The Case of the Haystack Kitties Read online

  Anyways, he ripped open the door, and his whole face brightened with relief. I could see, it in his eyes, in his smile, everything. The guy was so glad and happy, I found it a little embarrassing, to tell you the truth. And then he spoke.

  “Hankie boy, we sure come through this deal smellin’ like a rose. I was scared my spit can might have turned over on the dash.”

  HUH?

  Spit can? I followed his gaze to the tuna fish can on the dash. Sure enough, it hadn’t turned over, but was that a big deal? Hey, I had just . . . I don’t know what a dog has to do around here to . . . phooey. Skip it.

  I knew that deep in his heart, Slim was very glad to find me alive and unharmed, and I was pretty happy about that myself. I went to Wild Joyful Wags on the tail section and threw myself into his awaiting arms and began licking him on the face and ears.

  He laughed and patted me on the back. “Were you scared, pooch? I’ll bet you were. That was a pretty scary deal. You know, all these years I’ve been feedin’ hay by myself, I’ve wondered what might happen if a guy fell off the load. I reckon we found out, didn’t we? And you can stop lickin’ me any time now. Quit!”

  He pushed me away. It was then that his eyes fell upon . . . well, upon the chips and sawdust, you might say, and the various parts of the . . . uh . . . steering wheel. There was a long moment of silence. Then . . .

  “Good honk, what happened to my steering wheel?”

  Well, I . . . in my hour of greatest need . . . in the terror of the moment, don’t you see, I had felt this need to . . . dogs often do odd and peculiar things when . . .

  All at once I was overcome by the feeling that I was trying to explain something that couldn’t be explained.

  I lowered my head, tucked my tail between my legs, and moved as far away from him as I could, which placed me over against the door handle on the right side of the cab. There, I beamed him several different expressions, which included Awkward Grins, Funeral Home Eyes, and another one that attempted to say, “I know nothing about this, no kidding. It wasn’t me. Maybe you have . . . termites . . .”

  Then our eyes met. In the great gulf of silence that loomed between us, I waited to hear his next words.

  Chapter Eight: Slim’s Mackerel Sandwiches Are Poisonous

  His next words came as a shock to me. I had expected that he might call me a few names and throw a hissy fit.

  That’s not what happened.

  Here’s what happened. His face collapsed into a scowl, and he had just opened his mouth, as if to deliver me a lecture on why dogs shouldn’t chew steering wheels, when suddenly his eyes moved from me to a . . .

  Hmmm. What was that? It appeared to be a spot on the seat, a . . . uh . . . rather large wet spot on the . . . on the driver’s side, about where he usually . . . sat, you might say.

  Slim, that is. Where he usually sat on the seat.

  Oops.

  His face turned red. His eyes widened, then narrowed into angry squints. His nostrils flared.

  His eyes came at me like bullets. “What’s that?”

  I had no idea. Honest. No kidding. This was the first I’d seen of it. Okay, I had some idea. It was a wet spot. A spot of wetness.

  Rain. It had rained, and the window had been . . . wait, the window had been rolled up, right? So maybe the roof had, uh, leaked. Yes, that was it. A leaky roof.

  Yikes, his face was getting redder by the second. This was looking bad, very bad. I glanced around, hoping to find a trap door or secret passageway that might let me out of there. No luck. At that point, I began to consider the pros and cons of hurling myself through the window, but no, I had already tried that deal.

  Gulp. Once again I was trapped, and his eyes were burning holes in me. I couldn’t look at him. I mean, I knew nothing, almost nothing about the wet spot on the seat, but still, I felt terrible about it, and well, the evidence did look pretty bad.

  He was mad, really steamed. I counted my heartbeats and waited for the storm to hit. At last he spoke.

  “Hank, have you ever been beat to death with a ballpeen hammer?”

  Uh . . . no, never.

  “Has anybody ever tied you up in a gunnysack and throwed you into a pit full of alligators?”

  Not that I could, uh, recall. No.

