They loaded Alfred’s stuff into the pickup, and I marched around to the rear of the pickup and prepared to leap into the back. Huh? They drove off without me.
You know, a lot of dogs would have gotten their feelings hurt, but I didn’t give it a thought. Okay, I gave it a thought, one small thought, and decided, what the heck, they were busy and excited and just forgot to invite me. They probably knew that a big strapping dog like myself would have no problem walking a quarter mile to the house, even in the scalding heat, and they were sure right about that.
No problem. Besides, I was looking forward to having a few moments to myself, because I had a lot of things on my mind. Obviously, my career was about to take a major turn in a new and exciting direction, and I needed some time to make plans and chart a course for the future. I had no idea how long I would be digging bones with Mr. Wilkens and Alfred, and they were leaving me very little time to put my affairs in order before we shipped out.
I needed some time alone, is the point, but who or whom do you suppose came trotting up the road to meet me? Just the guy I didn’t need or want to see. Drover.
He rushed up to me, all aflutter with excitement. “Oh my gosh, Hank, you’ll never guess what I just saw in the back of that pickup!”
I kept walking. “You saw a gorgeous golden-haired lady dog.”
The bottom fell out of his smile. “Oh drat, you saw her, too?”
“Of course I saw her, too. Her name is Sardina. She comes from Boston, our state capital. She works with an arkansologist and they dig up bones. She hates lobsters and has fallen madly in love with me. What else do you want to know about her?”
He gave me a tragic look then fell to the ground and began kicking all four legs. “I can’t believe this. You cheated, and now my heart is broken! Oh, my heart!”
I glared down at the runt. “Drover, stop this childish display. You’re embarrassing me.”
“Yeah, but she smiled at me and there for a second, I thought . . . you stole her and it’s no fair! Boo hoo!”
“Drover, I didn’t steal her. To be honest, I had little or nothing to do with it. I merely said hello and, well, things happened so quickly, the two of us were just swept away.”
“Yeah, and I’ve been swept away—into the garbage heap!”
“Son, I know how you must feel, but try to remember that in the Game of Life, those who finish last are almost as important as those who finish first. The only difference is that if you finish last, you’re a loser.”
“Yeah, but she gave me the sweetest smile I ever saw.”
“She was probably studying your bones and thought they looked funny.”
He wiped a tear from his eye. “What’s wrong with my bones?”
“Do you want the truth? Your bones are bony.”
He started sniffling again. “You never told me that before.”
“Well, you never asked, but it’s very plain to see. You have the boniest bones I’ve ever seen, and I guess Sardina thought so, too. That’s why she smiled. I’m sorry, but there you are.”
“I can’t take any more! First it was the stub tail and now this!” He blubbered and boo-hooed some more, then dried his eyes. “What kind of name is that?”
“Bony is not a name. It’s a distractive itchative.”
“What?”
“I said, it’s a destructive adjective. Bony describes the boniness of a bone.”
“No, I mean Sardina.”
“Oh. Yes, it’s an odd name, and I even told her so.”
“It sounds like sardines.”
“Well, she comes from a coastal city, somewhere down south. What’s the capital of Texas?”
“Oklahoma?”
“No. Boston, that’s it. She’s from Boston.”
“I thought Boston was the capital of Mackerel-oosus.”
“Mackerels or sardines, they’re all fish, Drover, and that’s my whole point. Apparently the lady is fond of fish.”
“Yeah, but you said she hates lobsters.”
I stuck my nose in his face. “Lobsters are not fish. They have pinchers.”
“Dentures?”
“What?”
“You said that lobsters wear false teeth.”
“I did not say that lobsters wear false teeth! I said that dentures have pinchers and furthermore . . .” I blinked my eyes and glanced around. “Why are we discussing lobsters?”
“I don’t know, I’m all confused.”
I marched a few steps away and took a big gulp of fresh air. Suddenly I noticed that my stomach was growling. “Drover, have you ever developed a craving for sardines?”
“Well, I ate a can of ’em once.”
“Yes? How were they?”
“Well, they tasted like fish, only moreso.”
“I see, yes. Well, this is very odd. All at once I feel this . . . this irrational craving for sardines.”
“I’ll be derned. You know, I’m kind of hungry for mackerel.”
“Amazing. But why would two dogs in the Texas Panhandle be sitting around, thinking about fish?” For five long minutes, each of us was alone with his private thoughts. Then I heaved a sigh and returned to my companion. “Drover, I think it would be best if we kept this conversation to ourselves.”
“Yeah, and I can’t even remember what we were talking about.”
I sat down beside him. “Me neither, and that worries me. I’m sure that we were discussing something important, but somehow we ended up talking about fish.”
