LITMIR.BIZ

      So where were we? Oh yes, after being entertained by J.T. Cluck’s heartburn stories, I headed down to the office, where I found some nice shade and two gunny sack beds. Drover was occupying one of them, conked out asleep, and I slid into the embrace of the other one.

      Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t sleep. No sir, we have pretty strict rules about sleeping during business hours. I needed to conserve my energy, as well as catch up on reports and work out the schedule for Night Patrol. See, sometimes I do my paperwork in bed.

      All of a sudden, I was awakened by a piercing…

      Wait. Let me rephrase that. I wasn’t asleep and therefore couldn’t have been awakened by the scream. I was writing up my notes of the J.T. Cluck Comedy Hour, remember? Yes, that was it. The British were stealing his grasshoppers.

      The Head of Ranch Security doesn’t sleep in the middle of the day. Let’s just say that upon hearing the awful scream, I leaped out of my office chair and took charge of the situation. “Parsley bubbles on the lumber bunny cobblers! Outrageous freckles see no evil and we shall beat to quarters!”

      With jerky movements of my head, I glanced around and saw…what was that thing? It was mostly white. On one end, it seemed to have a head and on the other end, a stub of a tail. The creature stood on wobbly legs and stared at me with eyes that resembled…I don’t know, two bowls of dishwater.

      I beamed a merciless glare at the stranger and yelled, “Halt! Stop in the name of the lawn! Who goes there?”

      A mysterious voice said, “Poppy hop along with pollywog jelly.”

      “That’s your name? Let’s see some ID, and keep all five feet on the ground.”

      “I thought I heard someone scream.”

      “Roger that. I heard it too, and we’ve got units checking it out, even as we squeak. What’s your name? We need a name to go with the face.”

      “Which face?”

      “The one you’re wearing.”

      “Oh, that one.” He blinked his eyes and gazed around. “Well, I guess I’m Drover. I wasn’t sure at first, but I think I am.”

      “I’ve heard that name before.”

      “Yeah, I live here.”

      “Ah! Now we’re getting somewhere. Your name must already be in our system, so form a line and pick up your uniform.” I narrowed my eyes and looked closer at him. “Did you say your name is Drover?”

      He grinned and nodded. “Yeah. Hi.”

      “Hello. We used to have a Drover on the staff and he drove me nuts. What are you, his cousin or something?”

      “No, it was me all along. Sometimes they call me Rover, but it’s Drover with a D.”

      “Drover with a D? Are you suggesting that I can’t smell your name? And speaking of smell…” I moved closer and checked him out with Sniffatory Scanners. “I’m picking up a strange odor. Explain.”

      “Well, I rolled on a fresh cow pie.”

      “Why would you do that?”

      He grinned and shrugged. “I don’t know, it seemed like the right thing to do.”

      “It was the wrong thing to do. You stink. You said Drover, right?”

      “Yeah, with a D.”

      “Please stop telling me how to spell your name. The point is that you’re Drover with a D. We’ve known each other for a long time, which makes me wonder…” I glanced around in a full circle. “Where are we?”

      “In our bedroom, under the gas tanks.”

      “Ah. That explains the deja voodoo, the feeling that I’ve been here before.”

      “Yeah, about a million times. We were asleep and something woke us up.”

      “I wasn’t asleep. Who can sleep on this ranch? Even so…what do you suppose woke us up?”

      His eyes grew large. “It was some kind of scream.”

      That word, “scream,” seemed to activate all my professional instincts, and I knew we had a serious problem on the ranch. Just how serious, I didn’t know. You don’t either, so you’d better keep reading.