Murder in the Middle Pasture

by John R. Erickson

  “What, Hank?”

  “When the wildflowers come in the spring, I’d like for you to pick an Indian paintbrush and lay it on my gunnysack. Nothing big, just one flower.”

  “Oh Hank, don’t say that!”

  “It could happen. We must prepare ourselves.”

  “But I’m allergic to Indian paintbrush.”

  “All right. A winecup will be fine.”

  “They make me sneeze too.”

  “Sunflower.”

  “They’re worse yet.”

  “The flower of your choice, Drover.”

  “They all tear me up. What about a toadstool?”

  “If a toadstool is the best you can do for a fallen comrade, then so be it. I only hope you can live with your conscience.”

  “Conscience doesn’t make pollen.”

  “‘Conscience doesn’t make pollen.’ Did you make that up yourself or borrow it from someone else?”

  “It’s all mine, Hank. You like it?”

  “It sounds a little deep for you, Drover. That worries me.”

  He shrugged and grinned. “I guess I just got lucky.”

  “I guess you did. Well, I’m off to the canyons. Good luck and be brave.”

  And with that, I headed off to a new adventure—and possibly to a violent end.

  Chapter Eight: Amongst the Buzzards Again

  I lit out from headquarters and made my way through the ice and snow, taking aim for the big canyon country north of headquarters.

  My plan, as you might have guessed, was to locate the coyote village and establish an observation post in some rocks or brush nearby. I figgered that with my keen ears and uncanny vision, I could wait and watch and listen until I had assembled enough evidence to locate the murderer.

  And then I would face a small problem. Once the murderer had come forward and bragged himself into incriminalization . . . incrimination what­ever the word is, I would face the question of what to do about it. I mean, you don’t just waltz into the middle of a bunch of wild coyotes and make an arrest.

  Coyotes aren’t real bright but they can count past one. In other words, they’ve got enough knowledge of mathematics to calculate the odds in a tussle between one dog and a whole coyote village.

  What’s more important, I could calculate the odds and it wasn’t likely that I would try to make such a foolish move.

  That left a certain void in my strategy, don’t you see, but in the security business you can only take strategy so far, and then you have to “root hog or cut bait,” as they say.

  Once I passed beyond strategy, I would have to depend on my keen instincts which had been built up over many years of dealing with riff-raff, criminals, and dangerous characters.

  Anyway, with these heavy thoughts weighing heavily on my mind, I headed north into the canyon country.

  No ordinary dog would have taken on such a mission. No ordinary dog would have left a warm house and a warm fire and gone out into the snow. No ordinary dog would have ventured into enemy territory with night approaching. But as you might have guessed, Hank the Cowdog has never aspired to ordinarity.

  By the time I reached that first deep canyon in the west pasture, the gloom of night had begun to settle across the barren, snow-covered land, and the heavy gray sky was spitting down a few flakes of snow.

  It was a night not fit for man nor beets, but onward, ever onward I pushed, deeper, ever deeper into the silent mysteriosity of the canyon.

  I was padding through the snow, looking up at the canyon walls, when suddenly my ears flew up. I stopped in my tracks and listened. There it was again! The haunting sound of a coyote singing his evening dirge.

  My heart began to pound. The hair stood up on my back. My stomach growled because, well, I hadn’t eaten in a while. My ears stiffened to their full alert position. My eyes searched the canyon rim.

  Slowly but inexorably, my sensory equipment focused on one spot: a cave in the canyon wall.

  I crept toward it, taking full advantage of what little natural cover I could find. The snow crunched beneath my paws. I could hear the singer’s voice very well now, your typical coyote singing the day to sleep.

  Whether he was alone or part of a large war party, I couldn’t determine. At the moment, I could only hear the single voice.

  I slipped from rock to rock and bush to bush and made my way up the canyon wall. As I neared the mouth of the cave, I was struck by an odd sensation—the feeling that I had visited this place before in a dream.

  This phenomenon, known as Pre-Visitation Dreameration, is fairly common among the higher echelon of cowdogs. Stripped of the complex scientific language, it simply means that some dogs actually have the ability to visit the future in their dreams—hence my feeling that I had been to this cave before.

