The Almost Last Roundup Read online

  “In other words, you enjoyed watching your commanding officer suffer this humiliating experience? Is that what you’re telling this court?”

  “Well…”

  “If you could express the entertainment factor in pounds, how many pounds of laughter did you receive?”

  He rolled his eyes around. “Let’s see…ten or twelve.”

  “Then it’s settled. For every pound of pleasure you got out of that shameful fiasco, you will spend an hour with your nose in the corner.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “This court is adjourned. Prisoner will be removed to the brig, where he will serve twelve hours of Nose Time.” I shot out a paw toward the nearest corner. “Move.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t do anything.”

  “You should have thought of that sooner. Next time, maybe you’ll do something, and we’ll court-martial you for that too.”

  I marched the prisoner to the southeast corner of the machine shed. “There. Put your nose in the corner, and think about what a lousy friend you’ve turned out to be.”

  “Twelve whole minutes?”

  “That was the verdict of the court, twelve minutes in solitary confinement, and I don’t want to hear any grumbling.”

  I hated to be so severe with the runt, but if the officers don’t take the time to discipline the men, how will they learn anything?

  The bad part of this deal was that I didn’t dare leave him alone in his cell. I knew he would cheat. Don’t forget: he had a cozy relationship with the local cat, so I had every reason to suppose that he would cheat any time the opportunity presented itself.

  Ho hum. Boy, you talk about time crawling! After five minutes, I was about to go nuts. I rose to my feet and paced over to his cell. “Drover, the Review Board has been looking at your case. We’re considering an early release. All we require is that you swear a Solomon Oath.”

  “Oh goodie, I can handle that.”

  “Raise your right paw and repeat…” My nose was picking up an odor. “I smell smoke.”

  “I smell smoke.”

  “Smoke is a bad thing to smell in a drought.”

  “Smell is a bad thing to smoke in a joke.”

  “Stop repeating what I say.”

  “Stop repeating what I…”

  “Drover, snap out of it! Don’t you get it? Smoke in the air means we’re downwind from a prairie fire!”

  His eyes grew as wide as two fried eggs. “Fire! Oh my gosh, I think I’ll faint.”

  And before my very eyes, that’s what he did, went over like a bicycle, just as a vehicle pulled into the gravel drive in front of the machine shed. I left Drover where he lay and rushed outside.

  Loper jumped out of the pickup and yelled, “There’s a fire on Parnell’s! Saddle the horses, we’ve got to move the cows out of this pasture!”

  On an ordinary day, Slim didn’t move at dazzling speed, but this woke him up. He leaped to his feet and gazed off to the south, where a big column of angry white smoke was rising in the air.

  “Good honk!”

  “Looks like the wind’s taking it east of the house, but it’s going to burn the home pasture. I’ll call the fire department. Saddle two horses.”

  Loper trotted down to the house and—this will really surprise you—Slim ran down the hill to the saddle shed. I’m not kidding, he ran. I won’t say that he was poetry in motion, but by George, he was pickin’ ‘em up and layin’ ‘em down.

  Me? I did what any normal American dog would have done. I dashed back and forth in front of the machine shed and barked for five solid minutes, huge barks that kept the blaze away from headquarters.

  Boy, what a relief! I mean, getting your pastures burned is bad enough, but at least the house and barns appeared to be safe. It makes you wonder what happens to ranches that don’t have dogs, and I guess the answer is…they burn to the ground.

  Well, things started happening fast. Loper made his phone call, ran out of the house, and drove his pickup down to the corrals. I headed that way myself. I knew they would need my help on this deal. As I raced past the chicken house, I saw J.T. Cluck herding twenty-seven hens to safety.

  He squawked, “Y’all get inside, hurry! The British are coming!” As I rushed past, he yelled, “What did I tell you, pooch?”

  “Good call, J.T.”

  What a dunce.

  Minutes later, Loper and Slim were a-horseback, and they left the corrals in a high lope. I fell into position behind them and away we went. As we passed the house, Sally May came out into the yard and shouted, “Loper, don’t take any chances, please!”

