The Case of the Fiddle Playing Fox

by John R. Erickson

  And in his hands was an instrument of mischief: a little three-sixteenth-inch nylon rope. And he was building a loop.

  It’s amazing what happens to Drover when someone shows a rope. He suddenly changes direction, drops his head, and begins slinking away.

  Sure, he’d been roped a few times by cowboy pranksters and he didn’t enjoy it, but so what? That was no reason for him to be a spoilsport and a chicken-liver about it. Shucks, if I’d had a bone for every time I’d been roped by Slim and Loper, I’d have been one of the 10 wealthiest dogs in the country.

  But you didn’t see me slinking away every time somebody showed up with a rope in his hands, and besides, I had reason to suspect that Little Alfred couldn’t hit a bull in the behind with a bass fiddle, much less toss his loop around my neck.

  Furthermore, there was always the chance that he might put on a little exhibition, with Pete playing the part of livestock. Stranger things had happened, and I didn’t want to miss a minute of it.

  I mean, if you care about cowboying, you like to see these kids learning to rope and carrying on the skills into another generation, and when they’re roping cats, it warms the heart even more.

  Pete suspected nothing. That wasn’t exactly the biggest surprise of the year since cats aren’t what you’d call cowboy animals. They don’t understand the business at all and have no idea of what goes on inside a cowboy’s head.

  We cowdogs, on the other hand, have a pretty good reading of a cowboy’s mind, and one of the first principles we learn is that a loaded rope tends to go off.

  But do you think Pete picked up on that? No sir. He went right on rubbing and purring and winding his tail around the boy’s legs, I mean, it looked like a bullsnake climbing a tree.

  Little Alfred stumbled over the cat, which is what usually happens. He stopped and looked down. A gleam came into his eyes and a smile spread across his mouth.

  Up went the rope. Three twirls later, a nice little loop sailed out and dropped over Pete’s head, just as pretty as you please.

  I barked, wagged my tail, and jumped up and down. I mean, I could hardly contain my pride and enthusiasm. Did I say the boy couldn’t rope? Couldn’t hit a bull in the behind with a bass fiddle? Fellers, he had just one-looped a cat, and I couldn’t have been prouder if I’d done it myself!

  Well, you know Pete, sour-puss and can’t-take-a-joke. He pinned his ears down, growled, hissed, and made a dash for the iris patch. Ho ho! Did he come to a sudden stop? Yes he did. Hit the end of that twine, came to a sudden stop, and did a darling little back flip.

  Little Alfred beamed a smile at me. “I woped a cat!”

  I barked and wagged and gave him my most sincere congratulations on a job well done.

  He reeled the cat in. By this time, old Pete had quit fighting the rope and had sulled up. His ears were still pinned down and he was making that police-siren growl that cats make when they ain’t real happy about the state of the world.

  Alfred picked him up, opened the gate, and joined me on the other side, guess he wanted to show me his trophy. I gave him a big juicy lick on the face and was about to . . .

  HUH?

  The little snipe! Now, why did he go and pitch the cat on me? Hey, I’d been on his side all along. I’d been out there cheering him on and trying to coach . . .

  All at once, Pete wasn’t sullen anymore. He’d turned into a buzz saw, and before I even knew what was happening, he’d stung me in fifteen different places, and we’re talking about very important places such as my eyebrows, cheeks, gums, lips, ears, and the soft part of my nose.

  Did it hurt? You bet it hurt, and never mind who’d started this riot, I was fixing to introduce Pete to an old cowdog technique called “Disaster.” I barked and I snarled and I growled and I snapped . . .

  “HANK, YOU BULLY, GET AWAY FROM MY CAT!!”

  Huh?

  Get away from . . . no doubt that voice belonged to Sally May and . . . perhaps she thought . . .

  I cancelled my plans for hamburgerizing the cat, and prepared to thump my tail on the ground and give her an innocent smile.