  The best scientific minds in the world have grappled with this mystery but have failed to explain it. Even I can’t explain it. All I can say is that it happens.

  I hunkered down among the rocks and listened. Imagine my surprise when I heard a banjo playing! Yes, I had dreamed this scene before, I knew I had. The banjo was poorly tuned, just as in my dream, and the voice . . .

  I’m g-g-going to l-leave old T-T-Texas n-now.

  I’ve g-g-got no u-u-use for the L-L-Longhorn c-c-c . . . steer.

  I peered over the ledge and saw—not a coyote, as you might have suspected, but a crook-necked, pot-bellied, banjo-picking, stammering, stuttering buzzard named Junior.

  Through some small navigational error, I had ended up at the cave of Wallace and Junior, and if the surroundings had struck me as vaguely familiar, they should have.

  I hadn’t dreamed about the dadgum cave, I had been there, which confirmed my original suspicions regarding . . . never mind.

  Anyone can get lost in that big canyon. It’s no disgrace.

  I pulled myself over the ledge. I looked at the buzzard and he looked at me. He craned his neck and squinted his eyes, then a smile spread across his beak.

  “Oh b-b-boy, it’s my d-d-doggie f-friend!”

  “So it seems, Junior, so it seems. I see you’re still studying music in your spare time.”

  “Oh g-g-gosh y-yes, I l-like mu-mu-mu-mu-mu-music, and I w-want to b-b-be a su-su-singer when I g-g-grow up. What are y-y-you d-doing h-h-h-here, D-D-Doggie?”

  I studied the claws on my right paw for a moment. “To tell you the truth, Junior, I’ve had this cave under surveillance.”

  “You h-have?”

  “Yes. I’m investigating a murder and you’ll need to answer a few questions. Where were you this morning at daylight?”

  “D-d-daylight, let’s uh s-s-see.” He rolled his eyes and pulled on the end of his beak. “M-m-me and P-P-Pa were f-f-flying around, l-l-looking for b-b-b-b-breakfast.”

  “Ah ha, breakfast! Now we’re getting somewhere.” I moved closer and began pacing. “Tell me, Junior, on the morning of . . . this morning, did you and your father find any of this alleged breakfast?” He nodded. “Just as I suspected! All right, this next question could be extremely important. Answer it very carefully. What exactly did you and your father eat for breakfast? I want a full description, details, facts.”

  “Oh g-g-gosh, l-let’s s-s-see. W-w-we f-found a p-piece of r-r-rabbit and th-then we f-f-found a d-d-d-dead sk-skunk on the r-r-r-road, and then w-w-we . . .”

  Suddenly, I whirled and faced him. “Some dogs might believe that story, Junior, but it won’t work on me. I know you know something you’re not telling, and you know I know you know it, so let’s quit playing games.”

  I could see that this slashing approach had worked. He hung his head and shuffled his feet. He was ready to confess.

  “W-w-well okay, if you r-r-really have to know.”

  “I really have to know, Junior. There’s nothing personal in this. It’s just part of my job. Let�
��s take it from the beginning. You were flying over the middle pasture.” He nodded. “You saw something down below.” He nodded. “You went into a dive and swooped down on it.” He nodded. “All right, you take it from there.”

  “It was b-b-brown, and w-w-we swooped d-d-d-down on it and w-w-we were so h-h-hungry . . .”

  “Yes, yes? Brown, swooped, hungry. It’s all fitting into place. Go on.”

  “And P-P-Pa g-got m-m-mad ’cause it was only a s-s-s-sack of gu-gu-gu-garbage, garbage.”

  “Huh? A sack of garbage? That’s impossible.”

  “And it was f-f-full of p-p-paper and a ba-ba-banana p-peel and all we g-g-got to uh uh eat was a p-p-piece of a ba-ba-ba-ba-balony sandwich.”

  “I see.” I started pacing again. My mind seems to work faster when I pace. Had I been outsmarted by this buzzard or was he telling the truth? The pieces of the puzzle just didn’t seem to fit. I had a piece of rabbit, a dead skunk, a sack of garbage, a banana peel, and part of a baloney sandwich.

