The Ghosts of Rabbits Past Read online

  Are you shocked? I was. Maybe I should have expected some kind of treachery, but old, trusting Hank had gotten himself blind-sided. The magnitude of Drover’s corruption left me dizzy and speechless, and don’t tell me that I should have been listening more carefullier. Care-full-lee-er. More careful. Don’t tell me that I should have…phooey.

  Hey, I knew what he was supposed to say, and he knew what he was supposed to say, only he used a cheap trick and didn’t say it. Before my very eyes and ears, he promised on his Cowdog Oath to run off to the machine shed and hide. And then he did it!

  How did that make me look?

  Oh brother. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by the wickedness of this world—lies, cheating, dirty tricks, friend against friend, comrade against comrade. It almost broke my heart.

  But I had bigger problems than a broken heart. If you recall, I had walked into something big and hairy in the darkness…and I wasn’t anxious to find out what it might be.

  Chapter Three: Yipes!

  Are you feeling nervous about this? Good. I was scared out of my wits.

  All the evidence in this case suggested that I had either bumped into a cannibal, a Charlie Monster, or a Hooligan Mole. If you were in that situation, which would you choose?

  Those were the choices I faced, only I really didn’t have a choice, because whatever I’d bumped into was whatever it was, regardless of my opinions. That doesn’t make sense, so let’s move along.

  The point is that I was out there alone in the darkness and had encountered some living thing that wasn’t supposed to be there, and fellers, I had a real bad feeling about it. I tried to calm myself and plot a response. Should I bark the alarm, run, fight, or try to establish communication with the creature? Or creatures. For all I knew, there might be hundreds of them lurking in the darkness.

  I ran these options through Data Control and got a green light for Communication. That made sense. Communicating with alien beings is much better than any of the other things you can do with them.

  Trying to hide the quiver in my voice, I sent out a message.

  “Hello there. This is the voice of the ranch’s Security Division. You seem to be walking through a secured area without permission. If you’re here by mistake, this doesn’t have to be a big deal. Just turn around and leave the compound, and don’t come back.

  “If you came with hostile intentions, you should understand that we have snipers on the walls and three divisions of heavy infantry standing by. Any hostile action on your part will be met with deadly force.”

  I waited for a reply. Nothing, not a word, but I could hear raspy breathing, so I knew he was there. Suddenly it occurred to me that the creature might not speak Ranch English, so I tried another approach.

  Have I mentioned that I’m effluent in many languages? I am. It’s one of those skills that a top-of-the-line cowdog must be prepared to use in the course of a normal day. See, we never know the cultural background or language system of the Bad Guys we encounter on the ranch, so we must be prepared to conduct our business in any one of five or six languages.

  I addressed him in Universal Speaklish. “Ooo-hay are-yea oo-yea, eecher-cray? Eek-spay.”

  This time I got a reply. “Oom-pah oom-pah.”

  “Utt-whey? Eeek-spay owder-lay.”

  “Oom-pah oom-pah, tic-tac-toe.”

  Hmmm. I didn’t know if he could understand me, but I sure wasn’t understanding him. We both seemed to be speaking in a foreign tongue, but not necessarily the same one. Or…wait. Perhaps I had forgotten some of the vocabulary. I mean, it wasn’t every day that I carried on a conversation in Speaklish.

  I would have to keep trying. “Eecher-cray: utt-whey iz-yeah oour-yeah aim-nay? Awk-tay.”

  I waited for his reply, and this time, it came loud and clear. He said, “Oom-pah oom-pah Ort-snay.”

  The “oom-pah oom-pah” meant nothing to me, but Ort-snay? The word had a familiar ring, but for a moment or two, I couldn’t get the cart before the hammer. I did a quick search of my memory banks and came up with a match.

  Ort-snay was the Speaklish word for…SNORT!

  At that same moment, I began to notice a heavy musky odor in the aerosphere. Gulp. In the darkness of night, I had just made contact with a notorious cannibal named Snort, who had a notorious cannibal brother named Rip. And they were both notorious cannibals.

