LITMIR.BIZ

      It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. Sometimes you get a feeling, an eerie feeling, that something’s not right. Maybe you awaken from a dream or maybe it begins with a tiny sound out in the darkness, and then you notice this creepy crawling sensation on the back of your neck.

      You raise your head and lift your ears. You hold your breath and listen. Maybe you hear something and maybe you don’t, but you KNOW that something’s wrong, that something or someone is out there in the darkness.

      That’s the way it started, on a windy night in March. I was in my office on the twelfth floor of the Security Division’s Vast Office Complex. It had been another of those days that start out normal and then stretch into an eighteen-hour dog-killer. Around here, the work never ends. The work, the worry, the crushing responsibility of running the ranch . . . they just keep piling up.

      I was sitting at my desk, reading over a huge stack of . . .

      Wait. To be perfectly honest, I was under the gas tanks, sleeping on my gunnysack bed, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. All dogs need sleep every once in a while, even the Head of Ranch Security. There’s no shame or disgrace in grabbing a few winks of sleep, is there?

      Of course not. We cowdogs have very high standards and demand more of ourselves than your ordinary run of mutts, but still, eventually we must close our eyes, release our grip on the world, and catch a few winks of healing sleep.

      That’s what I was doing, healing my worn-out body and restoring my precious bodily fluids. I hadn’t slept more than a few minutes . . . okay, a few hours, but the point is that in the dark of the night, I awoke from a deep sleep, leaped out of bed, and noticed that creepy feeling in the back of my neck.

      I blinked my eyes and studied the . . . well, the darkness. It was very dark and I couldn’t see much of anything, but I KNEW that something wasn’t right.

      I reached for the microphone of my mind. “Jaybird, this is Codfish. Do you copy?”

      I held my breath and waited for a reply. It came. “Copy. Poppy. Hoppy.”

      “Drover? Are you there?”

      “Murk snork copy codfish pogostick. Zzzzzzt.”

      “Drover, answer me. We don’t have time for nonsense. I have a feeling that something strange is going on around here, over.”

      Over the crackle of the radio, I heard him say, “Ten thousand teddybears brush their teeth with okra pickles. Snork murk figgy pudding.”

      You see what I have to put up with around here? My Assistant Head of Ranch Security was sleeping his life away. He didn’t know or care that our ranch might be in danger, and I didn’t have time to mess with him.

      I sent one last message. “Drover, your behavior is shocking and disgraceful, and it will have to go into my report.”

      “Fuzzy bubble.”

      “Don’t argue with me. You’ve brought this on yourself and you’ll have to live with the consequences. I’m sorry it’s come to this.”

      “Beetle bomb codfish ladyfingers snork murff.”

      “I’m going out on a dangerous mission. If I’m not back in two hours, send fresh troops. Over and out.”

      “Scuffy railroad bloomers.”

      I stood there for a moment, wondering how I was expected to protect the ranch with such . . . oh well. I would deal with Drover later. Right now, I had a job to do.

      I left the office, took the elevator down to the ground floor, and strode out of the Security Divi­sion’s Vast Office Complex . . . out into the dark spookiness of the dark spooky night, let us say. I would have to answer this call without backup, and I’ll admit that it caused me some uneasiness. I mean, Drover wasn’t much help, even when he was awake, but at least he provided some companionship.

      Sometimes, when we pull duty in the middle of the night, it helps to have a warm body around, even one as worthless as Drover’s. But tonight I would have to face the darkness and the terrible loneliness of the job all by myself.

      I put my nose to the ground, switched all circuits over to Snifforadar, and began working the area. Back and forth, back and forth. This wasn’t as easy as you might suppose, since I had no clues or leads in the case. All I had was . . . well, just a feeling that something bad was going on.

      That wasn’t much, but sometimes in the Security Business, that’s all we get.

      I worked the area just west of the gas tanks and found nothing out of the ordinary. At that point I began to wonder if I had dreamed it all. That happens sometimes, you know, when a guy has worked himself down to a frazzle. He begins to imagine . . .

      Wait! Did you hear that? Maybe not, because you weren’t there, but I heard it. It was very plain in the stillness of the night: a clucking sound, perhaps the clucking of a chicken, and it had come from the direction

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