Chapter Seven: The Geothermal Procedure

Were you able to follow all of that? Maybe not, because it came at a rapid pace and involved classified information from the very highest levels of the ranch’s Security Division, so let me sum­marize with a Three Point Summary of the most impointant porks.

Points, that is. Impointant points.

Important points.

Point One: Certain members of our Elite Forces made the mistake of establishing friendly relations with our Number One Enemy, Pete the Barncat, and I guess it’s obvious by now that one of the guilty parties was . . . well, ME, you might say. Okay, let’s come clean on this. I made a really dumb mistake. In a moment of weakness, I trusted the cat.

Point Two: Admitting this really rips me. How could I have made such a bonehead mistake? I should have known better. Oh well.

Point Three: Once the little sneak had won my trust, he set a trap to get me in deep trouble with Sally May. How? He proposed the idea, the perfectly stupid idea, that I should run in front of her car at a slow rate of speed.

Point Two: It should have been obvious that this was a trap, a trick, and a set-up deal, and yet . . .

Point One: I fell for it anyway. Trying to be a good dog, trying my very hardest to win back the love and affection of Sally May, I led her down the road . . . at a slow rate of speed.

Point Two: That’s why she was blowing her horn and screeching at me. Remember that? At the time it was happening, it didn’t make any sense, but now . . . well, it seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? Boy, this really hurts.

Point Three: The rest is history. She got impatient, tried to pass me on the right side, and got herself stuck in the ditch. The angry woman who emerged from the car and chased me through the snow was SALLY MAY, not some . . .

Point Two: . . . phony Monster Woman. There was never a so-called Monster Woman on the ranch. That was pure garbage, another sneaky, underhanded trick, and Kitty Kitty thought I was, well, dumb enough to fall for it.

Point Three: Okay, I fell for it. That’s why the little wretch was sputtering and gagging. You thought he was coughing, right? Ha. He was LAUGHING at my misfortunes! He’d set the whole thing up and I had . . . phooey.

That’s the end of my Three Point Summary of the Tragic Events. It wasn’t easy to boil it all down to three points but somehow I managed to pull it off. And now you know the Awful Truth.

This is very embarrassing. I mean, when a guy takes pride in his ability to outsmart enemy agents and spies, it comes as a terrible blow when he has to admit that he’s been outwitted by a nitwit.

Wait, hold everything. Admit-outwit-nitwit. Do you see the pattern here? All three words end with the same two letters, i and t. Could this be some kind of clue that might blow the case . . .

I don’t think so. Just skip it.

Where were we? Oh yes, I was performing a duty which I absolutely hated—admitting that Sally May’s precious, scheming little shrimp of a cat had made a monkey out of me. But let me hasten to add that this bitter experience had made me a smarter dog, wiser dog, a dog who had been through the Fires of Life; a dog who had been burned and scorched but who had risen from the ashes like the mythical Tucson and had once again raised the Security Division’s noble banner on the Flagstaff of . . . something.

The point is that Pete had taught me bitter lessons about Life Itself and had left me smarter, wiser, tougher, and more determined than ever to triumph in the never-ending battle of Good Dogs Versus Evil Cats. In other words, what we had here was another huge moral victory over the cat. No kidding.

Even so, things were looking a little grim. Not only was the day cold and gloomy, but my relationship with Sally May had suffered another terrible blow. Her car was stuck in the ditch and it appeared that her trip into town would have to be cancelled. Unless . . .

Was there something I could do to free her car from the snow bank? Somehow in all the confusion and so forth, I hadn’t thought of that, but now . . .

Drover and I left the Conference Room. “Drover, I just thought of something.”

“I’ll be derned. I thought of something once, but then I forgot it.”

“Please hush and pay attention.” As we made our way toward the house, I told him my plan for freeing Sally May’s car from the snow bank. “What do you think of that?”

“Well . . . you really think it might work?”

“Of course it’ll work. It’s all based on science, the application of geothermal energy.”

“Gee. Oh.”

“Exactly. Gee-oh-therm-al. It means the scientific use of natural reserves of warm water. Warm water melts snow, right? Snow melts away and frees car. Car is free, Sally May is happy again. We win Big Points.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“I’m not finished. We have vast reserves of warm water within our very bodies, Drover, and we’re fixing to harness the forces of nature to help a lady in distress.” In the distance, we could hear the whine of car tires, as Sally May tried to plow her way out of the snow bank. “There, you hear that? She’s in distress and we can help.”

“Yeah, but this old leg is starting to act up on me again. I’m not sure I could hike all the way to the car.”

I gave the runt a withering glare. “Drover, I’m giving you the opportunity to win back Sally May’s love and devotion.”

“Yeah, but that’s your deal.”

“What?”

“I said . . . this old leg’s really starting to throb. Oh, the pain! Oh, my leg!” He limped around in a circle and collapsed in the snow. “There it went, drat the luck!”

I glared down at him. “Drover, is your leg actually hurting or is this another attempt to weasel out of an assignment?”

“No, it’s real this time. Honest. I guess you’d better go on without me. I just hope I can live with the guilt.”

“Hmmm. Well, all right, if you’re being sincere about this.”

“Oh yeah, very sincere. I don’t know when I’ve had so much pain and guilt.”

“All right, soldier. I guess we’ll have to leave you here and go on with the mission. Good luck. We’ll see you on the other side.”