  And he yelled back, “Hon, the banker owns forty percent of those cows. We’ve got to save them!”

  From the house, the guys galloped east until they found cows that had come down to the creek for water and were lying around in the shade. Slim rode to the east side of the bunch, Loper stayed on the west, and I took the territory between them. By this time, we were working in a thick cloud of smoke, and that was a bad sign. It meant that we were directly in the path of the fire, and the wind was driving it toward us.

  We pushed fifty cows and fifty calves through the smoke and toward the north. After a bit, we came to the county road and drove them across. There, I paused to catch my breath and threw a glance back to the south.

  Good grief, the fire had reached the creek, and through the smoke, I could see huge cottonwood trees glowing like torches! A big cedar tree on the north side of the creek exploded in a burst of flames. The fire had jumped the creek and was headed our way!

  We sure needed to hurry up, but the cows were hot and full of water, and they didn’t want to move. I mean, how dumb is a cow that wants to lie down in the shade and become roast beef? That’s how dumb they were, multiplied by fifty.

  On a normal cattle drive, the cowboys move at a slow pace and don’t yell, and any cowboy who does is considered an “owl-headed rookie,” to use the proper terminology. But this time it was different and all the rules of Cow-Handling Etiquette went out the window.

  The cowboys yelled, waved their arms like crazy people, and used their lariat ropes as whips. Me? I barked, and we’re talking about barks without pity and barks of great urgency.

  Those cows didn’t want to get out of a walk, but that was too bad for them. By George, forty percent of every one of those dummies belonged to the banker and…you know, I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but Loper had said it with conviction, so it must have been important.

  On and on we pushed through choking smoke until, at last, we came to a wire gate in the northeast corner of the home pasture. Slim dived out of the saddle, opened the gate, and threw it back, leaped into the saddle, and we pushed the herd through the gate and into the middle pasture.

  Only then did I realize that we had come out of the smoke cloud. Slim and Loper gazed off in the east, where the fire was on a course that would destroy the grass on the east side of ranch. Now and then, through the smoke, we caught glimpses of fire trucks and heavy equipment, waging a battle to stop the beast.

  Slim removed his hat and wiped the sweat off his face with the sleeve of his shirt. “Bad way to celebrate your birthday.”

  “Yeah, and the dog ate my cake.”

  “Well, look at the bright side. You didn’t get barbecued, and we didn’t lose any of the banker’s cows.”

  Loper stared into the distance. “But we’re going to lose at least half of our winter pasture, and look.” He pointed toward the hay field. Through a gap in the smoke, we saw two big stacks of alfalfa hay going up in flames. “There goes the hay.”

  We dogs know our people pretty well, and when something’s not right, we can see it on their faces. What I saw on Loper’s face was…gloom.

  Chapter Nine: Gloom Falls Over the Ranch

  We started back to headquarters in a sad little procession. At the
county road, we met a crew of volunteer fire fighters, three men in fire-fighting suits, riding in a big army surplus six-by-six truck. Loper flagged them down and asked how things were going.

  The driver, a rancher from Lipscomb County, said, “We’ve got five motor graders cutting fire guards and I think they’ve got it stopped, if the wind doesn’t change directions. But it got you pretty bad. From here on east, there isn’t much left.”

  “That’s what I figured. Anything we can do to help?”

  “No, we’ll sit on it for a few hours and let it run its course. That’s about all you can do. I’m sorry, Loper. A man doesn’t need this in the middle of a drought.”

  Loper nodded. “Thanks for your help. We sure appreciate it.”

  We rode in silence all the way to the corrals—actually, the guys rode, I walked. Back at the pens, they pulled their saddles and bridles, and carried them into the saddle shed.

  Loper leaned against the fence and stared at the ground. “We can’t feed our way out of this drought and it would take a four-inch rain to bring this grass back to life.” He took a deep breath of air and let it out slowly. “We’re whipped. We’re going to have to ship the cows.”