A tiny light of recognition flashed in Drover’s eyes. “Wait, I almost forgot. I saw Pete down at the house. He said something you’ll want to hear.”
I heaved a sigh. “Very well, let’s hear it and get it over with.”
“He said . . . let me see if I can remember . . . I want to get it just right . . . he said . . . I think he said . . .”
“Drover, hurry up.”
“Here we go. He said, ‘Tell Hankie the weather’s just perfect in my iris patch.’ That’s exactly what he said. Oh, and then he stuck out his tongue.”
Those words went through me like a wooden nickel. “The little sneak stuck out his tongue?”
“Yep, he sure did. I saw it myself.”
“One more question, Drover, and this could be crucial to the investigation. Did you feel that he intended the stuck-out tongue for you or for someone else?”
Drover rolled his eyes around. “Well, now that you mention it, I think maybe he meant it for . . . you.”
I sprang to my feet and suddenly I could feel a gush of new energy flowing through the blood vessels of my arteries. “Just as I suspected! Behind my back, the little pest is sticking out his tongue at me. He doesn’t have the guts to do it to my face.”
“Yeah, so he did it to my face, and I ratted on him, hee hee.”
I placed a paw on his shoulder. “It wasn’t ratting, son. You were just standing up for your comrades in the Security Division, and for that we are very grateful.”
“Yeah, and it was fun, too. I love to rat on cats.”
“Every dog with an ounce of decency loves to rat on cats. It’s part of the wonder of being a dog. And now you know what the insolent cat has forced upon us.”
“Yeah, hee hee, we’re going to beat him up!”
“Exactly! Do unto others, but don’t take trash off the cats! Come on, son, our unit is fixing to go into combat!”
“Oh goodie!”
Suddenly the morning air was filled with the growl of tank motors and the thud of marching feet, as the amassed forces of the entire Security Division moved like a deadly cloud toward ranch headquarters.
No one spoke. Every lip formed a tight determined line, and every eye was directed toward Ground Zero—the iris patch. Every soldier on this mission knew in his deepest heart that this would be the biggest and final
est showdown with our enemiest enemy, the sniveling, scheming little snot of a cat named Pete.
As our column rolled toward the house, I reached for the microphone of my mind. “Tank One, this is Infantry One. How are things looking on your side? Over.”
“Gosh, am I really a tank?”
“Roger that. How does it feel?”
“Well . . . pretty good, I guess. Reckon I ought to be making motor noise?”
“We’ve got a big ten-four on that, Tank One. You’re cleared for motor noise. Give it your best shot, over.”
“Brrrrrrrr brum brum, brrrrrr brum brum brum! How does that sound?”
“Five-by-five, Tank One. You’re sounding good. Any sign of the enemy yet?”
“Well, let me look. Nope, I can’t see Pete but . . . I’ll be derned, there’s a pickup parked in front of the house.”
“Come back on that, Tank One, we’ve got a noisy line. Over.”
“I said, there’s a pickup parked beside the house, and . . . oh my gosh! Hank, I just remembered what we were talking about back there.”
“Stick with the code names, son. I’m Infantry One. Repeat your message, over.”
His breathless voice came over the sneakers. Speakers. “Back there, we were talking about something and we couldn’t remember what it was. Remember?”
“Hurry up. Over.”
I strained my ears to pick up his next transmission. “SARDINA!”
Huh?
All our tanks and armored vehicles stopped in their tracks. The tramp of thousands of marching feet fell silent. Our entire invasion force came to a halt on a hill overlooking the battle zone.
In the eerie silence, I spoke into the microphone. “Uh, Drover, you stay here with the troops. I’ll go down and check this out.”
ZOOM!
Chapter Nine: My New Career Gets Put On Hold
Maybe in all the excitement of the invasion, you missed the meaning of Drover’s radio transmission, but I didn’t. I heard it loud and clear, and let me see if I can explain it.
Okay, let’s start with a well-known fact: Carrying on a normal conversation with Drover can rot your mind. In fact, there is no such thing as a normal conversation with Drover. Every conversation is totally abnormal, and sometimes it borders on chaos. The little mutt will take the thread of discussion and spin it into some kind of spiderweb, so that the unfortunate party on the other end begins to lose all contact with time, space, and reality.
I know what I’m talking about here. I’ve seen it happen over and over. You start off talking about apples and you end up with oranges or pineapples. You start off talking about horses and before you know it, you’re arguing about horseflies.
That is precisely what happened to our conversation at the mailbox. When it began, we were discussing one of the most important discoveries of my entire career, the lovely Miss Sardina Bandana of Boston, yet somehow Drover’s power to corrupt all forms of communication had led us into . . .
