The Curse of the Incredible Priceless Corncob Read online

  In a flash, Loper slammed the back gate shut, which was not what I considered good news at that point, since it locked me and that wild horned woman in a small space that was getting smaller by the minute.

  And at the same moment, just as I was about to be shredded and punctured, Slim jerked the rope and pulled me out of the pit of death.

  “Good job, Hankie, nice work.” He patted me on the head.

  Many words and thoughts marched across the vast expanse of my mind at that moment, none of which I can repeat. The point is, I had survived the ordeal but it had left a bitter taste in my mouth. A bitter taste is better than no taste at all, but it’s still a long way from sweet.

  We loaded up and headed for the house.

  Oh, one last thing. That Mysterious Brown Rain? Tobacco juice.

  Chapter Eight: No Barrel of Fun

  We got back down to the place around lunch­time. Slim and Loper unloaded the cow and calf in the heifer trap and parked the rig in front of the house. And they went inside to eat.

  No more pats on the head for me. No more “thanks, Hank” or “nice job, Hank.” They’d got what they needed out of me (temporary cow bait) and now they were ready to move along to something else (a nice big hot meal).

  Okay, if that was the way they were going to operate, I had some things to do myself. Some­body had to look after the ranch while certain unnamed persons stuffed themselves and sat around bragging about their exploits.

  Furthermore, it suddenly occurred to me that the previous evening, I had fallen heir to a fortune and that . . . holy cats, I had to get down to the trash barrels before somebody set them on fire!

  I went streaking down the hill, expecting at any moment to see the white wisp of smoke that would tell me my financial empire lay in ruins, like so much burned garbage in a barrel.

  But luck was with me this time. I found the barrels just as I had left them, three of them in a row, and none was on fire. Now all I had to do was remember which one contained my Priceless Corncob: left, right, or middle?

  Funny, I couldn’t remember. All at once they looked pretty muchly the same. I studied the situation and decided on the middle one. Yes, that was the one. I remembered now.

  A lot of dogs think you can’t search a garbage barrel without turning it over. They go in with no plan, no techniques, no understanding of the physical forces involved, and what they end up with is a big mess: barrels turned over, garbage scattered over five acres, the whole nine yards.

  Well, that’s unnecessary. Furthermore, it’s the mark of an amateur. Your trained professional cowdog will follow a set of procedures, process the garbage in a neat, efficient manner, find what he’s looking for, and leave no clues behind.

  I don’t suppose I need to say which method I use in my work.

  I took up my position, went into the deep crouch situation, thought through my jump, took my measurements, and made my calculations. Then and only then did I go into the jump procedure.

  I jumped and . . .

  You know, one thing a guy never thinks about when he’s concentrating on higher mathematics and complex formulas is what might happen if the barrel turned out to be empty.

  I mean, it’s reasonable to assume that a garbage barrel contains garbage, right? Otherwise it would be kind of silly to be jumping into it. In security work, we seldom enter empty barrels, for the simple reason that emptiness in and of itself contains very little of interest to us.

  However, what I’m sort of driving at in a round-about manner is that every once in a great while a guy jumps into a barrel that is empty. This always comes as a shock. I mean, we don’t train for this type of situation because . . .

  Instead of landing on a soft heap of newspapers, I plunged into the inner darkness and landed hard at the . . . well, at the bottom, of course, down there amongst the egg shells and the coffee grounds.

  Obviously I had picked the wrong barrel. Obviously Slim had thrown my Priceless Corncob into one of the other two. Obviously I was trapped in a stinking trash can. And obviously I didn’t intend to spend the rest of my life there.

  In other words, I needed to get out. I was studying on this latest problem when a face appeared in the circle of daylight above me. It was the face of a cat: a smirking, sniveling, insolent, unbearable cat.

  “My, my. You’ve finally found your place in this world.”

  “Step easy, cat, I’m in no mood for your mouth.”

  He lifted his right paw and gave it several long, slow strokes with his tongue. “Oh Hankie, you’ll never guess what I found in this other barrel.”

  There was something in his tone of voice that made me just a little bit . . .

  “HUH? Maybe you’d better tell me what you found in the other barrel, and be quick about it.”

  He wasn’t quick about it, not at all. He crouched down on the rim and started purring and twitching the end of his tail. As you know, I hate that tail-twitching business.

  “I found a corncob. Isn’t that a coincidence?”

  A growl began deep in my throat and was amplified by the emptiness of the barrel. “No, it’s not a coincidence. That’s MY Priceless Corncob and you know it.”

  “Well, maybe it was yours, Hankie, but . . .”

  “It was mine, it is mine, it always will be mine!”

  He closed his eyes and purred and smiled. “Finders keepers, losers weepers. What’s to keep me from taking it away and hiding it . . . from you?”

  All at once, his tail dipped down into the barrel and began twitching just a few feet from the end of my nose. Up to this point, I had remained cool-headed and rational. But this latest provocation brought our relationship to an all-time low, and I could no longer take responsibility for what happened.

  I leaped upward and snapped, and missed and fell back amongst the egg shells. I leaped again and again, trying my very best to amputate his tail, but each time he managed to snatch it back.

