Chapter Eight: A Cowboy Cook

See, the livestock auction had a little café, and every Wednesday during the sale, they served lunch. I’d heard Slim talking about their homemade cherry pie. As I recall, what he said was “It’s even better than mine.” I think that was some kind of joke, since he’d never made a pie in his whole life, and if he ever did, nobody would eat it. I sure wouldn’t.

The café also served burgers and steaks, and it appeared that someone was cooking them on an outdoor barbecue grill near the back door of the café. That was the source of the steak fumes and that’s where my legs were taking me, straight toward the cloud of white smoke that combined the delicious smells of mesquite coals and broiling meat.

Sniff sniff slurp.

Fifty feet away, my mouth began to water as my mind projected pictures of hunks of beef hissing over a bed of glowing mesquite coals. The pictures were so vivid, I tried to snatch one of the steaks, but, well, pretty pictures in the mind are pretty empty and a guy finds himself biting thin air, is what happens. That’s not the sort of thing you want to do in public, go around trying to snap steak-mirages out of the air.

Dogpound Ralph was following me, and he noticed. “What did you have in mind?”

“I have steak in mind, Ralph. I plan to beg or borrow a steak. That’s what we did when you and I went on The Fling, remember?”

“Yeah, but you messed it up and got caught.”

“A plate fell off the grill and broke. It was an accident. It could have happened to anyone.”

He trotted up beside me. “You’ve got no charm or technique, just blunder in and start grabbing. Better let me handle this.”

I laughed. “You? That’s funny, pal, and the answer is no.” I stopped and looked him straight in the eyes. “You wait right here and watch. I’ll show you charm and technique. In five minutes, I’ll be back with a steak.”

He shrugged. “Bet you won’t.”

I didn’t bother to argue with him. What did he know, this jailbird-dog who hung out with the local dogcatcher? I left him there and crept toward the clouds of smoke that were causing various parts of my body to do peculiar things: nose, ears, eyes, heart, lungs, and liver, every part of a dog’s body that responds to delicious smells.

The trouble with these steak deals is that they’re always supervised, and this one was no exception. The cook was sitting in a metal folding chair, his left boot resting on his knee, and right away I picked up a couple of clues that told me that he was wearing a Cowboy Cook Costume.

First, he wore his pant legs tucked inside the tops of his boots. Second, his jeans were hitched up with a pair of bright red suspenders. Third, he wore a huge bushy mustache that was waxed on the ends, and fourth, he wore a big cowboy hat with a wide brim and a tall crown.

See, your ordinary everyday cowboy or rancher (Slim and Loper, for example) wouldn’t dress in such a gaudy fashion, but a guy who’d been hired as a cowboy cook would. A lot of dogs wouldn’t have noticed such tiny details, but I picked ’em up right away. Oh, and I almost forgot the fifth clue: that big hat had no sweat stains around the base of the crown.

Heh heh. These guys can’t get up early enough in the morning to fool Hank the Cowdog. He wasn’t a working cowboy. They’d hired him as a cook.

He’d dug a fire pit in the ground, burned a batch of mesquite wood down to coals, and had laid an iron grill across the pit. Steaks and burgers hissed on the grill, and nearby he had a big cast-iron pot hanging over the fire.

As I approached his camp, I slowed my pace. I mean, I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea, that I was just some mutt who’d come to poach a steak or something like that. Cowboy chefs are pretty suspicious of dogs who come up to watch them cook, don’t you know, so I made it appear that I had . . . well, stumbled upon his camp by accident. No fevered eyes, no dripping chops, no frenzied tail-wags.

He looked up and saw me, and for a moment I wasn’t sure which way this would go, whether he would leap out of his chair and yell at me, or invite me to, uh, share his campfire. He had a pair of friendly eyes, and after a bit, he smiled beneath his mustache and said, “Hello, pup. Pull up a chair. You want a cup of coffee?”

I think that was a joke. Dogs don’t drink coffee or sit in chairs, but his manner was cordial, so I went to him and sat down beside his chair. He scratched me behind the ears and gave me a pat on the ribs. This was a nice man, and obviously he liked . . . sniff, sniff . . . dogs. This deal appeared to be moving in the right direction.

He cocked his head back and looked me over. “Well, you’ve got some tallow on your ribs, so I guess you’re not a stray.”

Oh no, not a stray. I had a steady job on a steak . . . on a ranch, that is. I thumped my tail on the ground to add some sincerity to my, uh, presentation.

“Don’t be stirring up the dust.”

Oh, the tail, sorry.

“Mrs. Berry don’t approve of sand on the meat.”

Right, no problem. I flipped two switches and shut down the tail.

He leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. “Steaks sure smell good, don’t they?”

Steaks? What steaks? Oh, by George, he had some steaks on the grill! Ha ha. I hadn’t even noticed.

“Those are rib-eyes, pup, USDA Grade Awesome.” He pushed himself up out of his chair. “Say, I need to step inside for just a second. Would you keep your eye on them steaks for me?”

