Chapter Three: I Discover a Stray Cat in the Haystack
By the time I reached the Combat Zone, Slim was already there. He’d found a piece of windmill rod, and he ran straight at the bull, yelling, waving his arms, and swinging the rod.
If he’d stopped to think about it, he might have tried a different approach. He got the bull so stirred up that, instead of stepping over the fence he’d already torn down, he tore out another six feet of posts and barbed wire. Then he headed west in a run.
Slim stopped, threw the windmill rod at him, and yelled, “You dadgum fence-wrecking bull! Get ’im, Hankie, and bite him twice for me!”
I zoomed past him and headed straight for the villainous bull. I threw all circuits over into Automatic and began the Targeting Procedure. Would you like to listen in? Okay, here’s the conversation that was going on in the cockpit of my mind.
“Range . . . mark! Bearing . . . mark! All ahead two thirds, course two-five-zero! Open outer doors, flood tubes one and three, and plot a solution! We have a solution. Stand by to fire!”
Pretty impressive, huh? You bet it was. You probably thought we dogs just went out and barked at things. Ha! Far from it. Our Targeting Procedures are very precise and very complicated, and we have to . . .
HUH?
The bull had been, uh, running, don’t you see, but all at once he stopped and wheeled around and . . . well, more or less turned back in my direction and . . . you must realize that all our calculations and Targeting So-Forths had been based on . . .
We had to, uh, plot a new solution, is the long and short of it. We went to Full Air Brakes, did a rapid turn to the starboard larboard, reversed directions, hit Full Flames on all engines, and went streaking back to the . . . well . . . to the pickup, you might say.
We needed some time to retarget, don’t you see, and Data Control felt that Drover might need some help in . . . well, guarding the underside of the . . . we sure couldn’t afford to lose that pickup.
I scrambled beneath the pickup and cut loose with a withering barrage of barking. Drover was there, his eyes as big as grapesfruit. Grapefruits, that is. “Did you get him?”
“Oh yeah, no problem. I don’t think we’ll see him again.”
“Oh good. Boy, he sure was a big old bull.”
I peeked out and saw that the bull was walking away. “He was nothing but a huge hamburger, Drover, and the bigger they are, the harder they cook.” I noticed that he was staring at me. “Why are you staring at me?”
“Well, I don’t know. Somehow that didn’t make sense.”
“Of course it made sense. The bigger they are, the . . . just skip it, Drover. I’m sorry I brought it up, and I don’t have time to explain it. I’ve got work to do.”
“Okay, I think I’ll just stay here for a while. This derned old leg went out on me again.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.” I crawled out and gave the bull a few parting shots. “Let that be a lesson to you, you big galoot! Next time you won’t be so lucky.”
Pretty tough, huh? You have to be firm with these bulls.
I noticed that Slim was trying to patch up the fence, and I figured I’d better scoot over there and supervise. On my way across the stack lot, I caught sight of something out of the corner of my eye. It wasn’t much, just a blur of color. Something was over there, and I needed to check it out.
I altered course and marched over to the spot. I stuck my nose between two bales of hay and . . . my goodness, it was a cat, a smallish, yellowish she-cat. My first instink was to raise all hackles and growl at her, which I did, but then I noticed that she had a more or less pleasant face, and she didn’t hiss at me or yowl. Still, she was a cat, and cats had no business on my outfit.
I mean, we already had one, and he was one too many. Pete, I mean. I had no use for Pete. He was lazy, hateful, spoiled, and constantly looking for ways of getting me into trouble. Have I mentioned that I don’t like cats? I don’t like cats, period.
“What are you doing in there?”
She spoke in a sad little voice. “I’m lost. I’m alone and abandoned. I need a home.”
“Life is tough, ma’am. We have no homes for cats. This is a cattle ranch, not a cat ranch. You’re occupying my haystack and trespassing on my property. Oh yes, I’m Hank the Cowdog, Head of Ranch Security. You’ll need to move along.”
“But couldn’t I stay in your haystack for a day or two?”
“No.”
“I wouldn’t be any trouble.”
“Cats always cause trouble. The answer is no, I’m sorry. I’ll be back here this afternoon to check things out. Nothing personal, ma’am, but you’d better be gone. Good luck.”
I marched away from her. I kind of hated being so . . . hey, once you start boarding stray cats, there’s no end to it. They’ll move in and take over the place.
I joined Slim. I could see that he was experiencing a period of great darkness. He always does when there is a fence to repair. He doesn’t enjoy fixing fence. I knew that about him and knew that in this hour of despair he needed a friend.
When I got there, he was standing over the wreckage, muttering to himself. “Of all the bum luck. I’ve got cattle to feed and hay to load, and that bull decides to wreck the stack lot fence.”
I sat down beside him and struck a pose we call Loyal Friend Sharing Heartache. We save it for special occasions such as this one. Deep down, maybe I didn’t really care all that much. I mean, there are many tragedies in the world that are worse than a trashed fence, but in the Ranch Dog Business, we get no points for bringing them up.
