Chapter Three: Caution: Scary Material!

What? You think you can handle the scary part? Well, maybe you can and maybe you can’t. I guess we can give it a try and see what happens, but if you end up having nightmares or wetting the bed, don’t blame me.

I tried to warn you.

Okay, back to the enraged heifer. Yipes! It was pretty clear that she had no desire to work this thing out or come up with a peaceful solution. In one rapid motion, she scooped me up on her horns and tossed me into the air like a feather. When I came back to earth, she was right there, waiting to do it again. She did.

Hey, I could take a hint. If she didn’t want me in her nursery, that was fine. I was ready to leave, but it wasn’t so easy to get out when I was spending so much of my time doing loops and cartwheels in the air.

The old hag . . . young hag. The hateful thing.

Well, it took some doing, but at last I was able to escape her horns and scramble under the fence to safety. There, I joined Slim who was bent over with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. I sat down at his feet and swept the ground with my tail, as if to say, “Well, how’d we do?”

His eyes came up and pierced me. “You know, Hank, there’s times when I think our friendship ain’t worth all the trouble it causes. Next time I have to pull a calf, would you take a trip to the Belgium Congo and stay gone for a month?”

Well, I . . . I hardly knew how to respond to that. I mean, I’d tried to do my part.

The heifer had gone over to her calf and was licking it down, but every now and then her head jerked around and she gave us menacing glares. Slim raised up, rubbed his ribs, and let out a groan.

“Well, it’s been a night for higher education, and I have learned an important lesson about pulling calves the Cowboy Way. Next time, I think I’ll just foller the manual.”

See? I’d tried to tell him.

He fished a pocket watch out of his jeans. He snapped open the case and brought the watch up close to his face. He squinted and scowled. “Good honk, I’m going blind, can’t even see the hands on this watch.” He gave it a shake. It made a rattling sound. “Oh. I wondered what that crunch was when I wrapped around the snubbin’ post. I thought it was my broken heart but I guess it was my watch.”

He heaved a sigh and put his busted watch away. “I’m guessing it’s about five o’clock in the A and M—too early to start work and too late to go back to the house. You reckon we might ought to drive into town and get some breakfast at the cafe?”

Drive 25 miles into town? In the dark? Not me, pal. I wasn’t that desperate for something to eat.

He must have figured this out on his own. “Naw, too much trouble.” He yawned and stretched. “Well, I’m going to make me a pallet on the saddle shed floor and catch a few winks. How about you, pup?”

Me? No, I still had rounds to make, things to . . . oh, what the heck, maybe the ranch could survive if I grabbed a few hours’ sleep. Sure.

We groped our way to the saddle shed. Slim gathered up four saddle blankets and laid them out on the floor. Say, that looked pretty inviting, and I moved right in and began scratching up my . . .

“Hey, don’t be digging up my bed. You can sleep on the floor.”

Well . . . sure, fine. I was just . . . gee, he was awfully grabby about the bed.

He snapped off the light and stretched out on my . . . on the bed, shall we say, while I sat on the hard cement floor.

“Ahhhh! Heck of a fine bed. Don’t know as I’ve ever stretched out on a better bed. You’d love it, pooch, only we ain’t got any room for you. Sorry.”

That was okay. I knew his sleeping habits. We would experience thirty seconds of silence, then the air would be filled with his honking and snoring, and at that point I would, heh-heh, find my rightful place on the bed.

Sure enough, silence moved over us. I waited for my signal. Ten seconds. Fifteen seconds. Twenty seconds. Then . . .

“Hank, have I ever sung you the song about Billy Joe and Dave?”

What? The song about . . . hey, it was five o’clock in the morning!

“I’ll bet you’d love to hear it.”

No, I would NOT love to hear it. I would love to SLEEP. That’s what most people did at this hour of the morning.

“I wouldn’t sing for just any old mutt. I hope you know that.”

Oh brother.

“You’re a mighty lucky dog.”

Yeah, right.

“I hope I can remember all the words. You’d forgive me if I messed up a verse or two, wouldn’t you?”

Sigh. It appeared that I was about to be exposed to another one of his corny songs. A dog sure has to put up with a lot on this outfit.

Have we discussed Slim’s singing? He wasn’t much of a singer, but he didn’t know it or wouldn’t admit it. He came up with these corny songs and then performed them for me. Why me, out of all the people and dogs in the world? How could I be so lucky?

Because nobody else would sit there and listen to it. I had to. It was part of my job, and it wasn’t the part I liked the best. I had to sit there and stay awake and pretend that I was listening to something wonderful.

