Chapter Seven: We Ride in the Fancy New Pickup

My eyes moved up the stranger’s legs and came to rest on . . . Loper’s face. He was standing on one leg and sucking breakfast particles out of his teeth.

“Am I interrupting something?”

Slim grabbed his hat off the ground and pushed himself up to his feet. “Oh no, me and Hank was just . . . rassling.”

“Rassling.”

“Playing around.”

“Oh. Well, I just wondered if there was a chance you might feed cattle this morning. ’Course, we could put it off for a few days, if it’s not convenient.”

Slim gave him a scowl. “You just love catching me in awkward moments, don’t you?”

Loper snorted a laugh. “I do, I really do. Thanks, Slimbo, you’ve made my whole day.” He started walking away, but when his eyes fell on me, his smile fell like a dead pigeon. “Forty bucks.” Shaking his head, he walked down to the corrals.

Well, gee, did we have to bring up ancient history? Hey, we’d already worked through that crisis and had moved on with our lives.

Oh well. Slim and I had made peace and he’d invited us to help him on his feed run. And you know what else? He even let us ride in the cab of that fancy new loaner pickup! No kidding. I could hardly believe it, after the fuss he’d made about the Donut Fiasco. But that was the nice thing about Slim. He didn’t hold a grudge. He didn’t hang on to his anger the way some people did. (I won’t mention any names.)

Yes I will. Loper.

Once we were settled inside the cab of the new pickup, Slim started the engine and listened to it for a second. “It’s a diesel. What do you think?”

Well, it was . . . loud. Real loud. Sounded like a dump truck.

“I like the sound of a diesel. And check this out.” He snapped on the radio. “It works, and so do the windshield wipers.” He turned on the wipers and grinned like a little boy. “Oh, and look at this.” He pushed a button on the armrest and. . . amazing. The window on the passenger side zipped up. He gave us a wink. “Heh. Electric winders. And it’s even got electric door locks.” He pushed another button on the armrest, causing the door-lock gizmos to move up and down. “What do you think of that?”

Incredible. Drover and I were speechless. We had never known such luxury, or even imagined it.

“This pickup’s way too fancy for me, but I won’t mind being pampered for a few days. Heck, I deserve it, after all those years of driving Loper’s junk heaps. Don’t you dogs agree?”

Oh yes, no question about it. He deserved to be pampered . . . and, well, so did we. After all, we had put up with those junk-heap pickups too—the bad smells, the dust, the rough rides over pasture roads. I’d never been the kind of dog who craved luxury or pampering (it’ll make a poodle out of you if you’re not careful), but I figured that I could stand a couple of days of it.

Slim stepped on the clutch and shifted up into first gear, and we drove around to the stack lot to load up some hay. That winter, we were feeding cake (cubed feed in sacks) to most of the cows, but feeding hay to one bunch of cows that had baby calves. Why hay? Well, as I recall, it had something to do with . . . what was it? Milk production, there we go. Alfalfa hay, it seems, is a good type of feed for cows that are nursing calves. It helps them produce more milk . . . or something like that.

Slim did most of the work of loading the bales onto the bed of the pickup. Okay, he did all the work. Ranch dogs can do many things, some of them really amazing, but loading bales of hay isn’t one of them. But that didn’t mean that I sat around on my duff and loafed while Slim was working hard, loading the bales. No sir. Every time he lifted a bale, I was right there beside him, checking for . . .

“Hank, get out of the way.”

. . . mice. See, when cold weather comes, your field mice leave the fields and pastures and . . .

“Hank, move!”

. . . take up residence in the cracks between the bales of hay. Once inside the stack, they’ll dig holes in the hay, build nests, and generally make a mess of . . .

“HANK!”

Huh?

“I can’t carry this bale of hay to the pickup when I’m stumbling over you.”

Oh.

“Now get off the stack. Go sit on the ground and scratch a flea.”

Sure, no problem.

Anyway, as I was saying, sometimes a dog’s best course of action in these hay-loading situations is to sit on the ground, scratch a couple of fleas, and watch. But that’s not the same as loafing. Loafing is an entirely different deal, and it’s not something you’ll ever catch ME doing. Now, Drover’s a different story, but we don’t need to go into that.

Slim loaded twenty bales onto the bed of the pickup and we set out for the northwest pasture. He rolled the windows down, which allowed me to stick my head outside. Dogs like to do that, you know. We like to hang our heads out the windows because . . . well, who wants to look out at the world through a piece of glass? Not me. I like to be involved, right in the middle of things.

Slim watched as I stuck my head out the window. “Hank, those electric buttons are on your side too, so be careful where you step.”

Sure, no problem. You know, there’s something really special about hanging your head out the window of a moving pickup. I’m speaking as a dog, of course. Humans don’t seem to get as much of a kick out of it as we do.

