LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

      WHAT! Compost heap! He’d given all the breakfast scraps to that miserable little…my mind was swirling. In the distance, I heard the cat laughing his head off.

      I turned to my assistant. “We’ve been tricked.”

      “You mean…I got slugged for nothing?”

      “Yes, that’s exactly what it means. Pete lured us into an argument over scraps that don’t exist. He ate them two hours ago.”

      “Oh darn, now I’m all upset.”

      “Fool! How could you have fallen for Pete’s treachery?”

      “Gosh, what did I do?”

      “Well, in the first place…Drover, Life is full of details. The fact that I can’t remember them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

      “Pete got the scraps ‘cause we slept late. That’s the reason you’re mad.”

      “That’s one of the reasons I’m mad. The other is that you’re still spreading lies and gossip about your commanding officer—namely, that I slept late.”

      “Yeah, but it’s true.”

      “All right, then you’re spreading truth about your commanding officer and that’s even worse.”

      “Yeah, but you gave me an award for bravery.”

      “I’m glad you mentioned that. The award has been revoked and those Chicken Marks are going right back on your record.”

      He gave me a wounded look. “Yeah, but I didn’t do anything wrong!”

      “Drover, the cat is laughing his head off and one of us has to accept the blame. I could take the blame, but think of the effect it would have on morale of this outfit.”

      He blinked his eyes. “Gosh, I never thought of that.”

      “It could be devastating. Here’s the solution. You take the blame, go to your room, and stick your nose in the corner for five minutes. That will put an end to the whole nasty episode.”

      “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

      I whopped him on the back. “I like your spirit, son. Now, run along and let’s put this thing behind us.”

      “Okay, here I go!”

      With an air of fatherly pride, I watched as he…huh? You know what he did? After running about ten steps toward the gas tanks, he made a hard right turn and highballed it straight to the machine shed, where he dived through the slot between the big sliding doors.

      “Drover, this is the voice of your commanding officer! Return to base at once and put your nose in the corner! Drover?”

      He had vanished into the depths of his Secret Sanctuary, and it would have taken a pack of bloodhounds to find him in there.

      You know, it breaks my heart when these things happen. You drill the men, try to teach them discipline and loyalty, and just when you think a light has come on in their tiny minds, they make a dumb decision and blow the whole thing to smithereens.

      Oh well. We have to trudge on with our lives.

      Little Alfred had dumped the contents of his bucket into the compost pit, so I drifted over to check it out. Sniff sniff. Carrot peelings, wilted lettuce, coffee grounds, onion skins, peach seeds, watermelon rinds, and three dozen potatoes that had sprouted in the pantry and gone bad. In other words, I was looking at vegetable garbage that a normal dog wouldn’t touch, even if he was starving to death.

      Yes, this had turned into a dark day on the ranch, and to make things even worse, I could hear Sally May’s rotten little cat: “How are the scraps, Hankie? Hee, hee, hee!”

      Right then and there, I made an entry in the Log Book of My Mind: “Kitty will pay for this.” Exactly when and where he would pay had not been determined.

      I turned to Little Alfred, my dearest pal in the world, gave him Shattered Looks and went to Slow Wags on the tail section, as if to say, “Here’s a thought. What are the chances that you could slip into the house and, you know, bring me a cookie? One little cookie might really turn things around.”

      No sale. He ordered me out of the garden and headed back to the house with his empty bucket. (Here’s an important detail: he forgot to close the garden gate. That will come up later, so remember it).

      At that very moment, I heard a vehicle pulling into ranch headquarters, and, well, you know me. Even when my heart is aching for breakfast scraps and cookies that never appear, I’m still Head of the ranch’s Security Division, and I have to work Traffic.

      Who else would do it? Drover? Pete? That’s a laugh. Rain or shine, day or night, happy or sad, they can be counted on to do nothing. I have to rise to the occasion and monitor the comings and goings of all vehicles that enter my territory, and that’s what I did. I went to Turbo Four on all engines and met the UV (Unidentified Vehicle) as it was coming down that little hill in front of the house.

      Okay, false alarm. It was one of our ranch pickups, and it was pulling a sixteen-foot stock trailer. The driver was Slim Chance, the hired hand on this outfit. In other words, I didn’t need to check his papers or run his license plate number through Data Control. I waved him through Security and gave him an escort down to the corrals. (When they’re pulling a trailer, we know their destination: the corrals).

      Loper had just turned the horses out into the pasture and made his appearance as Slim was backing the trailer up to the loading chute. When Slim stepped out of the pickup, Loper said, “You couldn’t load the bull?”

      “Of course I loaded the bull. When you send a man to do a man’s job, he gets it done.”

      Loper pointed to the trailer. “Where’s the bull?”

      Slim looked toward the trailer and saw that it was empty. His eyes grew wide. “Loper, when I left the east pasture pens, that bull was in the trailer. What in the world?”

      They walked to the trailer and gave it an inspection. Loper pointed to the trailer gate. “There’s your answer. The sliding gate came open and you unloaded a bull somewhere on the county road.”

      Slim smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Good honk. I never use that sliding gate and I didn’t check to see if it was latched.”

      “I can tell you: it wasn’t latched. On that bumpy road, it worked itself open. How fast were you driving?”

      “Not fast, twenty or thirty miles an hour.”

      “Well, if he didn’t break a leg, he’ll be out on the road somewhere between here and the east pasture.”

      “We’d better saddle the horses.”

      Loper shook his head. “I just turned ‘em out, and we won’t need horses anyway. That bull’s as gentle as a pup. We’ll take three corral panels and make a wing, and load him afoot.”

      “I think we ought to take horses.”

      “It would take too long. I’ve got a meeting at church at four o’clock and there’s only so much time in my schedule to clean up your messes. The next time we need to move a bull, I’ll send Alfred to do it.”

      Slim shook his head and rolled his eyes up to the sky. “Loper, you are the most…”

      They were still arguing when they got into the pickup. Loper started the motor and pulled away from the corrals. I didn’t do Escort this time because…well, to be real honest, I didn’t want to call attention to the fact that they had left me behind.

      See, most of the time, a loyal cowdog wants to go along on every adventure and, you know, be right there in the middle of things, but when the adventure involves a bull…uh, that changes things. Bulls are huge and they don’t

Скачать книгу