The Big Question

by John R. Erickson

  He nodded. “Yeah, and I’ve always thought you were a mouthy little jerk.”

  “Really?” I had to laugh. “You’ve thought that about me?”

  “Oh yeah, you and every other so-called cowdog. We horses have a saying: ‘When it’s time to work cattle, it’s time to tie up the dog.’”

  “That seems harsh.”

  “Truth usually is.”

  “But now we have a job to do, Snips, so I guess we’ll have to bury all the hatchets under the bridge.”

  “We’ll get along all right.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way. I agree. We belong to different worlds, but surely, for this one important mission, we can work together.”

  “Probably can.” He lifted his lips and exposed a smile of huge alfalfa-stained teeth. “As long as you stay out of my territory.”

  I stared up at him. “What does that mean?”

  He lowered his head and brought his nose close to mine. “Draw an imaginary circle around me, ten feet across. What’s inside the circle is mine. You stay out of it and we’ll get along fine.”

  I stiffened. “What gives you the right to claim a territory?”

  “Brute force.”

  “I see. Are you aware that I’m Head of Ranch Security?” He snorted a laugh. “All right, let’s come at this from another angle. What if, by accident, I happen to stray into your so-called territory?”

  “Well, it ain’t complicated. I’ll either bite off your tail or kick you into next week.”

  I took a step backward. “You know, pal, all at once I’m remembering all the reasons I’ve never gotten along with you guys.”

  “Yeah, ‘cause you’re a typical ranch mutt. You don’t know your place.”

  “For your information, my place is wherever I am. My place is the world.”

  He gave his head a shake. “Bud, you’re going to have a long night.”

  I took another step backward. “Yes, and in closing, let me say that you’re just as arrogant and overbearing as I always thought.” He shot out his front foot and tried to club me. Heh heh. Foolish horse. I dived out of range and yelled, “You missed, Fatso, and we can forget about working together. This means war!”

  Anyway, the Brotherhood of All Animals didn’t last long. I should have known. An honest dog can’t do business with a horse.

  Chapter Eight: Cold, Snow, and Misery

  Slim intervened just in time to save his horse from a terrible thrashing. He stuffed his left snow boot into the stirrup and hauled himself up into the saddle, waved for Viola to move forward, and our cattle drive got under way.

  Viola honked the horn and the cattle strung out behind her. Slim and I took our positions on the “drag” end of the herd, pushing the stragglers and slackers. Slim yelled, “Keep ‘em moving, pooch. If one stops, bite him on the hocks.”

  Hey, I was a professional cowdog. I knew the routine.

  We pushed the little dummies past the police car and the cattle trucks, and down the dirt road that would lead us to the ranch. Once we got the herd on the county road, we were able to relax a bit, because we had them in a lane, with barbed wire fences on both sides.

  And at that point, I found my thoughts turning toward…the nerve of that horse! Imagine him, telling ME to stay out of his territory! I had never been so insulted. And for his information, I would do my job and go wherever the work demanded. If that meant crossing his “territory,” too bad. By George, a dog can take only so much mouth off a horse.

  And you know what? Once we had the herd strung out in a nice long line, I began looking for opportunities to…well, trespass into his so-called territory. Hee hee. I darted behind him and even dashed under his belly, through the space between his front and back legs. Pretty amazing, huh? You bet.

  Hee hee. I loved it. Any time I can do something to irritate a horse, I’ll be glad to do it. Sign me up! You know what he did? Nothing. He just plodded along while a little snowdrift built up between his ears. He did nothing because horses are basically lazy animals. They talk, they threaten, they bluster and run their big mouths, but when it comes to expending any energy…

  BAM!

  Cough, hark, gasp.

  On the other hand…gasp, wheeze…a guy forgets how fast a horse can pull a gun and fire off a cheap shot with those back feet. Don’t let anyone kid you. Horses are the masters of the cheap shot, and as I was saying, any mature, intelligent dog can figure out how to work cattle with a horse.

