LITMIR.BIZ

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think we were trying to decide . . . I’m not sure there was a point.”

      “Hence, by simple logic, we see that you’ve lured me into another pointless conversation. And you also woke me up, and don’t try to deny it.”

      “Okay. Hank, you see the moon?”

      I squinted my eyes and looked toward the east and saw the alleged moon. “Of course I see the moon. Anyone with eyes can see the moon. I saw the moon at this same time last night and last month and last year. I assume, since that’s such a stupid question, you’ll follow it with another stupid question.”

      He shook his head. “No, that was all. I just wondered if you saw the moon.”

      I pushed myself up on all-fours and lumbered over to him. I was not in, shall we say, a jolly frame of mind. “Listen, pipsqueak, after interrupting my sleep, you’d better have another question in mind.”

      “Oh. Well, all right. Let me see here. Hank, how come the moon comes up in the evening and goes down after midnight?”

      I stared at him and shook my head. “See? I knew you had one more stupid question in there. All right, I’ll tell you, but I expect you to pay attention and remember your lessons. I don’t want to go through this every night for the rest of our lives.”

      “Okay, Hank, I’m ready.”

      “Number one: hot air rises. Number two: cold air unrises, or you might prefer to say that it falls.”

      “Yeah, I like that better.”

      “Number three: the air at the end of the day is hot. Number four: the air at the end of the night is cold. Can you figger it from there or do I have to fill in the blanks?”

      He squinted one eye and thought about it. “Well, that tells me a lot about air but I was kind of curious about the moon.”

      “They’re one and the same, you dunce.”

      “You mean the moon’s nothing but air? I thought it was made out of cheese.”

      “It IS made out of cheese, but do you think it’s up there hanging in water?”

      “Well . . . no.”

      “Then what’s it hanging in?”

      Again, he squinted at the moon. “Right now, I’d say it’s hanging in that big cottonwood tree down by the creek.”

      “Absolutely wrong. It appears to be, but that’s only a tropical illusion.”

      “It is? Then that means . . .”

      “Exactly. It’s actually hanging in thin air.”

      “It does look pretty thin.”

      “It’s very thin, Drover, and since thin air is thinner than thick air and warm air is warmer than cool air, it follows from simple deduction that the moon rises. I can’t make it any simpler than that.”

      “Oh, that’s simple enough . . . I guess.”

      “Any more questions about the moon, the sun, the planets, the canopy of stars that covers the skies at night? This is the time to ask your questions, Drover, while we’re between investigations.”

      “Well . . . what would happen if the moon was hanging in thin water instead of thin air? Would it sink or float?”

      “That would depend on how thin the water was, and I think that’s about all the time we have for questions. We’ve got work to do.”

      “I thought this was the time to ask questions.”

      “It was, but time marches on, and we either join the parade or go to the rodeo.”

      Drover scratched his ear. “I’ve never been to a rodeo.”

      “Yes, but you’ve never been to a parade either, so that only proves what I’ve said all along.”

      “What’s that?”

      “It’s time to get to work. There’s more to this life than rodeos and parades.”

      “I sure hope so. I’ve never been to either one.”

      I stared at the runt. “I just said that. Why are you repeating what I’ve already said?”

      He hung his head. “I don’t know. It just sounded good at the time, and I didn’t know what else to say.”

      “Drover, when you don’t have anything important to say, it’s usually better just to keep your trap shut.”

      “Okay Hank, but it’s liable to get awful quiet around here.”

      “That gives us something to hope for, doesn’t it, and hope is the fuel for the machinery of life, so that pretty well wraps things up. Are you ready to go on patrol?”

      “Well . . . I was feeling kind of sleepy, to tell you the truth.”

      “I appreciate the truth but the sleep will have to wait. We’ve got a job to do.”

      “Oh rats.”

      At that very moment, I heard the back door slam up at the house. I perked my ears and listened. Sally May’s footsteps on the sidewalk, seventeen of them (seventeen footsteps, not seventeen sidewalks). Then, a fork scraping on a plate. Then . . .

      “Kitty kitty kitty! Here Hank, here Drover!”

      Ah ha! It was scrap time at the yard gate, one of my very favorite times of the day. “Come on, Drover. Our most important job right now is to beat the cat to the scraps. Let’s move out.”

      We left the gas tanks and went sprinting up the hill.

      Little did we know what awaited us at the top of the hill, and for the very best of reasons.

      We weren’t there yet.

      Chapter Two: The Mystery of the Corncobs

      Just as I had surmised, Sally May was standing at the yard gate with a plate in her hand. And just as I had NOT surmised, Pete had beat us there.

      In other words, we had failed in our primary mission of the evening, to beat the cat to the scraps. Failure is painful enough by itself, but when it comes at the hands of a cat, it becomes almost un­bearable, even though a cat has paws instead of hands.

      Drover and I couldn’t have responded to the call any faster, which left only one solution to the puzzle: Pete had been tipped off about the scraps. He had gotten inside information. In other words, he had cheated, which is the typical cat method of doing business.

      They don’t play by the rules, see. They cheat and use sneaky behavior to compensate for certain design mistakes that were made when cats were first invented. When you deal with cats on a daily basis, as I do, you have to be prepared to play dirty.

      Well, by the time we got there, Sally May had already scraped off one portion of scraps, and I don’t need to tell you who was there to snatch them the instant they hit the ground: Mister Cheater, Mister Greediness, Pete the Barncat.

      I went straight to him, figgered I’d check out his scraps to see exactly what he’d got. “Out of the way, cat. We’re taking over this deal and you can run along and play.”

      Pete cut his eyes in my direction, pinned his ears down, and started growling and chewing at the same time. You ever notice how a cat does that? They come out with this peculiar sound, see, something between a yowl and a growl, but they’re so greedy and

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