We went streaking all the way up the hill and didn’t slow down until we saw the machine shed up ahead. There, we went to Full Air Brakes, slid right up to the big double doors, and dived inside.
Lucky for us, Slim and Loper were there, doing some shop work—clanging, banging, welding, yelling, grinding—doing all the things they have to do to keep the machinery running. Slim was under the welding hood, kneeling on the floor and welding on a piece of metal. Maybe I should have barked a warning, but there wasn’t time, and besides I was out of breath, so I had no choice but to . . .
The back of his shirt had come untucked, don’t you see, and all at once it occurred to me that . . . well, it resembled a tent, a nice cozy tent. Maybe there’d be room inside his tent for . . . ME, you might say. Why not? We’d been pals for many years. We’d slept in the same bed, eaten off the same plate, ridden in the same pickup, shared many adventures together, so it seemed perfectly natural, perfectly reasonable that . . .
I mean, if Slim had known that I was being chased by a wild, screeching, dog-eating pirate, I’m almost sure that he would have wanted me to jump inside his shirt. In fact, he would have demanded it.
That’s the kind of friendship we had—tested by fire and time, true to the bone.
I knew it would be a tight squeeze, but I had a feeling that I could do it. I dashed up behind him and in a flash . . .
It was lousy luck that I’d forgotten about my nose. A dog’s nose, by its very nature, is wet and cold, right? And, okay, Slim was under the welding hood and didn’t even know I was around, so . . . uh . . . when my cold nose came into contact with his bare skin . . .
“YEEEE-OW!”
Gee whiz, I’d never suspected that Slim could move so fast or jump so high. I mean, welding rods and cords and slag hammers went flying in all directions, and so did the welding hood. When his feet came back to Mother Earth, he whirled around and—gosh, his eyes were flaming.
I knew at once that this incident was going to . . . uh . . . put a strain on our friendship, so right away I switched over to Looks of Remorse and Tragic Wags in the tail section. A lot of times that’ll turn a bad situation around, don’t you know, especially if we put our hearts and souls into the presentation.
That’s what I did, and also squeezed up a little smile that said, “Oh. Slim. Were you inside that shirt? I . . . uh . . . had no idea . . . look, I can explain everything. A pirate was trying to eat me.”
He leveled a finger at me and said, “Hank, if you ever cold-nose me again . . .”
He wasn’t able to finish his threat, because at that very moment, the dreaded pirate appeared at the door of the shed.
His one horrible, bloodshot eye looked straight at me. My gaze was locked on him. He uttered a chilling laugh, and I tried to growl back but . . . well, it came out sounding like something else. A gurgle or a yodel. It wasn’t my usual manly growl, but what’s a guy to do?
I kept waiting for Slim and Loper to respond to this emergency. I mean, here was a notorious pirate, walking right into our machine shed, and Slim and Loper were just . . . you know what they did? They were watching the whole thing and grinning!
Hey, what about fighting him off with hammers and clubs? What about rushing to the aid of the Head of Ranch Security? What about lending a hand to defend the ranch against—
He lurched another step in my direction, the pirate did, and his sword ripped through the air. Okay, that did it. It was clear by then that I would get no help from my so-called cowboy friends, so I was forced to go to Drastic Measures.
I did what any normal red-blooded American dog would have done. I turned toward the north wall of the shed and prepared to blow a hole right through the middle of it! Yes sir, if nobody was going to help me, I would have to help myself.
The trick to knocking down walls and blowing holes in the sides of barns is acceleration. If a dog can go from a standing start to the speed of light in just a matter of seconds, he can . . . BONK! . . . ruin his nose and knock himself silly, without making the slightest impression on the stupid wall.
As I lay there, flat on my back, staring up at the mud dauber nests on the ceiling joists, I heard . . . laughter. The laughter of two overgrown children who pretended to be cowboys, and who were always quick to laugh at the misfortunes of others.
Slim and Loper.
One of them said, “Alfred, you scared that poor dog half to death. Where’d you get the pirate suit?”
HUH?
Alfred? Pirate suit?
I staggered to my feet, just in time to see—you won’t believe this.