Pretty sad, huh? You bet. I felt sorry for the little guy. I mean, what lousy luck that his leg had quit him just before an important mission. I could see the deep hurt and regret in his eyes, as he realized that he had missed his chance to perform heroic acts, but . . . well, some of us plunge on to new heights of bravery and some of us fall by the hayseed.

I had no choice but to leave Drover where he fell, twisting in pain and guilt. One of us had to mish on with the mushion . . . mush on with the mission, let us say, to free Sally May from the frozen snow bank.

I turned my nose into the . . . yipes . . . cold north wind and set a course that would take me directly to the snowbound car. I could hear the whine of the tires as she switched from Forward to Reverse in an attempt to rock the car out of the snow. It wasn’t working, of course. I could have told her that. If she would just sit still and be patient, help was on the way.

Geothermal Energy. It’s pretty impressive that a dog would know so much about heavy-duty scientific stuff, isn’t it? You bet. A lot of your ordinary mutts would have just stood around saying, “Duhhhhhh,” while the Lady of the House was trapped inside a snowbound car. Not me, fellers. On this outfit, any time we can apply science and mathematics to the daily problems of life, we do it.

It didn’t take me long to reach the stranded vehicle. I marched up to the right rear tire and . . . SPLAT! She was still spinning her tires in the . . . SPLAT! You know, if she would just shut off the motor and sit still for a few . . . SPLAT!

On the other hand, if I skipped the rear tires and concentrated my efforts on the front tires, I would reduce the risk of getting plastered by flying snow, right? No problem there. I simply made a little detour, trotted around to the left side of the car, and marched up to the left front wheel. Pretty shrewd, huh?

I eased up to the tire and gave it a routine sniffing, checking it for scent. This wasn’t really necessary but it’s something we always do as a precautionary measure. Against what? We’re not entirely clear about that, but the point is that dogs have always done it this way and that’s what we do.

I finished the Snifferation in a matter of seconds, then went straight into the Geothermal Positioning Procedure. Here, a dog must position all four feet on the ground, so that the weight of his enormous body is equally distributed. Put too much weight on one side and it can throw the whole deal off kilter.

See, before we release the Geothermal Energy Fluid, we must be sure that the Launching Plat­form, so to speak, is perfectly level, square, plumb, and so forth. It’s a lot of trouble, keeping things square and level, and a lot of mutts wouldn’t go to the trouble, but with me it’s a matter of routine.

It took a while but I got everything lined up, and then I was ready to move on to the next phase of the procedure. In this phase, we use huge hydraulic pumps that actually raise one of the legs of the Launching Platform. No kidding. In this case, it was the right rear leg of the . . .

HUH?

A woman was standing over me. She was wearing a heavy coat and a fur hat. Her nostrils were flared out like the head of a rattlesnake and her teeth were clenched like . . . gulp. I had seen this woman before . . . not so very long ago, in fact, and I had a feeling that it was . . .

“Get away from my car, you oaf! Haven’t you done enough?”

Okay, it was Sally May. Did you think it was Monster Woman? So did I, just for second, but then I knew it must be Sally May. She had two kids, right? There were two children inside the car, and in fact, one of them (Little Alfred) was sticking his head out the window and . . . well, grinning about something.

Why was he grinning? Was I grinning? Heck no. I could see at a glance that Sally May was . . . well, in a pretty serious frame of mind, shall we say. Maybe she didn’t understand that I had rushed back to melt the snow away from her . . .

You won’t believe what she did. I was shocked to the bone. She snatched the hat off her head and threw it at me!

“Get away from here! Scat! Shoo!”

Gee whiz, I’d only been trying to . . . fine. If she wanted her car to stay in the snow bank for the rest of the day, if she didn’t want my help, I could scat. But the next time she ran off the road and got herself stuck in a snow bank . . .

Sniff, sniff.

You know, that hat of hers had a pretty interesting smell. It reminded me a whole lot of . . . rabbits. Have we ever discussed Rabbits and Bunnies? We’ve got quite a number of bunnies on our ranch and I’ve made countless attempts to catch one, but with no success. They’re clever little snots and experts at hiding in pipes and lumber piles.

But here was a nice little rabbit skin hat, lying in the snow. Heck, if she didn’t want it . . .

“Put down my hat! Come back here, you . . . Hank, GIVE ME THAT HAT!”

Holy smokes, she was chasing me again!

Anyway, I didn’t have the slightest interest in chewing on her ugly old hat anyway, so I, uh, dropped it and ran, one step ahead of . . . OOF! . . . a snowball that she launched in my direction. Actually, I was about half a step too slow and she nailed me right in the ribcage. Did it hurt? You bet it did. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that Sally May’s a bad shot with a rock or a snowball. She can knock the eye out of a potato at twenty yards.

Beyond that range, she’s not so great, but she connects often enough to be considered dangerous. My best advice is . . . don’t ever give her a shot, she’s liable to drill you.

Anyway, I was saddened by this latest turn of events, and I must admit that it made me wonder all over again . . . WHAT DOES A DOG HAVE TO DO TO PLEASE THESE PEOPLE?

You try to give ’em an escort off the ranch and they get mad. You try to free their cars from a snow bank and they get mad. You pick up an old hat they’ve thrown away and they get mad.

I don’t know. It’s very discouraging.