Slurp. Oh sure, anything for a friend.

“I won’t be long.”

Heh heh. Neither would I.

The instant I heard the screen door close behind him, I whipped my head around to the grill and stared at the steaks, twenty of them, and I can hardly describe the emotions that were bouncing off the walls of my mind.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that this job would turn out to be so easy. I mean, cowboys know dogs, and as a general rule, you can expect that they have a pretty good understanding of . . . well, the temptations that we face every day. Yet this guy—I didn’t even know his name—this cowboy cook had walked off and left ME in charge of twenty sizzling rib-eye steaks!

Holy smokes, this was Christmas for Dogs! A river was running through my mouth. I was shaking with excitement, my heart was racing, my eyes were fluttering, and I took a creeping step toward . . .

“That’s what I figured.”

Huh? A voice had come out of nowhere and froze me in my tracks. An instant later, the screen door opened and out came my, uh, new friend, the cowboy cook. His mouth held an odd, lopsided smile. He sat down in his chair and said, “Come here.” I rushed over to him and laid my head in his lap and went to Slow Thumps on the tail section.

“Don’t stir up the dust.”

Oh yes, sorry.

He took my face in his hands and looked into my eyes. “Let me tell you a little story.” He reached down and flipped up the lid of a . . . what was that? Oh, it was a guitar case, and he pulled out a guitar. And he started singing this song.

Ed and the Cheese

At fifty a bachelor cowboy named Ed

Took a job on a ranch on a fork of the Red.

He wintered that year by himself in a shack

With a leaky old roof and a privy out back.

He had him a cook stove, a chest, and a bed.

The place wasn’t fancy but neither was Ed.

But then he took notice of something not right.

He had him a roommate that came out at night.

Ed never did see him but knew he was there,

From the mess on the cabinet anda hole in the chair.

So Ed, he decided to give it a test,

Left two hunks of cheese in plain sight on the chest.

Next morning he checked it and sure ’nuff he found

His roommate had snuck out and gobbled it down.

Ed nodded and gave his two fingers a snap

And left his new buddy some cheese in a trap.

This tale has a moral for those who will hear.

There’s danger in being a rat with no fear.

Old Ed lured him out and caught him with ease,

’Cause a thief can’t resist taking unguarded cheese.

The cowboy placed his quitar back in its case and turned his eyes on me. “So there it is, pup. Did you get the point?”

The point? Well, it wasn’t a bad song (I’d heard worse from Slim Chance), but I hadn’t noticed anything especially pointy about it. No.

He leaned back in his chair and parked one leg over the opposite knee. “See, when I stepped into the café, I was giving you a test.”

A test?

“And you flunked. You ain’t exactly a thief, but only because I didn’t give you the chance.”

I hardly knew what to say. What a cheap trick!

“The point is, you told me what was on your mind.”

Well, what did he expect? Hey, I wasn’t Mister Perfect Doggie. What kind of dog would sit there and ignore twenty hissing steaks on the grill?

He gave me a grin. “It was nice knowing you, but now you have to move along.” He brought his face right down to my nose and narrowed his eyes. “’Cause we ain’t feeding steaks to the dogs today.”

Fine! I didn’t want his old steaks anyway. The very idea, him pulling sneaky tricks on a dog who’d come over to pay a friendly visit! I’d never been so insulted. I lifted my head to a proud angle and marched away. This was outrageous!

Furthermore, I had important work to do. A friend of mine, who happened to be an incredible ninny, was running loose in town, and I had to find him before he . . .

“Hey, pooch, I might let you taste my beans. You like cowboy beans?”

No, I did not like cowboy beans, especially if they were made by a sneak who laid traps for innocent dogs. We dogs have our pride, and just because we get hungry once in a while doesn’t mean . . . on the other hand, a guy should never let pride rule his roost.

I, uh, did an about-face and went back to the fire and gave him an expression that said, “Okay, as a personal favor, I’ll try your beans.”

He lifted the lid on the big cast-iron pot and dipped out some beans into a tin plate. “It’s a new recipe. I call it ‘Gasping Delight.’”

Interesting name. Hurry up.

“Now, it’s got a few peppers in it . . .” He set the plate on the ground in front of me. “. . . so you might want to eat it kind of slow.”

Never tell a dog how to eat. We invented eating.

I put my nose into the plate and started wolfing like there was no tomorrow. Good. Real good. Hey, these were some very tasty beans. Too bad I lived with cowboys who weren’t smart enough to make a pot of . . .

All at once, my eyes began to water and something strange was going on inside my mouth. HARK! GASP! What was that stuff?

“Reckon I made ’em a little too hot?”

I stared at him through swimming eyes. “A little too hot? Buddy, somebody dumped a sack of gunpowder into your stupid beans and you don’t need to worry about me hanging around. Good-bye!”

And with that, I whirled around and stormed away. Hark.