LITMIR.BIZ

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important mission. I didn’t want you to miss out on this great opportunity. Congratulations.”

      “Gosh, thanks.” He yawned.

      “Don’t yawn when I’m talking to you. It’s impolite and disrespectful.”

      “But I just woke up.”

      “That’s no excuse. There’s a time to yawn and there’s a time to un-yawn.”

      “I ate an onion once. Made me sick as a dog.”

      “Well, what did you expect? If you’re a dog, Drover, you can’t very well be sick as a horse. Had you ever thought of that?”

      “Not really.”

      “So there you are. It all fits together.” There was a moment of silence. I thought I heard him yawn again. “Did you just yawn?”

      “No, that wasn’t me.”

      “Good. What were we discussing? I seem to have lost my train of thought.”

      “Onions.”

      “Yes, of course. Drover, you should never eat an onion. It will make you as sick as a horse, but that’s not what we were talking about.”

      “We’d just decided to go back to bed.”

      “Exactly. Well, good night, Drover, I hope you get a good . . . wait a minute. I just woke you up.”

      “Yeah. I fibbed, but it was for my own good. You said that was okay.”

      I stuck my nose in his face and gave him a growl. “Listen, you tuna, I woke you up for a very important reason. I picked up signals on E-scope. I want you to check it out. Do you have any problem with that?”

      “Yeah. What’s an E-scope?”

      “Ears, Drover. Earatory Scanners. Earascopes.”

      “That’s three names. I only have two ears.”

      “If you keep blabbering and wasting my valuable time, you might end up with only one ear. Now get out there and see what was causing those odd sounds.”

      He walked around in circles. “Which way? I don’t know where to go, and boy, this old leg is . . .”

      “Over there, Drover, toward the garbage barrels. I’ll stay here and defend Command Central. We’ll maintain constant radio contact. Oh, and your code name for this mission is Flaming Pretzel.”

      He burst out with a silly giggle. “Tee-hee, that’s funny—Flaming Pretzel.”

      “It’s not funny at all, Drover. It’s not only very serious, it’s also Top Secret. Do you realize that we’re the only dogs in the world who know the true meaning of Flaming Pretzel?”

      “Yeah, and even I don’t know what it means.”

      “Exactly, and neither do I. That gives you some idea of just how secret and important this mission is. Even those of us who will carry out the mission can’t be trusted with its true meaning. Congratu­lations, Drover. Now get on with it. Good hunting.”

      With much whimpering and whining, he set out on his mission. Once he was gone, I . . . heh, heh . . . did a quick spin around my gunnysack and flopped down. See, I had done some calculations and figured that I could grab ten minutes of sack time before I had to bark up the sun. When you’re Head of Ranch Security, you grab your sleep when it’s grabbable, because when it’s not grabbable, it’s . . . snork murk borgle muff . . .

      Perhaps I dozed. Yes, I’m sure I did, but I was soon dragged from my slumbers by the crackling of the radio.

      “Hank, this is . . . I forgot my name, over.”

      “Porkchop.”

      “Okay. Hank, this is Flaming Pork Chop, over, and I’ve found something out here, over and over. You’d better come check it out, over and over and over.”

      Huh? Over and over and over? Who was . . . what the . . . oh, yes, it was Drover. Do you get the secret meaning? Over + Dr = Drover.

      I shook the sleep out of my vapors. “This is Command Central to Flagrant Pretzel. Come back on that last repeat. Report. Repeat the report.”

      “I’ve found something out here and it looks pretty serious. You’d better come see, over and under.”

      I heaved a sigh and pushed myself up on all fours. Well, my sleep was finished and duty was calling. I yawned. We always yawn first thing . . . I’ve already said that. I yawned and stretched and rolled the muscles in my enormous shoulders, and lumbered out into the predawn darkness to find my nincompoop assistant.

      Chances were that he had found nothing at all, or maybe a stray cricket, but I had to check it out. That was my job, after all, and when you’re Head of Ranch Security, the bug stops here. Within seconds, I had located Drover’s position.

      He was crouched behind a chinaberry tree. “Okay, what seems to be the problem?”

      “Well, let me think here. I saw three garbage barrels.”

      “Yes, that checks out. Those are Sally May’s garbage barrels. She puts garbage in them and burns it once a week. What’s the point?”

      “Well, there’s no garbage in them.”

      “Hmm. That’s odd. How do you explain that?”

      “Well, it’s scattered all over the ground.”

      “Hmmm. That’s even odder. Sally May isn’t the kind of woman who throws her garbage on the ground. I don’t like the sound of this, Drover. Could it be that she’s undergone a complete change of personality?”

      “Yeah, either that or those five coons tipped over the barrels and scattered the garbage.”

      HUH? Five coons?

      And so it was that the mystery began, a mystery that would soon lead me into deadly combat with a clan of coons, and would end with me being . . .

      You’ll see.

      Chapter Two: I Tear Down a Whole Tree and Thrash Several Coons

      I peered into the darkness and studied the situation. Much to my amazement, Drover had not only given a fairly accurate description of the problem, but he had even come up with the correct number of coons. There were five of them, and fellers, they were making a mess of things.

      They’re experts at making messes, don’t you know. They’re never content just to take what they need and leave. Oh no. They find some kind of fiendish pleasure in wrecking things, whether it’s a corn patch, a chicken house, or a garbage barrel. Or three garbage barrels.

      I watched them and felt a growing sense of outrage. My master’s wife had spent a lot of hours and a lot of days trying to make the place look nice and presentable. Now, here were these bandits, these raccoon thugs, making a mockery of all her hard work. The longer I watched, the madder I got.

      “Drover, are you going to sit there watching this outrage, or will you do something to teach those villains a lesson?”

      “Oh . . . probably just sit here. How about you?”

      “Are you suggesting that I might be afraid to go into combat against five coons?”

      “Well . . . it makes sense to me.”

      “Yes, it does, doesn’t it? I mean, combat against one coon is dangerous enough, but five . . . a guy could sure get his face plowed.”

      “Yeah, and I’m still worried about this old leg. The pain

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