  And the whole time, he sat there looking down and grinning, just as though he had planned all along to get me stirred up, just as though I had been suckered into his shabby little game.

  What he didn’t know was that . . . okay, maybe I did get suckered into his shabby little game, but sometimes a guy loses his iron discipline . . .

  “Give me my Priceless Corncob, you nincompoop cat!” I made another snap at his tail and, you might say, missed again.

  “Come and get it, Hankie. It’s right over here in this other barrel. All you have to do is jump out.”

  I stared up at him. He grinned down at me. He didn’t think I could do it. He thought he was perfectly safe up there on his perch. Well, hey, he had made a very serious mistake in judgment because what he had seen up to that point was just my warm-up routine.

  “All right, cat, you asked for it and now you’re fixing to get it.”

  He yawned. That was a mistake too.

  I went into my deepest crouch and exploded in an upward direction. I’m proud to report that I knocked Pete off his perch, sent him flying to the ground, landed in the next garbage barrel, pulled it over, hit the ground running, and chased Kitty-Kitty up the nearest tree—all in the space of just a few action-packed seconds.

  I didn’t bother to taunt the cat. There would be plenty of taunt for timing once I had rescued my Priceless Corncob from the garbage.

  I rushed back to the barrel, which was now on the ground, and began digging through the trash: newspapers, bean cans, ketchup bottles, butcher paper, diapers . . . ah ha! There it was my Priceless Corncob, my ticket to the future, my . . .

  “HANK, GET OUT OF THE GARBAGE, YOU NASTY DOG!!”

  Huh?

  I wonder how Sally May . . . she seemed pretty steamed up about the . . . it did look pretty bad, I guess. I mean, the wind had come up out of the south and you might say that a lot of those newspapers had begun . . . several pages had blow
n into the yard and others were on their way to . . . and then the bean cans rolling around in the wind . . . yes, it looked pretty . . . it sort of detracted from the overall appearance of the . . .

  I couldn’t blame her for being mad. I was mad too. My only complaint was that, in a moment of anger, she misinterpreted the evidence and blamed ME for the entire mess, which probably explains why she threw the ketchup bottle at me.

  Well, you know me. I can take a hint. I grabbed up my Priceless Corncob and vanished into the night. Okay, it wasn’t night, it was broad daylight, but that didn’t keep me from vanishing.

  I had solved the Case of the Garbage Barrel, but it had been no barrel of fun.

  One final note before we move on. Every once in a while, I get the feeling that Pete is involved in some kind of conspiracy. I’ve noticed, not once but several times, that at the very moment he has provoked me into outskirts of temper and awkward situations, Sally May shows up.

  How does a dumb cat end up on the right side so often? It can’t possibly have anything to do with intelligence, so how do you explain it?

  Beats me. Dumb luck, I guess.

  Chapter Nine: I’m Rich!

  Well, I had more important things to do than sit around and speculate about dumb cats and their uncanny ability to walk into a thorny situation and come out smelling like a rose, so to speak.

  They say that if you throw a cat into the air, he’ll always land on his feet. Maybe so. If I didn’t have more important things to do, I wouldn’t mind studying that situation in detail, especially the part about throwing cats into the air.

  I’d like to spend about two weeks throwing Pete into the air, and I wouldn’t care if he landed on his feet or on his nose. Your serious scientific minds don’t care how their research comes out. They’re in it strictly for the love of knowledge.

  A little humor there.

  But as I was saying, I had better things to do than . . . yes, I already said that. Shucks, I was RICH! And I mean filthy, stinking, rolling-in-the-chips kind of rich. Why, there was no calculating how much that Priceless Corncob was worth.

  When Sally May appeared on the scene and that situation at the garbage cans went sour, I picked up my little old Priceless Corncob and vanished myself down to the corrals. By this time I was feeling mighty good. In fact, I felt a song tugging at the shoestrings of my heart . . . heartstrings of my . . . I felt a song in my heart, is the point, and never mind about the strings.

  Most of the time, when I feel a song in my heart, what I do about it is just by George sing it, and after setting my Priceless Corncob down along the fence in the front lot, I took a few steps back, tuned up, and burst into song. Here’s how it went.

  I’m Rich

  Well not so very long ago, it’s been just a day or three,

  I had me a job, pretty good job, as Head of Security.

  I worked real hard, took care of my place, kept it safe and sound.

  I knew that ranch like the back of my hand, I knew my way around.

  I guess you could say that I was content to leave things where they stood.

  I mean, there might have been a better deal around, but this one was pretty good.

  But then, you know, by George, one night I fell heir to a treasure,

  An Incredible Priceless Corncob, worth more than you could measure.

  And now I’m rich, you bet I’m rich!

  No more sleeping in the ditch, old pal, because I’m rich.

  Well, sudden wealth can do a lot to change your attitude.

  Makes you aware of who you are and what you have to prove.

  I mean, you just can’t go on living in your same old low class style,

  You’ve got to put on airs and flaunt your wealth and strut your stuff a while.

