LITMIR.BIZ

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thought they had bristles.”

      “No. You’re thinking of brushes. Brushes have bristles. Hogs have hair.”

      “I’ll be derned. What makes ’em so boring?”

      “They’re boring, Drover, because they grunt all the time. If they had anything to say, maybe they wouldn’t be so boring, but their answer to everything is a grunt.”

      “Yeah, and who cares what a hog thinks anyway?”

      “Exactly my point. And let that be a lesson to you.”

      Just then, Slim pointed down to the creek. “Lookie yonder. There’s our doe and fawn again.” He gave us the evil eye. “Don’t you dogs even think about chasing those deer.”

      Who, me? Hey, he didn’t need to . . .

      Sure enough, on the other side of the creek was a whitetail doe and her fawn. They’d been coming in for water the past several days, and Slim sure didn’t need to worry about me barking them away. No sir. The thought had never . . .

      Okay, maybe I’d thought about it once or twice. I mean, barking at wild animals was second nature to a dog, but Slim had made his position clear on the matter and I had taken a solemn pledge not to bother his deer. Heck, I had even promised to protect them.

      At that very moment, my ears picked up the sound of an approaching vehicle. That was odd, very odd. Who would be coming to Slim’s place at this hour of the day? I didn’t know, and it didn’t really matter. The vehicle had no business on our ranch, and it was time for us dogs to bark the alarm.

      “Drover, we’ve got an unidentified vehicle coming in from the south. This could turn into a Code Three Situation. Let’s move out.”

      We went streaking past Slim’s pitiful little yard. It was pitiful because it contained no grass, only weeds, and most of those weeds were withered and brown from the heat. We roared past the yard, past the house, and went ripping up the hill to the cattle guard.

      There, sure enough, we met the Unauthorized Vehicle. Description: old Ford, faded blue, conventional box bed, a dent in the right fender. A driver appeared to be sitting . . . well, in the driver’s seat. I guess that wasn’t such a big clue, but I took note of it anyway.

      When you’re Head of Ranch Security, you have to notice every tiny detail. I mean, if there had been no driver, that would have been . . . never mind.

      But there was a driver. A man, age . . . I couldn’t tell his age. Maybe forty. He was wearing a straw cowboy hat and a T-shirt, an odd combination. See, cowboys—your real working cowboys—wear long-sleeved shirts, never T-shirts. There are reasons for that, but we’re in the middle of a Code Three and I don’t have time to go into them now.

      Oh, maybe we can pause for just a minute. Cowboys wear long-sleeved shirts to protect them­selves from sun and biting insects. Men who wear T-shirts usually aren’t ranch cowboys.

      Okay, back to the Unidentified Vehicle. We swooped in on it, Drover and I did, and within seconds we had it surrounded. I gave the order to initiate Warning Barks. When the pickup didn’t screech to a halt, we shifted into the next stage, which we call “You’d Better Stop That Thing Right Now.”

      It’s a more serious kind of barking, don’t you see, and a lot of times the driver of the vehicle will slam on his brakes and step out of the cab with his hands in the air. No kidding.

      But that’s not what this guy did. He kept driv­ing, I mean, just ignored us, kept going and left us in a cloud of dust. Caliche dust, very fine and powdery because of the dryness of the weather, and I didn’t appreciate having to breathe it.

      Already I wasn’t liking this guy, and then I noticed a couple of clues that made me like him even less. First off, he had two fishing poles hanging out the window on the passenger side, an indication that he might be a poached fisherman.

      A fishing poacherman.

      A poaching fisherman.

      A poacher. A trespasser. The kind of guy who slips onto a ranch and fishes without the permission of the owners. I don’t like ’em. They have no respect for private property. They come in without permission, catch fish, and leave their garbage behind—candy wrappers, beer cans, soda pop bottles—and we have to clean up the mess.

      So, right away, I had three or four good reasons for disliking this guy, and after choking on his dust for a few seconds, I sprang back into action and chased him all the way to Slim’s little shack of a barn. Drover fell in behind me and added a few yips.

      It must have worked. The trespasser pulled up beside Slim’s pickup and stopped. I quit barking and waited to see what would happen.

      Slim slouched against the pickup and stuck out his hand. “Well I’ll be derned. Joe McCall. I haven’t seen you in a while.”

      They shook hands. “It was at a team roping in Higgins, wasn’t it?”

      “That’s right. Me and Loper were lookin’ at the prize money right up to the last go-round. Then you caught your steer in seven seconds flat. We went home broke, and I’ve been broke ever since. I always figured it was mostly your fault.”

      Joe laughed. “We got lucky, is all. You guys were hot that night. You still rope?”

      “In the pasture, is all. My banker sent a little note with my fifth overdraft and said I might want to explore other career opportunities. I guess he’d done figured out that I wasn’t going to make it to the National Finals.”

      Joe nodded and smiled. “I hear you. Me too. Having to grow up is terrible, ain’t it?”

      “I wouldn’t know. I’m still fightin’ it. Well, heck, get out and stretch your legs. What brings you out here to the wilderness?”

      Joe got out and stretched. “Well, I had a day off and did a little fishing at the lake. I was on my way home and thought I’d stop by and say howdy.”

      Slim’s gaze went to the bed of the pickup. “What’s that you’re hauling back there?”

      Joe’s smile faded. “Oh, that’s Bruiser, my brother’s dog. He’s a rottweiler. I’m baby-sitting this week.”

      I shot a glance at Drover. “Did you hear that? There’s an unauthorized dog in the back of that pickup. Come on, son, we need to check this out.”

      We went streaking over to the pickup, and so the mystery began.

      Chapter Two: Bruiser, the Raging Rottweiler

      Joe let down the tailgate of the pickup, just as Drover and I arrived to begin our investigation of this new dog.

      Have we discussed the ranch’s position on visiting dogs? Maybe not. We always check ’em out pretty carefully, and for very good reason. Some of those town dogs will try to chase cattle, and that’s a major No-No. A huge No-No. In ranch country, dogs who chase cattle are very unpopular, and they don’t last long.

      Yes, we would have to speak with this mutt and get a few things . . .

      HUH?

      I saw him. There he was.

      That wasn’t a dog. It was a BEAR, a huge, enormous grizzly bear!

      I, uh, did a sudden about-face and found my steps leading to the underside of Joe’s, uh, pickup, so to speak. There, to my surprise, I found Drover cowering in the dust.

      “What are you doing under here? You’re supposed to be interrogating that dog.”

      “Not me. I saw him, and he looks like a gorilla. I never interrogate gorillas.”

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