  Encantering countables in the dark of night might be better than encumbering vegetables…sorry, let me back up and start that sentence again. Encountering cannibals in the dark of night might be better than encountering vampires, but it’s not exactly something to celebrate.

  See, I had done business with Rip and Snort, and knew them fairly well—as well as a dog can ever know the murky depths of a cannibal’s mind. If you caught them at the right moment, on the right day, they could be a barrel of laughs. You talk about a couple of goof-offs! They were worthless beyond all description and did things that normal dogs only dream about.

  They were experts at scratching fleas. They composed trashy coyote songs and could howl all night long. Their belching skills were the stuff of legends. They knew everything there was to know about rolling on a dead skunk and impressing the ladies with their deep manly aroma. They got into fights, beat up badgers, and banged their heads against trees just for sport. And nobody could beat them when it came to poaching chickens. Slurp. Excuse me.

  Please ignore that “slurp.” It meant almost nothing.

  The point is that when Rip and Snort were in a friendly mood, they became role models and the envy of every ranch dog in Texas—because they were bums, totally worthless, no ambition, no jobs, no duties or responsibilities, just goofing off forever.

  But there was the Other Side, where good old boys passed through a veil of darkness and became bad old boys, and their true coyote nature overpowered everything else. With Rip and Snort, it was a short step from one side to the other. One minute would find them full of fun and nonsense, and the next…yipes. Their eyes began to sparkle with unholy yellow light, and a ranch dog began to realize…these guys might eat a dog!

  So there you are, a glance at our files on Rip and Snort. And there I was, all alone in the darkness with Snort, and probably not far from Rip, since they always ran together.

  It was too late to escape. There was no place to hide. I didn’t know which mood they were in. I would have to try to get out of this with charm and diplomacy.

  I tried to put a little jingle into my voice. “Hey Snort, is that you?”

  “Ha! Me, you betcha, and brother too. Rip and Snort come to town and take over whole place.”

  “Well, it isn’t actually a town, Snort. It’s only the headquarters compound of our ranch, but to you guys, it must seem like a huge and busy place.”

  “Plenty huge and dizzy.”

  “No, I said busy. Biz, biz, biz. Bizz-zee. Dizzy is something else.”

  “Hunk quit talk like beetle-bum.”

  “A what? Oh, you mean a bumblebee?”

  “Rip and Snort not friend to beetle-bum, get stung on nose.”

  “Right. Those beetle-bums are bad news.”

  “Hunk get bad news if keeping talk like beetle-bum.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t realize you were so sensitive. Let’s talk about something else. What brings you to ranch headquarters? I mean, you guys don’t come here very often.”

  “Uh. ‘Cause guys not like house and boom-boom.”

  “Right. Coyotes are scared of people and guns.”

  “Coyotes not scared of nothing.”

  “That’s what I meant. You’re not scared of anything, but you’d rather not get peppered with buckshot.”

  “Rip and Snort not give a hoot for pepper.”

  “I agree. It’ll burn your mouth and make you sneeze, and raise your temperature twenty degrees. Ha ha. A little humor there, a rhyme for the
evening, so to speak. Ha ha.”

  There was a long, deadly silence. “Hunk try to be funny?”

  “Well, yes. I just thought…hey Snort, let’s be honest. Talking with you can be pretty depressing.”

  “Ha! Coyote brothers not give a hoot for pretty dressing. Coyote brothers ugly and meaner than whole world.”

  “That was my point. You guys are ugly and mean, and sometimes I find that depressing.”

  “Hunk talk too much. Rip and Snort come on important mitchen.”

  Mitchen? Hmmm. I wasn’t familiar with that word, but it must have been important, because…well, because he’d said so, right? “Important mitchen.” Wait, I had it! In the coyote dialect, mitchen translated into mission.

  “Oh, I get it now. You’re here on an important mission?”

  “Mitchen. Hunk not know how to talk.”

  “Sorry, my fault. You’re here on an important mitchen. Would it be proper for me to ask the nature of your mitchen?”

  “Brothers come to catnip kid.”

  “You’re calling yourself the Catnip Kid? Gee, that’s nice, Snort, I like it. Every outlaw ought to have a nickname.”

