of hearts, I think you are totally weird.”

She burst out crying. “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I’m going to eat some worms!”

And with that, she went flying back into the yard, crawled under the house through a hole in the foundation, and disappeared. In the silence, I could hear her sobbing under the house.

Well, it served her right.