Chapter Nine: Sally May Returns on Crutches

It must have been several hours later when I heard a car rumble over the cattle guard between the home pasture and the horse pasture.

Drover and I had spent the last of the morning and the early part of the afternoon winding down from our confrontation with Tuerto the One-Eyed Killer Stud Horse. We had gone up to the machine shed and crunched some Co-op dog food, then stretched out in the sun there on the south side of the shed.

In the fall of the year, the south side of the machine shed is one of the preferred sleeping areas on the ranch. The shed takes the sting out of the north wind and that old sun warms a guy up and makes him want to stretch out and take a nap—especially if he’s spent all morning fighting killer horses.

I mean, that’ll wear a feller down to a nubbin about as quick as anything.

Anyway, I’d caught myself a little nap and refreshed myself and was in the process of yawning and stretching the kinks out of my back, when I heard a car rumble over the cattle guard.

Well, you know me. My ears shot up and I told Drover to prepare himself for a lightning dash up to the county road, because I suspected that our old enemy, the mailman, had just made another encroachment of our territory.

We went ripping around the east side of the machine shed and had shifted into Barking Mode One when I saw Grandma’s car turn at the mailbox and start down toward the house. In the blink of an eye, I reversed all engines and slid to a stop.

“Hold it, son, shut her down! I’ve got a feeling that this would be a good time to hide out and become scarce.”

“How come?”

I told him about Sally May’s unfortunate accident, that she had twisted her ankle and had gone into town to see the doctor, and that she might not be happy to see . . . well, a certain un-named ranch dog so soon after she had tried to strangle him.

“She tried to strangle you, no fooling?”

“That’s correct, with her bare hands. I mean, that old gal may wear perfume and curl her hair, but once she gets down in the dirt and throws a few punches, she’s meaner than nine junkyard dogs with a bellyache.”

“Gosh, that doesn’t sound like the Sally May I know.”

“Whatever you think, Drover. If you want to run the risk of getting impaled on a crutch, just go on and meet the car. But I’m warning you, she’s dangerous.”

“I think I’ll go down and welcome her back to the ranch.”

“Fine. Go say hello and we’ll see what happens, but if you come back wearing a crutch through your rib cage, don’t expect to get any sympathy from me.”

“Okay, Hank. Here I go!”

He scampered away to meet the car, while I slipped off to the north and established an observation post amongst the pine, spruce, bodark, and Russian olive trees in the shelter belt.

The car pulled around to the back of the house, with my sawed-off, stub-tailed, pea-brained assistant scampering along behind. The doors flew open and three children jumped out—Little Alfred and his two girl-cousins. Grandma got out, went around to the passenger side, and opened the door for Sally May.

As I had predicted, her ankle was wrapped up in a big white bandage and she was on crutches. Drover went up to her, wagging his stub tail and groveling in the dirt and doing this thing he often does to make points—he lifts his lips and shows his teeth, and people just love it because they think he’s smiling.

If I tried that, they’d accuse me of showing fangs and making threatening gestures. Drover does it and wins points and everybody laughs and says, “Oh, isn’t he cute!”

That’s okay. I never wanted to be cute anyway. But it does kind of irritate me that . . . oh well.

Sally May was smiling and seemed to be in a much better humor. She and Grandma talked about baking pies and taking the wild turkey out of the deep freeze.

This was the same wild turkey Loper had brought home a couple of weeks ago. His story, as I recall, was that the turkey had run into his pickup and broken its neck. Ho, ho. I happened to be in the back of the pickup that afternoon and I can reveal here, for the first time, the true and uncensored story.

We drove up on a group of wild turkeys along the creek, don’t you see, and this being the holiday season, Loper decided that he needed one. What that turkey ran into was not the pickup but a .22 bullet, which was slightly illegal since Loper hadn’t bought a hunting license that year.

I can also reveal that Loper picked the turkey down at the feed barn, stuffed all the feathers into a paper sack, and buried it in the sand along the creek. Sounds pretty suspicious, huh? Yes, indeed.

I could go even further and reveal that, while he buried the feathers, I stayed behind and, uh, stood guard over the nice, plump, juicy turkey which was hanging by a piece of baling wire from a corral post, and boy, it was a good thing that I stayed behind to guard it because, well, any old stray dog who happened along could have hopped up on his hind legs and made himself a meal—and I mean a good meal—on that nice, plump, tender, juicy . . .  

As I said, I could reveal this little episode, but I won’t, for various reasons. But as you can see, there was more to the turkey story than the general public knew about. I mention it here, not because I’m one to go around blabbing, but only to point out that Old Hank isn’t the only one on this outfit who is guilty of naughty behavior.

Anyway, where were we? Oh yes. Drover had tested the temperature of the water, so to speak, and had found it to be something better than ice cold, so I decided, what the heck, maybe I ought to go on down and patch things up with Sally May.

Yes, I know. She’d called me terrible names and screeched at me and tried to strangle me, but I’ve never been one to carry a grudge.

I mean, beneath all the hair and muscle and armor plating that a guy needs in this line of work, I’m very warm and forgiving and expressive and loving, bold and courageous and as stout as an ox, a hard worker, good with children, devilishly handsome, if you believe the ladies, and . . . 

I decided to go down and make peace with Sally May, is the basic point.

I left the shelter belt and headed down to the yard. Sally May was halfway between the gate and the back door when she glanced around and saw me coming.

The smile wilted on her mouth. Dark clouds, so to speak, gathered on her brow. Her eyes narrowed and she said, “Here comes that oaf of a dog!” Upon hearing which I did a quick about-face and returned to the shelter belt.

That was okay with me. I have never depended on the approval of small minds for my happiness. If she wanted to play freeze-out with me, we’d just by George play freeze-out.

Time passed very slowly in the shelter belt. I got bored. I bore easily. When you’re accustomed to lots of excitement and action, it’s hard to adjust to the humdrum existence that ordinary dogs accept as normal. I didn’t have any important cases to work on, it was just a tad too chilly for a dip in the sewer and . . . 

Ho hum. I watched the kids playing with Drover and Pete. They seemed to be having fun. Having fun has never been a big deal with me. A lot of dogs think that’s what this life is all about—having fun all the time, one big party after another—and what the heck, I didn’t figger it would hurt me or anybody else if I went down and had a little fun myself.

I pushed myself up, shook the grass off my coat, checked all points of the compass to make sure that Sally May wasn’t lurking in the evergreens with a butcher knife, and padded down to donate my presence to the little children.

They were nice kids, after all, and they de­served a break.