  Snort grumbled, “What means ‘nick-nock’?”

  At that moment, the moon appeared from behind a layer of clouds and…yipes, I got my first glimpse of the cannibals. They towered over me and were beaming glares that seemed irritated and unfriendly, even hostile.

  “I didn’t say nick-nock. I said nickname, and a nickname is…well, it’s a name we give ourselves in a spirit of fun or affection.”

  “Snort not have fun with infection, too many germs.”

  You know, under different circumstances, I would have been laughing. I mean, this was the craziest conversation I’d had since the last time I’d tried to communicate with these boneheads. But laughing in front of cannibals wasn’t something I wanted to try.

  Let’s face it, being incredibly dumb isn’t always funny to those who are.

  Hencely, laughing was out of the question, but somehow I had to keep the conversation moving. Don’t forget, when cannibals stop talking, they start thinking about food.

  But what could I say?

  Chapter Four: The Catnip Kid

  Tough assignment, right? You bet. This conversation had not only gone off the rails, there weren’t any rails left. Snort had a genius for misunderstanding every word and turning every conversation on its head. No ordinary dog could have kept going, but I did. Hey, I had no choice.

  “Okay, Snort, I agree about the germs. We’ll have no germs and no infections. Everything we say will be sanitary.”

  “Brothers not go to cemetery, got too many skeletons.”

  “Great point. Cemeteries are out, skeletons are out, and no more germs. But tell me this. Why did you decide to call yourself the Catnip Kid?”

  He stared at me with empty eyes. “Snort not call nobody Catnip Kid. Dummy dog not understand nothing for phooey. Rip and Snort come chopping for cat.”

  “You’re chopping cats? I’m sorry, Snort, but that just doesn’t make any…”

  BAM! He clubbed me over the head with his paw. “Hunk better listen pretty quick or Snort break face. Brothers come to ranch to catnip kid.”

  For a moment, I was baffled. What in the world was he trying to…wait! Of course, don’t you get it? They had come to ranch headquarters to…

  I’m sure you didn’t figure it out for yourself, because…well, you’re not accustomed to dealing with cannibals and trying to translate their grunted gibberish into simple language that makes sense.

  Okay, let’s slow down and sort this out. Snort had muttered something about “catnip kid.” You thought he had taken a new nickname and was now calling himself The Catnip Kid, as in “The Catnip Kid rides again!”

  Nope, you had it figured all wrong. I picked it up right away and worked out the translation. Are you ready to hear it? Rip and Snort had come to ranch headquarters on a mitchen (remember, that’s Coyote for “mission”) to kidnap the cat.

  Do you get it now? Cats love catnip, but coyotes love to kidnap, so when a coyote grumbles the phrase “catnip the kid,” he’s really saying that he wants to kidnap the cat.

  It’s kind of a backwards code, don’t you see, and once you’ve broken their codes, the rest is easy.

  Wow, what a shocking revelation. They wanted to steal the little slacker who hung out on my ranch—Pete the Barncat—and I must confess that my first thought was…

  I’d better not say it. It might sound cruel and harsh and…look, this is my story and I don’t have to reveal my true thoughts about Pete or anything else. Think of the little children. What would say if they knew that my first reaction to Snort’s kidnapping plot was, “WHAT A DEAL!”

  The kids would be shocked and disappointed. They would think that I’m a heartless lout. They would probably take the side of the kitty, even though they don’t know him as well as I know him—that he’s a scheming, back-stabbing little sneak.

  No, I’m not going to reveal…wait. You know what? I already let it slip out. Did you notice?

  Oh brother. Well, it’s out in the open and there’s no use in pretending. I’ve shot myself in the foot with my own big mouth, so we might as well hang out all the dirty laundry on the Clothes Line of Life.

  Okay, when Snort revealed his plot to catnip the kid…kidnap the cat, that is, I reacted with an explosion of…this is going to sound bad, so hang on…I reacted with an explosion of pure laughter and joy.

