Chapter Ten: Okay, Maybe It Was a Tornado
You’re probably wondering why Little Alfred had parked his stupid tricycle right under that window. I wondered that myself.
It was very careless of him. I mean, suppose the house had caught fire and members of his family had been jumping out the windows. Someone might have landed smack in the middle of his stupid two-bit tricycle, just as I did, and gotten a handlebar in the rib cage, just as I did.
Did it hurt? You bet it did.
Kids are supposed to park their tricycles on the porch, not under windows and fire escapes and emergency exits, but the most annoying part of this was that Drover had jumped out the same window only seconds before and . . .
How do you explain that?
He’s so lucky, he doesn’t need brains.
I limped around for a moment, trying to jumpstart my hearts and lung. It was that serious. At last, I got ’em going again and turned a steely gaze on Mister Ate My Bacon.
“You might have warned me that I was about to dive into the middle of a killer tricycle!”
“Well, I was so worried about the hurricane that I didn’t think about it.”
I stuck my nose right in his face. “Drover, if a dog gets killed on a tricycle, he doesn’t need to worry about a hurricane, does he?”
“I never thought about that.”
“Well, think about it. The answer is no.”
“No what?”
“No. Just plain ordinary NO. That is the answer.”
“Yeah, but I forgot the question.”
Hmmmm. I too had forgotten the question, and all at once it didn’t seem terribly important anyway, so . . . phooey.
Suddenly I heard something in the distance. I cocked one ear and listened. “Shhhh. Do you hear something?”
“Yeah, it’s that same roar.”
“Ah yes, the roar. It’s quite a loud roar, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. You don’t reckon it’s a train, do you?”
“I don’t think so, Drover. I’ve never seen a train on this ranch.”
“Slim trains horses.”
“Good point. Maybe we’d better run up to the top of the hill and check it out.”
And so it was that we left the yard, climbed over the fence, and went streaking out into the home pasture, until we reached a spot some fifty years north of the machine shed.
Yards, I should say, fifty yards. There, we were away from trees and buildings and other objects that blocked our view, and we established a Forward Observation Post.
Right away, we put our tail-ends together and began scanning the surrounding country. I surveyed the country east of us, while Drover took the western side.
“All right, Drover, tell me what you see.”
“Well . . . it’s awful dark.”
“That checks out. Go on.”
“I see . . . a lot of darkness, and some lightning, but more darkness than lightning.”
“Exactly. Same over here. Any sign of a train?”
“Nope, no trains.”
“Hmmm, yes, same over here. But I still hear that roaring noise. How about you?”
He cocked his ear and listened. “Yeah, there it is, off to the southwest, and it’s getting louder.”
“Right. We’re getting the same readings on my end. Any sign of Loper and Sally May?”
“Nope. I don’t see anyone, but I’m not surprised ’cause they went somewhere to make a big cattle trade.”
I was silent for a moment, as I ran that comment through my data banks. “Cattle trade? I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, the phone rang, remember? And then they all left the house, remember? And Loper said they were going to talk to the seller, and I just . . .”
“One moment, Drover. You assumed that this guy was trying to sell them some cattle, but I must warn you that we deal in facts, not assumptions.”
“Oh darn, I goofed again.”
“Yes, but don’t get discouraged. You were right about the ‘seller’ part, so let’s go back to that clue and see if we can pick up the trail.”
“Okay, but I wonder what that funnel-looking thing is over there.”
“The one clue we have is (a) a mysterious phone call in the middle of the night; and (b) an equally mysterious salesman who was selling something.”
“It looks pretty big.”
“Actually, Drover, we have two clues, not one, so things are moving right along. We’ll have this little mystery knocked out in no time at all.”
“Gosh, that thing looks green.”
“Everything greens up after a rain, son, the grass, the trees . . .”
“I don’t think it’s a tree.”
“Well, what do you expect? Everything can’t be a tree. If everything were a tree, we’d have no dogs. Now, as I was saying, we have a salesman, calling in the middle of the night, and the question we must answer is this: What was he selling?”
“A funnel?”
“Don’t be absurd. Nobody sells funnels in the middle of the night, and besides, you’ve already guessed cattle.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“Don’t argue with me. You guessed cattle, and the point I’m trying to make, if you will just shut your little trap and listen, the point I’m trying to impress upon you . . .”
“Hank, that thing’s moving this way.”
“Hush, I’m just about to wrap this thing up. You supposed and assumed that he was selling cattle . . .”
“It’s a funnel.”
“All right, have it your way. You insist that he was selling funnels but he might just as well have been selling watermelons or horse feed, fence posts or barbed wire.”
“Hank, I’m getting scared.”
“Never fear the truth, Drover, even when it proves you wrong. Nothing is truer than the truth . . . and that roar seems to be getting louder and louder, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, and that big black funnel is coming closer and closer.”
“What? Speak up. I can’t hear you over the roar . . . the wind seems to be picking up all of a sudden, doesn’t it?”
“Hank, that thing doesn’t look natural. It’s HUGE!”
“What ‘thing’ are we talking about?”
“Turn around and look over this way.”
Just to humor the little mutt, I turned around and did a quick scan of the Western Quadrant. “I see nothing, Drover, nothing but darkness and . . .” A spear of lightning cut across the dark sky and . . .
HUH?
“My goodness, what is that thing? It looks like a . . . well, a huge black funnel, you might say.”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you.”
“Sometimes you have trouble communicating, Drover, and . . . all at once the pieces of the puzzle are coming together. Loper wasn’t talking to a salesman. He was referring to the CELLAR, going to the cellar! And that fits in perfectly with all the talk about tornadoes, don’t you see?”
“I thought it was a hurricane.”
“We were misquoted, Drover, it happens all the time. Yes! The cellar, the roaring sound, the funnel . . . it’s all fitting together, like a great big patchwork quilt. We’ve solved the mystery, Drover. There’s a tornado running loose, and I guess you know what that means.”
“Yeah, it’s fixing to run over us.”
“Exactly, unless we stiffen our backs, stand our ground, and bark as we’ve never barked before!”
“Oh my leg!”
“Don’t squeak. Bark! Throw your whole body and soul into it. This one is for the ranch, Drover, so give it your best shot. Ready? Commence Heavy Duty Barking!”
Boy, you should have seen us! Standing alone on that windswept hill, we turned to face the charge of the Deadly Swirling Hurricane . . . Tornado, that is, just as I had suspected all along.
Yes, a terrible tornado. We snarled and snapped. We lunged and growled.
Was I scared? Not a bit. There’s something about the excitement of combat that brings out hidden reserves of courage in a dog. The more you bark, the more you want to bark. The harder you fight, the harder you want to . . .
Okay, maybe we began to feel a little uneasy when the Thing didn’t turn and run. I mean, we’d given it some pretty stern barking and . . . gulp . . . it should have stopped or . . . paused or . . . gulp . . . at least slowed down a little bit.
But it kept coming closer and closer and . . . you know, that Thing was turning out to be a whole lot bigger than I had . . . we’re talking BIG like nothing I had ever seen before.
Hey fellers, that Thing wasn’t just as big as a house, it was as big as the whole horse pasture . . . it was as big as a whole entire mountain! It was . . .
It was time for us to abandon ship, retreat, and get our little selves out of . . .