Murder in the Middle Pasture

by John R. Erickson

  We parked on a hill in the middle pasture and Slim rolled down his window and called the cattle. He cupped his hand around his mouth and hollered, “Wooooooo!” in a loud, high-pitched voice. Kind of hurt my ears, to tell you the truth, and it sure was funny the way his Adam’s apple moved up and down.

  The first-calf heifers were in this pasture, the ones Slim was supposed to watch. They came in and milled around the pickup, but every now and then they’d hear the wind stir up a strange sound and they’d run off a little ways.

  Slim took a bite off his plug of tobacco and studied the cattle. “Hank, it appears to me the coyotes have been prowling around these heifers. They’re awful jumpy. I sure hope we don’t have a calf-killing coyote on the place. I guess we’d better start carrying the .22, don’t you reckon?”

  I whapped my tail against the seat. If we had a calf-killer on the ranch, I was betting his name was Scraunch. I’d tangled with that dude before and he was tough. I wasn’t exactly looking for opportunities to go against him again on the field of battle, but if it came to that I was ready.

  On my ranch, calf-killing is a very serious crime and it demands swift and terrible justice. Slim got out and counted the heifers. They were so waspy that he couldn’t get a good count, and after the third or fourth try, he got sore and yelled, “Hold still, dang ya!” They didn’t.

  Well, Slim had left his window down so I bailed out, thought I might give him a hand. There was a mottle-faced heifer on the edge of the herd, kept running off and acting silly. I started stalking her, and the next time she left the herd, I went into action.

  “All right, you old sow,” I growled, “that’s about all of that stuff we’re gonna take from you! Now get yourself back in that herd and stay there!”

  By George, that got her attention. She stopped dead in her tracks, snorted, and started shaking her horns at me. A lot of dogs would have sold out right there and headed for the pickup. Me, I don’t scare so easy. Sure, she had enormous horns that tapered down to dagger points, but after you’ve worked cattle for a while, you get to where you can read their minds.

  Cattle are basically dumb, don’t you see, and heifers tend to be dumber than grown cows and maybe even dumber than steers—which is a little hard to believe since steers are incredibly stupid. You just wouldn’t believe some of the stunts they pull.

  Anyway, heifers are short a full load of brains by quite a bit and they’ll always try to run a bluff on you. They’ve got this little routine where they snort and shake their horns and beller, and some of them will even paw the ground. I’ve seen it a hundred times, maybe a thousand.

  It’s all bluff.

  Very seldom do you run into one that does what this one did. Dang her soul, she ran her bluff only she wasn’t bluffing. It’s hard to tell sometimes. She came a-hooking, and fellers, it was pretty plain on her face that she intended to put the britches on me.

  I held my ground until the last possible second—well, actually until she gathered me up on them horns and pitched me halfway across the pasture, kinda surprised me. When I hit the ground, there she was again, and you know what else? All her dumb friends came charging over to get in on the action. By George, I had forty-seven pregnant women with horns trying to take a razoo at me.

  I’ve said this before but it bears repeating. There’s a thin line between heroism and stupidity. Where your ordinary mutt might hold his ground and throw himself into senseless combat, your better grade of cowdogs will make a mature assessment of the situation, realize that nothing is gained from a childish outburst of temper, and then run like a son of a gun for the nearest cover.

  No ordinary dog could have reached such a mature decision so quickly or sprinted so fast to the pickup. As you might guess, I did, but it required poise in the face of danger, a great deal of experience, and superior intelligence—not to mention just plain old brute animal athletic ability.

  I took aim for the window, and as I leaped high in the air, I looked back at the old sookie and said, “Sister, after you’ve had that calf and lost about two hundred pounds, you might be able to stay up with me, but . . .”

  Looking back on the incident, I’m guessing that the wind must have turned the pickup completely around. There’s no other way of explaining why the window glass was rolled up. Through some freak of nature, possibly a giant whirlwind, the pickup had swapped sides and I dived into the window on the passenger side. Never saw anything like it.

