LITMIR.BIZ

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Slim with an escort all the way to . . .

      That was odd. Instead of driving down to the corrals, where he usually went at this hour of the morning, he stopped in front of the house.

      The moment he stepped out of the pickup, I was there to greet him. I gave him Broad Wags and Joyful Leaps, just to let him know that, by George, it was sure good to see him again.

      That should have been enough to start his day off right, but yikes, he looked at me with a pair of stony eyes and said, “What are you so happy about, pooch? Don’t you know what day this is?”

      Well, I . . . no, I didn’t. Up until that very moment, I had thought it was a fairly normal day. Obviously, I had missed something.

      He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and trudged up to the front door. He carried a bundle of something under his arm, a mess of papers, it appeared. His back was bent and his head was low, as though he were packing several sacks of feed, only he wasn’t.

      He tapped on the door. Loper appeared. He was not smiling too. “Come in,” was all he said. The door closed behind them.

      My goodness, this was a dark day. Something bad was happening on my ranch, and I didn’t even know what it was.

      (You probably think it had something to do with the Night-Stalking Bone Monster, but I’ll give you a hint: It didn’t, not yet. That came later.)

      I had planned to move along and do a routine sweep of the entire headquarters area, but it was clear by then that we had a serious problem on the ranch, and I needed to remain on call until we cleared it up.

      After marking two of Slim’s tires—I saw no real need to mark all four of them; I mean, we knew the vehicle and a Short Mark was good enough—after the so-forth, I curled up beside the front gate and . . . snork, mirk . . . perhaps I dozed off for a moment or two.

      The next thing I knew, they were coming down the sidewalk. Slim and Loper, that is. “Get out of the gate, Hank!” I leaped to my feet, staggered three steps to the north, and did a quick scan of their faces. They were still dark, depressed, angry.

      The sun had climbed fairly high above the horizon. Perhaps I had dozed for an hour or two instead of a moment or two.

      They came through the gate. Instead of doing Joyous Leaps and Broad Wags, I switched all circuits over to Graveyard Mode. If they were de­pressed, I was depressed. If they were sad, so was I. That’s just part of being a loyal dog.

      Fellers, we were sad and depressed. Perhaps we were going to climb into Slim’s pickup and drive to a funeral. Yes, this was a very sad . . . only they didn’t climb into the pickup. They started walking north, toward the county road.

      Now, that was strange. These two cowboys weren’t fond of walking, yet here they were . . . walking. It was hard to believe, but I fell in step beside them. We walked in silence. Oh, and did I mention that each of them carried a white envelope? Yes, they did.

      At last, Slim spoke. “Well, here goes another year down the drain. You reckon we’ll ever find happiness again?”

      “Oh sure. Fools always forget. Give us six months and we’ll be able to smile again. By Christ­mas, we’ll be laughing.”

      “I ain’t so sure. I think my giggle box is permanently broke, and so am I.”

      “Well, look at it this way, Slim. If you had that money, you’d spend it on something foolish.”

      “I’d sure try.”

      “Yeah, me too. But I guess Sally May didn’t need that new dress.”

      “Nope. And I didn’t need to get these boots half-soled.”

      “Heck no. Wear a thicker sock.”

      “I sure hope this check don’t bounce.”

      “They’ll be in touch, don’t worry.”

      “I’ll bet.”

      None of this made any sense to me. As near as I could figure it, Slim had worn out all his socks and was sending off an order for more. He hoped they would arrive by Christmas, and if they did, he would . . . laugh, I guess.

      Sounded crazy to me.

      By that time we had reached the mailbox, which appeared to be our destination. Ah ha, yes. The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. Loper opened the little door and pitched his letter inside.

      “Well, back to work.”

      Slim held his letter up and gave it a pat. “Here we are, little feller. Go find the IRS and tell ’em that they’ve ruined my life—again.” He pitched his letter inside and slammed the door.

      We trudged back down to the house. There, we split up and went our separate ways: Loper into the house; Slim to the corrals; and me to the gas tanks.

      And you know what? I never did figure out what we were all being so sad about. What the heck was an IRS?

      International Reserve of Socks?

      Interplanetary Rhubarb Society?

      Incredible Reindeer Snouts?

      I decided to stop worrying about it. If you can’t figure out why you’re miserable, maybe you’re not.

      I had more important things to worry about, such as . . . well, you’ll soon find out.

      Chapter Two: The Cat Tries to Steal My T-Bones

      I couldn’t help feeling just a little angry that I had wasted the best part of the morning trying to be a good dog and showing sympathy for my cowboy pals.

      I mean, we try to help them out and share their little sorrows, but there’s a limit to how sad a dog can feel about holey socks and reindeer snouts. Down deep, where it really counts, I just don’t care about either subject.

      I’m sorry.

      And I was way behind in my work and beginning to feel the awesome weight of responsibility that came with my job. Running a ranch is no cup of worms, let me tell you, and I still had eighteen hours of work to do before I slept.

      I hurried past the front gate, headed down the caliche hill, past that cottonwood tree that was just beginning to put out a few spring leaves, past the . . .

      Suddenly I heard a sound. A voice. A child’s voice. Little Alfred’s voice, to be exact, and here’s what he said: “Hee-oo, kitty kitty. Hee-oo, Petie. Come for scwaps.”

      I went to Full Air Brakes and skidded to a stop. Scwaps? My ears shot up to Full and Undivided Attention, for you see, I had just broken the code of a very important transmission. You probably weren’t aware of this, but “scwaps” in Kid Lan­guage means “scraps” to the rest of us.

      My goodness, I had just stumbled into a conspiracy of major portions. It appeared that Little Alfred, who or whom I had always considered my special pal, was about to offer delicious scraps to my least favorite character on the ranch: Pete the Cheat, Pete the Sneaking Little Barncat.

      I was stunned, shocked beyond recognition. Wounded. Devustated . . . devvusstated . . . davastated . . . deeply hurt, shall we say.

      Gee whiz, Alfred and I had been through SO MUCH together, yet now he had turned against his very best friend in the whole world and was about to offer MY scraps to the cat!

      Oh, pain! Oh, treachery! Oh, broken heart!

      A lot of your ordinary dogs would have quit right there—admitted defeat and gone into mourning for several days. Not me. “Ordinary” has never been a word that applied to me.

      Hey,

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