Wagons West Read online

  And so our journey began. On and on we pushed—over mountain passes that were still clogged with snow, across mighty rivers with steamboats chugging past, across burning deserts where the only living things we saw were cactus trees and two-hump camels.

  It must have been somewhere in the middle of the desert that we made a sad discovery. Our horse was getting tired, and we’re talking about bleary-eye, tongue-dragging, gasping-for-air kind of tired. The grand adventure that had begun as a piece of cake had turned into a piece of something quite a bit heavier than cake, maybe bricks or lead weights.

  Gag, I was bushed, and you know what really hurt? We hadn’t gone more than a hundred feet from the house, for crying out loud.

  The Wagon Boss tried to urge me on. “Come on, horsie, gitty up! Gitty up!”

  Gitty Up was out of the question. It was time for me to Gitty Down, and that’s what I did. I sat down, unrolled about six inches of tongue, and went into our Maximum Ventilation Program (panting for air).

  Alfred was disappointed. I could see it all over his face. “Hankie, we’re not there yet.”

  Yeah, well, we were as “there” as we were likely to get for a while. I had to take a break and refill my tanks with…

  Huh?

  You won’t believe this. Would you like to guess who showed up at that very moment, and I mean out of nowhere, like flies at a picnic? I’ll give you some hints.

  Hint #1: He wasn’t invited.

  Hint #2: He wasn’t invited because nobody

  could stand his company.

  Hint #3: He came slithering up behind me

  and began rubbing on my left front leg.

  Hint #4: He flicked the end of his tail across

  my nose.

  Did you figure it out? It was Mister Never Sweat, Sally May’s rotten little cat, and for reasons I could not imagine, he had left the yard and hiked out into the pasture to join us.

  I pushed him away. “Get that tail out of my face. What are you doing out here, you little creep?”

  “Now Hankie, don’t be that way. You might not believe this, but I’ve come to help.”

  A jagged laugh leaped out of my throat. “Help? You? The last time you helped, you helped yourself to my scraps.”

  His eyes lit up. “You know, I did, and they were delicious. But, Hankie, this is different.” He stared at me with his mysterious kitty eyes. “I really do think I can help you.”

  I ran this through Data Control. He was up to some kind of trickery, but I couldn’t figure it out. “Okay, I’ll bite. Help me what?”

  “I can help you pull the wagon.”

  “You can help me…ha ha! Oh, that’s rich, that’s hilarious. You couldn’t even pull an empty bean can, much less a wagon.”

  He rolled over on his back and began playing with his tail. “Well, it all depends on how you approach it, Hankie. You should look for your Hidden Strength. Scissors cut paper. Rock breaks scissors. Paper covers rock.”

  “Yeah, and dog runs kitty up a tree. So what?”

  His face bloomed with a smile. “That’s it, Hankie, you figured it out!”

  “I did?”

  “Yes, and I am just amazed. You discovered your Hidden Strength, based on a law of physics.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  He sat up and lowered his voice to a whisper. “A dog is never too tired to chase a cat.”

  “Wait a second. Are you saying...”

  “I’ll hiss, you’ll chase. In chasing, you’ll pull the wagon and entertain the child.”

  My mind was swirling. I would have begun pacing, as I often do in such swirling situations, but, well, I was hitched to the wagon.

  “Okay, Pete, let’s go straight to the bottom line. What’s in it for you? And don’t give me any baloney about how you care about me or Little Alfred or anyone else on this planet, because I know you don’t.”

  He fluttered his eyes and studied his paw. “Hankie, I…am…bored.”

  I stared at him in amazement. “You’re bored? You’re so bored that you want me to chase you?”

  His eyes crackled with delight and he nodded his head. “Yes, and I think it might turn out to be fun.”

  This was one of the craziest things I’d ever heard, and the craziest part was that…it might actually work.

  Chapter Eleven: Prisoners in a Cave

  It almost made me ill that Pete had come up with a solution to our Energy Crisis, and that I hadn’t. It was so simple yet so true.

  A dog is never too tired to chase a cat.