  At the time, I didn’t know that she was already upset about the missing eggs. But I soon found out.

  Chapter Three: The Case of the Missing Eggs

  She came storming down the hill, carrying the egg bucket in her left hand. Right hand. Who cares?

  Carrying the egg bucket in one hand and with the other she held Baby Molly. No doubt the two of them had been up at the chicken house, gathering eggs. (That explained the egg bucket, see.)

  She reached the bottom of the hill and set the egg bucket down on the ground beside me. Naturally, I peered inside and gave the bucket a sniffing, with no thought or intention of . . . some dogs will eat eggs, don’t you see, and they’re known as Egg-Sucking Dogs and they ain’t popular with ranch wives or whoever else is in charge of the . . .

  Nothing could have been further from my mind. Honest. Cross my heart and hope to die. I have flaws, but sucking eggs has never been one of them, although I must admit that at certain times of the day and certain times of the year, a nice fresh egg . . .

  She speared me with her eyes. “Don’t you even THINK about messing with my eggs!”

  Who, me? Now, what had . . . all I’d . . . there was no reason to . . .

  Sometimes the best thing a guy can do is just keep his mouth shut and take a telling, even when it involves stuffing down his sense of mortal outrage. In the process of stuffing down the so forth, I sniffed again. It was just a mannerism, it meant nothing at all, but Sally May took it all wrong and turned it into something that was blown all out of . . .

  “Stop smelling my eggs because they’re not for you!”

  Okay, okay. But for what it’s worth, they smelled pretty good, although that wasn’t my primary . . .

  Let me repeat that I am not now and never have been an egg-sucking dog, and that’s my last word on the subject. For a while.

  At that moment, High Loper came up the hill. He’d been down at the barn doing his morning chores, which at that time of the year meant feeding one saddle horse and a two-year-old colt. The rest of the horses were grazing on grass.

  He walked up to us, swept his eyes over me, the cat, and Little Alfred, and grinned. “Well, well, what do we have cooking here?”

  Sally May placed both hands on her hips. “Your son and your dog. You see what they’re doing?”

  Little Alfred beamed, as all eyes turned to him. “I woped me a cat, Daddy.”

  “Yes,” Sally May went on, “he roped my poor cat and then threw him on your dog, just to see what would happen.”

  Loper chuckled. “What happened?”

  “You know very well what happened. If I hadn’t come down just when I did, Hank would have brutalized the cat.”

  “From the looks of the blood, hon, it was the other way around. It looks like your cat brutalized my poor dog.”

  She glanced down at me. I wagged my tail extra hard. I was disappointed to see her smile. “He did take a few licks, didn’t he, but I’m sure he deserved them. Now, will you speak to your son about starting cat-and-dog fights?”

  Loper knelt down and gave Alfred a lecture about roping cats and starting fights, although I got the feeling that Loper might have participated in the same sports when he was young.

  “Oh,” said Sally May, “and while we’re on the subject of your dog, I found seven broken eggs in the chicken house this morning. Something got in there last night,” she turned a dark glare in my direction, “and is eating my eggs.”

  I turned away, astonished that she might think . . .

  Loper stood up, and as usual his knees popped three times. “Now hold on. What makes you think Hank had anything to do with it?”

  “Well . . . I don’t know. Nothing really, except that he has a lousy reputation around here, and anytime there
’s a mess or some trouble, he’s a prime suspect.”

  Her words cut me to the crick. It was really tough to sit there and listen to such falsehoods and never say a word in my own defense. I managed to keep silent, but just barely.

  “I doubt that Hank’s the culprit, hon. More than likely, it was a skunk or a bullsnake, but just because you’re such a sweet and gorgeous thang, I’ll go up and check it out.”

  He gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  “Well, that’s nice. Thank you. I’ll be much sweeter and more gorgeous if I can get my twelve eggs a day.”