  Slim’s eyes popped open. “All of them? Loper, if you take ‘em to the sale barn, you’ll be selling on a down-market.”

  “I know.”

  “When we get a rain and need to restock, cows’ll be higher than a cat’s back.”

  “I know.”

  “You can’t sell cows for eight hundred bucks and buy ‘em back for two thousand. The math don’t work out.”

  “I know.”

  “Good honk, we’ll be…”

  Loper nodded.

  A long silence followed, as each man was lost in his own thoughts. Then Slim said, “Should I start looking for another job?” Loper said nothing. “Loper?”

  “We’ll start gathering the north pastures day-after tomorrow and drive everything down to headquarters. I’ll call Cesar and line up trucks.”

  “We’ll need some cowboys.”

  Loper gave his head a shake. “I don’t want anyone else around. This is like a funeral. Just you and me horseback...and Alfred. He can ride the pony. Sally May can call the cattle with the pickup.” His eyes came up. “What about Viola? Doesn’t she ride?”

  “Oh yeah, she makes a hand.”

  “I don’t mind having her around. Give her a call.”

  Slim gazed up at the sky for a long time—the pale blue, cloudless drought sky. “When I landed on this outfit, I was on my way to find a job in Montana. Maybe I’ll get my chance after all.”

  Loper’s eyes seemed empty. “I’ve never seen it this bad. I never thought I would see it this bad.”

  Boy, you talk about a bad ending to a bad day! All at once, our lives had been turned upside-down. The drought had stuck a dagger into the heart of our ranching operation, and the fire had finished the job. Loper was going to ship all the cattle. Slim was out of a job and would have to move.

  Loper went to the house, and fellers, he looked like a man whose spirit had been smashed: empty eyes, head down, arms hanging at his sides. Standing in the yard, he gave the news to Sally May and she cried. Alfred tried to put on a brave face, but his lip was trembling. He didn’t understand everything that was going on, but he’d never seen such a look of defeat in his daddy’s eyes. And I guess he was feeling pretty blue about that deal with the cake too.

  There was only one bright spot in this otherwise gloomy scene. Sally May’s rotten little cat came creeping out of the iris patch and began rubbing on her ankles. When she turned to go inside the house, she stepped on his tail—and, fellers, she really nailed him.

  “Reeeeeer!”

  It didn’t change anything, but, by George, if your world is falling apart, you might as well march into the Unknown with the sounds of an unhappy cat in your ears.

  Drover and I hung around the corrals while Slim tended to the horses, put out feed, and finished his work on the stock trailer, then we hopped into his pickup and went down to his shack for the night. I had a feeling that he would appreciate having a couple of loyal dogs close by.

  I mean, the guy was fixing to lose his job. That’s a heavy load to be carrying around.

  On the two-mile drive to his place, we drove past blackened pastures and trees that had been scorched, and the air was heavy with the smell of burned grass. Slim didn’t say much, but Drover seemed to have gone over the edge. We’re talking about hysterical.

  “If Slim moves away, where’ll we sleep on cold winter nights?”

  “Drover, I don’t know.”

  “We’ll freeze!”

  “We won’t freeze.”

  “He won’t be around to sing us corny songs or share his canned mackerel sandwiches.” His eyes had grown wild. “Oh my gosh! What if times get so bad, Loper and Sally May have to eat their dogs?”

  “They would never eat their dogs.”

  “If they sell all the cattle, they won’t have any beef.”

  “Okay, have it your way. One of these days, we’ll be a pot of soup.”

  “Help! I’m too young to be a pot of soup! And this leg’s killing me!”

  Oh brother. The little goof spun around in circles and dived into Slim’s lap. There, he went into hiding with both paws covering his eyes. Slim seemed surprised and gave me a puzzled look. “What’s wrong with Stub Tail? He’s shaking all over.”

  Well, he didn’t want to be a pot of soup. And he was a weird little hypocardiac. If he’d been back at headquarters, he would have dashed to the machine shed to hide from Life’s unanswered questions, but in the cab of the pickup, his only place of refuge was a cowboy’s lap.

