The Disappearance of Drover Read online

  “All right, you little faker. I’ll take the lead position, and we’ll hold you in reserve.”

  “Let’s don’t hurt him. He’s just a little guy.”

  “We’ll give him whatever it takes to send him on his way. Let’s move out.”

  We crept forward. Up ahead, we could see the badger digging. They’re famous diggers, you know. They’ve got long claws and powerful front legs. Give a badger a couple of hours and he’ll dig up half an acre of pasture.

  What are they digging for? Who knows? Probably bugs. I don’t care what kind of excuse they come up with. If they don’t have a permit to dig, they need to move along.

  About ten yards away from the target, I stopped and took another look. “Abel Baker, this is Baker Charlie. The package appears to be, uh, bigger than we thought.”

  “Yeah, but he’s not as big as a goat. And I bet he’ll run. They always run back to their holes.”

  I gave that some thought. “Good point. Okay, I’ll give him a stern barking. In the event that he wants to fight, we’ll, uh, melt back to the porch. What do you think?”

  “That’ll work.”

  “All right, here I go. If I encounter any problems, I’ll call for backup. Stay alert.”

  “Got it.”

  The badger was so busy digging and sniffing and destroying ranch property, he never saw me coming. Good. I crept up behind him, filled my lungs with a fresh supply of air, squared my enormous shoulders, and gave him a blast of barking.

  Heh heh. That woke him up. He whirled around, saw me towering over him (badgers are built low to the ground, don’t you know), and off he went, running as fast as his stubby legs would carry him—not very fast. I could have rolled him easy, but . . . well, we wanted to avoid a confrontation if at all possible. I mean, he wasn’t the biggest badger I’d ever seen, but he was still a badger.

  I reached for the radio. “Hank to Drover, over. The package is moving. Let’s give pursuit and see where he goes.”

  “Got it.”

  This promised to be a routine assignment with no major bloodshed. I hit an easy trot and followed the culprit. I would give him a scare and a warning ticket and that would be the end of it.

  He hadn’t gone more than, oh, thirty yards when he came to his hole and dived inside. I was standing over the hole when Drover came up, huffing and puffing. “Did he go in the hole?”

  “That’s correct. I guess he didn’t want a piece of me.” I glanced at Drover and saw that he was wearing an odd smile. “What are you grinning about?”

  “Oh, I was just thinking . . . maybe we could dig him out.”

  “Dig him out? Why would we want to do that?”

  He let out a giggle. “Hee hee. ’Cause there’s two of us and only one of him. ’Cause he’s a little shrimp. ’Cause it might be fun.”

  I gave that some thought. “You know, you’re right, it might be fun. I mean, if he’s in the hole and we’re outside, what harm can come of it? You want to dig or should I?”

  I was shocked when he said, “Oh, I’ll do it. I’m feeling kind of wild.” He puffed himself up and took a step toward the hole . . . and let out a groan. “Uh-oh, there’s that leg again. Maybe I’d better give it some rest.”

  “Drover, one of these days I’m going to get suspicious about your leg. Get out of the way.” I pushed him aside and stepped up to the hole.

  “No, this time it’s real pain, and it’s really painful.”

  “Please hush, I’m trying to concentrate.”

  I started digging, and we’re talking about dirt flying in all directions. Hey, this was fun! After moving several cubic yards of dirt, I stuck my nose into the hole and delivered a blast of barking. “This is Ranch Security, so listen up! The next time you want to tear up ranch property . . .”

  Huh?

  Chapter Three: The Pit of Death

  We need to say a few words about badgers. When a dog runs a half-grown badger down a hole, he has every reason to suppose that the hard part is over. What remains is good clean entertainment for the dogs. We bark for a while, then go back to the house, right?

  That’s what I had in mind, but what I hadn’t counted on—and what no dog would have considered—was that we had crossed paths with a half-grown badger who was also a little hoodlum with no respect for authority.