  With that, she herded her two children into the yard, un-noosed the cat, and disarmed Little Alfred. Loper and I went up the hill to chick out the checking house. Chicken house. Check out the chicken house.

  As we passed the big sliding doors of the ma­chine shed, whose nose do you suppose poked out of the crack between the doors? It was Mister Scared-He’d-Get-Roped.

  “Hi Hank, looks like we might get some rain, huh?” I ignored him, so naturally he came out and fell in step beside me. “Where we going?”

  “I don’t know where you’re going, but Loper and I are going to the chicken house on important business.”

  “Oh good.”

  “But I’d just as soon not be seen with you, after the way you ran from that rope.”

  “Yeah, that was quite a rope.”

  By this time, Loper had reached the chicken house. He pushed open the big door on the east. The chickens never used this door, for the simple reason that chickens are unable to turn doorknobs and push open large doors. They came and went through a small opening near the center of the building.

  I was already studying the layout of the alleged chicken house, committing every detail of its construction to memory, amassing facts and clues, and sending it all to Data Control. A guy never knows which tiny fact will be the one that breaks a case wide open.

  Loper stepped inside, causing the hens to squawk and flutter. I followed one step behind, put my nose to the floor and began . . .

  You ever try to sniff out a scent in a chicken house? You should try it sometime, just put your nose to the floor and take a deep breath. When you regain consciousness, you’ll realize that even an elephant could hide his scent in a chicken house.

  My nose is a very sensitive smellatory instrument, see, and it’s calibrated to pick up SUBTLE odors. There are many odors in a chicken house, none of them subtle. One whiff of that place blew out all my circuits.

  When I stopped coughing, I was able to mutter, “Boy, this is a foul place!”

  “Yeah,” said Drover, “they’re just birds.”

  “What?”

  “I said, fowls are just birds. That’s how come they’re in a chicken house.”

  Sometimes . . . oh well. I had more important things to do than to make sense of Drover’s nonsense.

  Loper was bending over one of the nests, which was located inside a wooden crate. I hopped up and studied the contents of the nest. There, lying amidst the straw, were pieces of egg shell.

  Loper moved on down the line and found other nests with broken eggs. Then he straightened up, worked a kink out of his back, and pushed his straw hat to the back of his head.

  “Well, dogs, something’s been robbing these nests.” I barked. Now we were getting somewhere. “It wasn’t a bullsnake, because a snake wouldn’t have left the shells in the nest.

  “It looks like the work of a skunk, but if it had been a skunk, he would have left a scent behind. That leaves a coon or a coyote. The next question is, where were you fools when the coyote or coon came into headquarters?”

  Huh? Well, it was a big ranch and . . .

  “Let’s just say that if I find any more busted eggs, I might start thinking about my dog food bill. I might just run the cost of gain on you mutts and decide to cut down on my overhead.”

  He leaned down and brought his face real close to mine. “Do you understand what I’m saying? No more busted eggs. No more angry wife. No more varmints in the chicken house. Tend to your business!”

  Tend to . . . what did he think we’d . . . but, yes, the message had come through loud and clear, so loud and so clear that I left the chicken house shaking all over.

  If you happen to be a dog, the prospect of life without dog food can be rather bleak. We had a job to do, fellers, and we dared not fail.

  Chapter Four: The Case of the Phoney Fiddle Music in the Night

  Loper closed the door, gave us one last scorching glare, and stomped back down to the corrals. Needless to say, I had little desire to go with him. There are times to be a loyal dog and there are times to be invisible. I choose invisible.

  As soon as Loper’s footsteps faded into the distance, I turned to my assistant. “Well, you sure made a mess of this deal. Where were you last night when the robber strolled into the chicken house and had himself a feast?”

  “I don’t know. I never saw him.”

  “Exactly. Now, the next question is, why didn’t you see him? What were you doing that was more important than guarding the chicken house?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Nothing. That’s the answer. Nothing was more important than guarding the chicken house, and that is precisely what you were doing.”