  “Well, somebody should have done it a long time ago, and the only reason they didn’t was they didn’t want to waste a good gunnysack.” He kicked the side of the pickup. “You’re worthless, dumb as a box of rocks.” He kicked the pickup again. “First you chewed up my steering wheel, and then you puddled all over my seat. Didn’t you?”

  I . . . but you see . . . okay, yes, I’d done it. I was a rat and a bum, and he might as well fetch the hammer and get on with the ugly business.

  He glared at me through his glasses—which, by the way, were speckled with green bits of alfalfa hay. He glared at me and shook his head and muttered words under his breath.

  How was I supposed to respond to that? When they don’t come right out and say what’s on their minds, how can a dog . . . I mean, communication is impossible without communication, right? When they just stand there, moving their lips and muttering under their breath . . .

  At last he broke the awful silence. “Hank, you’re so dumb it hurts. But you know what hurts even worse?”

  No, I had no idea. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  He leaned into the cab and brought his face right up to mine. “What hurts even worse is that I may be even dumber than you are, since I’m the dufus that caused it all.”

  I stared at him in disbelief and even dared to tap the end of my tail.

  “If I’d tied down the dadgum hay with ropes, like you’re supposed to, none of this would have happened.” Yes, I had tried to warn him about that. “And if a man ain’t smarter than his dog, I guess he gets what he deserves—a chewed-up steering wheel, a seat that’s been pottied on, and a pickup sitting in the middle of the dadgum creek.”

  He leaned against the side of the pickup, snatched his hat off his head, and used it to fan his face. “Boy, this day ain’t going according to plan.” He heaved a sigh and looked down at his feet. “Well, here I am, standing in the creek, and I notice that my boots leak. Is there anything else we can do to foul up the day? Yes, there is. We could be stuck, and then I could have the pleasure of walkin’ back to headquarters in wet boots and explaining to the boss how I happened to park his pickup in the creek.”

  He climbed into the cab and slammed the door. Perhaps he had already forgotten about the wet spot on the seat, and I sure wasn’t going to bring it up.

  “Well, I reckon we’d better find out if we’re stuck or not.”

  He fired up the motor, stomped on the gas, threw her into reverse, and popped the clutch. We lurched backward a few feet, and yes, I did go sailing into the dashboard. Slim got a chuckle out of that and said, “Hang on, pooch, ’cause Barney Oilfield is at the controls.” He shifted into grandma­low, popped the clutch, and threw me back into the seat.

  He repeated this several times, back and forth, until at last he plowed his way up the west bank and back on dry land. I had never met Barney Oilfield, but he must have been a crazy driver. But the important thing was that we had rescued the pickup, and that left Slim in a much better mood.

  He grinned down at me. “You know, Hank, you’re so graceful, maybe we ought to be sending you to ballet school.”

  Ballet school? What did that mean? I didn’t know if this was a sincere compliment or just another of his cowboy jokes. With these guys, you never know. But his smile soon faded, and he snapped his finger.

  “Dern. I’ve got to load all them bales back on the flatbed.”

  We pulled around to the pile of bales, and with much grunting and muttering, he reloaded the hay. I supervised the loading process and checked for mice beneath the bales. (No mice, and he did a pretty fai
r job of stacking.)

  That done, we went on with our feed run and pitched out hay to the cows on down the creek. At twelve o’clock, we found ourselves in the East Creek pasture, far from home and food, but Slim had come prepared. He drove under a big cottonwood tree, shut off the motor, and reached into the glove box. He pulled out a brown paper sack, which . . . hmmm, had a pretty interesting smell about it.

  He must have noticed that I had noticed. “Heh. You didn’t know you was here in the cab with my dinner, did you? Heh. It’s a good thing you didn’t. Old Slim’ll overlook a few fangmarks on the steering wheel, but don’t be messin’ with his dinner.”

  Well, no, of course. I knew that, and if he thought . . . hmmm. It did smell pretty yummy, and yes, it was a good thing I hadn’t known it was in there.