  You know what he did? He grabbed my ears with both paws and started pulling me down into his hole! Oh, and he started hissing, too. In case you’ve never shared a hole with an angry badger, let me point out that they can hiss like . . . I don’t know what, but it sounded like there were twenty-three hissing cobras inside that hole.

  Fellers, you talk about something that will throw a dog into Panic Overload. That did it. I hit Full Reverse on all engines and started throwing up dirt with all four legs. “Drover, send troops, we’ve been ambushed! Help!”

  Did the troops arrive just in time to save my skin? Of course not. Drover vanished like a puff of smoke, and the badger kept pulling me deeper into the Pit of Death. Huge badger, biggest one I’d ever encountered.

  Oh, and you know what else he did? He bit me on the lip and wouldn’t let go! No kidding, he actually put a fang-lock on my lip and hung on, and how’s a dog supposed to defend himself when he’s got a badger on his lip? At that point I knew that the time had come to, uh, settle this thing out of court, so to speak.

  “Hey listen, pal, I think we got the wrong address, no kidding. See, we were looking for a gopher and, well, ha ha, it’s pretty clear that you’re not . . . hey, buddy, will you let go of my lip?”

  Before you mess around with a badger, you should understand that they don’t negotiate. They don’t talk or listen or compromise, and they have no sense of humor. Zero. When they get stirred up enough to pull you down into a hole, they’re not kidding.

  It was a good thing he was only half-grown, because if he’d been full-grown, I would have been dragged down into The Place Where No Dog Wants to Go and this story wouldn’t have a happy ending.

  I don’t know what saved me (it wasn’t Drover), but all at once the little thug let me go. Since I had all four legs in Full Reverse, I went flying out of the hole and did two backward rolls. I staggered to my feet, blinked my eyes, and stood there, quivering all over. Somehow I had managed to survive one of the most terrifying ordeals of my whole career and . . . and I should have just walked away and left it there. However . . .

  This is really hard to explain. See, when a dog survives a terrible ordeal, it gives him a rush of adrinkalot . . . androidin . . . it gives him a rush of some kind of juice that makes him feel like King Kong.

  Adrenalin, there we go. His glandular so-forths pump large quantities of the harmonicas . . . hormones, let us say . . . into his bloodstream and . . . well, sometimes it makes him do things that are really dumb.

  I hate to put it that way, but how else do you explain . . . see, instead of walking away and calling it good, I just couldn’t resist . . . I marched back to the hole, stuck my head inside, and yelled, “Okay, you little creep, you beat me with that lip-lock, but if you ever come out of that hole again . . .”

  HERE HE CAME! And we’re talking about red-hot lava rushing up from the center of the earth. I won’t try to sugarcoat this next part. I did what a brave ranch dog never wants to do. I pushed the throttle up to Turbo Seven and ran for my life.

  It was total defeat and humiliation. The Security Division left the field of battle in panic and disarray.

  Whew! Boy, what a dragon. I headed straight for the house. If the badger had followed me, I might have been forced to dive through a window and take refuge under Slim’s bed, but lucky for me, he quit the chase and I settled for leaping into the back of the pickup, which was parked beside the house.

  I scrambled over the tailgate and squeezed myself into a corner behind the cab. There, in the eerie silence, I caught my breath and tri
ed to absorb the powerful lesson that had come from my ordeal. You want to hear it?

  Even the Head of Ranch Security needs to learn when to keep his big mouth shut.

  Yes, it was a powerful lesson and I will never remember it.

  Never forget it, shall we say.

  After absorbing that powerful lesson, I found myself . . . well, worrying about Drover. I know I shouldn’t have wasted my time. The little goof had left me hung out to dry, but still . . . great generals always worry about their men. Think of the ones we remember from history: Napoleon, Seizure of Rome, Salamander the Great, Charlie Mange. . . . All those guys worried about the common soldiers who marched into battle and served with distinction.

  Come to think of it, Drover hadn’t done either one of those things, but I worried about him anyway. What if he’d been mugged by the badger . . . or eaten alive? I waited and listened (nothing, not a sound), and with each passing second, my head grew heartier . . . my heart grew heavier, let us say, until I could no longer endure the strain.