Okay, we can call off the Code Three. You thought we’d been attacked by a notorious pirate? Ha ha. Not at all, and I’d never been totally . . . this will come as a huge shock, but I can now reveal that the pirate was actually . . . Little Alfred.
Ha ha. No problem, no big deal.
See, the boy and his dad had been staying up late at night, reading Treasure Island, a book about . . . well, pirates and stuff. And Sally May had ordered Alfred a pirate costume out of a catalog, so that he could play . . . what was the name of the guy?
High Ho Silver?
Gung Ho Silver?
Some guy named Silver, a pirate with a wooden leg and . . . Hong Kong Silver? . . . and a patch over his eye, and I guess he went around waving his sword all the time . . . King Kong Silver? . . . and scaring people and dogs. Anyway, you get the picture. Alfred had put on his costume and had come out on the porch to see if he could . . . well, terrify his doggies, I suppose, but he hadn’t fooled me, not even for a . . .
Okay, he’d fooled me for just a little while, but as far as me believing that we actually had a real live pirate on the ranch . . . ha ha . . .
Long John Silver. There we go.
So what we had here was just a simple case of mistaken . . . although I must admit that my feelings were pretty badly damaged over the deal. I’d always known that Slim and Loper were shameless jokers, but what really broke my heart about this deal was that their childish ways had rubbed off on Little Alfred.
And now that the scary part was over, I realized that Alfred needed to be shunned.
With my nose throbbing and my eyes still watering from the wall experience, I held my head at a proud angle and marched out of the shed, past the jeering masses and the tiny minds who had nothing better to do than to goof off and make jokes.
As I passed Alfred, I beamed him a sad look that said, “Well, this is the end of a long friendship and a glorious career. You leave me with no choice, Alfred. I’m resigning my position with the Security Division and quitting in disgrace. When the sun goes down tonight, I’ll be gone. Good-bye.”
It was a tragic moment, one of the darkest moments of my entire career. Not only had I lost my home and ranch, but they had lost . . . ME.
Chapter Seven: The Bubble-Gum Adventure
Outside the shed, it was my misfortune to encounter Drover. Where had he been through my terrible ordeal, and how had he gotten outside? I had no idea. Furthermore, I didn’t care.
“Hank, did you hear that loud crash?”
“Not only did I hear that loud crash, I was that loud crash. Good-bye, Drover.”
“I’ll be derned. Hey, wait a minute.”
I stopped and looked down at the mutt. “Yes? Be brief. I’ve been shamed and disgraced, and I’ll be leaving soon.”
“Yeah, but . . . we didn’t solve the case of Murphy the Spy. That pirate was Little Alfred.”
“So it seems, Drover. I was wrong and I made a fool of myself. Well, they got their laughs out of me, and now I’m leaving.”
His eyes grew wide. “Leaving! You mean—”
“Yes, Drover. I’m quitting, resigning my position. I no longer care about the Murphy Case or the Pirate Invasion. Let some other dog have all the worry and responsibility.”
“Yeah, but . . .�
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Just then, Little Alfred came out of the shed. He was smiling. “Hankie, did I scare you wiff my costume?”
I turned my eyes away.
“Well, don’t be mad. I was just having some fun.”
Don’t be mad? Ha!
He put his arm around me and patted me on the ribs. “We can still be fwiends, can’t we? Maybe we can pway Tweasure Island.”
Play? Ha! No, my feelings had been shattered beyond all repair, and so had our friendship.
“I might give you a tweat.”
A treat? No thanks, pal. Things had gone too far, and I couldn’t be bribed.
The boy looked up at the sky. “What if I gave you . . . my bubble gum?”
Nope, wouldn’t work. The damage was just too great, and—well, I’d never tried bubble gum and probably wouldn’t like it. No.
He reached into his mouth and brought out a gooey wad of something pink. “It’s pwetty good.”
It probably was “pwetty good,” but dogs didn’t chew . . .
He held it under my . . . sniff, sniff . . . nose, and you know what? It did smell pretty good, I mean, real good, but as far as me being bribed by a piece of . . .