See, when our cowboys are depressed, they expect us to be depressed. When they’re happy, they want us to be happy. That may sound a little strange, but that’s what we dogs get paid for.
Slim shook his head and stared at the fence. He heaved a sigh. I followed his lead and did the same. We were both very depressed about this fence deal.
“I ain’t got time to fix it right, plus I’m a little short on inspiration so I reckon I’ll do a sharecropper patch and hope it’ll turn a bull.”
We had seen those sharecropper patches many times before. Slim and Loper were famous for their ingenuity in this department. They could take a stretch of old, rusted barbed wire and dinky posts, add some baling wire and a few staples, and make it just as sorry as it had been before.
Only this time, Slim added a new technique I hadn’t seen before. Where the posts were broken off at the ground, he stood them up and wired in a crutch post on each side, making a kind of A-frame. It held up the fence, didn’t cost the ranch any money in new material, and spared Slim the trouble of digging postholes.
I thought it was pretty clever. I also thought the bull would wreck it in about ten seconds, but of course I kept that thought to myself. These cowboys don’t want advice from their dogs.
He spent fifteen minutes on it, and when he was done, he stood back and admired his work. “Well now, that ain’t such a bad job, is it Hank?”
Uh . . . no. No, it was very nice. Beautiful. A fine piece of work. Too bad we didn’t have a camera.
“I bet it’ll turn that old bull, and if it don’t, I’ve got a shotgun and some number seven loads that might get his attention. Come on, pooch, we’ve got hay to load and mouths to feed.”
He crawled into the pickup and backed it up to the stack. You’re probably wondering about Drover and if he got smushed, seeing as how he was still under the pickup, guarding the springs and shocks and U-joints. He didn’t get smushed. He never gets smushed. He waited until the last possible second, then squirted out of danger.
Whilst Slim loaded the hay and stacked it on the flatbed, I threw myself into the task of ignoring Drover. He came up and started yapping about something or other, nothing that interested me in the least. I walked away in the middle of his so-called conversation and took up a new position. He followed and continued his yapping. At last I got tired of it.
“Drover, are you bored?”
“Who me? Well . . . yeah, maybe I am. How’d you know?”
“I always know when you’re bored, because you start boring me with boring conversation.”
“I’ll be derned. I didn’t know it was so obvious.”
“It is. What you need is a little job to keep you busy, so why don’t you walk over there to those two bales of hay—you see those two bales off to themselves? Walk over there, stick your head in between them, and bark as loud as you can.”
“Okay, let’s see if I can remember: two bales, stick my head, and bark. I think I’ve got it. But how come you want me to bark at the hay?”
“Just do it, Drover. For once in your life, follow an order and complete a task.”
“Well . . . there’s not a snake in there, is there?”
“No, there’s no snake. You have my Cowdog Oath on it. Now go.”
“Well, I guess . . . okay, here I go.”
He went skipping over to the two bales of hay. I watched with great interest, heh heh, and had a fairly good idea what might happen. I didn’t wish the dunce any trouble, but he needed some life experiences to occupy his tiny mind and to give him something new to talk about.
He reached the bales, looked back at me, and waved. I waved back. He stuck his nose in between the bales and did his best imitation of a deep roaring bark. It wasn’t much of a bark, but it proved to be enough. Heh, heh.
He jumped three feet in the air and squalled, then came highballing it back to me. “Hank, there’s a cat in there!”
“No kidding? A cat, huh?”
“Yeah, and I barked, and she slapped my face.”
“Goodness. What a naughty cat. Why didn’t you beat her up and run her off the ranch?”
“Well . . . I just couldn’t do it. Who could beat up a cat with kittens?”
I stared into the huge vacuum of his eyes. “What?”
“Kittens. She’s got six little baby kittens in there.”
My eyes rolled back in my head. Oh great! We didn’t have just one stray cat on the ranch. We had SIX! Seven, actually, if you counted the mother.
And guess who came slithering along at that very moment—speaking of stray and unwanted cats. It was Pete. No doubt he had heard the noise and had come to check it out. Oh, and he had been listening in on our conversation.
“Hi, Hankie. I hear we’ve got some new cats on the ranch.”
I whirled around and showed him some fangs. “Get lost, Pete. The cats have to go. They’re not staying on my ranch, and I don’t want to hear what you have to say about it. I already know.”
“I don’t think you do, Hankie. It might surprise you.”
“What are you saying, you little sneak? Out with it.”
He blinked his eyes and grinned. “I think you should . . . order them off the ranch, right now. Throw them out. Make them leave. They don’t belong here.”
I stared into his cunning cattish eyes. He didn’t know it, but he had just caused a train wreck in my mind. Suddenly I wasn’t sure what kind of scheme he was trying to cook up. With cats, you never know. They say one thing, and it means something else, but you can always be sure they’re up to no good.
Pete was up to no good, but I didn’t have time to get to the bottom of his barrel. I had work to do, so I whirled around and marched away. But it continued to bother me. Only later did I discover why he had taken my side in the Stray Cat Debate.