LITMIR.BIZ

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and details.”

      He rolled his eyes around. “Well, let’s see…oh yeah. I think it was a boiled turkey neck.”

      I stared at the runt. “A boiled turkey neck!”

      “That’s what it looked like.”

      I took a deep breath and climbed out of the bunker. “Drover, do you see what this means?”

      “How can a turkey neck mean anything?”

      “Please listen carefully.” I stuck my nose in his face and raised my voice. “There’s only one man in the whole world who would eat a cold, left-over, boiled turkey neck at three o’clock in the morning.”

      “Gosh, you mean…”

      “Yes! What you saw in the kitchen was Slim Chance. He lives in this house. He sleeps in that bedroom down the hall. We see him every day. He isn’t nine feet tall, he doesn’t have vampire teeth, and I can’t believe you thought he was a monster.”

      “Well, you said it first, and you barked at him too.”

      “I did not bark at him. You’re the one who…” I blinked my eyes and glanced around. “Drover, when this thing started, we were asleep, right?” He nodded. “In other words, our minds might not have been operating at full capacity?” He nodded.

      I crept across the room and peeked into the kitchen, then returned to the spot where Drover was waiting. “It’s Slim. He’s eating a turkey neck. I’m canceling Ranch Red Alert.”

      “Oh good!”

      “And Drover…” I moved closer and lowered my voice. “I think it would be best if we kept this to ourselves—you know, inside the Security Division.”

      “You mean…”

      “Yes. That business about Slim being a Charlie Monster…ha ha…it’s so ridiculous, we don’t need to spread it around.”

      “Yeah, somebody might think we’re just a couple of dumb dogs.”

      “Exactly, and think of what a bad effect that could have on morale. We must protect ourselves from lies and gossip.”

      “Yeah, even when they’re true.”

      “Especially when they’re true. Lies that contain a germ of truth can be very contagious, so here’s our story: We heard dogs barking but it wasn’t us. We don’t know anything about anything. Got it?”

      He grinned and gave me a wink. “Got it.”

      “Good! Now, let’s go into the kitchen and see what’s going on.”

      Okay, we’d had a little mix-up, a simple case of mistaken identity. Ha ha. But when a guy’s jerked out of a deep sleep, he sometimes…anyway, let’s back off and start all over again.

      It must have been around the end of May. Wait. May comes in the spring, right? We were still in wintertime. It was the last day of December, New Year’s Eve day to be exact, the very day that Slim and I learned a lot more about gathering buffalo than we ever wanted to know, but that comes later. At this point in the story, you’re not supposed to know about the scary part.

      You heard nothing about buffalo, right? Thanks.

      Okay, Drover and I had spent the past week camped out at Slim’s bachelor shack, two miles east of ranch headquarters. We often camped there in the winter because Slim was kind enough to let us sleep inside the house, near his wood-burning stove.

      See, our main office at ranch headquarters can be a little drafty in the dead of winter. I mean, sometimes I speak of it as “our Vast Office Complex,” but the truth is, it consists of two old gunny sacks beneath a pair of three hundred gallon fuel tanks. No heater and no walls to stop the whistling north wind that often comes in the winter months.

      I’m not whining or complaining, and I’m not going to say a word about Management being too CHEAP to build us the kind of office complex we deserve. I’m sure Loper had his reasons for putting the entire Security Division in a cramped, drafty little FLEABAG OF AN OFFICE beneath the gas tanks, although I can’t imagine what they were.

      On the other hand, Slim Chance, the hired hand on our outfit, had an enlightened policy about Dogs In The House, and in the depths of winter, we often chose to move the entire staff two miles down the creek to his place. There, in the Security Division’s Winter Headquarters, we conducted ranch business in the living room, beside a big, friendly, wood-burning stove.

      That’s where we were on that Saturday morning, New Year’s Eve day of whatever year it was, and the time had come for us to greet the Master of the House and find out what in thunder he was doing, wandering around the house at three o’clock in the morning.

      You’ll see. It was pretty strange.

      Chapter Two: Slim’s Fateful Decision

      Drover and I were on our way to the kitchen to wish Slim the good-morningest of good mornings, when we met him coming into the living room. He had just finished gnawing on a cold turkey neck. He wore flannel pajamas, his hair was a mess, and there was an odd expression on his face: distracted and very serious.

      The man had something on his mind and that was odd. I got the feeling that he’d been thinking about something during the night and we were fixing to hear about it.

      I gave Drover the signal to cancel Happy Dog and Good Morning, and we shifted into a program called Dogs Who Listen. It’s a dandy program but pretty difficult to pull off. It requires that we mirror the moods of our people, don’t you see. If they look thoughtful, we look thoughtful. If they want to talk, we listen.

      The reason it’s a tough program is that it requires a high level of concentration. As you might expect, Drover isn’t very good at that, because he has a lot of trouble staying on task. When we’re doing Dogs Who Listen, we can’t scratch or fall asleep. You’d be surprised at how crabby our people get when they confide in their dogs, and we scratch or fall asleep.

      We sat down on the living room floor and waited to hear what this was all about. Wearing a deep scowl, Slim paced two circles around the room, then stopped beside the stove and stared at the floor. “Dogs, I can’t sleep. A week ago, I done a terrible thing and it’s eating me up.”

      Drover and I exchanged glances. What was this? Slim had done a terrible deed and we didn’t know about it? I inched closer so that I could hear every word.

      “I asked a fine lady if she’d marry me, and she said yes. Now my conscience won’t give me a minute’s peace. I think she was feeling sorry for me, is why she said yes, and I’m betting that she’s changed her mind, only she’s too nice to tell me.”

      He looked down at us. “I’ve been brooding about it all week, and the truth just came to me. I’ve got nothing to offer Viola. She needs to forget about me and go on down the road. I’ll wait till eight o’clock and then I’m going to call her up and tell her the deal’s off. She’ll probably cry for two minutes, but for the rest of her life, she’ll thank the Lord that I let her off the hook.”

      [no image in epub file]

      He heaved a deep sigh. “There, the decision’s made and maybe I can get some sleep.” He shuffled off toward the bedroom. “Hank, if I ain’t up by eight o’clock, bark me out of bed.”

      And with that, he was gone. I was too stunned to speak, and my mind drifted back to that day a week ago. Yes, I remembered it very well. In a snowstorm, Slim and I spent five hours gathering a hundred head of steers off a busy highway and driving them five miles back to the ranch. He was ahorseback, I was afoot, and Miss Viola drove ahead of us in the pickup. Fellers, that was one of those times when the weather wasn’t fit for man nor beets. We’re talking about brutal

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