  “Oh. Well, I guess I was doing the right thing, huh?”

  “Absolutely wrong.”

  “Oh drat. But Hank, if nothing was more im­portant than guarding the chicken house, then I was doing the more important thing, seems to me.”

  I glared at him. “Are you trying to confuse me?”

  “Not really.”

  “Good. It would be a waste of your time to try. Furthermore . . .”

  At that moment I realized that I was being stared at by a pair of rooster eyes—at close range. You ever been stared at by a rooster at close range? They have this funny way of twisting their heads, see, and blinking their eyes, as if they’re not sure what it is they’re looking at.

  As you might have guessed, J. T. Cluck had returned—without being invited, I might add.

  “Oh, it’s you again,” said J.T. “I was a-wondering what that was. Did you just come out of the chicken house?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Who do you think, you darn fool dog? ME! I want to know who’s going in and out of my chicken house. You may not know it, mister, and you may not care, but we’ve been losing eggs in the night.”

  “I’m aware of that, and as a matter of fact, I just happen to be working on the case at this very moment.”

  “Huh. Somehow that don’t thrill me the way it ort to.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, thrilling chickens ain’t something I’d care to do, even if I didn’t have anything else on my agenda, which I do. But while you’re here and wasting my time anyway, I might as well ask you a few questions.”

  “Go ahead, ask me some questions, ask me anything. My life’s an open book.”

  “I know. And if you had to make your living selling it, you’d starve to death.”

  “Say what? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.” I fixed him with a stern gaze and began to pace back and forth in front of him. Did I mention that my mind works better when I . . . yes, I did. “All right, let’s get down to the brass tacks.”

  “Fine, I’m ready, ask me anything. Say, you ever been pecking for gravel and swaller a brass tack? I did that once, and you talk about indigestion! That was the first time in my life that I ever got cavities in my gizzard gravel.”

  “That’s very interesting.”

  “Yeah, I know. We ain’t got teeth, maybe you didn’t realize that. We swaller gravel and it goes down to the gizzard and the gizzard grinds up our food.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “So we never have problems with our teeth, see. You can’t have problems with what you ain
’t got.”

  “I’m very happy for you but . . .”

  “Pretty good system most of the time, but like Elsa says, she says a rooster my age has got no business swallering tacks and nails and running all that hardware through my gizzard.”

  “J.T.?”

  “Causes cavities in the gizzard gravel and gives me indigestion.”

  “Tell me about last night.”

  “Huh? Last night? Naw, this happened several weeks ago.”

  “Never mind your indigestion. What happened last night? Did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary?”

  “Well, let me think here.” He cocked his head and raised one foot off the ground. “Yes, I did. I heard something last night that I won’t forget for a long time.”

  “Okay, tell me about it. Describe exactly what you heard and keep to the facts.”

  “You bet, here we go. You know what was strange about the whole deal?” He glanced over both wings and moved closer. “What was funny about that deal of the busted eggs was that sometime in the deep dark of the night, I woke up—I was on the roost, see, sleeping real good—I woke up in the deep dark of the night and heard . . .”

  I stood motionless, waiting to hear the rest. “Yes? You heard something? Go on.”

  “Naw, you wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Try me.”

  “Naw, it’s just too outrageous, and I ain’t sure I believe it my own self.”

  “TELL ME WHAT YOU HEARD!”

  “Well, you don’t have to screech. I ain’t deaf yet! Okay, I’ll tell you the rest of the darned story. I woke up in the deep dark of the night and I heard something. And what I heard was . . . fiddle music!”

  “Fiddle music?”

  “Yes sir, that’s exactly what I heard. Fiddle music.”

  I swung my eyes around to Drover. He was looking up at the clouds. “Have you been talking to this rooster behind my back?”

  His gaze drifted down and settled on me. It was as empty a gaze as I’d ever seen. “Oh, hi. I was just watching the clouds. Kind of looks like rain.”