  They just didn’t fit.

  I decided to try a different tack. “All right, Junior, for the sake of convenience, we’ll assume your story checks out. Maybe you and your old man were clean on this one, but what about other suspicious characters? Did you see anyone else in the middle pasture?”

  He nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  I stopped pacing and whirled on him again. “Just as I suspected! You saw the murderers in the middle pasture but you weren’t going to tell me, were you? You were going to hide that crucial piece of evidence, but let me remind you, Junior, that concealing evidence makes you an egg-scissory to the crime.”

  “Oh g-g-gosh!”

  “Yes indeed, which means that you could find yourself in very serious trouble. So,” I faced him with a cold sneer, “it’s confession time. Allow me to reconstruct the scene. You and Wallace were fighting over the baloney sandwich.” Junior nodded. “Off in the distance, you saw two, possibly three figures highlighted against the snow.” He nodded. “Perhaps they came toward you.” He nodded. “And as they drew closer, you saw . . .” I paused here for dramatic effect. “You saw that they were COYOTES!” He nodded.

  But then he shook his head. “N-no, they were d-d-doggies.”

  “No they weren’t, they were coyotes.”

  “D-d-d-doggies.”

  “Coyotes!”

  “D-doggies.”

  “Doggies!”

  “C-c-coyotes.”

  I had trapped him, using an old trick of interrogation I had picked up many years ago. The technical name for it is Reversible Argu­men­terro­gation, but there’s no reason why anyone outside of security work would need to remember that.

  The important thing is that you can use it to trip up a difficult witness, get him going in a straight line, see, and then throw in a different word to confuse him. In that moment of confusion, the truth will just by George pop out. I’ve seen it work time and time again.

  “No further questions,” I said. “The prosecution rests its case.”

  “Uh b-but they were uh d-d-d-doggies.”

  “Perhaps you thought they were dogs at the time, but subconsciously you knew they were coyotes. My clever line of questioning was aimed at drawing the truth out of your subconscious mind. It did. We’re finished—except for one last question.”

  “Uh-uh okay.”

  “If you’re going to sing and play the banjo, why don’t you learn to tune it? I mean, I tuned it the last time I was here and now it sounds just as bad as it did before.”

  He shrugged. “It s-s-sounded p-pretty g-g-good to m-me.”

  “Yeah, well there’s things about music that buzzards may not understand. Let me see that thing.” I picked it up and strummed a G chord. It sounded awful! I twisted the pegs and got ’er tuned up. “How about ‘Good Night, Irene’? You know that one?”

  “Uh w-w-well, a little b-b-bit.”

  “I’ll do the verse and you come in on the chorus. We’ll sing the world to sleep, Junior, just me and you, and then I have to be off on a dangerous mission.”

  Sometimes I sleep in the cake house,

  Sometimes I sleep on the ground.

  Sometimes I take a great notion

  To jump into the sewer and drown.

  Oh Beulah, good night, good . . .

  Junior was shaking his head. “Uh w-wait a m-minute, D-D-Doggie, y-you uh g-g-got the wrong w-w-w-w-w-w . . . girl. It’s uh su-su-supposed to b-be I-I-Irene, n-not B-Beulah.”

  “We changed the words.”

  “Uh okay.”

  “Start the chorus again, two three, . . .”

  Oh Beulah good night, good night.

  Beulah good night. Good night Beulah,

  Good night Beulah,

  I’ll see you in my dreams.

  I love that girl, God knows I do,

  I’ll love her till the creek runs dry.

  And if that girl turns her back on me

  You can kiss that bird dog good-bye.

  Oh Beulah good night, good night.

  Beulah good night.

  Good night Beulah, good night Beulah

  There’ll be a terrible fight.

  Stop your ramblin’, stop your gamblin’,

  Stop makin’ patrols at night.

  Go home to that gal with the fine sharp nose

  And everything will come out all right.

  Oh Beulah good night, good night.

  Beulah good night.

  Good night Beulah, good night Beulah,

  I’ll see you in my dreams.

