Chapter Four: HUH?

The cowboys were gathered around the door of the saddle shed. Loper was crouched down, doodling in the dust with his finger, which seemed a little odd to me.

I marched right into the center of things, which is sort of where you would expect the Head of Ranch Security to go, right? I sat down and waited for the conference to begin.

Loper’s head came up. “You’re sitting on my map of the pasture, you idiot.”

I glanced around the circle of faces, searching for the alleged “idiot” who had . . . 

“WILL YOU MOVE YOUR WORTHLESS CARCASS!”

He appeared to be looking at . . . well, ME, you might say. I gave him a smile and began sweeping the ground with my tail.

“GET OFF MY MAP!”

I looked around for this map he was yelling about, and I’ll be derned if I could see one. Obviously, he was speaking to someone else, yet he continued to glare at me and yell. So I, not knowing anything better to do, acted on a sudden impulse and licked him on the face.

Maybe that was the wrong sudden impulse to act upon. I mean, let’s examine the facts: some guys appreciate a juicy lick on the face and some don’t; sometimes it’s just the right way to start off the morning and sometimes it ain’t. At a high level conference, you just never know.

The point I’m sort of easing into is that Loper grabbed me and threw me out of the inner circle, while the others laughed and slapped their knees, and then he went back to drawing in the dust with his finger.

Oh. He was making a map of the . . . how was I supposed to know? He re-drew the pasture in the dust. I poked my head in between several pairs of legs and observed.

“Slim, you and Baxter take this trail up the caprock and check out the northwest corner. If you find any cattle, push them east toward me. I’ll be over in the northeast corner. We’ll push everything south and try to bunch them in the prairie dog flat northeast of the house. You got that?”

The men nodded. So did I.

“All right, Billy, you cross the creek and ride out the south side. I noticed a big bunch over in the southeast corner yesterday evening.”

Billy nodded. So did I. It was a pretty simple strategy, really, the same one I would have suggested.

“Johnny, you take the dog and ride down the creek to the Parnell water gap. There’s a bunch of tamaracks and willows down there, and that’s where the dog might make a hand. Turn him loose in that brush and see if he can bring the cattle out.”

Johnny nodded. So did I. Loper was exactly right in thinking that I could bring those cattle out of the heavy brush. That’s one of my specialties, brush work.

You’ll find that some of your modern-day, lower-bred stock dogs won’t do brush work. For example, you hear a lot of these blue heelers nowadays complaining about thick brush. They don’t like it. They’d rather sit in the back of a pickup in front of the coffee shop and growl at everyone who goes in and out.

I never had much use for the coffee shop crowd myself, and heavy brush has never bothered me in the least. As far as I’m concerned, the heavier the brush, the thicker it is, and I like to be in the thick of things. So there you are.

It struck me as a little odd that Loper had assigned me to work with Johnny, a man I didn’t know. A lot of dogs would find it difficult, if not impossible, to coordinate complex pasture maneuvers and command systems with a total stranger.

Me? I take things as they come. Loyalty to the outfit is very high on my list, and if that means working with a stranger—hey, I’ll be there, covering my territory and doing my job.

“Any questions?” Nobody had a question. Loper pushed himself up to a standing position and I noted that his knees popped. I salted that information away for future reference. You never know when mere information might turn into a valuable clue.

“Boys,” Loper went on, “I’ll be riding a green colt this morning. If the cattle make a run, you boys with better horses will have to go with the leaders and I’ll stay with the drag.” They nodded. “Baxter, will that beagle dog of yours stay in the pickup?”

“Oh yeah, she’s trained, and she don’t have much use for cattle anyway. She’ll stay in the pickup.”

“Good. That leaves us with just one worthless dog to worry about.”

Ho ho! Benny was fixing to get himself tied up or locked up or otherwise removed from the roundup strategy. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer dog or come at a better time.

I had tried to prepare him for this, but some dogs just can’t seem to take a hint.

“Come on, Hank.”

This was turning out even better than I had hoped! I would get to watch the scoundrel take his medicine. I could hardly wait to see that grin melt off his mouth.