For us, it’s something really special. Did you know, for example, that if you hold your head at a certain angle, the wind will cause your ears to flap around? No kidding. And at another angle, if you let your tongue hang out the side of your mouth, the wind will cause the old tongue to flutter. I’m serious. And it’s a pretty neat sensation.

Anyway, there’s a little lesson on our Window Procedures, and it explains why I always choose to sit in the Shotgun Position, next to the window. I love the sensation of fresh air blowing across my face.

But wouldn’t you know? Drover started whining about it. “Gosh, I wish I could ride Shotgun sometimes.”

I pulled my head back inside and faced the runt. “What?”

“I said, you never let me ride Shotgun, so I never get to stick my head out the window.”

“That’s correct, and do you know why?”

“Because you’re selfish?”

“No, just the opposite. I’m doing it for your own good. Drover, do you have any idea just how dangerous it is to stick your face out the window of a moving pickup?”

“I guess not.”

“It’s very dangerous. Consider the facts. When you’re moving along at thirty miles an hour, if a grasshopper happened to fly up and hit you in the face, why, there’s no telling how much damage it might cause.”

“I never thought about that.”

“That’s why I’m here, son, to protect you from hazards you’re not aware of. Now, you take those big green grasshoppers. They can actually break off a tooth, damage your nose, or even knock out an eye.”

“Oh my gosh. Knock out your eye?”

“No kidding. They’ll knock it right out of your head. How would like that?”

“I wouldn’t. This stub tail is bad enough.”

“Well, there you are. You thought I was being selfish about the window? Well, now you know the truth.” I laid a paw on his shoulder. “I’m only trying to protect you from a deadly Grasshopper Encounter.”

“Gosh, thanks.” He thought for a moment, then scowled. “Yeah, but we don’t have grasshoppers in the wintertime. I haven’t seen one in two months.”

“Drover, the fact that you haven’t seen any grasshoppers doesn’t mean they’re not still lurking around. It merely means you haven’t seen one. They’re very sneaky, you know.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“They are. Very sneaky. Never trust a grasshopper. Just when you think they’re all gone, one’ll fly up from the ditch and knock your eye out. We just can’t risk it.”

He hung his head. “I guess you’re right. But I get tired of breathing stale air all the time.”

“Drover, stale air is better than no air at all. How would you like to live in a deep dark mine shaft, where there was no air?”

“I wouldn’t like it. I’m scared of the dark.”

“Well, there you are. Sitting in the middle of the seat, you get plenty of sunshine and stale air. You should count your blessings and stop complaining. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my window.”

I stuck my head out the window and feasted on a blast of clean, fresh air. WOW! Terrific. Over the roar of the wind, I heard Drover’s voice. “Yeah, but how come the grasshoppers never knock out your eye?”

“I’m sorry, son, we’re out of time for questions. Save it for another day.”

Hanging my head out the window was great, one of the special joys of being a dog. It saddened me that Drover couldn’t share the experience, but . . . well, there’s only one Shotgun window on a pickup and one of us had to . . .

Huh?

All at once the window glass began sliding up. Shocked and alarmed, I backed away from it and barked. That seemed to work. The window stopped dead in its tracks . . . although windows don’t exactly leave tracks. Anyway . . . no problem.

When we reached the northwest pasture, the cows were standing on the feed ground, waiting for us. Twenty or thirty of them, all standing around in small clusters. Cows have a pretty good sense of time, did you know that? They do, which is pretty amazing, considering that cows are really dumb about most things. Once we’ve established a pattern for the daily feed run, they expect us to be there at the same time every day, and if we’re not, they’ll stand there, mooing and complaining until we show up.

Slim stepped out of the pickup and counted the cows. They were all present. He got back inside and rigged the gearshift for Automatic Pilot, his usual feeding procedure. You might recall that when he fed hay by himself, he put the pickup in Grandma Low gear, let out on the clutch, and let the pickup drive itself, whilst he scrambled onto the bed on the pickup and tossed out the hay.

This was nothing new to me, I mean, Slim and I had done it many times before and it had always worked to perfection. Okay, not always. You might recall that he had once jumped out when the windows were rolled up, and had somehow managed to lock himself out of the pickup. That had been a pretty scary deal, since I had been left alone in a runaway pickup.

But Slim had learned from his careless mistake, and this time, he left both windows down so there was zero chance of it happening again.

He put the pickup in low gear and let out on the clutch. It started moving. He stepped out, climbed up into the back end, and started throwing off hay. Me? As you might expect, I took this opportunity to stick my head out the Shotgun-side window and draw in more deep breaths of fresh . . .

Zzzzzzzzzip.

Huh?