  On the chorus, old Junior came in and croaked a little harmony part. Wasn’t too bad. When we were finished, he said, “Who’s uh B-B-Beulah?”

  I laid the banjo down and sighed. “Well, that’s a long story, Junior. Let’s just say that at this time of the day, when the quiet creeps in and the shadows grow long, I find myself thinking about her. If things had worked out different, I might be a married man today, with a home and kids and a beautiful collie bride to fluff up my gunnysack.”

  “Oh g-g-gosh! Is sh-sh-sh-she your g-g-girlfriend?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes, but I share her heart with a certain featherbrained bird dog named Plato. Sometimes I wish . . . ah well, there’s no use second-guessing fate.”

  “I n-n-never had a g-g-girlfriend,” said Junior with a shy grin.

  I looked at him for a moment. “Yes, I can understand that. I reckon life can get pretty discouraging for a buzzard.”

  “Y-y-yeah.”

  “But maybe one of these days . . .”

  All at once I heard footsteps behind me. I leaped to my feet, whirled, and stood face to face with a creature wearing a long black robe with a hood on it.

  Unless I missed my guess, the Grim Reaper had just walked out of the cave.

  Chapter Nine: My Dangerous Mission

  Grim Reapers don’t often catch me so relaxed and unprepared, but when they do I try to make up for it with an especially ferocious barrage of barking.

  And that’s exactly what I did to this one. I stood my ground, leaned into my task, and by George barked him up one side and down the other, left him with the understanding that you don’t sneak up on Hank’s blind side and get off for free.

  Over the barking, I heard a voice: “Junior, what is all this dad-danged racket out here! Now you tell that dog to shut up or I’m gonna, how can a body sleep around here with, you tell that, shut up that barking, you silly dog!”

  “Oh, h-h-hi P-Pa.”

  Huh? I shut down my barking to a dull roar and studied the figure in the black cloak. Junior was right. It was Wallace, his old man, but I’d like to emphasize that he looked very much like the Grim Reaper, and I mean VERY MUCH, and anyone who saw that black feathered THING sneaking out of a dark cave . . . it was the kind of mistake in ident
ity that any dog would have made under the same . . .

  “Say, I’d better warn you about sneaking up on guard dogs like that. A guy could . . .”

  He stuck his beak in my face. “You hush!”

  “Okay, but let me repeat . . .”

  “You just keep talking, pup, and I’ll repeat on you and send you home smellin’ like fifteen dead skunks!”

  “Yes sir.”

  There’s a time for a dog to stand up and be counted, and there’s a time for a dog to sit down and shut up. We already know what buzzards do when they get mad. They throw up. They’ve got a good aim, and what the old man said about fifteen dead skunks was no idle boast. That was probably his menu for the last three days.

  After he’d backed me down, he stalked over to Junior. “I’ve told you once, I’ve told you twice, I’ve told you a thousand times, son, your daddy needs his sleep and I can’t sleep with all this dad-drat noise!”

  “B-b-but P-Pa, we was only s-s-s-singing.”

  “You can call it whatever you want, son, but it’s noise to me and it’s past your bedtime and I’m too tired to fool around and you tell that dog to go on home and get out of here.” He turned to me. “Don’t you have a place to go at night, every time I turn around you’re out here keepin’ my boy up and raisin’ cane in the middle of the dad-danged night,” back to Junior, “and you know I need my sleep because I’m having to feed two mouths instead of one, you won’t get out into the world and hustle for grub, and this foolishness is fixin’ to come to a screechin’ halt!” He glared at me. “Right now.”

  “B-b-b-but P-Pa . . .”

  I started backing toward the ledge. “That’s all right, Junior, let’s don’t say anything we’ll regret. I got some serious business to take care of anyway, so I’ll just ooze out of here and leave you boys to your own devices.”

  “Real good idea,” said the old man, “and the next time you feel a song in your heart, go somewhere else to sing it, hear?”

  “I’ll sure do that.”

  As I slipped over the ledge, Junior gave me a sad smile and waved his wing. “B-b-bye, D-D-Doggie. C-c-c-come b-back sometime.”