  “Okay, Pete, I’ve run the numbers and it might work.”

  “You’re welcome, Hankie.”

  “I didn’t say ‘thank you.’”

  “I know. That would hurt, wouldn’t it?”

  “More than you can imagine. Let’s get started. Anything for the kids.”

  “Very well, Hankie. Stand by for blast-off.”

  Kitty took his position right in front of me, and we’re talking about nose-to-nose. He flattened his ears and threw a hump into his back. The pupils of his eyes became large black circles and he cranked up the yowling sound that is sure to build a fire in the mind of a dog.

  It worked. I felt a rush of thermonuclear energy, and the engines of my mind began to roar and tremble with an incredible force. Over the roar and rumble, I heard the countdown coming from Mission Control: “Three, two, one…”

  Kitty hit the Launch Button. He HISSED right in my face and smacked me across the nose with his claws. Ouch. That did it! The world went red and the chase was on!

  You talk about a blast-off! Drover did a back flip over the back end of the wagon and landed on the ground. Little Alfred grabbed the sides and held on for dear life. Kitty went streaking south, toward the creek, and I was in hot pursuit, blasting him with enormous barks and trying to snap off the end of his tail.

  Behind me, I heard Alfred scream, “Hankie, no! Wait, stop!”

  Too late. There was no turning back now. The weapon had been launched and Sir Figgy Newton was driving the bus.

  Sir Isaac Newton, I guess it should be, the famous scientist. In other words, we had uncorked a bottle of Pure Physics.

  The earth rushed past me and the next thing I knew, we had run out of flat prairie country and, up ahead, I saw the brushy undergrowth along the creek. A tiny voice inside my head whispered a warning: “Don’t go crashing into the brush.”

  Yeah, well, that was a nice idea, but somehow it didn’t register. When you mess around with the laws of figgies…the laws of physics…anyway, we went crashing into a bunch of tamaracks and came to a sudden stop.

  The wagon and I had gotten high-centered in the brush, is the point. I was gasping for air. Alfred’s mouth hung open and his eyes were wide with…I don’t know, surprise, fear, or excitement, I suppose. I had given him a pretty wild ride.

  I needed help but saw no sign of Kitty. “Hey Pete, front and center!” He took his sweet time, of course. Cats always do that and it drives me nuts, but I must admit that I was kind of glad when he came slithering through a crack in the brush. “There you are. Good. Listen, pal, we have a little problem.”

  He swept his gaze over the scene. “Not a little problem, Hankie.”

  “Okay, a big problem. How are you at untying knots?”

  “Well, Hankie, cats don’t do knots.” He gazed up at the sky. “And cats don’t do wet either.”

  “What does wet have to do with anything?”

  He pointed a paw toward the north. “Rain.”

  I turned my head around and saw…gulp. A huge gray wall of clouds was moving toward us from the northwest. Lightning flashed and I heard the sound of thunder.

  A storm was heading our way, and fellers, it was BIG and UGLY, one of the scariest storms I’d seen in years.

  “Hey Pete, we need to get t
he boy back to the house, and I was wondering…”

  He began edging away. “We need to get the cat back to the house, Hankie. I’m not bored any longer, and I hate getting wet. Bye now, and good luck.”

  “Pete, wait. You can’t just…come back here, you little traitor!”

  He was gone, poof, and I shouldn’t have been surprised. When you’re in trouble, don’t call a cat.

  I turned to my little pal. The thunder was getting louder now, and he looked as scared as I felt. “What are we gonna do, Hankie?”

  I used my tail to tap out a message. “It appears that we’re going to get drenched, pelted with hailstones, and possibly blown away in a tornado. If the creek comes up, we’ll get swept away in a flood. If we happen to survive all of that, your mother will paddle your little behind and flog me with her mop.”

  Maybe that was the wrong message. His lip began to quiver and a tear slid down his cheek. “Hankie, I want to go home.”

  I tapped out another message. “So do I. Let’s see if we can get out of this mess. You can start by untying the rope.”

