The Curse of the Incredible Priceless Corncob Page 2

  I rolled it around in my mouth and let it fall back to the ground. I stared at it. It was a corncob.

  I lifted my head and searched Sally May’s face for some answers. Had this been an accident? Was it some kind of joke? What did we have here? I wagged my tail and waited for an answer.

  “Well,” she said, “go on and eat it. If you can chew bones, you can chew corncobs. There’s nothing wrong with them.”

  Let me break in here to point out that while Sally May was a wonderful lady in many respects, there were things she didn’t understand about dogs. DOGS DON’T EAT CORNCOBS. I sniffed out the scraps one last time, drew my tail up between my legs, and, shall we say, vanished into the evening shadows. I hid in some tall weeds just above the gas tanks and watched to see what would happen next.

  Sally May shook her head and said something about Hank being too fussy for his own good, and then she looked at Drover. “But you’ll eat them, won’t you, Drover? You’re not a fussy eater, are you? Come here, puppy.”

  You know what the little dope did? He wagged and grinned his way over to the fence, collected his pat on the head, and then made a big show of eating a derned corncob. I could have wrung his neck.

  He gummed the cob and rolled it around in his mouth and grinned up at Sally May, just as though he’d got hold of the best steak on the ranch—until Sally May went back into the house and turned off the yard light.

  And then, why you’d have thought that cob was on fire, the way he spit it out! Once the audience goes home, the farce is over.

  I came out of hiding and walked over to Drover. “That was a pretty good show you put on, son.”

  “Oh thanks, Hank. I didn’t want Sally May to think we didn’t like her corncobs.”

  “Yes, I noticed. It was a brilliant stroke. Now, for the rest of our lives, she’s going to be feeding us corncobs and garbage, and thanks to you, she’ll expect us to eat it!”

  “Gee, I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “That’s too bad, son. You’ve made your bed and now the chickens will come home to roost in it.”

  “Oh my gosh, they’re awful messy.”

  “Exactly. Well,” I took a deep breath, “you’ve made a shambles of the evening. Let’s see if we can salvage something of the night. Come on, we’ve still got two days’ work to do between now and daylight.”

  We started down the hill. I had already begun sifting through details and organizing the night patrol, when all of a sudden I heard a sound that made me freeze in my tracks.

  I froze in my tracks. Drover, who was looking at the stars, ran into me. “Hold up, halt! Did you hear what I heard?”

  “Oops, ’scuse me, I don’t know. What did you hear?”

  “Shhh! Listen.”

  We cocked our heads and listened. There it was again, the sniveling, whining voice of a cat: “Ummm, they left all these nice corncobs, just for me!”

  “So, it’s all coming clear now,” I whispered. “We’ve been duped by the cat. He engineered this whole thing just so he could steal our corncobs!”

  “Huh. But I thought we didn’t want the corncobs.”

  “That’s precisely what he wanted you to think you wanted, Drover. You played right into his devilish scheme, and I came within a hair of playing the sucker myself. But I think we’ve caught it just in the nick of time.”

  “Oh good.”

  “Come on, son, and prepare for combat. We’re fixing to send Pete the Barncat to the School of Hard Knocks.”

  And with that, we made an about-face and marched back up the hill.

  Chapter Three: Another Humiliating Defeat for the Cat

  We stormed up the hill and caught Pete, just as he was about to help himself to our corncobs.

  “That’s far enough, cat, stop where you are, freeze, don’t move a muscle, halt!”

  Pete crouched down and began backing away from the cobs. “Uh oh, looks like the cops are here.”

  “You got that right, cat. I’d inform you of your constitutional rights if you had any, but you don’t. All you have at this point in history is a bunch of trouble.”

  “Yeah,” said Drover, “and you’re in trouble too.”

  “Mmmm,” said the cat, “I believe you’re right.”

  “You almost pulled off your devious little scheme,” I said, “but like all crinimals, you made a fatal mistake. Did you actually think you could work your medicine show and shell game on the Head of Ranch Security?”

