LITMIR.BIZ

      It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. At first glance there was nothing about the vehicle that made it stand out. It was a red Chevy car with . . . I don’t know, four doors and four tires. No big deal, except that it had come onto my ranch without permission, so Drover and I gave it the usual treatment.

      We shifted into the Launch All Dogs Procedure, went ripping up the hill, and barked the car all the way down to the machine shed.

      There, I waited to see if the driver would dare to step out. Sometimes they don’t, you know. After they’ve seen all the amassed forces of the ranch’s Security Division, sometimes they just sit in the car, afraid to move. But this guy seemed pretty brave, and when he climbed out of the car, I understood why.

      He was a deputy sheriff. On his belt he carried a pistol, two sets of handcuffs, and all that other stuff they load onto their belts. And you know what else? I knew the guy: Chief Deputy Kile of the Ochiltree County Sheriff’s Department.

      Do you remember Deputy Kile? He helped me solve the Case of the Saddle House Robbery . . . or I helped him. I don’t remember all the details, but we worked the case together and sent a sneaking little saddle thief to the slammer.

      Are you familiar with the word “slammer”? Maybe not, because it’s one of the technical words we use in the Security Business. It means “jailhouse,” and we call it “slammer” because . . . well, because every jailhouse has a big iron door, and when you throw a crook in jail, you close the door behind him and it SLAMS.

      So instead of calling it a jailhouse, we call it the slammer.

      Maybe this is obvious, but the point is that Deputy Kile and I were in the same line of work, right? He happened to work for the sheriff’s department and I happened to be Head of Ranch Security, but both of us enforced the law and were the sworn enemies of all crooks, crinimals, spies, snakes, scorpions, and night monsters.

      I was very interested in finding out why he had come to the ranch. He wasn’t the kind of fellow who made social calls or engaged in idle chatter, so when Slim came out of the machine shed to greet him, I stationed myself nearby and listened to their conversation.

      After exchanging pleasantries and thoughts about the weather and pasture conditions, Deputy Kile said, “Slim, I need to borrow some air. I’ve got a slow leak in that right front tire.”

      A slow leak in his tire? That was all? What a bum deal. I had hoped for something more exciting. I mean, let’s face it, in August things get a little dull around here.

      Slim looked at the tire. “I can fix it with a plug, if you’ve got a few minutes.”

      Deputy Kile said he had time, so Slim jacked up the car, pulled off the tire, and found the source of the problem: a mesquite thorn.

      He pulled it out with a pair of needle-nose pliers and held it up. “Where’d you find a mesquite thorn? There ain’t a mesquite tree within twenty miles of here.”