The Big Question - John R. Erickson Hank the Cowdog

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with open mouths and wide eyes, we stared at her in unison, two dogs and a bachelor cowboy. The seconds passed and when no one spoke, she finally said, “Well, Merry Christmas. Did I come at a bad time?”

      Slim swallowed so hard, his Adam’s apple bounced around. He blinked his eyes and mumbled, “Bad time? Oh, no ma’am, it’s a good time. I was just…cleaning up the house.”

      Oh brother, that was a whopper of a lie! Him, cleaning the house? Ha.

      He pushed open the screen door and she stepped inside. At that point…well, what’s a dog supposed to do? I shot across the room and met her at the…whatever you call it, the “threshold,” I suppose, and there I went into a program we call “Exuberant Leaps and Groans.”

      It’s not an easy program to pull off, and a lot of your ordinary mutts won’t even attempt it. It consists of hops, leaps, dives, and groans of delight. The timing on those groans is pretty crucial. If you try to groan at the very moment you’re leaping, it’ll come out as a grunt and that kills the emotional so-forth of the presentation. You might get by with grunting over a cowboy, but grunting over a lady is exactly wrong. Never grunt over a lady.

      Whilst I was doing Leaps and Groans, Drover did his own little routine. He didn’t have the ambition to do good leaps, so he scrambled in circles and squeaked. It was kind of pathetic, to tell you the truth, but I guess he was doing his best.

      But back to my Leaps and Groans, there was one part of the presentation that you probably didn’t notice. See, I didn’t throw myself into her embrace, and fellers, that took some iron discipline, because every cell and fiber of my body was telling me to dive right into the middle of her arms. I held back because…well, the last time I leaped into her embrace, she fell over backwards and landed on the floor, and Slim had harsh words to say about that.

      So, this time, I gave her an amazing display of leaping. And as you might expect, she was impressed. Delighted. Blown away. She laughed and said, “My goodness, Hank, you’re very athletic.”

      Athletic? Hey, I was just getting warmed up. Wait until she saw Part Two. I raced down the long dark hallway to Slim’s bedroom, did a one-eighty in front of his bed, sprinted back into the living room, did another one-eighty and two Joyous Leaps, raced into the kitchen, did a…

      Actually, I slipped on the linoleum floor and had a pretty bad collision with a chair, but I made an amazing recovery, streaked back into the living room, and did five Straight-up Hops and three groans, right there in front of her.

      Wow. I’m not one to honk my own wagon, but I must admit that it was one of the most awesome displays of dogly devotion ever seen in the whole world. Miss Viola was amazed, and we’re talking about speechless amazed. Even Drover was amazed. Slim was…well, he was so busy picking up magazines and dirty socks off the floor, he didn’t see much of it, but that was okay because it wasn’t meant for him.

      The important point is that She-For-Whom-It-Was-Meant saw every leap and heard every groan, and she was deeply moved. Perhaps for the first time, she understood that she’d been wasting her time with Slim, and I was the Dog of Her Dreams.

      I can’t think of a nicer way of putting it. The facts pretty muchly spoke for themselves. Slim was a dirty bachelor and a lazy slug, while I was…well, an Olympic sprinter and diver, an acrobat, a ballet dancer, a poet and a hero, and a world-class groaner who just happened to be madly in love with her.

      There. It was out in the open for all the world to see. Miss Viola and I would run away to a castle on a mountain top and live happy ever afterly, while Slim stayed in his shack and ate boiled turkey necks for the rest of his life.

      I hated to do that to poor Slim on Christmas day, but…well, he still had Drover to warm his feet on cold winter nights.

      You probably think that Miss Viola and I loaded up in a one-horse open sleigh and drove off to that gleaming castle in the misty distance of our dreams. That’s kind of what I’d had in mind, don’t you see, but…well, it didn’t happen that way.

      Maybe she had other things to do. Or maybe she felt sorry for Slim. Yes, that was it. She couldn’t bring herself to break the heart of a skinny bachelor on Christmas day, so you might say that we had to postpone our plans for the future.

      But make no mistake about it, she was impressed by my performance. She laughed, she rubbed my ears and, hey, she even said, “Hank, for that, you deserve a cookie.” And right there in front of the whole world, she unwrapped her gift, brought out one of her famous oatmeal and raisin cookies, and pitched it up in the air.

      Would you care to guess what happened next? You won’t believe this. What happened next was that a little white comet came flying through the air, right in front of my nose, and SNATCHED MY COOKIE!

      It was Drover. One second, he’d been sitting there like a chunk of petrified wood, and the next…I was astamished, outraged, speechless, but I didn’t stay speechless for long.

      I marched over to him, stuck my nose in his face, and roared, “You little cook, that was my crookie you stole!”

      “No, it was a cookie.”

      “Of course it was a cookie. It was MY cookie and you robbed it!”

      He gobbled and slurped. “Well, you stole my turkey neck, so we’re even.”

      “It was only half a turkey neck.”

      “Yeah, and you stole it.”

      “I did not steal it. You fell asleep and it walked out the door.”

      “Did not.”

      “Did too, and I’ll thank you to stop spewing cookie crumbs in my face!”

      “You’re welcome.”

      “You did it again!”

      “Well, quit making me talk and I won’t spit crumbs.”

      “You’re still spitting crumbs! Every time you open your cheating little mouth, you spew crumbs in my face!”

      “It’s the best cookie I ever ate.”

      “And you’re still spewing crumbs on me!” I marched two steps away and brushed the crumbs off my nose, face, and eyebrows. “Okay, pal, you’ve really done it this time.”

      “Thanks for the cookie.”

      “Shut your trap. For robbing cookies and spewing crumbs in the face of a superior officer, you will get seven Chicken Marks.”

      He grinned. “Yeah, but I didn’t mean to spit crumbs.”

      “Okay, ten Chicken Marks.”

      “How come it went up?”

      “Because you’re a greedy little pig, that’s why, and this will go into my report. The whole world will find out what a shameless little cookie-grabber you turned out to be.”

      He swallowed down the last wad of cookie. “You can keep the turkey necks. I’ll take a cookie every time.”

      I drew in a huge gulp of air and was about to give him the tongue-lashing of his young life, when I realized that Miss Viola was holding another cookie in her fingers, and she said, “Here, Hank, this one is for you. Drover…no.”

      She pitched it into the air and…SNARF…this time, I snared it right out of the sky. Chewing the delicious cookie, I marched back to Mister Buttinski. “There, you see? She loves me ten times more than she doesn’t love you, so there!”

      “You’re spitting crumbs in my face.”

      “Good. Here’s some more.” And with that, I proceeded to blow crumbs all over his cheating little…oops, somehow in the process of crumbulating Drover, the main part of my cookie spurted out of my mouth and landed…

      Guess who pounced on it

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