  I smashed into the glass, just knocked a slat out of my nose, rattled my teeth, snapped my spine, and popped my neck, but the worst of it came when that old barrel-bellied sister got me on the ground.

  She wasn’t kidding. I mean, if I hadn’t crawled underneath the pickup, she would have built a mudhole right in the middle of my back!

  Life has many lessons to teach, and even I get sent to school every now and then. The lesson to be learned from heifers is that it doesn’t take any brains to be stupid, but just because they’re stupid doesn’t mean they can’t hurt you.

  Slim finally got ’em fed but he had trouble packing the bales around because he was laughing so hard, which I thought was just a little tacky. At last his skinny face appeared underneath the pickup and he said, “Come on, Fang, we got cattle to feed. Now don’t you hurt those heifers.”

  Little did he know what I could have done . . . oh well.

  We went on to the north pastures and fed other bunches of ungrateful morons. Slim insisted that I stay in the cab. I consented but only because I feared what I might do if given the opportunity. All the way home, I brooded over my nose, which appeared to be bent to the left.

  It was dusk by the time we made it back to headquarters. The snow had slacked off to a few small flakes, but the dull gray sky promised more. The wind died to a whisper and the cold winter night began to creep in.

  I went to the machine shed to check on Drover. I found him asleep on a pair of Loper’s coveralls (which, I might point out, Loper rarely wore because his cowboy vanity didn’t allow it).

  “Hey, wake up. We got work to do.”

  “Huh, what?” He sat up. One of his ears was perked higher than the other, a sign of mental confusion. “Oh, it’s you.”

  “That’s right. All goofing off and half-stepping stops as of now. Pay attention, I got two questions for you.”

  “Wait a minute.” He sat there until his ears evened up. “Okay, ask me anything, Hank.”

  “All right. Number One, did you serve your time in the corner?”

  “Corner . . . serve time . . .” He rolled his eyes around. “Oh yeah, gosh yes, Hank, and it was just awful! I didn’t think I could stand it.”

  “Uh-huh. Number Two, whose idea was it for you to serve your sentence in the machine shed, where it was warm and dry?”

  “It was your idea, Hank, don’t you remember? You studied on it for a long time and you decided there weren’t any corners outside and I couldn’t stand in the corner unless we found one.”

  “I said that?”

  “Sure did. You figgered there were four corners in the machine shed, and you were right.”

  “Hmm, I’ll be derned. Nevertheless, Drover, the sentence wasn’t nearly harsh enough and . . .”

  Just then we heard Slim down at the house. “Here Drover, come on, boy!”

  Drover sprang to his feet. “Uh oh that’s me gotta go bye.” And in a flash, the runt was gone.

  I stepped outside just in time to see Slim and Drover go into a nice warm house for the night.

  Chapter Five: The Cold Weather Cowdog Blues

  Don’t get me wrong. Sleeping outside in the dead of winter was no big shucks to me. I mean, my attitude is that if you go into security work, you take the bad with the awful. You take the worst they can throw at you, chew it up, spit it out, and go back for more.

  I’d slept in cold, snow, rain, blizzard, sleet, ice, you name it. In my years
of security work, I’d slept in everything but comfort, and that was okay because I’d never wanted to be anything but tough.

  And as for having someone to talk to at night, I never needed that either. Most of my heavy and dangerous work comes in the night and I never found much time or need for talking on the job.

  On the other hand, I’m only flesh and blood. It’s hard to remember that, but it’s true. Inside every cowdog there’s a heart and a liver and a gizzard—well, I’m not sure about the gizzard, but we definitely have hearts and livers. And where you find a heart and a liver, you’ll find the same basic emotions that exist in ordinary dogs.

  I mean, we cowdogs have tremendous pride and we have to struggle every day with our emotional side. When you make your living doing battle against evil and darkness, you find it hard to admit that you have feelings. I don’t remember who said it, but “Steel crieth not.”

  Maybe I said it. Even so, it’s true.