  I rose to a standing position and peered over the side of the pickup bed. “Drover? Pssst. Are you out there?”

  I cocked my ear and waited, and began picking up an odd thumping sound in the night. What was that? I listened closer and there it was again. It sounded a bit like . . . huh? Okay, relax. Ha ha. It was the sound of my own . . . ha ha. You know, in times of stress, a guy can hear his own heart beating and . . . skip it.

  The point is that I heard almost nothing at all, and certainly no trace of the guy whose fate had become a matter of great concern. “Drover? Are you there?”

  And that’s when I heard a tiny voice in the distance. “Yes! I’m here!”

  “Oh, thank goodness! I’ve been worried about you.”

  “Thanks. Me, too.”

  “Remember that little badger?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Well, he turned out to be a lot tougher than we thought.”

  “I’ll be derned. Did you beat him up?”

  There was a moment of silence. “We’ll talk about it later. Are you all right?”

  “Well, this old leg’s still giving me fits, but I guess I’m okay.”

  “Good. Listen, I’ve taken refuge in the back of Slim’s pickup. With that badger on the loose, I think we should camp here for the night. Can you find it in the dark?”

  “Already did.”

  “What? Come back on that.”

  “I’ve been here for fifteen minutes.”

  “Yes, but where is here? Be specific, son, we need details.”

  “Three feet to your left.”

  “What! You have only three feet left? I thought you said . . .”

  “Turn to the left.”

  I turned to the left. “Roger that. Now what?”

  “Look straight ahead.”

  I narrowed my eyes and peered into the darkness directly in front of me and saw. . . . “Drover? Is that you?”

  “Yeah. Hi.”

  I marched over to him and snarled in his face. “Listen, you little pipsqueak, that badger pulled me into his hole and almost chewed my lip off.”

  “You mean . . .”

  “Yes! I called for backup, and what did you do?”

  “Well, I backed up . . . all the way here.”

  “Exactly, and for that, you will receive five Chicken Marks.”

  “Drat.”

  “Make it six, one for naughty language. And tomorrow, you will stand with your nose in the corner.”

  He cried and moaned and begged me not to give him the Chicken Marks, but my heart had turned to stone. By George, if we don’t stand firm and impose discipline, who will teach the Drovers of this world how to behave?

  Well, we had both escaped with our lives. A few minutes before daylight, we had accounted for all our troops and hunkered down for a few hours of well-deserved sleep.

  And in case you were worried about my lip, yes, it hurt.

  Pretty scary, huh? I tried to warn you. It had been a long and brutal campaign for those of us in the Security Division. We’d taken some hits and suffered some indignities, but against incredible odds, we’d survived to fight another day.

  Little did we know or suspect that . . . well, you’ll see.

  Chapter Four: The Rubber Baby-Buggy Bumpers

  Ordinarily, I’m the first one out of bed, and we’re talking about early, four–five o’clock in the morning, the darkness before dawn. I take pride in being the first one up and kind of enjoy telling everyone that by seven o’clock, I’ve already put in half a day’s work.

  But the day of which we’re whiching began a little different. In the first place, I didn’t leap out of bed at my usual time. I didn’t bark up the sun or chase the wild turkeys. I slept late, and I’m not proud to admit it. I mean, Drover is easily corrupted and I try to set a good example, but on this particular morning, I kind of went to seed.

  There were reasons for it, of course. Don’t forget that I had been up half the night doing battle with a ferocious badger. Show me a dog that fights full-grown badgers and I’ll show you a dog that doesn’t jump out of bed at the crack of dawn. Even a body that’s made of iron and steel will show the effects of badger-fighting, and mine did.

  So I gave my aching body a little vacation from the endless routine of running the ranch and stayed in bed. I was awakened by an odd sensation. I felt that I was . . . well, moving.