  It appeared to be a sandwich. He had wrapped it in . . . was that newspaper? Yes, by George, he had wrapped his sandwich in a piece of newspaper. He removed the newspaper, held the sandwich in his hands, and admired it. He smelled it and cut his eyes toward me. He might have noticed that I was . . . well, watching. Watching with considerable interest. My ears leaped up, and I licked my chops.

  Yes, I’m sure he noticed, because he gave me a big grin. “Now, ain’t this a beautiful samwitch? Built it myself. Canned mackerel and taco sauce. It’s my own recipe.” He took a big bite. Red juice oozed out of the sides—taco sauce, I guess it was—and dripped onto his fingers and jeans. He licked his fingers and then waved the sandwich under my nose. “Here, I reckon I can spare you a smell.”

  You probably think that I tried to steal a bite of it, but I didn’t. No, if he’d wanted me to join him for lunch, he would have brought me something. I was sorry he didn’t consider our friendship worth a sand­wich or some token reward, but apparently he didn’t and that was fine.

  It smelled pretty good. Not great, but pretty good. I’d never been wild about the smell or taste of canned mackerel. At certain times of certain days, I’d even gone on record as saying that mackerel stinks. But on this particular day, as we were picnicking under the cottonwoods, it didn’t smell half bad.

  Pretty good, actually, and the longer I sat there watching, him eat and listening to him slurp and smack, the better it smelled. I might have preferred roast beef or fried steak, but those items weren’t on the menu.

  He waved it under my nose again. Why was he doing this? I mean, it’s not polite to eat in front of your friends, right? Even dogs know that, yet here he was, not merely eating in front of his loyal friend and hay-hauling partner but also waving the sandwich in front of my nose.

  And by the way, it smelled great. I’ve always loved the aroma of fresh canned mackerel. The taco sauce I can take or leave, but mackerel? Great smell. It always reminds me of ocean spray and enchanted islands and . . . well, food.

  I was pretty sure that he would offer me a bite. That would be the polite and mannerly thing to do, and to encourage his manners and politeness, I swept the pickup seat with broad wags of my tail and showed him, through perked ears and facial expressions, that I was ready for my portion.

  I waited. He took another bite. He gave me a wink. What was the deal? Surely he wasn’t going to eat it down to a stub and give me the crusts. I mean, he’d done that before. Did he think I had some special fondness for crusts of bread? Hey, if he didn’t want to eat them, why should I?

  No thanks. If it was a mackerel sandwich, I wanted some mackerel.

  At that very moment, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head to the left and said, “I’ll be derned. There’s that same roadrunner I seen over here just the other . . .”

  SNAP!

  Well, what did he expect me to do? Sit there like a “box of rocks” (his term) whilst he slobbered and smacked and showed terrible manners and devoured our whole mackerel sandwich? Heck no. I did what any normal, healthy American dog would have done.

  He wasn’t real happy about it and gave me an elbow in the ribs, but that was too bad. He was the guy who’d brought up the subject by waving the sand­wich under my nose.

  I felt no guilt about it, none. What I felt was quite a bit worse than guilt. That stinking mackerel gave me the worst heartburn I’d experienced in my entire career.

  I burped dead fish all afternoon.

  Who would put such rot into a sandwich?

  I should have known better than to eat anything made by a bachelor cowboy.

  I hate mackerel.

  Chapter Nine: Bummer: I Get Drafted to Guard the Stack Lot

  We got back to headquarters around four o’clock that afternoon. By that time, I had gone through the worst of the Toxic Mackerel Syn­drome and had managed to survive.

  Do you think I got any sympathy from Slim? Oh no. Every time my stomach chugged, filling the cab with the smell of his awful sandwich, he had to make a big deal out of it.

  He even had the gall to say—you won’t believe this—he even had the nerve to say, “Well, it serves you right for stealin’ food from your pal.”

  In the first place, I hadn’t stolen anything. I had merely claimed my rightful share of the sandwich he’d waved in front of my nose. In the second place, what kind of pal gives his dog poisoned mackerel?