  Steel crieth not.

  I’m trying to prepare you for a shocking revelation. On that particular evening, December 22 I believe it was, when I saw Slim and Drover go into the house, when I saw the warm yellow light coming from the kitchen window, when I looked up at the smoky dark sky, when I felt the chill rising from the snow, when I heard the whisper of the wind, when I went down to my cold gunnysack bed—fellers, I didn’t feel very much like steel anymore.

  I hate to admit it, but I was lonesome and blue. I wanted to be in a warm house. I wanted to see light and hear laughter. I wanted to curl up in front of that big Jotul stove and watch the logs burn down to red embers. I wanted to hear the rocking chair squeak on the old pine floor. I wanted somebody to reach down and scratch me behind the ears.

  I tried to shake it off. I went on patrol and made my evening rounds, down to the cake house, over to the feed barn, the calf shed, the saddle house, the sick pen, up to the chicken house, and then to the machine shed.

  Everything was quiet and there I was again, looking down at the light in the window.

  I didn’t figger there was much chance of me talking my way into the house. I mean, Sally May had been pretty clear that she didn’t want “Hank McNasty” in her house, and I think she meant ME when she said that. On the other hand, Sally May wasn’t around, and as the saying goes, “When the cat’s away the dogs try to get in by the fire.”

  It was worth a try.

  I loped down the hill, hopped over the fence, and took up a position right under the kitchen window. I could see Slim plain as could be. It appeared that he was standing over the sink, peeling potatoes. I tuned up and sang him a mournful song.

  Well my bed is cold and I’m feelin’ kind of old,

  I got the cold weather cowdog blues.

  My bones are achin’ and my whole body’s shakin’,

  I got them cold weather cowdog blues.

  Don’t tell me that I’m a guard dog.

  Don’t tell me I’m sposed to be tough.

  ’Cause I’m lonesome and I’m blue and I’m cold as a frog

  And I just can’t handle that stuff

  Tonight.

  It would sure be nice just to thaw my ice,

  And curl up by the wood burning stove.

  I got the sleepin’ outside, layin’ in the snow,

  I got the cold weather cowdog,

  The lonesome as a hound dog,

  The cold weather cowdog blues.

  Real bad.

  Well, I performed the song (my own composition, by the way) in the snow under the kitchen window, and naturally I throwed in some whining and heavy begs at the end.

  Slim was listening. I could see him through the window, even though the screen was rusted and had some green paint spots on it (typical cowboy paint job). Then he left the window and I heard his boots on the floor. He was coming to the back door.

  By George, it had worked!

  He opened the door and stepped outside.

  “What’s wrong, Hankie? You hear some coyotes out there?”

  No.

  “You miss old Drover?”

  No. Well, maybe a little.

  “Say, it’s cold as a witch’s refrigerator out here! I don’t know how you can stand this cold.”

  Right.

  “Well, old pup, I’ve got the solution to that problem.”

  It takes time but they’ll come around.

  “Here, try this.” It was then that I noticed the smoking frying pan. He scraped the contents into the snow. “I got to fooling around and kind of scorched my taters. That’ll warm you up. Night night.” He went back inside.

  I sniffed his taters, which were sending up gray smoke. Did he say “kind of scorched”? He kind of burned them to a cinder, is what he kind of did, and I’d never met a dog that would eat such garbage. I mean, if he couldn’t cook any better than that, he sure didn’t need to worry about me begging at his table.

  Well, I had no choice but to increase the volume and intensity of my, uh, presentation, so to speak. I howled. I moaned. I cried. I gave him the full load. This went on for fifteen or twenty minutes, until at last he came back outside.

  He leaned against the door jamb and crossed his arms. “Hank, you’re making an awful lot of noise.”

  Yep.

  “Is this gonna go on all night long?”

  Yep.

  “It’s pretty cold, ain’t it?”

  Yep.

  “Would it help if I let you come inside?”

  Yep.

  “Will you dogs stay in the utility room?”

  Yep. Cross my heart and hope to die.

