Chapter Seven: A Narrow Escape from Horned Death

We made our way north over that dusty, bumpy road, climbed the caprock, went into the middle pasture, followed the road where it loops around to the west, turned back north over at the fence between the middle and west pastures, drove a mile or two in that direction, and went into the northwest pasture at that wire gate near the spot where that old cow died in the blizzard and her bones are still there, which explains why they call it Dead Cow Gate.

Sounds kind of spooky, doesn’t it? Dead Cow Gate. Well, if you think that’s spooky, I’ve got some bad news for you. The REAL spooky part is yet to come.

I mean, unbeknownst to me, I had been tapped for one of the most dangerous missions of my career, and if you have the slightest physical weakness, such as shortness of breath, a tendency to faint, hook worms, round worms, ringing of the ears, Eye-Crosserosis, liver flukes, inflammation of the galoot, tired blood, or heartburn—DON’T READ THE REST OF THIS CHAPTER.

Just skip over it. It ain’t worth the risk unless you’re in top physical condition and you’re mentally prepared for a tale that will make your hair stand on end.

This mission was so dangerous that I can’t even reveal if I survived it or not. So there you are. Proceed at your own risk, and if you get the liver scared out of you, don’t blame me.

We drove through Dead Cow Gate and headed north on a narrow, bumpy feed trail. Since we were pulling a stock trailer, Loper had to take it slow. I know that broke his heart because he loves to hot-rod the pickup over the ranch.

He’s sure hard on equipment.

Well, we came to that hill that leads down to the windmill, and we inched our way down. I noticed that the Mysterious Brown Rain had stopped by this time and I went back to my position on the spare tire. Up ahead, standing near the water tank, was a horned cow, and ten-twelve feet to the west, lying in a clump of grass, was her calf.

Maybe she thought that calf was hidden, and I expect that most ordinary dogs would have missed it, but my eyes are trained to pick up the smallest details and that’s just what they did.

So the clues were falling into place. We hadn’t even arrived on location, yet already I had begun gathering clues and sifting evidence. I had a feeling that it wouldn’t take me long to wrap this one up.

Loper stopped the pickup and he and Slim stepped out. The cow watched their every move, which was okay because I watched HER every move. She sniffed the air and bawled and looked over toward the calf. She backed up a few steps and started pawing up dirt.

So. We had one here that was going to play the tough-guy routine. I’ve seen it many times in my career, and I have my little bag of tricks that I use on cows like her. Sometimes I bite their heels, sometimes I bite them on the flanks, sometimes I take a killer hold on their noses, but in all cases I use quickness and superior intelligence to beat them at their own shabby game.

But here’s the thing to remember: when one goes to pawing up dirt, it does something to me, inflames me, gets me all stirred up, makes me want to dive out of the pickup and go on the attack.

Which is sort of what I did. I flew out of the pickup like an arrow on its way to the target, hit the ground running, and went into what we call the Pre-Gather Barkeration Mode. Behind the complex technical language lies a simple truth, which is that a lot of times you can accomplish your primary objectives with a stern barking.

Now where were we? Oh yes, I had just dived out of the pickup and gone into the Pre-Gather Barkeration Mode. I gave her three rapid barks as a way of beginning the procedure and testing her resolve.

You might say that her resolve tested out pretty high. I knew I had a bad cow here when she answered my first three barks by loading me up on her horns and throwing me a distance of, shall we say, something in the 10–12 foot range.

In the business, we refer to this as Pre-Gather Flying Lessons. That’s kind of an inside joke, see, because we rarely plan it that way, for obvious reasons. But the fact that it’s an inside joke doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s funny.

Basically, it’s not funny at all. Basically, it hurts.

You might say that she caught me slightly off guard and that landing on my back did nasty things to my ability to breathe and see. I staggered to my feet and waited for the cowboys to come to my rescue.

“HANK, YOU IDIOT, LEAVE THE COW ALONE! You’ve got her so stirred up, we won’t be able to do a thing with her!”

HUH? Leave the . . . Well, hey, I can take a hint. By George, it doesn’t take a full orchestra and a neon sign to get a point across to Hank the Cowdog. I dragged my powerful but wounded body out of the field of battle and took cover, so to speak, behind the pickup.

Loper had taken a catch rope out of the cab, and I listened as they discussed their next move. It appeared that, for reasons unknown at that point, they wanted to load the cow and calf into the trailer. How did they plan to do that out in the pasture, where they had no pens or loading facilities?

Here’s what they did. Loper shook out a little loop and slipped around behind the calf. The old cow watched him and appeared ready to charge, but just then Slim stepped out and waved his hat at her. (It’s an old trick, used to distract a cow on the fight.)

