Chapter Six: Three Pounding Hearts in the Kitchen

I had to give Drover Growls and Fangs to convince him that I was taking charge of the case, but that was no big deal.

And then I had to follow Little Alfred into the kitchen to collect my bacon. He had come with only one piece, don’t you see, and had to raid the friginator again.

Frigoriginator.

Figerator.

Phooey. The ice box.

He had to raid the ice box again to get my Special Bacon Award. Following the beam of his flashlight, we crept on silent toes and paws into the kitchen. There, we halted in front of the frigin . . . ice box.

Alfred put a finger to his lips and said, “Shhh.” And he gave me a wink. I didn’t wink back because, well, dogs don’t wink.

Do we? I don’t think so. Seems to me that our eyelids more or less work together, and where one goes the other is likely to follow.

Anyways, I didn’t wink back but I did move my paws up and down, signaling Enormous Anticipa­tion, and I did lick my chops and went to Broad Joyous Swings on the tail section.

I’m sure the boy knew at a glance that this was a very important moment in my career, and would you like to guess what the little stinkpot did?

Instead of just handing me the bacon or holding it out so that I could lift it gently from his out­stretched fingers, he laid it over the top of my snout.

You can’t imagine what a commotion this caused. I mean, there I was, dying inside from bacon lust, and he draped my award over the top of my snout—where I was getting extreme and maximum smells but where I couldn’t reach it with my tongue and teeth.

I tried a correction maneuver, moving my jaws at a high rate of speed—chomping, that is—but that didn’t seem to help. I then shifted into a second correction maneuver: shot my tongue straight out to Max Length, threw a 180-degree curl into it, and sent it arcing back over the top of my nose.

Did you follow all of that? It was pretty complicated, actually, and if you missed some of the steps, don’t worry. As long as I know what I’m doing, it doesn’t matter if you do or not.

I definitely knew what I was doing and I did it about as well as it could be done. That Reverse Curl was pretty amazing but I ran out of tongue about half an inch short of the prize.

At that point, I initiated Correction Three: went to Full Reverse on all engines, in hopes that . . . well, the thought had occurred to me that if I ran backward fast enough, my mouth might somehow catch up with the, uh, elusive bacon.

Not a bad idea but it didn’t work either. What it did accomplish was to crash my tail section into a kitchen chair, which more or less scooted and scratched across the limoleun floor and caused all three of us to freeze in our tracks.

In the dead silence, we heard a bed squeak in a distant room. Then, a voice that sent cheers of fill down my spine, chills of fear, and we’re talking about serious heavy-duty fills of cheer, because the voice belonged to the most feared woman on the ranch.

In all of Ochiltree County.

In the whole state of Texas.

Sally May.

Yes, it was her voice. She didn’t have much to say at that hour of the night, but then Sally May didn’t have to say a whole lot to scare the living bejeebers out of two dogs and one little boy.

She said, “Alfred?”

Dead silence, fellers, except for all the throbbing hearts in the room. Three throbbing hearts. Nobody breathed or moved. We were frozen, petri­fied . . . although that bacon was still draped over my snout and I found myself twisting my head around to see if I could . . .

You know, if a guy twists his head far enough in one direction, he’ll fall over backward. Try it some time. Just lean your head back as far as she’ll go, and then lean it back some more. It works.

Boy, I felt pretty silly, falling over backward right in the middle of such a scary scenery, but by George, it happened before I knew it.

Alfred almost had a stroke. His eyes were this big around . . . I guess you can’t see how big around they were . . . his eyes got as big around as, I don’t know, real big and real wide, and he had his finger up to his lips and he was trying to tell me to shut up and be still.

I froze. Alfred froze. Drover shivered. In the silence, we heard another dreaded squeak of the bed. Then, the dreaded voice: “Alfred? Is that you?”

Alfred’s eyes flew from side to side. He didn’t know what to do: answer, say nothing, stand still, or run like a striped ape. I sympathized because I didn’t have a great plan for my own, uh, health and survival, shall we say.

And I was getting worried about Drover. You know Drover. When he gets scared, he just falls apart. He’ll run in circles, squeak, crash into things. You never know what the little mutt’s going to do next.

So far, he was holding himself together. That was good because we had pretty muchly drifted into one of those situations from which some dogs never return alive. I mean, if Sally May ever caught us in her kitchen in the middle of the . . .

Ooooo boy, we didn’t need to go very far down that road to find a couple of tombstones.

How had I gotten myself into this mess? Oh yes, the storm. And the bacon, speaking of which . . . I still hadn’t been able to snag that bacon and the aroma of it was about to drive me . . .

The Voice That Chills came again from the other room.

“Loper, wake up.”

“Uuuuuu.”

“Loper, somebody is in this house.”

“Uuuuuuu a;ckeit cl0e89dskcgh slckbnbedn—3um.”

“Loper, wake up!”

“Huh? What?”

“I heard a sound in the kitchen.”

“I’ll be derned.”

“Would you like to go check it out?”

“Nope.” Silence. “Ouch! Those are my ribs.”

“Dear, please.”

“Okay, okay. Okay.” The bed squeaked. Foot­steps on the floor. “Okay. Kitchen. All you people in the kitchen stand at attention. Here I come.”

He was coming. That was pretty serious but not nearly as serious as if Sally May Herself had come. Somehow the thought of getting murdered by Loper didn’t terrify me as much.

Still, we had to do something. I glanced at Alfred. He looked rather pale, seemed to me, and scared beyond recognition. The sound of bare feet moving across the floor filled the dreadful silence. They were coming our way.

The feet, that is. Loper was coming our way too, walking on his . . . you get the idea.

I was still watching Alfred, waiting for him to give us a sign. Son, do something. Don’t just stand there. Several lives are at stake here.

The footsteps were coming closer and closer. My heart was pounding. The boy was frozen in his tracks. I was so scared that I could no longer smell that wonderful bacon draped over my snout. That’s pretty scared.

Footsteps in the darkness.

The rumble of thunder outside.

Hearts racing and pounding.

Then . . .