  I raised my head, blinked my eyes, and glanced around. What I saw was astounding. My bedroom had been transformed into a kind of metal container, but without a roof. I could see the sky overhead and feel wind rushing past my ears. And directly to my left, I saw . . . what was that thing? It appeared to be a pile of hair.

  Well, you know me. When I wake up and see an unauthorized pile of hair, I don’t just sit there looking simple. I grabbed the microphone of my mind and put in an urgent call to Data Control.

  “Spaghetti Central, this is Whickerbill. Corned beef is tadpoling the rubber baby-buggy bumpers!”

  I waited for a reply, but the line seemed to have gone dead. That’s the problem with this modern technology. Just when you really need it, it goes on the blink. I would have to work this out on my own.

  I moved closer to the pile of hair and gave it a sniffing with Nosetory Scanners. It had a familiar smell, but I couldn’t come up with any kind of solid identity. At that point, it appeared to be . . . well, just a random pile of hair.

  But then, before my very eyes, the pile of hair transformed into something with two eyes, two ears, and a nose. It appeared to be some kind of life-form. It blinked its eyes, grinned, and spoke. “Oh, hi. Is it morning already?”

  “Who are you, and what have you done with the rubber baby-buggy bumpers?”

  “Well, I’m Drover, and I don’t know anything about rubby bigger-baby bippers.”

  “You’re Drover? Then what . . .” I glanced around. “Drover, something has happened to our bedroom. Everything’s changed, and I have the strangest feeling that . . . well, that we’re moving.”

  He stood up and looked around. “Yeah, ’cause we are.”

  “But how can that be?”

  “Well, we spent the night in the back of Slim’s pickup, and I think we’re going to town.”

  “Really?” I went to the side of the pickup bed and saw a highway rushing past. “Drover, it’s coming back to me now. I got mugged by a badger, and we spent the night in the pickup, remember? And now the pickup is moving. I think we’re heading for town.”

  “Yeah, and Slim’s going to be surprised when he finds us back here.”

  I began pacing, as I often do when I’m dealing with large concepts. “Okay, there’s just one thing that doesn’t add up. I can accept that we’re in a moving pickup. I can accept that we’re going to town, but I don’t understand the connection with rubber baby-bug
gy bumpers.”

  Drover shrugged. “Yeah, that’s a toughie.”

  You know, we never did figure it out and it remains a mystery to this very day. Neither of us ever figured out who stole the rubby bubby-baby bumpers, or why. But once I had cleared the sleep and cobwebs out of my head, one fact remained clear and true.

  WE WERE GOING TO TOWN! And if you’re a ranch dog, going to town is a big deal.

  See, we lived twenty-five miles from Twitchell and spent most of our time working hard to protect our ranch. Well, I did. Drover spent most of his time goofing off and chasing butterflies, while I worked eighteen hours every day to protect my ranch from coyotes, cannibals, raccoons, skunks, porcupines, and badgers.

  And speaking of badgers, my nose and ears still throbbed from the . . . he’d caught me by surprise, is how he did it, and landed a few lucky punches; but if I ever caught him on my place again, he would face an older, wiser, meaner Hank the Cowdog, and he would be in deep trouble.

  Anyway, we dogs didn’t have many opportunities to visit the big city of Twitchell, and, to be honest, we were seldom invited. That always seemed odd to me. I mean, you’d think our people would want to show us off to the general public and would be proud to drive down Main Street with a couple of high-dollar ranch dogs in the back of the pickup.

  That’s what you’d think, but they rarely invited us to go with them on their trips to town. Slim hadn’t invited us this time either, but that was just his tough luck. I had every intention of making the most of it.

  Thirty minutes after leaving the ranch, we drove past the Twitchell City Limits sign, Pop. 1,377, and made our way down the main thoroughfare of this huge city. It had been a while since I’d been to town, but right away I saw familiar sights that brought back pleasant memories: Waterhole 83, the Dixie Dog Drive-in, and Jim’s Tire Shop. Off in the distance, I could see the yard where I had saved my sister Maggie from the notorious Car Barkaholic Dog. (Rambo. Remember him?)