  “I mean, you ain’t one of Sally May’s favorite pets.”

  Nope.

  “And she’d skin me alive . . . oh what the heck, come on in.”

  I shot the gap between his legs and by the time he had the door shut, I was curled up on the rug beside Drover. Drover raised his head and stared at me.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  “What’s it to you? I got my rights. You’re not the only privileged character on this ranch. Just go on about your business and don’t try to take more than half this rug.”

  “Oh. Okay.” He went back to sleep. I’m sure he needed it since he’d only logged about fifteen hours of rack time out of the last twenty-four.

  Myself, I wasn’t sleepy. For a long time I watched Slim working in the kitchen. I could barely see him through the smoke. Judging by the smell, I calculated that he was burning newspaper and cardboard boxes, though I found out later that he was actually cooking another batch of potatoes and a hamburger steak.

  He scraped the “food” into a plate and walked into the living room to eat. Well, it got kind of quiet and boring in the utility room. Drover twitched and wheezed in his sleep. I got tired of it and decided to move around a little bit.

  I tiptoed into the kitchen and peeked around the corner. There was Slim, sitting in the big wooden rocker in front of the wood stove, eating his supper. I dropped down on my belly and start­ed inching my way toward the living room.

  I did this very carefully and Slim didn’t notice me until I was at his feet in front of that nice warm stove. He was eating with his fingers and he looked down at me.

  “Where do you think you’re going, pup? That old stove feels pretty good tonight, don’t it?” I whapped my tail on the floor. He tore off a piece of cinderized hamburger and handed it to me. “Here, sink your teeth into this.”

  I tongued it, gummed it, rolled it around in my mouth, and then, well, spit it out on the floor, you might say.

  He scowled. “Why you hammerheaded dog, what’s wrong with you?”

  What’s wrong with me is what’s kept me alive all these years: I never eat poison.

  “You got no taste.” He picked the meat off the floor, wiped it on his jeans, and ate it. Then he wiped his ha
nds on his jeans, pushed himself out of the chair, went into the kitchen, and put his plate and two frying pans into the refrigerator.

  He must have noticed that I was watching him. “It’s an old cowboy trick, Hank. If you put your dirty dishes in the ice box, they won’t get moldy in the sink.”

  I thought that was pretty sharp. Maybe old Slim couldn’t cook, but at least he was clean.

  He came back into the living room with two glasses. One had soda pop in it and the other was empty. He threw a couple of hackberry logs into the stove and sat down in his chair again. He took a bite off his plug of tobacco and sat there, one leg throwed over the other, looking at the fire.

  He had his soda pop glass in one hand and the empty glass in the other. He drank out of one and spit into the other. I watched him for a long time, wondering if he would get them mixed up. He didn’t, and I finally fell asleep.

  Then I heard his boots hit the floor. He flew out of the chair and ran into the kitchen and held his mouth under the water faucet.

  “Well, I think I’ll leave it with you, Hank.” He pointed a finger at me. “Now look, dog, I’ll let you stay by the fire but if I hear you roaming around and acting silly, I’ll throw your tail back out into the snow. You got that?”

  Yes sir. I whapped my tail extra hard on the floor.

  “Sweet dreams.” He went into the bedroom, shucked off his clothes down to his red long johns, turned off the light, and went to bed.

  Hey, it was great sleeping there by the warm fire. That was as close to heaven as I’d been in a long time, except that wood floor got awful hard along about midnight. I scratched around and changed positions but I just couldn’t get comfortable.

  I sat up, yawned, scratched a couple of fleas, and wondered what I ought to do. Should I go out to the utility room and sleep on the rug—and put up with Drover’s wheezing and twitching? Should I roam around the house? Should I hop up on Sally May’s sofa and run the risk of getting my throat cut?

  No. But there was one last alternative. As quiet as a panther, I slipped into the bedroom, one step at a time. At the foot of the bed, I stopped and listened. Nothing but Slim’s heavy breathing—snoring, actually.