While the cow made wicked noises at Slim, Loper was able to get into throwing range of the calf. When the calf jumped up to run, he brought up the loop, whipped it around one time, and flipped it out. (It’s called a hoolihan toss and Loper can do it pretty well.)

The loop went straight to the mark and pulled down on the calf’s neck. When Calfie hit the end of the twine, he jumped into the air and started bawling. That got the old lady stirred up something terrible. Say, fellers, she was ready to do some serious damage.

She wasn’t paying attention to Slim anymore. She had her wild eyes on the guy who was messing around with her calf. She shook her horns and bellered and took aim for High Loper, who was trying to drag the calf to the trailer.

It was at that precise moment that Slim un­leashed a secret weapon, his deadly fighting and barking machine. He looked down at me and said, “Get her, Hank!”

Even though I was still hurting from my first encounter with the nasty wench, even though I had been called an “idiot” by the very cowboy I was being sent out to rescue, I forgave past mistakes and ignored the throbbing of my body and went streaking into combat.

I wish you could have seen it. Oh, that was an attack to remember! I sank my teeth into her brisket and suddenly she lost interest in what Loper was doing. She slung me around and bellered and slobbered, but you know what? When you got one by the brisket, she has a real hard time putting her horns to use.

Well, while old Sookie was trying to sweep the ground with me, Loper dragged the calf into the trailer, stuck it in the front compartment, and closed the middle gate. By this time I had figgered out their strategy. They’d locked the calf in the front and hoped that when the old lady heard him bawling, she would jump into the back compartment. They could close the back gate on her and that would be the end of it.

Not a bad plan, actually, only it didn’t work. The old cow was so stirred up by then, she had lost interest in her calf and all she could think of was making hamburger out of me. How foolish of her, but nobody ever said that cows were smart.

Well, I played my deal about as slick as it could be played. I hung on to her brisket until all hands were safe and all our objectives had been accomplished. Then I simply released my jaws and walked away.

All right, maybe I RAN away, for the simple reason that she came after me with them horns. That’s an excellent reason for running. Before you could say “osmosis” five times, I had scooted my bad self under the pickup and was through for the day.

Mission accomplished.

I was ready to go to the house but the cowboys were still puzzling over the problem of how to get the cow loaded. That being their problem, I didn’t concern myself with it.

I was licking down a couple of spots where the cow had mussed my coat, when all at once I realized that the boys had stopped talking. And they were looking under the pickup. At me.

“Here, Hankie, come here, boy.” That was Loper. I hardly recognized his voice. Instead of yelling and cursing, he was addressing me in a tone that was not only friendly, but also full of respect and admiration.

What was this? You mean after years and years of being yelled at and taken for granted, I was suddenly getting some of the appreciation I so richly deserved?

I crawled out from under the pickup and collected kind words, pats on the head, a couple of nice rubs under my chin. I was basking, so to speak, in the limelight when . . . that was strange. Loper picked me up and carried me into the back compartment of the trailer, and Slim slipped the catch rope around my middle, just behind my front legs, and he pitched the coils of the rope over the bars on the left side of the . . . 

What were these guys . . . 

And then they left me in there by myself and Slim took hold of the rope and gave it a jerk and I went up into the air and . . . 

What the heck were they . . . 

“All right, Hank, start barking again, see if you can get her to come after you.”

Start barking . . . see if I could . . . HUH? 

Suddenly the pieces of the puzzle . . . hey, those guys were planning to use me for BAIT! Which was too bad because I had no intention of, but on the other hand, when they’ve got you on a catch rope, it’s hard to argue . . . 

I barked a protest. I mean, this was by George outrageous, but barking might not have been a smart thing to do, don’t you see, because it sort of called attention to my presence there in the trailer.

And here she came. I could see the blood vanes, blood vaynes, blood vaens, spelling has never been one of my better areas, blood veins standing out on her eyeballs. I could hear her snorting like a locomotive. I could see the sharp tips of her horns gleaming in the sunlight.

Fellers, she flew into that trailer like a jungle cat and all at once it seemed awful crowded. There for a minute, I thought the old curtain was about to fall on my life’s performance, so to speak, and that I was fixing to go to my internal reward.

In a flash, Loper slammed the back gate shut, which was not what I considered good news at that point, since it locked me and that wild horned woman in a small space that was getting smaller by the minute.

And at the same moment, just as I was about to be shredded and punctured, Slim jerked the rope and pulled me out of the pit of death.

“Good job, Hankie, nice work.” He patted me on the head.

Many words and thoughts marched across the vast expanse of my mind at that moment, none of which I can repeat. The point is, I had survived the ordeal but it had left a bitter taste in my mouth. A bitter taste is better than no taste at all, but it’s still a long way from sweet.

We loaded up and headed for the house.

Oh, one last thing. That Mysterious Brown Rain? Tobacco juice.