  “Well, I thought it was worth a try.”

  “Sometimes the crinimal mind amazes me. You had it all worked out, didn’t you? You had everyone on the ranch playing his part and saying his lines. Oh, you’re clever, Pete, but then you made your fatal mistake. Instead of waiting for a sucker to come along, you tried your scam on me!”

  “Yeah,” said Drover, “and on me too.”

  Pete shrugged and smiled. “We all have to work with what we’ve got.”

  “Exactly,” I said, “and what you got was caught. Would you care to hear how I broke the case?”

  “Might as well, if it’s all the same price.”

  “Number one: I had a suspicion all along that something wasn’t quite right. You were a little too eager and a little too greedy in eating your steak scraps. In other words, you overplayed your part.”

  “Oh shuckins.”

  “And number two: as we were walking away, we overheard your smart aleck remark. In other words, you just couldn’t resist mouthing off. That was your fatal flaw, Pete. You blew the case wide open with your own big mouth.”

  “Yeah,” Drover chimed in, “and now we want our corncobs back.”

  Pete grinned. “Oh no, I’m afraid we can’t do that. You boys walked away from them and now they’re mine. Finders keepers, losers weepers.”

  I gave him a growl. “You’re going to be the losers’ sweeper, cat, ’cause I’m fixing to sweep the ranch with your carcass. Get away from our cobs.”

  His eyelids hung low over his eyes and he started twitching the end of his tail. “Now hold on, Hankie, I’m sure we can work something out. I’ll trade you the last piece of steak fat for your interest in the cobs.”

  I was about to reject the deal out of hand, but then I caught myself. Hmmm. I sure did like steak fat. “There’s very little chance we can work out a trade, cat, but let’s see what you’ve got.”

  I followed him over to the spot near the gate where he had made a pig of himself. Sure enough, there was a four-inch strip of steak fat lying on the ground, and it appeared to be cooked just the way I like it. Furthermore, a short distance away was a T-bone that still had plenty of meat on it.

  I must admit that the fumes coming off the steak fat had a powerful effect on my smellometric apparatus, so much so that I was almost by George overwhelmed by it. I had to take a step backward and turn my nose away from the fumes, else I would have lost my head.

  “Well,” said the cat, “what do you think, Hankie? Isn’t that a pretty piece of steak fat?”

  “I’ve seen better,” I lied. “Stay here, cat, don’t move. I want to have a conference with my assistant.”

  Pete shrugged and began licking his paw. Drover and I went off to ourselves and held a short meeting.

  “What do you think, Drover?”

  “Oh, I want to trade! If he’s dumb enough to give us steak fat for a couple of corncobs, I think we ought to go for it.”

  “Yes, I know what you mean, but there’s something about this whole thing that still bothers me. Look at him, Drover.” We watched Pete licking down some rough hair on the back of his right rear leg. He appeared very cool and confident. “That cat’s too sure of himself. He thinks he’s got the upper hand.”

  “Well, he’s wrong about that, Hank. Anybody can see that he’s got the lower leg.”

  “Exactly my point, Drover. I think he�
�s running a bluff. I think he’s still got some flex in his deal, and it’s our job to smoke him out.”

  “Well, maybe so, but I sure like steak fat better than corncobs.”

  “Of course you do, but you can’t let the cat know it. You don’t understand trading, Drover. It’s a science all to itself. It takes tremendous discipline and self-control. Watch me and study your lessons.”

  I swaggered over to Pete. “We’ve discussed your deal, and there’s no way we can let those corncobs go for one measly strip of steak fat. It’s a bad trade and you know it.”

  Pete stood up and yawned and started rubbing against the fence. “Well, it was worth a try.”

  “Yes, it was worth a try, Pete, and if you had proposed that deal to a couple of ordinary mutts, you probably could have pulled it off. But you’re not dealing with ordinary mutts.”