  Stay out of his territory. It may be unfair and unjust, but it’s not complicated. See, you just draw an imaginary circle around the stupid horse and that’s his territory. This requires patience and a great deal of maturity. A wise, experienced cowdog will always put the needs of the ranch above his desire to give the big bully the kind of heckling he so richly deserves.

  See, we had a job to do and somebody on the crew had to show some maturity. Mature, rational behavior is something you’ll never get from a twelve hundred pound galloot, so it falls upon the shoulders of a dog to resolve the conflicts and work together as a team.

  Idiot horse.

  Anyway, we had gotten the cattle off the highway. Or, to put it another way, I had gotten the cattle off the highway, with very little help or cooperation from anyone else. Slim did his best to make a hand, but he was mounted on a brute that took fiendish delight in kicking dogs, so I had to work twice as hard.

  That was okay. Cowdogs don’t whine or complain. We don’t expect life to be a bud of wrestles. A bed of roses, let us say. Oh, and don’t forget how much help I got from my Assistant Head of Ranch Security. Zero. He was sitting in the warm lap of a beautiful lady, being coddled and probably ruined forever.

  Maybe you’re wondering how we were able to move cattle in the dark. First, we had the pickup in front of us, with its headlight beams and red tail lights, so all we had to do was keep the cattle moving toward the lights. Second, we were lucky to have a full moon. Even though it was covered by clouds, it was bright enough to cast a glow upon the sky. In other words, it was dark but not black dark.

  The first couple of miles went pretty fast. The cattle were feeling frisky, and Slim and I held our own against the cold. But as we pushed on, deeper into the bone-chilling darkness, fatigue began to take its toll. Slim began to take on the appearance of a mummy wrapped up in a white sheet. I mean, the poor guy was covered with snow and ice. So were the cattle, and they didn’t want to move.

  I knew Slim was cold, but he never said a word of complaint. That would have been un-cowboy and un-Slim. The man had his faults, but whining wasn’t one of them. He was bad to hold a grudge (the cookies) and he rode a scheming, malicious crowbait of a horse, but the man himself was as good as gold. Slim Chance was, as they say, a good man to ride the river with, and I was proud to serve with him.

  On and on we pushed through the wind-driven cold and snow. The cattle were getting tired. I was getting tired and the icy ground was beginning to hurt my feet. Slim slumped forward in the saddle, caked with ice. He hardly moved or spoke. Then, around seven-thirty, we began seeing the first strink pinks of light on the eastern horizon. Pink streaks of light, let us say. Slim glanced around and mumbled, “Let’s take a soup break.”

  Great idea. I trotted up and down the line of snow-flocked cattle, barking the order to halt. “All right, you lazy bums, we’re going to take a five-minute rest. Stop where you are, and the first silly son of a gun that tries to run off will have to deal with me. You got that? Any questions? Good. Stand your ground and keep your traps shut.”

  Heh heh. I got ‘em told, didn’t I? In this line of work, you have to be firm with the cattle. Show any weakness, give ‘em too much slack, and they’ll run wild.

  Slim spurred Snips into a trot and rode around the left side of the herd until he reached the pickup. He waved his arm so that Viola could see him, and she stopped. A moment later, she steppe
d out, holding a cup of steaming hot soup.

  “Don’t you want to get down?” she asked, handing him the soup.

  He shook his head. “If I got down, I might never get back in the saddle. These chaps are as stiff as a board.” He took a gulp of soup. “Oh, that’s good. Did you make it from scratch?”

  She nodded. “Homemade beef and barley.”

  “Well, it sure hits the…” He started coughing and couldn’t quit. The longer he coughed, the more it turned into a deep, painful hack that caused him to groan and slump over the saddle horn.

  Viola’s face showed concern. “Slim, that doesn’t sound good. I hope you’re not…”

  “I’m okay, just got some soup down the wrong pipe.” He drained the cup and looked around. “We’re about halfway. Can you make it another hour and a half?”

  “Well, I can but I’m wondering about you. Are you sure…”

  “I’m fine, and even if I’m not, there’s no quitting on this deal.” He handed her the empty cup. “Thanks. That was the best soup I ever ate, and it sure warmed my gizzard. Let’s move ‘em out.”