  He seemed to understand. He swiped the tears away with his hand, crawled out of the wagon, and started working on the knot. The thunder was getting louder. His hands were shaking. Hurry up! By this time, I could hear the roar of the wind and rain. I glanced off to the north and saw the house disappear behind a wall of gray.

  At last he got the knot untied, just as the storm hit us, and boy, did it hit us! The wind screamed in the cottonwood trees, and all at once it was raining snakes, weasels, and pitchforks, raining so hard, we could hardly breathe.

  The world went dark. We couldn’t see and had no sense of direction. Together, we stumbled through tamaracks and willows, two tiny souls lost in a raging storm.

  And I’m afraid we’re going to have to stop right here. The story has gotten out of control and…well, you know me. I worry about the children. I don’t mind giving them some scary stuff once in a while, but this…it might be too much. No kidding.

  Don’t whine. You think you can handle scary stuff, but you don’t know what’s coming.

  What do you say we just shut everything down, brush our teeth, and climb into a nice warm bed? We can crawl under the covers and snuggle up and…

  You want to keep going? Okay, you asked for it. Hang on, here we go.

  Okay, two lost souls in the so-forth. We staggered and stumbled. The wind screamed, the thunder roared, and we began hearing the thud of hailstones striking the trees around us. Big stones, the kind that can hurt a little boy. But then…

  A bird was standing on the ground in front of us. An owl. Holy smokes, it was Madame Moonshine, and she yelled over the storm, “My goodness, look what I’ve found. Quick! Follow me, tally-ho!”

  I’m not the kind of dog who makes a habit of following owls to unknown places, in the middle of howling storms, but, well, I had run out of ideas.

  We followed her across a shallow spot in the creek and kept her in sight as she hopped and flapped toward her cave in the south bank of the creek. Slipping and sliding in the mud, we made our way up the embankment, where she stood, pointing a wing toward the opening.

  She called out, “Timothy, open the outer gates!” At that moment, a big hailstone whacked her on top of the head. She turned an angry glare toward the sky and shook her wing. “And YOU will cease striking me with stones!” Another one beaned her on the nose. She rubbed her beak, muttered something, turned to us, and yelled, “Hurry, scurry, in the cave/Never worry, ever brave!”

  We dived into the cave—not quite “ever brave,” but safe from the storm.

  Whew! I had been in this cave before, you know, long away and far ago. This was the cave where Madame Moonshine had cured me of a terrible case of Eye-Crosserosis. Remember that deal? The place hadn’t changed much—a fairly large cave with mouse bones scattered across the floor and long tree roots hanging from the ceiling.

  Little Alfred took it all in with wide, wondering eyes, and moved closer to me.

  Madame hopped past us and stood on a little raised platform at the front. She clasped her wings together, leaned forward, and studied me with her big full-moon eyes. “You’re an odd-looking rabbit. Haven’t we met?”

  “Yes ma’am, this very morning. I’m Hank the Cowdog. Remember me?”

  “Yes, of course, but why do you keep telling everyone that you’re a rabbit?”

  “I’ve never told anyone that I’m a rabbit.”

  “You’re ashamed of it, aren’t you?”

  “No ma’am, I’m not a rabbit.”

  “If you insist you’re not a rabbit, then why are you so ashamed of being a rabbit? It seems irrational. You can’t go though life being ashamed of what you’re not.” She closed her eyes and seemed to be lost in thought. “Had you ever thought of being a woodpecker?”

  I didn’t mean to laugh, but it jumped out. “Ha ha. No ma’am, I’ve never thought of that.”

  Her eyes popped open. “Please don’t laugh. There is nothing silly about being a woodpecker. Every woodpecker on this ranch is proud of himself, and you’ll never find one that goes around claiming to be a rabbit.”

  “Yes ma’am, sorry.”

  She shook her head and gazed up at the roots on the ceiling. “Something about this doesn’t make sense.”

  “I agree, so maybe we can change the subject. When the rain stops, I need to get this boy back home.”