  “Yes, I can see that.”

  “So, to bring you up to date, we’re rejecting your offer and breaking off the negotiations. Unless . . .”

  His eyes widened and his ears twitched—just the sort of clues a sharp negotiator looks for. I had pitched out some bait, and he had made the mistake of going for it.

  “Yes, go on. Unless what, Hankie?”

  “Unless,” I walked around, looked up at the sky, took my good sweet time, see, which always impresses them, “unless you threw that steak bone into the deal, and that just might send us back to the bargaining table. I’m not making any promises, but the bone would definitely sweeten the pot.”

  Pete studied me for a long time, and all at once I could see respect and admiration in those cat eyes which usually expressed only cunning, sneakiness, arrogance, and the kind of smug self-satisfaction that makes cats so hard to bear.

  This cat had met his match in all categories. It was written all over his face.

  “Mmmm, you drive a hard bargain, Hankie.”

  I chuckled. “When you’re holding aces, Pete, you bet the limit. You know that. I know that. Everyone in this crazy business knows that. Now, what’ll it be: stay or fold?”

  “I’ll take it.” I could hardly believe my ears. He had just agreed to trade me a piece of steak fat and a T-bone for two corncobs?

  I studied his face again, especially the eyes. The eyes tell it all, don’t you know. His had that shifty look again, and my cowdog instincts told me to go slow. “Not so fast, cat. We’ll need to take this up in executive session.”

  Drover and I went off to the side again. Drover was jumping up and down as if he had little springs on all four feet. “Boy, you sure put it to him, Hank, I didn’t think he’d ever go for it but you sure put one over on him this time!”

  “Be quiet a minute, let me think.”

  Drover quit hopping around and stared at me. “What’s there to think about?”

  We observed a moment of silence. “Can you see what he’s doing, Drover?”

  “Yeah, he’s getting skinned!”

  “I thought so too—at first. But there’s a pattern to all this, and at last I’ve figured out what he’s up to. Why would he trade good steak scraps for two worthless corncobs?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care. Let’s eat, I’m starved.”

  “Not so fast. You’re walking right into his trap. The truth is that those corncobs are priceless and Pete will stop at nothing to get his hands on them. I would guess that they’re worth their weight in diamonds and rubies.”

  “But who wants to eat diamonds and rubies!”

  “Exactly. We’d be fools to try, and we’d be bigger fools to trade Priceless Corncobs for a miserable pile of steak scraps. Drover, if you agree, I’m going to pull out of the negotiations.”

  “Oh good, ’cause I don’t agree.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Absolutely sure.”

  “In that case, I have no choice but to pull rank and disqualify your vote. If you insist on stinking with your thomach . . . thinking with your stomach, that is, then you must expect to lose some of your privileges. But remember, Drover: I’m doing this for your own good.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s a different matter. I thought maybe you’d just made a dumb mistake.”

  “Almost, Drover. I almost traded away our fortune, which would have ranked as the dumbest mistake of the year, but our fortune is safe. We have managed to snatch defeat out of the jaws of tragedy, so to speak.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  “Indeed it is. Now, all we have to do is break the bad news to Pete. I’ll do the talking. If he puts up a struggle, we’ll go into a Code Three. You got that?”

  “I think so. Let’s see, a Code Three’s between Code Two and Code Four.”

  “We don’t have a Code Four.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Just stay behind me if something breaks loose, and don’t get hurt. Let’s move out.”

  We crept back to the fence, but instead of going directly to Pete, I took up a defensive position between him and the Priceless Corncobs. I didn’t think he was foolish enough to start something, but with cats you never know.

  “All right, cat, listen carefully and do exactly as I say and no one will get hurt. The deal’s off. We’re taking the treasure down to the gas tanks. Keep your paws where I can see them and don’t make any sudden moves. Drover, get one of the Priceless Corncobs and go on down to the tanks. I’ll keep the cat covered.”

  “Okay Hank.” He picked up half the treasure and vanished in the darkness.