  When Viola opened the door to get into the pickup, I caught a glimpse of little Mister Limp-and-Groan. He was hopping up and down on the seat, looking toward Viola with adoring eyes. His leg seemed to have healed up nicely.

  Just for an instant, our gazes met. His grin dropped like a dead pigeon and he let out a groan. “Boy, this is tough!”

  The door slammed shut before I could tell him…I’m not sure what I would have told him, but it would have burned his ears. What a pampered life he led!

  Oh well, some of us had to get back to work. Slim rode back to the rear of the herd, while I marched up and down the line, barking orders. “On your feet, you squids, we’re moving out! Form a line, pick up those feet, rattle your hocks, forward march, move it! And here’s a message for all you slackers. When you end up at the back of the line, you’ll belong to me…and you won’t like it.”

  Heh heh. Boy, that woke ‘em up. Sometimes I even amaze myself. But do you suppose Snips was impressed? Oh no. When I joined him and Slim at the back of the herd, I saw the horse sneering at me. And he said, “What a loser. They should have left you tied up at the house.”

  “Oh yeah? Snips, if you were doing this job by yourself, it would take about two weeks. Or maybe two years. You know, it wouldn’t hurt if you lost a few hundred pounds.”

  He snorted a laugh. “You’ve still got the world’s fastest mouth.”

  “You think so? Hey, what would you say if I crossed into your territory, huh?”

  “I wouldn’t say anything.”

  “I did it once before and you landed a lucky punch. I don’t think you could do it again.”

  His face lit up with a smile. “Yeah? Try me. It’ll help pass the time.”

  Hee hee. You’ll love this part. See, I’d spent the last two hours brooding about that lucky shot he’d made, and I’d worked out a whole new plan. This time, instead of darting behind him and exposing myself to a swift kick from his back legs, I would dash in front of him.

  A horse can strike with his front feet but not nearly as fast as he can with the back ones. Heh heh. Pretty shrewd, huh? You bet. Hey, a dog’s mind is an awesome thing. A horse might win one in a row against a dog, but never two in a row.

  I waited and watched, studying the slow, plodding rhythm of his feet. Oh, and get this. I also paid close attention to his ears. A horse’s ears will tell you what he’s thinking. When his ears were straight up and alert, that meant he was paying close attention and was ready to fire. When the ears dropped…heh heh.

  I waited and watched, watched and waited. Horses don’t have much patience, you know, and after a while his mind began to wander. When he dropped his left ear, I knew my big moment had arrived. Before he even knew what was happening…

  Never mind. We’re going to skip this part.

  Remember what we were saying about maturity? A grown-up, mature cowdog has better things to do with his life than torment horses. I mean, we were on a cattle drive, right? And I had the awesome responsibility of delivering a hundred half-frozen yearling steers to the ranch.

  Nothing happened, no kidding.

  Chapter Nine: Cheap-Shotted By a Scheming Horse

  Okay, maybe we should come clean on this. Honesty is always the best policy, and the truth is that…something happened. We had an incident, let us say, a painful embarrassing incident, and the sooner we get it out in the open, the sooner I can forget about it.

  In the middle of that long, frigid cattle drive back to the ranch, I found myself, uh, thinking of ways to heckle Slim’s horse—nothing serious, mind you, but just little things that would get on his nerves. I mean, the guy was so arrogant and full of himself, any dog would have jumped at the chance to taunt him.

  I was patient. I did everything right. I studied the angle of his ears and the slow plodding rhythm of his front feet. In this kind of Special Ops procedure, the front feet are crucial, since those are the guns he’ll use on any dog that tries to streak through that part of his territory.

  I gave him ten minutes, maybe fifteen. His ears lost focus. His eyes glazed over. His head bobbed up and down in that slow rhythm horses get into when they’re on a job that stretches into hours and hours.

  The time was right. I grabbed a big gulp of air and began flexing the enormous muscles that would propel me through the Danger Zone.

  Three. Two. One. Banzai! We had ignition. There was a deafening blast of smoke and fire from engines one and two, and suddenly …

  Okay, what we had failed to feed into our Launch Program was, uh, any kind of numbers that related to the horse’s mouth.