  Her eyes drifted down to me. “Home? Oh, I’m afraid that isn’t possible. We’re having too much fun. I don’t get many visitors, you know. Timothy? Close the outer doors! Raise the draw-bridge and secure the walls.”

  Uh oh. Remember Big Tim? He was Madame Moonshine’s pet rattlesnake and personal bodyguard. We hadn’t seen him when we’d come into the cave, but we saw him now. He was coiled up in the door, rattling his tail and flicking out his long black tongue.

  Gulp. Unless I was badly mistaken, we had just become prisoners in Madame Moonshine’s cave. This wasn’t what I’d had in mind.

  Pretty spooky, huh? You bet. But we have to keep going. Hang on.

  There we were, prisoners in Madame Moonshine’s cave, with a six-foot diamondback rattlesnake guarding the door. Little Alfred was one scared little boy and held me tight, and I must admit that I was a little nervous too.

  I had just carried on a loony conversation with the owner of the cave, and we’re talking about LOONY. The only thing she’d said that made any sense was, “This doesn’t make any sense.” Where do you go from there?

  Nowhere. The conversation dropped dead and for a long time, we sat there, hostages inside a gloomy cave. While the storm raged outside, Madame Moonshine entertained us with tricks. She balanced a mouse bone on the end of her beak and showed us how she could swivel her head around backwards.

  I thought it was kind of boring, to tell you the truth, but she seemed to be having the time of her life. But then…hmm. I noticed that the rain had stopped…and thought of something I should have thought of sooner.

  “Hey Madame, do you remember knocking yourself out on a window this morning?”

  She stopped in the middle of her trick and gave me a puzzled look. “This morning? Oh, that was years ago.”

  “It was hours ago. You saw your reflection in the window and thought it was another bird.”

  She scowled and stroked her chin with the tip of her wing. “Now that you mention it…yes, it’s coming back. There was a woodpecker on the other side of the glass. Was that you? Yes, of course! So you really ARE a woodpecker! I knew we’d met before.”

  Oh brother.

  “No ma’am, you saw your reflection in the glass and whammed into it.”

  “I did that? How silly.”

  “It knocked you out. You fell to the ground, and a cat was about to eat you.”

  “Hmm, yes, it’s coming back now. So…you were the cat
?”

  “I was the dog who kept the cat from eating you.”

  “I thought you were a rabbit.”

  “I’m a dog!”

  She seemed bewildered. “Oh my, this is confusing. So…did anyone eat me?”

  “No ma’am, I saved your life.”

  She smiled and blinked her eyes. “Of course, and that’s why I’m still here! You know, I’ve been wondering about that all day, and the answer is…I’m here because nobody ate me this morning.” She began pacing. “But there’s more to this, isn’t there? Did I make any promises?”

  “You sure did. You said that my good deed would come back to me as a blessing.”

  She stopped pacing and stared at the floor. “I did say that, I know I did. So now…you want to collect?”

  “Right, exactly. I need to get this boy back home.”

  Her voice dropped into a creepy whisper. “Very well, but only if you can answer The Ominous Riddle of Fog, and I must warn you, it is very, very difficult.”

  Gulp.

  Chapter Twelve: The Ominous Riddle of Fog

  There was a long moment of silence. Then Madame swiveled her head around. “Do you wish to continue?”

  “What if I get the wrong answer?”

  Her gaze roamed the ceiling. “Oh, please don’t.”

  “Pretty bad?”

  “Never has anyone who unfailed the test not managed to unsurvive.”

  “Uh…say that again.”

  “No one in the entire universe has ever not managed to unsurvive a non-passing score of more than three but less than one.”

  “So…if I score a two, I’ll be okay?”

  “If you score a two, you will transform into a purple penguin. Are you prepared to risk it?”

  I swallow a lump in my throat. “Sure. Let’s give it a shot.”

  “Foolish rabbit, wiser penguin.” She faced me with a solemn owlish expression. “Pencils up! You have thirty seconds to do the calculations. Here is your test question. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled okra, how much wood would a chipmunk chip, if a chipmunk would chip wood? Begin calculating!”