I fell in step beside Loper and we went marching . . . that was odd. Instead of marching toward Benny, we headed east, toward the house. Oh well. Loper had his own way of handling the “worthless dog” situation, as he had described it so well, and I had every confidence that . . . 

We marched up the hill, past the roping dummy, past the gas tanks, up to the yard gate. Just as I had predicted, he bent over and picked up a piece of rope, some ten feet in length, that was tied to the gate post.

I sat down and looked back toward the pickups, waiting for Loper to call the unsuspecting Benny up for his, shall we say, “roundup assignment.” Heh heh. I could hardly conceal my . . . 

HUH?

Unless I was badly mistaken, Loper had just . . . wait a minute, there must be some . . . he hadn’t even called Benny and . . . hey, he had tied up the wrong dog!

I looked up at him, gave him my most wounded look, and whapped my tail on the ground. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called Drover. In a flash the runt was there, grinning, turning in circles, and wagging his stump tail.

Loper jammed his hands on his hips. “You dogs stay out of the way and keep quiet. We’re going to see a REAL dog in action today, and I don’t want you to mess up his work. You got that?”

By this time, Drover was in the middle of one of his guilt spasms, when he rolls around on the ground and kicks his legs in the air and pulls his lips up into a simple-looking grin and seems to be apologizing for every mistake that’s been made since the beginning of time.

I don’t know why he does that. If you ask me, it’s undignified.

Anyway, Loper stomped back down to the corral, leaving me tied up and psychologically damaged.

“Gee, you got tied up, didn’t you, Hank?”

“Wipe that silly grin off your face.”

“Oh, okay.” The silly grin vanished and was replaced by Drover’s patented blank expression. “You got tied up, didn’t you?”

“It may appear that way at first glance, Drover, but on second glance . . . yes. Of course, I don’t need to tell you that someone on this ranch has just made an enormous mistake.”

“Oh, you didn’t need to tell me that.”

“I know I didn’t, which is why I said so, but I thought I’d say it anyway.”

“I thought that’s what you thought that’s what you’d say, and I’m glad you said it anyway.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re glad.”

“I thought you would be.”

“Do you have any idea what you’re saying?”

“No, what?”

“Absolutely nothing. You’re just spouting nonsense.”

“Well, you keep answering me.”

“Answers are not the question, Drover.”

“No, I guess not.”

“And questions are not the answer.”

“It gets kind of confusing, doesn’t it?”

“And while we’re on the subject of questions, I have one for you.”

“Oh good, and I have one for you too.”

“I’ll go first, since mine is the more important of the two.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Mine’s pretty important.”

“I doubt that, but just to prove what a wonderful dog I am, I’ll let you go first.”

“Gee thanks, Hank. That’s mighty nice of you.”

“Yes, I know. Go ahead.” I waited, while Drover squinted his eyes and twisted his mouth around. “You’ll have to speak a little louder, son, I can’t hear you.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I know you didn’t say anything. That’s my whole point. Hurry up and ask your question, I have important things to do.”

“What can you do when you’re tied up?”

“ASK YOUR QUESTION!”

“Oh. Well, let’s see here. It was right on the tip of my tongue, and it sure was important. You don’t remember what it was, do you?”

“Of course I don’t. How could I remember something I never knew in the first place?”

“I don’t know, but I thought I’d check.”

“Is it possible, Drover, that after I was generous enough to let you go first, you forgot your question?”

“Well . . . I didn’t want to say that, ’cause it might have made you mad.”

“Indeed it might have. Go ahead and admit it.”

“I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you.”

“It’s not all the same to me. It’s completely different, a brand new category of stupidity. Did you forget your question?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“In other words, yes, you did in fact forget your question.”

“Something like that.”

“Very well, that just proves what I’ve suspected for a long time: courtesy is wasted on you. In the future, I’ll save my generosity for somebody who deserves it.”

“Sorry, Hank, I tried.”

“Never mind that you tried, Drover. The point is that you failed. And I guess you realize that this leaves me with no choice but to proceed to MY question.”

“I guess so.”

But you know what? After going through all that nonsense with Drover, I couldn’t remember what I was going to ask him. That really burned me up, and it just goes to prove that . . . never mind.