  See, in plotting our countermeasures, we’d forgotten that an unusually crafty horse might bite a dog that flies through his air space. What he’ll do is grab the dog by the scruff of the neck, shake him like a rag doll, and then send him flying into a snow bank, and we’re talking about ten-fifteen feet through the air.

  The long and short of it was that, well, I got nailed. Did it hurt? You bet it hurt. You don’t hear much about the scruff of a dog’s neck, but it’s a pretty sensitive area with a lot of nervous endings. Big pain.

  The point is that I walked into an ambush and got wrecked, and the horse loved it. For the next thirty minutes, he ran his big flappy mouth at full throttle and I had to listen to him boast, brag, mock, and chortle. I tried to stay as far away from him as I could.

  The big bully.

  I had plenty of other things to worry about, trying to keep the cattle moving on the last leg of our drive. They were worn out, cold, hungry, and caked with ice and snow. They wanted to lie down and rest, but we had to keep them moving.

  Let me tell you, that last hour of the drive was a killer and I thought we would never make it to the ranch, but around nine o’clock, Viola drove the pickup across a cattle guard and stopped. She stepped out, pointed to a wire gate, and yelled to Slim, “Should I open the gate?”

  Slim looked up and glanced around. I think he had dozed off. He nodded his head and yelled, “Open it!”

  Viola put her shoulder into the ice-coated gate post, pushed and struggled, and finally managed to get the keeper-wire unhooked. She dragged the gate to the open position, jumped back into the pickup, honked her horn, and drove forward.

  This was the last step in the cattle drive. All the steers had to do was trot through the open gate and then we could all go home. But do you suppose they took the easy way? Oh no. They are SO DUMB!

  The lead steer walked up to the open gate and stopped. He lowered his nose and sniffed the ground. I could almost hear him thinking, “Now, when we got here, there was a six-wire gate across this space. I can’t exactly see it, but I’ll bet it’s still there.”

  Oh brother! Back on the drag-end of the herd, Slim rode back and forth, waved his arms, and yelled, “Hyah, wa
lk on!” Oh, and he coughed a lot. That cough seemed to be getting worse and moving deeper into his chest.

  Whilst he was yelling and coughing, I trotted up and down the line, delivering the kind of deep ferocious barking you’d expect from a professional stockdog who’d had it up to here with this bunch of knuckle-headed steers.

  “Idiots! The gate is open! Walk ten steps to the east and we’ll be done. Do you think we’re out here because we love you? We don’t love you. Nobody loves you, and do you know why? Because you’re too dumb to walk through an open gate, and that is Dumb Without A Name! Move it!”

  The morons somehow managed to stand in front of the gate for TEN MINUTES without one of them walking through to the other side. I almost lost my mind. I couldn’t believe it. And you know, they might still be standing there, bawling and mooing and shivering, if one of them hadn’t gotten shoved through the gate.

  There, standing in the pasture where he was supposed to be, he glanced around and a little candle of light appeared in the emptiness of his eyes, and you could almost hear him declare, “Duh! Duh duh duh!”

  One of the other little geniuses noticed the first one and a shout of joy leaped out of his mouth. “Duh! The gate’s open! Duh!” And he walked through the gate. Then a third steer noticed the first two. He glanced around and in a burst of insight, he yelled, “Duh! Oh, duh!” And he trotted through the gate.

  Unbelievable. For five minutes, Slim and I stood there, freezing our tails off and waiting for a hundred head of steers to say “Duh!” and walk through the open gate. Un-bee-leeve-able.

  When the last one scampered through the gate…actually, he jumped through the opening, as though he thought he was leaping across a canal full of alligators… when the last one cleared the gate, Slim croaked, “Well, Hank, we done it. Nice work.”

  He rode through the gate and crawled off his horse, and I mean crawled. He kind of slid out of the saddle and when his boots hit the ground, he held on to the saddle horn and stood there for a minute, testing his legs. Only then did he take a step, and he didn’t get far. A fit of coughing stopped him in his tracks. Bending over, he placed his hands on his knees and hacked for a solid minute.