  Oh well.

  Remember the bull that had torn down the stack lot fence? Well, guess who was back in the stack lot when we returned to headquarters.

  Mister Bull. It had probably taken him all of five seconds to rub down the fence, and we found him eating the southwest corner out of the haystack. This was bad news.

  See, once a bull has developed a taste for freechoice alfalfa hay, he tends to want more of it, not less. Bulls are so big and powerful, they go pretty muchly where they want to go. It will take them a little longer to trash a good fence than a bad one, but bulls have nothing better to do, and they will rub and push on a fence until they have it on the ground.

  It was getting along toward evening. Slim and I were tired from a long day’s work, and neither of us had the time or energy to fix fence or play chase games with that greedy bull. We ran him out of the stack lot again, and once again Slim patched up the fence.

  I watched and tried not to reveal my true thoughts. I mean, it was obvious, wasn’t it? As soon as we left for the night, the bull would return, tear down the fence, and go back to eating a hole in the haystack.

  So what was the point of patching the fence again? It was wasted effort. Until Slim came up with a radical new plan, such as loading the bull in a trailer and hauling him to the other side of the ranch, this was an exercise in fertility.

  But no one asked my opinion. I was merely Head of Ranch Security, and we’ve already discussed that tender subject. I merely observed and kept silent and tried to remember that Slim never learned anything the easy way. His motto for ranch work was: “There’s five wrong ways of doing every job, and a guy ought to try every one of ’em, every time.”

  Okay, maybe that wasn’t really his motto, but it sure described what I had seen over the years. No, until he came up with some radical new . . .

  HUH?

  He had the rope tied into my collar before I knew what was happening. I mean, I was just sitting there, lost in deep thoughts about Improved Ranch Management, and I’d hardly noticed that he’d slipped down to the machine shed and returned with twelve feet of cotton rope. And before I had time to smell a rat and run for cover, he had tied one end of the rope to my collar.

  No doubt my face showed shock and surprise. I gazed up at him with hurt-filled eyes, whapped my tail on the ground, and asked, “What does this mean? You’ve tied a rope to my collar, and surely you’re not planning . . .”

  He gave me a wink and a grin. “I’ve got it figgered, Hankie. It’s time for some radical action.”

  What? Hey, if he thought he was going to stake me out and make bull bait out of me, he was badly . . . I had plans, a schedule to keep, a ranch to
run. I was a very busy dog and . . .

  No thanks. I pointed myself to the west, hit Full Flames on all engines, and . . . GULK . . . that dinky cotton rope proved to be stouter than you might have supposed, and I found myself lying on my back, looking up at my former friend.

  “Hi, puppy. I’ve got a little job for you.”

  Ha! Forget that. Not me, brother.

  “It’ll be fun.”

  Oh sure, right. No thanks.

  “Here’s the deal. Me and you are going to make camp in the stack lot tonight.”

  Oh? Both of us? Well, maybe that wouldn’t be . . . I mean, if he was going to stay, it might be okay. Even fun.

  “We’re going to make camp, just me and you, ’cause we’re such wonderful pals and camping buddies.”

  Yes, we’d had a pretty good relationship. A cowboy and his dog.

  “And once we’ve made camp, I’m going home to my nice soft bed, and you’re gonna be our official ranch representative when the bull comes back.”

  WHAT? I stared at him. I could hardly believe my ears.

  Oh cruel world! Oh broken trust and wounded pride! What a fool I’d been. I should have eaten his whole sandwich when I’d had the chance. Instead of making a little stain on his pickup seat, I should have opened up the main valve and flooded the place.

  Okay. Fine. It appeared that I had no choice in the matter. If he was enough of a rat to make bull bait out of his loyal friend, I would stiffen my back and hold my head high and do my duty for the ranch.

  My conscience was clear in the matter. His conscience, on the other hand, would torment him all night, all day tomorrow, next week, next month, and for the rest of his life. One day in the distant future, fate would bring us back together. I would still be holding my head high, but he would be . . .