  Smiling at the cat, I backed away. “You almost pulled it off, Pete. I’ve got to hand it to you. When it comes to being sneaky and devious, you’re the champ. You were one step ahead of me right up to the end, but then you were undone by your own greed.”

  He looked at his claws. “I might sweeten the deal a little more.”

  “No way, Pete. As you know very well, these corncobs are worth a fortune. Now, just stay where you are while I . . .”

  I snatched up the remaining Priceless Corncob and made a dash down the hill to the gas tanks.

  And suddenly, for the first time in my career, I was a wealthy dog.

  Chapter Four: The Seed of Greed Takes Root in Drover’s Tiny Brain

  I joined Drover down at the gas tanks, and we spent the next half hour in a wild celebration.

  “Drover, do you have any idea what we’ve just pulled off?”

  “Sure do.”

  “What have we just pulled off?”

  “Well . . . I know we’ve pulled off something, but maybe you could refresh my memory.”

  “What we’ve pulled off, Drover, is the deal of the year, the deal of the century. Do you realize how wealthy you are at this moment?”

  “Not really.”

  I lay back on my gunnysack and looked up at the stars. “Drover, half an hour ago you were just another flunky ranch dog, but now you’re worth your weight in gold, silver, diamonds, pearls, rubies, steak bones, or any other commodity you’d care to use as a standard of wealth.”

  “How about sleep? That’s about the best thing I know.”

  “Good point. Yes, Drover, you’re now worth your weight in sleep. Tell me, pardner, how does it feel to be filthy rich?”

  “Gosh, I’m not sure. I’ve been filthy before but never rich. How’s it supposed to feel?”

  “Well, you understand that I haven’t had much practice at this either, but I think a guy’s supposed to notice a difference. I guess one thing you do when you’re rich is you spend a lot of time thinking about your money.”

  “Yeah, but we don’t have money. We have corncobs.”

  “Priceless Corncobs, Drover, and that’s better than money. I mean, what could we do with money?”

  “I don’t know.” There was a moment of silence. “What can we do with corncobs?”

  “Priceless Corncobs and . . .” I thought for
a long time. “By George, we can look at them, Drover.”

  “We sure can. Let’s do it.”

  I nosed my Incredible Priceless Corncob into position, a couple of feet west of my gunnysack. Then I sat down and looked at it. Drover followed my lead and did the same. For a long time we didn’t say a word, just sat there looking at our Incredible Priceless Corncobs.

  I broke the silence. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

  “Sure are.”

  “You ever see anything so beautiful in your whole life?”

  “Well . . . it still looks a little like a corncob to me, Hank.”

  “You’re not concentrating. Think of it as wealth, Drover. Think of it as the answer to your every dream and wish.”

  “Okay, I’m going to concentrate.” He concentrated.

  “Now what do you see?”

  “Oh my gosh, it’s beautiful, Hank!”

  “See? What did I tell you? It’s fame, it’s fortune, it’s freedom, it’s power and influence and handsome good looks.”

  “Yeah, I see it all now.”

  “It’s other dogs addressing you as Sir. It’s re­spect from the cowboys. It’s the women falling all over you.”

  “Even Beulah?”

  I studied the runt out of the corner of my eye. “Beulah will be too busy falling all over me. She won’t have time for you.”

  “Oh rats.”

  “But there are other women, Drover, hundreds of them, thousands of them, and they’ll be fighting each other to get a lock of your hair for their scrapbooks.”

  “No fooling? That might hurt.”

  “Beauty knows no pain, Drover. Take my word for it. When those ladies start turning handsprings over you, you won’t worry about losing a little hair.”

  “Maybe not. Boy, I can hardly wait. Do they come here or do we have to go to them?”

  “Oh, it varies. We’ll just have to see how things shape up. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all, Drover, if a couple dozen lady dogs show up here, once the word gets out.”

  “Oh my gosh. And all because of a corncob?”