  Pot of soup. Oh brother.

  Slim scratched the little mutt behind the ears. “I guess everybody’s feeling low-down, even the dogs.” He turned to me with a sad-sweet smile. “You might as well come over and join us.”

  No kidding? Hey, that sounded good to me. Actually, I didn’t think that Loper and Sally May would eat their dogs, but I was feeling kind of uneasy about things, too, so I piled into his lap, alongside Drover. It was a little crowded, all three of us stacked into a small space under the steering wheel, but we were all together and it felt good.

  Slim even nuzzled me with his chin, and I gave him a lick on the cheek. He didn’t seem to mind, and I think he might have enjoyed it.

  It was a precious moment, a cowboy and his dogs, driving the pickup home at the end of the day. And we were all thinking the same thought…that our time together was…well, coming to an end.

  Yes, it was a golden moment, right up to the second when…you won’t believe this…right up to the second when Mister Squeakbox....oh brother!

  Slim felt something warm and wet spreading across his lap. His eyes popped wide open, he hit the brakes, and tossed both of us to the other side of the cab.

  “Knotheads! That’s what I get for being nice. Y’all have no more manners than a couple of hogs.”

  We made the rest of the trip in stony silence. Slim was really hacked about the wet spot on the front of his jeans, and I mean, a big wet spot. I was so mad at Drover, I couldn’t speak. When we got to the shack, Slim stormed inside to change his jeans, and he didn’t invite us into the house.

  We set up shop on the porch, right in front of the screen door. I scorched the runt with a glare. “How could you have done that? How could you have done that!”

  He was almost in tears. “I don’t know. He was so kind…and he rubbed me behind the ears…and I just melted inside.”

  “You melted, all right, and dumped five gallons of water in his lap!”

  “I couldn’t hold it!”

  “Why didn’t you move?”

  “I don’t know! I was sad and scared of being soup, then he rubbed my ears and I was so happy…oh, I’ve ruined everythin
g! I’m such a failure!”

  He broke down and started bawling, crying his little heart out. Tears dripped off his nose and plinked on the porch. And I had to watch and listen to the whole thing.

  You know, those of us who go into Security Work have to be pretty hard-boiled, but there are times when our spirits are touched by the softer things in life. I felt a tug at the heart of my purse strings, and laid a paw upon his shoulder. “Okay, that’s enough. Stop crying.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t, I’m so ashamed!”

  “Drover, if you’ll stop crying, I’ll tell you a deep dark secret.”

  He sniffled and looked at me through tear-shining eyes. “You will?”

  “Yes. Come closer.” I leaned into his ear and whispered, “Half of that water was mine.”

  He let out a gasp. “No fooling? You did it too?”

  “Shhh, not so loud. Yes, that’s why the stain was so big. I don’t know how it happened. It just slipped out, and if you ever breathe a word of this to anyone, I’ll…I don’t know what I’ll do, but you won’t like it.”

  All at once, he was laughing and hopping around. “Now I’m happy again! Hee hee! Thanks for telling me. Maybe I’m normal, after all.”

  “Don’t get carried away. Slim doesn’t know which one of us did it, but he’s mad enough to bite nails. It’s going to take some hard selling to get us into the house.”

  “Heavy Begs?”

  “Exactly. Do you remember the protocol?”

  He cocked his head to the side and stared at me. “I thought protocol was cough medicine.”

  “No, it’s the procedure we follow: Sad Eyes, Lifeless Tail, Tragic Ears, Looks of Remorse, and lots of whimpering.”

  “Yeah, but my tail’s too short to look lifeless.”

  “Good point. I’ll handle the tail, you double up on the whimpering. But get this. We’re going to make this presentation as a song. We will sing in a whimpering tone. Can you do it?”

  He grinned. “Oh yeah, I’m ready to roll!”

  “That’s the spirit. Would you like to know the name of our song?”