I don’t know how this happened, but suddenly my tongue . . . well, somehow it shot out of my mouth and made contact, shall we say, with the . . .
My eyes brightened. My ears shot up. That was bubble gum?
He grinned. “What do you think?”
I thought . . . you know, time heals all wounds, even the terrible wounds of the spirit, and quite a bit of time had passed . . . and I was feeling a whole lot better about my . . . uh . . . okay, what the heck. I would accept his offer, and yes, I might even consider sticking around and playing pirates with him.
I took his peace offering into my mouth and began chewing it up. Hey, this stuff was great!
Alfred beamed a smile. “And now we’re fwiends again, aren’t we?”
Oh yes! The best of friends, no question about it.
“Okay, Hankie. We’re gonna make us a ship in a twee. Come on.” Alfred started walking off to the south.
Right, you bet, no problem. What a fine lad! Yes, maybe he had fallen under the corrupting influence of the local cowboys, but I wasn’t the kind of dog who held a grudge. I mean, true friends forgive and . . .
I shewed and shewed on that bubblygum. It was ’licious, great shuff, but I couldn’t get it shewed op.
But back to the bishnesh of friendship . . . I’ve always shed that any friendship worth having ish worth . . .
Gorp, gop, slurp.
You know, the wonger I shewed that schtuff, the bigger it got, and it wuss schtarting to gummup my cheeth . . .
Suddenly I realized that Drover was staring at me. “Boy, I sure wish I had some bubble gum. Is it pretty good? I ate some one time, and the longer I chewed, the bigger it got. It sure did gum up my teeth.”
I gave him a withering glare and said, “Glop glork glum slum slop.”
Hey, this was getting serious! I couldn’t chew it up, I couldn’t swallow it, I couldn’t spit it out. I tried everything. I moved my jaws, I moved my tongue, I pawed at my mouth, I ran in circles . . . yipes, that stuff had gotten hold of me and I couldn’t . . .
Just then, when I was nearing the point of desperation, Slim stepped outside and saw that I was in an emergency situation. Shaking his head, he came over to me.
“Hank, what’s got hold of you?” He pried open my jaws and pulled out the stringy gob of gooey yucko gum. “Oh, I see. Birdbrain. There. Now, next time you get a chance to . . .”
He held the gum between his right thumb and forefinger, then tried to remove it with his left thumb and forefinger. He merely pulled it into two pieces, with a long thread of gum hanging between them. He gave both hands a shake, but the stuff didn’t come off. He tried to rub it off on the ground, but that didn’t work either. The gum was now clinging to both hands, and he had pink threads of it on his boots, shirt, and glasses. There was dirt stuck all over it.
He looked at me and sighed. “Well, I guess it serves me right for laughing at you, huh pooch?”
That was exactly right, which just goes to prove that Justice has a way of chasing us down, no matter how hard we laugh or try to escape it.
I gave Slim one last smirk and marched away, leaving him with the problem of how to get out of my Bubble-Gum Trap.
See, I’d planned it this way all along. No kidding. After he had made such a joke out of my misfortune, I had plotted a way of getting my revenge, and he had walked right into my clever trap. No kidding. And it served him right.
Anyway, Alfred and Drover had walked down the hill, and I joined them. Alfred had plopped down on the ground and was in the process of removing his—oh, so that was it! You remember that business of the wooden leg? It wasn’t real, just a thing made out of plastic. He had doubled up his left leg, see, and tied the thing on with leather straps.
I had, uh, noticed that right away, the very minute he’d walked out on the porch. Honest.
“It’s too much twouble,” he explained. “And besides, you can’t cwimb a twee wiff a wooden weg.”
Well, yes, that made sense. But why did he need to climb a tree? I mean, why would a pirate . . .
I soon found out, and it turned out to be a pretty good idea. See, he borrowed an old sheet from his momma, climbed up into a tree, and tied the sheet to a couple of tree limbs, making a sail. Up in a fork of the tree, Alfred’s dad had nailed some one-by-six-foot boards to the limbs, giving us a “deck.” And suddenly we had ourselves a real, genuine sailing ship! Pretty slick, huh?