I waited to hear the tiresome thing—his song, that is. I waited and waited. The next thing I heard was the sound of his snoring.

He was asleep!

What was the deal? After I’d gone to the trouble to prepare myself for the shock of his so-called music, he’d . . . oh well. It was no big loss.

I had dodged a bullet, but by then I was wide awerp and ready to launch mysnork into another eighteen-hour day of wonk. There was no womp I would be urble to snork the honking sassafras smurk skittlebum . . . zzzzzzzzz.

Okay, maybe I dozed off. Who wouldn’t have dozed off? Don’t forget, I had been up most of the night, protecting the ranch and calving out heifers. I was tuckered out and in desperate need of sleep, so I grabbed me a few Z’s.

What woke me up was the sound of someone making an unauthorized entry into the . . . where was I? My head shot up and I managed to squeeze off a bark or two. Okay, I was in the saddle shed, and at first I aimed a bark at Slim because I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought, but there was this guy stretched out on the floor and that seemed pretty strange.

But then the door opened and sunlight poured in, and through the glare of sunbeams I saw some kind of midget standing there in the doorway, so I turned my guns around and aimed several barks at . . .

Huh? Okay, it turned out to be Little Alfred. Relax. I canceled the Code Three and shifted into the Grins and Wags Procedure.

See, Slim and I had fallen asleep in the saddle shed, and . . . maybe you remember that part, so let’s move along. Slim sat up, yawned, and rubbed his eyes. Then he squinted at me and wrinkled up his nose and pushed me away.

“Hank, has anyone told you lately that you stink? Well, you do. I’d sooner sleep with hogs.”

There, you see? I’d stayed up half the night with him, had saved him from being trampled and skewered by an angry heifer, and that was all the thanks I got for it. He hadn’t cared about my smell when I’d been out there in the corral, saving his life, but now . . .

Oh well. Putting up with his childish remarks was just part of the job, but I’ll tell you something. He didn’t smell so great himself. I mean, we’re talking about a bachelor cowboy who spent very little time in a bathtub, right? And a guy who’d recently been dragged through a cow lot, right?

But did I make a big deal out of that? Did I go around telling everyone on the ranch that he smelled worse than hogs? No sir. All I did was . . . oh well.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but I didn’t smell a bit worse than he did.

And if he didn’t want me sitting close to him, that was just fine with me. I had other friends in the world, people who really cared about me and accepted me for what I was and didn’t mind if I smelled a little . . . well, ranchy.

How’s a ranch dog supposed to smell?

I jacked myself up off the floor, left Slim to enjoy his own boring company, and marched straight over to Little Alfred. And there, right in front of my former friend, I hopped up on my back legs and gave the boy a juicy lick on the cheek.

He laughed and gave me a hug. “Hi, Hankie. What are y’all doing down here in the saddo shed? Were you sweeping?”

Slim dragged himself up to a standing position, groaned, and rubbed his side. He explained that we had been calving out a heifer. “What time is it?”

“Oh, ten o’cwock, I guess.”

“Good honk. The day’s half over. I need to get some work done.” He yawned. “I wish them heifers would have their children during my office hours. They sure get my days and nights messed up.”

“Hey Swim, I’ve got a gweat idea. Why don’t we pway Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn? Me and my dad have been weading the book at night.”

“The heck you have.”

“Yep. I’ll be Tom Sawyer. You can be Huck, and we’ll go down to the Mississippi Wiver and catch fish.”

Slim nodded his head and thought about it. “You know, Button, that sounds like a lot of fun, but I’ve got a handicap that keeps me from doing stuff like that. It’s called a steady job.”

“Aw, Swim.”

“See, your daddy pays my wages and he wants me to play Slim Chance—cowboy vet, welder, hay-hauler, barn cleaner-upper, and windmill mechanic. He might not be tickled if I was to switch over to Huckleberry Finn.”

The boy frowned and rocked up and down on his toes. “Well . . . he wikes the book. Maybe he wouldn’t care.”

“Heh. You don’t know your daddy as well as I do, son. When it comes to ranch work, he’s a regular Simon LaGreasy. I think I’d better pass on the Huck Finn offer.”

Alfred’s face fell into a heap of wrinkles and he pooched out his lips. “Dwat. I can’t pway Tom Sawyer without a Huckleberry Finn.”

Slim snapped his fingers. “I know just the guy for the Huck Finn part.” All at once his gaze swung around and fastened on . . . well, on ME, you might say.

Hey, what was this all about? I soon found out, and that’s where the Fishhook Deal came from.