  For one thing, it ain’t proper now to speak to just anyone,

  You’ve got to choose your friends more carefully, according to how much mun

  They’ve got, ’cause see, a lot of dogs don’t have it and probably never will,

  And them’s the kind you leave behind when you’re marching up the hill.

  ’Cause now I’m rich, I’m by George rich.

  No more sleeping in the ditch, old pal, this dog is rich.

  Another thing you’ve got to watch when you join the upper crust

  Is working eighty hours a week and thinking that you must.

  ’Cause when you’ve got a fortune behind you every day,

  You don’t even need a job to prove that you’re okay.

  There’s lots of ways of acting to get your point across

  That now you’re rich and famous and you’ve become the boss.

  But the best way to express your wealth and make it really sting

  Is to stay in bed, cover up your head, and never do a thing!

  It says you’re rich! Oh, you’re rich!

  No more digging a ditch, pal, this dog is rich!

  Boy, it was a crackerjack of a song! I mean, beautiful music, meaningful words, an important message, the whole nine yards.

  I didn’t realize I had an audience until I had finished the song, and at that point I heard a crackling in some weeds over by the loading chute and saw—not Pete the Barncat, as you might have suspected, but little Mister Half-Stepper.

  He poked his head out of the weeds. “What was that all about?”

  “What do you think it was all about? It was about wealth, money, riches, treasure, my fortune in Priceless Corncobs, and my new status as one of the ten wealthiest dogs in the world, speaking of which, don’t get too close to my Priceless Corncob.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Drover, it’s just that you can’t be trusted.”

  He looked at my treasure and walked around it. “Don’t you think you’re acting kind of silly about all this?”

  “Silly? Who’s acting silly? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He looked up at the clouds. “I don’t think corncobs are very beautiful. I don’t think they’re beautiful at all. I think they’re ugly.”

  “I see. Is that all?”

  “No, there’s more. I don’t think they’re worth anything and I don’t think you’re rich.”

  “Are you finished now?”

  “No, there’s one more thing.” All at once, he burst into tears. “Oh Hank, I went to sleep last night with my corncob right in front of my paws and when I woke up this morning, it was gone and there were coon tracks all around!”

  “Wait a minute, hold it right there! Notice the clues, Drover. There’s a pattern here. It’s all fitting together.”

  “I know, I . . .”

  “Shut up. It’s all coming clear now: an un­guarded treasure vanishes in the night and we find coon tracks all around the scene of the crime. Don’t you see what this means?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “Then shut up. This means that while you slept, a band of outlaw coons slipped onto the place and stole your Priceless Corncob right from under your nose!”

  “It wasn’t exactly under my nose . . . ”

  “If you’ll shut your little trap, Drover, I’ll finish explaining what has happened here. You relaxed your guard, the coons made off with your treasure, and now you’re a penniless bankrupt and a pauper.”

  The tears began to flow again. “I was afraid you’d say that! That’s why I didn’t want to tell you the truth. I’m never going to tell the truth again. It always gets me into trouble.”

  I paced up and down in front of him. “The root of your problem, Drover, is not that you told the truth, but that the truth was true. If it hadn’t been so true, you wouldn’t be in this mess right now.”

  “Yeah, but if I’d lied, it wouldn’t have been true at all.”

  “Of course not, because a lie can’t possibly b
e the truth. But lying bears bitter fruit. Have you heard of bitter fruit?”

  “You mean chinaberries?”

  “No, I don’t mean chinaberries. I’m talking about the philosophical concept of bitter fruit.”

  He gave me a blank stare. “Are you saying that the coons ate chinaberries before they stole my corncob?”

  Sometimes, when you look into Drover’s eyes, you get the feeling that there is absolutely nothing behind them, and at that point you wonder if communication is worth the effort.

  “Yes, that’s what I’m saying, Drover. The coons ate chinaberries and that explains why they stole your Priceless Corncob. Is it clear now?”

  “It’s starting to make a little sense.”

  “Good. Now let me finish. You were robbed and now you’re broke, but instead of taking it with grace and dignity, you tried to convince me that my Priceless Corncob was worthless, in hopes I might cast it away and join you in poverty.”

  “How’d you know that’s what I was trying to do? I thought I was being pretty sneaky.”

  I couldn’t help chuckling. “Drover, Drover! Son, in my years of security work, I’ve gone up against the best crinimal minds in the business. You may not be the dumbest dog I’ve ever known, but you definitely rank in the Top Ten.”

  He wagged his tail. “Gosh, thanks, Hank. I feel better already.”

  “That’s good, Drover, and I’m glad to have played a small part in guiding you through a difficult period of self-realization.”

  “Yeah, it was pretty tough there for a while.”

  Of course,” I examined the claws on my right foot, “you understand that I can’t speak to you anymore, and we can’t be seen together.”

  “We can’t?”

  I shrugged. “We belong to different social classes, Drover. I’m a very wealthy dog, but you? Well, you’re back to being a common ranch mutt. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, you couldn’t help it.”

  “I have to think of my position, my status, my reputation—speaking of which, I hope you understand that I’m resigning my position with the Security Division.”