  WHAT A DEAL! In one big swoop, I could get a couple of dangerous cannibals away from headquarters and, at the same time, dispose of a nuisance that had dealt me misery for years.

  I mean, this fit in perfectly with my Position on Cats. We’ve discussed my POC, right? I don’t like ‘em, never have and never will. My idea of a perfect day is a day without cats. My idea of a perfect ranch is a ranch without cats. My idea of a perfect business transaction is one that allows me to unload the local cat on a couple of cannibal thugs.

  Hee, hee, hee. Fellers, this was going to be fun.

  It took me a moment to regain my composure. “Snort, that is one of the greatest ideas I’ve ever heard, and I’ll back you every step of the way. I’ll give you the keys to the ranch. We’ll turn off all security systems and you can make yourself right at home.” I gave him a wink and a grin. “Hey, bud, I’ll even tell you where to find the little pest.”

  “What wrongs with Hunk eyeball?”

  “What? Nothing’s wrong with my eyeball. I was winking at you.”

  “How come Hunk winkie eyeball at Snort?”

  I took a deep breath and searched for patience. “Snort, I winked my eye as a little gesture of friendship, two guys sharing a joke.”

  “Snort not want to choke.”

  “Fine. We’ll forget the whole thing. It’s not important.”

  He glared at me. “Winkie eyeball make Snort berry suppishus of Hunk.”

  “Well, we don’t want you to get suspicious.”

  “Suppishus. Hunk not know how to talk.”

  “Sorry. We don’t want you to get suppishus.”

  “Hunk all the time talk like dummy.”

  “Okay, fine, whatever. Can we change the subject? You came here to kidnap the cat, so let’s get on with it.”

  The brothers went into a whispering conference, then Snort said, “Brother still suppishus of winkie eyeball.”

  This was starting to get on my nerves. “What is wrong with you guys? You get hung up on some little detail and you can’t get away from it.”

  “Hunk close one eye, not winkie no more.”

  “I will not close one eye! That would be totally ridiculous.” Snort raised his paw like a club. “Okay, no problem, I’ll close one eye.” I squeezed my left eye shut.

  “Not winkie no more with other eyeball too.”
r />   “Fine. I will not winkie no more with other eyeball too. Now, where were we? You guys have got me so rattled, I don’t know which way is up.”

  Snort pointed his paw toward the sky. “That way up.” He pointed toward the ground. “That way down.” He swung his paw in a circle. “That way all around.”

  “Thank you, Snort. I don’t know how I’ve gotten along all these years without your help. Okay, you’re shopping for a cat, right?”

  The brothers shook their heads in unison. “Chopping for cat.”

  “Sorry. You’re chopping for a cat, and I can help. He stays in the yard, right over there in the iris patch. Be my guest. Help yourselves.” They stared at me with empty yellow eyes. “Now what’s the problem?”

  “Hunk fetch cat.”

  “Hey, this is your deal. I don’t want to fetch the cat.”

  Snort’s hammer fist came down on top of my head. BAM! “Hunk fetch cat pretty quick or get snot beat out of!”

  I picked myself off the ground and gave them a ragged smile. “Here’s an idea. Why don’t I fetch the cat?”

  They howled with laughter. “Hunk fetch cat, and be quicker and quickest, oh boy!”

  Well, this deal had gotten out of hand, but they’d left me with no choice. I would have to serve as their delivery dog. I hopped over the fence and started toward the iris patch. With every step, I felt…

  You know, it’s one thing to talk about bumping off the cat…wait, that sounds pretty bad. Let’s try a different approach. It’s one thing to talk about, uh, letting a couple of cannibals borrow your cat, and it’s another to actually be involved in it. Pete had been a constant source of irritation to me for years, but…this?

  By the time I reached the iris patch, I was not feeling good about it, but the brothers were watching my every move. What else could I do? I tried to remember every sneaky trick the cat had pulled on me, hoping it would help me through this time of trial.

  I rumbled up to the iris patch, expecting the kitty to greet me with his usual insolent smirk and his annoying, “Well, well! It’s Hankie the Wonderdog.” That’s not what he said. He said nothing, and it appeared that he was…