LITMIR.BIZ

      It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. It was a cold, windy night in February. It had begun to snow and the cowboys were worried that it might turn into a blizzard.

      It did, one of the worst blizzards I’d ever seen.

      As I lay there in front of the stove in Slim’s house, little did I know that within a matter of hours I would have to leave the warmth and security of the house and go out alone into the teeth of the blinded blizzard and perform an errand of mercy.

      I didn’t know all that, and you’re not supposed to know it either. It comes later in the story but I kind of blurted it out without thinking.

      I shouldn’t have done that. Forget I said it.

      Okay. Drover and I had gone down to Slim’s place to spend the night, but let me hasten to add that our going down to Slim’s place had nothing whatever to do with the fact that he allowed us dogs to sleep inside in front of his woodstove.

      See, I really don’t approve of sleeping indoors, and I’ve never had much use for . . .

      All right, maybe the sleeping-indoors-beside-the-stove factor had played a small part in our decision to camp out with Slim that night, but only a very small part.

      Mainly, I thought that he needed some company and also the security that comes from having the Head of Ranch Security close at hand.

      No kidding, that was the main reason.

      Well, it was along about nine o’clock. Slim had been sitting in his big rocking chair and reading a livestock magazine, while we dogs, uh, guarded the stove.

      You never know when some nut will try to steal your stove.

      All at once, Slim stood up and yawned. “Boys, all this excitement is about to wear me out.” He fished out his pocket watch. “Good honk, it ain’t but nine o’clock and I’m already fightin’ to stay awake.”

      He wandered into the kitchen and opened up the icebox and pulled out the makings for a ketchup and bread sandwich. When he took the first bite, ketchup oozed out the back side. It looked pretty awful.

      He gnawed it down to a stub, licked his fingers, and pitched the stub over in our direction—two little corners of bread splattered with ketchup.

      I sniffed it and, shall we say, turned it down. Even Drover, who will eat anything that doesn’t eat him first, even Drover turned it down.

      We whapped our tails on the floor and tried to express our deepest sorrow at turning down Slim’s offer of stale bread crusts. At the same time, I tried to let him know that I might consider a better offer—say, sardines, Vienna sausage, a piece of cheese, or any one of the many varieties of fresh meat that might have been tucked away in his freezer compartment.

      This was a delicate situation that required near-perfect coordination between tail-whapping and a sad look in the eyes. I thought I’d pulled it off pretty well, but Slim missed it.

      “Dumb dogs,” he said, and built another ketchup sandwich.

      Suddenly and all at once, with no warning whatsoever, the lights went out and we were plunged into total darkness, except for the little flare of light that showed through the air vent on the stove.

      I could hear Slim mumbling to himself in the kitchen. “Well, there goes the electric. We must have gotten five snowflakes. That’s usually what it takes. Now, where’d I put the candles?”

      In the process of stumbling around to find a candle, he kicked over the sack of garbage that had been sitting beside the stove for two or three weeks.

      “Dadgum garbage. You’d think somebody around here would take it out to the barrel.”

      He found a stub of candle in one of the cabinets and struck a wooden match with his thumbnail. Pretty good trick, as long as you don’t get burning sulphur under the nail, but he did, and that seemed to wake him up.

      That was the first time I’d ever seen a grown cowboy sucking his thumb.

      He lit the candle and then went looking for his coal-oil lamp, which he found and lit with the candle. Holding the lamp about shoulder high, he went to the front door and looked out. “Dogs, that old wind is gettin’ up. If it should happen to start snowing hard, we’d be in for a blizzard, sure ’nuff.”

      He set the lamp down and had just lowered himself into the rocking chair when, all of a sudden and out of nowhere, a bell began to ring. I shot a glance at Drover.

      “What was that?”

      “Sounded like a bell to me.”

      “Exactly. But there are no bells in this house.”

      It rang a second time.

      “There it goes again, Hank! What does it mean?”

      “It means,” I pushed myself up from the hearth and switched all my Hair

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