Chapter Three: The Case of the Embezzled Scrambled Eggs

I’ve never understood exactly what it is about Pete that gets me so stirred up. Under ordinary circumstances, I keep an iron grip on my emotions, which comes in handy in the security business because emotions have no place in that spear.

Sphere, I probably should say. I don’t like Pete, that’s the point. He’s your typical arrogant, sniveling, scheming, insolent cat. I don’t like the way he holds his tail, the way he walks, or the way he rubs up against everything in sight.

I don’t like his face. I don’t like his whiney voice. I don’t like his attitude. I don’t like cats, but I wouldn’t like Pete even if he wasn’t a cat.

When he appeared on the scene, my ears jumped up and a growl began to rumble deep in my throat. It was just by George automatic.

By this time, Loper had left in his pickup, but Sally May was still there with her plate of goodies, which I had every intention of protecting from Pete. Sally May must have heard me growling.

“Hank, stop that! I won’t have you bullying the cat.”

I twisted my head around and looked up at her with my most sincere expression of sincerity. Bullying the cat! I hadn’t even touched the little snot, much less given him the pounding he so richly deserved.

I whimpered and whapped my tail on the ground.

She bent down and brought her face only inches away from the end of my nose. “I know what you’re thinking, Hank, but if you start tormenting the cat again, I’m going to whack you over the head with this spoon.”

Suddenly I was seized by an impulse to lick her on the nose. I don’t know why. It just seemed the appropriate thing to do. My tongue shot out and gave her a big, loving, juicy, peace-making, forgiving, friendly cowdog lick on the nose.

And it was such a big extra special lick that some of it lapped over and got her on the mouth.

My goodness. You’d have thought that she’d been bitten by a water moccasin, the way she drew back and stiffened up.

“Don’t do that! I don’t like dogs who lick all the time! No, no, no. Don’t lick.”

And here’s the real shocker. She not only wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, but she spit. Or is it “spitted”? “Spat”? She spatted, not at anyone in particular but in a way that made you think she’d just gotten a taste of poison.

Really shocked me. I mean, all those years I’d thought she was a proper lady, and then to see her spitting . . . well, it kind of disappointed me, I guess you’d say. I’d expected more from Sally May than spitting.

I turned to Drover and shrugged. “How do you please these people? They don’t want you to growl, they don’t want you to bark, they don’t want you to hamburgerize the cats. After years and years of working up the courage to show a little affection, you give ’em a lick on the face and, whammo, they throw it right back at you.”

“Maybe she doesn’t like dogs.”

“And once you’ve been rebuked and rejected and scorned, you withdraw into the inner recessitudes of your dark self, and something happens to you, Drover. A guy begins to change in little ways. It makes him hard and cold and hard.”

“You said ‘hard’ twice.”

“It makes him think about running away and becoming an outlaw, a killer dog who howls in the night and spends his life looking for revenge.”

“I spent all day looking for a bone once.”

“Exactly. Yes, rejection is a terrible thing, Drover.”

“I guess so. Maybe you’d better not lick her in the face any more.”

I stared at the runt. “Is that all you can say? Is that all the comfort you can give me in this time of sorrow?”

“Well . . . you might try it and see if it helps.”

“A simple answer from a simple mind. I should have known better than to expose the burning embers of my heart to the likes of you.”

“Heartburn’s pretty bad, but it beats hay fever.”

At that moment, I realized that Pete was rubbing against my right front leg and flicking the end of his tail across my chin. Suddenly, I forgot my sorrows and began thinking nasty thoughts.

“Hi, Hankie. Sure is a pretty day, isn’t it?”

My lips curled, my eyes flared, and a growl rumbled in my throat. I glanced up at Sally May. Had she been looking the other way, Pete wouldn’t have thought the day was so pretty. But she wasn’t looking the other way. She was looking at me.

“Don’t you dare! Now, you dogs had better learn to get along with the cat. Here, kitty kitty.”

Pete gave me one last grin, stepped on my tail, and shot through a hole in the fence. Then, before my very eyes, Sally May scraped MY juicy, fatty bacon ends out on the ground and gave them all to the cat.

Well, hey, that was too much. I barked. I howled. I cried and moaned and protested this injustice. Sally May came over to the fence and gave me a scowl.

“Oh be quiet, Hank. I’ve got some for you too. Here.” She scraped something off the plate. It hit the ground.

I sniffed it. Scrambled eggs and burned toast. I gave her a mournful look and whapped my tail. I mean, scrambled eggs are okay, but I had sort of prepared my taste buds for something in the bacon department.

I put some serious begs on her. No sale. All right, if scrambled eggs was the best we could do . . . I looked down and was stunned to see that the eggs had vanished. I turned to Drover, who was licking his chops.

“Did you eat my eggs?”

“Who me?”

“Of course you did. Yes, it’s all coming clear now. First the cat steals my bacon, then my own trusted assistant embezzles my eggs. Oh vile world! Oh wickedness! Oh treachery! How much deeper canst thou sink?”

“Are you asking me or the world?”

“I’m asking you, Mr. Egg Embezzler.”

“Oh. What was the question again?”

Funny, I couldn’t remember the question either. Oh well. “The point is, you should be ashamed of yourself. For that, Drover, you can spend the next hour standing in the corner.”

“Oh drat.”

“Don’t argue with me. Go to your room, put your nose in the corner, and say the following five hundred times: ‘Only a chicken would steal an egg from his friend.’”

“Only a chicken . . . gosh, Hank, what if I can’t remember all that?”

“This afternoon, I’ll give you a test to make sure you memorized it. If you flunk, then you will have crossed over the line between Serious Trouble and Very Serious Trouble. I wouldn’t want to speculate on the consequences of that.”

“Oh darn. Well, if I admit I ate your eggs, would you let me off without any punishment?”

“Negative. There’s no plea bargaining on this ranch—not while I’m in charge and not when I’ve been looted by my own employees. Now go, and shame on you for a whole hour.”

Drover hung his head and went padding down to the gas tanks. I watched the little mutt and hoped the punishment wasn’t too severe. I only wanted to break his bad habits, not his spirit.

There are times, up here at the top, when a guy is tempted to soften his position on crime and punishment. But part of being a cowdog and a Head of Ranch Security lies in being just a little tougher than your average run of dogs.

Drover was the one with egg on his face, and now the foot was on the other shoe.