That done, he turned a stern gaze on me and Drover. “Okay, doggies, we’re fixing to sail our ship, and we’re gonna find some buried tweasure!”
Buried treasure, huh? Hey, this was sounding better and better.
“Hank, you can be Jim Hawkins.” I saluted the captain and thumped my tail on the ground. “And Dwover, you can be . . . Billy Bones.”
Drover fluttered his stub tail and said, “Oh good, ’cause I sure like bones.”
“And now,” said Captain Long John Alfred, “our ship’s weady to sail. But how can we get y’all dogs into the ship?”
Hmmm. That was a problem, all right, because . . . well, dogs don’t climb trees. Or ships. We’re not climbers, don’t you see.
The captain thought about it for a long minute, and then he came up with an idea. He told Dwover and me to wait right there—Drover and me, that is—whilst he went to gather up some equipment. He returned ten minutes later with . . . my goodness, a length of rope and a five gallon bucket. He tied one end of the wope . . . uh, rope . . . to the handle of the bucket and . . .
Wait a minute, hold everything. He thought I was going to climb into the bucket so that he could haul me—ha ha. No thanks, pal. There are many things a loyal dog will do for his friends, but as far as me . . .
Sniff, sniff. My goodness, something inside the bucket smelled . . . sniff, sniff . . . pretty good. I, uh, felt it was my duty to stick my head into the bucket to check this out . . .
“No, no, Hankie. My mom made some sandwiches and that’s our food for the twip. We can’t eat ’til we get on the ship and set sail. I’ll take the food up first, then pull you up.”
Oh, so that was it. Okay, sure, fine. Food for the trip. Great idea, and he sure didn’t need to worry about me . . . sniff, sniff. Unless I was badly mistaken, there were two fat tuna fish sandwiches in there!
Have we discussed tuna fish sandwiches? Maybe not, so here’s my Position on Tuna Fish. Slim eats tuna fish right out of the can, and if you ask me, tuna out of the can tends to be either too dry or too greasy. I’m not crazy about Slim’s tuna fish. But Sally May . . .
Sally May makes the best tuna fish sandwiches in the whole world, and her trick is that she adds a bunch of stuff to the tuna: mayonnaise, sweet
pickles, chopped-up boiled egg. And you know what else? She even goes to the trouble of putting a crisp leaf of lettuce on it!
No kidding, what she does to an ordinary tuna fish sandwich is amazing. It’s the sort of thing only a mother would do, the sort of thing a bachelor cowboy would never do, not even in a thousand . . .
Sniff, sniff.
“Hankie, get your nose away fwom my food!”
Huh?
Me? Hey, he sure didn’t need to worry about . . . in fact, I would stand right there and guard it for him! That’s the kind of dog I was, loyal to the . . . sniff, sniff . . . end. No kidding.
Yes, it was a good thing I was there to, uh, guard the ship’s provisions, because at that very moment, Captain Alfred started climbing up the tree.
I watched as he climbed up the trunk of the big cottonwood, sniffer and sniffer . . . uh, higher and higher, I should say, and all at once it occurred to me, heh heh, that he wasn’t exactly watching me like a hawk anymore, so I . . .
I found myself staring into the grinning face of a cat! Yes, it was Mister Kitty Moocher and no doubt he’d caught the scent of the tuna fish sandwiches and had come to check it out. The foolish cat even hopped up on his back legs and peered into the bucket.
I went straight into Menacing Growls. “Kitty, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Oh, hello, Hankie. I wonder what’s inside the bucket.”
“Then let me tell you. What’s inside the bucket is trouble.”
“Mmmm. Trouble smells good.”
“Yes, Kitty, trouble often smells good. If it smelled bad, cats like you might never blunder into it. Now scram.”
Pete pinned his ears down on his head and did that thing with his eyes . . . how do I describe it? I’m not sure. The center part of the eye grows bigger than normal, don’t you see, and it’s something cats do when they’re mad or unhappy. Maybe they think it scares the opposition, and maybe it does if the opposition is an ordinary dog. Me? Ha! If Kitty wanted to scare the Head of Ranch Security, he would have to . . .
The Case of the Shipwrecked Tree Page 4