This is embarrassing. I don’t know how it happened. Somehow the little goof had steered our conversation into Pete the Barncat! Who wants to waste time talking about Pete or his iris patch resort? Not me, yet somehow it happened.
Oh well. The important thing is that I got it shut down only moments before our armored columns were scheduled to roll into ranch headquarters and make hamburger out of the cat. Don’t get me wrong. Hamburgerizing the cat would have been fun but totally unnecessary, for you see, I NO LONGER CARED that Kitty owned the best and most comfortable piece of real estate on the ranch. I had bigger fish to fly.
Wait, hold everything. Did you notice that the subject of FISH popped up again? Could this be a clue? Had Pete infected our systems with some kind of Fish Virus? I mean, he’s a dumb little cat but dumb in a cunning sort of way. You never want to estimunderate his talent for messing with the mind of a dog.
Maybe it was just a coincidence. Forget about the fish.
Okay, where were we? Oh yes, fish. Fish are pretty interesting little creatures and one of the great unanswered questions in this life is, “Who taught them to swim?” The same question applies to ducks. How is it that a duck can swim but if a buzzard falls into a stock tank, he’ll sink like a rock?
An even better question is, why are we talking about fish, ducks, and buzzards? You see what Drover does to me? Phooey.
The point is that the lovely Sardina Bandana was sitting in the back of a pickup, not more than a hundred feet from the spot where our invasion force had come to a halt, and suddenly new meaning and purpose rushed into my life. My eyes grew wide with wonder and missification, and all at once my heart was beating like a beating heart.
“Sardina, my beloved, you’ve come back to me, just as I dreamed you would!”
Leaving Drover in charge of the troops, I went rushing down the hill to see my darling, only I took a small detour that led to the yard fence. There, I glared through the wire and raised my voice to a thunder of righteous anger. “Pete, I have only one thing to say to you.”
The pestilence lifted his head to a haughty angle and fluttered his eyelids. “Oh goodie, you’re back. It’s so boring when you’re gone.”
“Yeah? Well, try this on for size. I hope you get bedsores in your iris patch.”
“Ooo, that was clever.”
“And furthermore, take this!” Right there, in plain sight for all the world to see, I stuck out my tongue at him . . . and even crossed my eyes!
Boy, you talk about blowing a cat away! I blew him into next week, left him sputtering and speechless. The dumb cat. He thought I was lusting for his loafing spot in the shade? Ha, what a joke. I had much bigger and better things waiting for me—a gorgeous lady dog who absolutely adored me and a new assignment as Assistant Director of Bone Research at a very important arkinsawlogical excavation.
With all of this in my future, did I have time to fuss and twitter with the local cat? No sir. Poor old Pete. He had slid into insignificance, completely off the radar screen of my ambitions. Not only would the Elite Troops of the Security Division not invade his yard, we wouldn’t even give him a thought.
And so it was that I left the little sneak sitting in the ramble of his own rubble and marched around to the front of the house, where a vehicle was waiting to whisk me off to my new assignment. It would be a tough job, supervising a crew of scientists, and I’ll admit that I felt a little nervous about it. I mean, I knew bones as well as any dog alive, but that other stuff—flint, beads, arrowheads, potterage—that wasn’t exactly my cup of wax.
I would have to study and observe, and, well, bluff like crazy the rest of the time. You’d be surprised how well that works, bluffing. Heh heh.
I made my way toward the small crowd that had gathered at the front gate, where Mr. Wilkens, Little Alfred, and Sally May were engaged in conversation. Baby Molly was there too, but she was goo-gooing in her mother’s arms and not actually a part of the conversation.
I slowed my pace to a dignified walk and shot a glance toward the pickup. Just as I suspected, the astonishingly beautiful Sardina Bandana was watching my every move, staring at me with eyes that sparkled like a whole trainload of diamonds. To reward her attention, I raised one eyebrow, then hurried on to hear what was being said.
Sally May was talking. “Slim Chance? Why yes, he lives not far from here. In fact, he works for us on the ranch. How do you know Slim?”
“Well, we went to the same high school, and Slim and I . . .” Mr. Wilkens laughed and ducked his head. “We spent quite a lot of time together in the detention hall, catching up on our homework.”
Sally May nodded. “That sounds like Slim. I’m sure a lot of teachers retired after he went through the school.”
“We were both pretty caught up in being bronc riders, see, and couldn’t seem to fit schoolwork into our schedules.”
“But now you’re an archeologist. What happ
ened to the rodeo?”
“Well, ma’am, one night a bronc threw me so high, I caught a glimpse of the future. Riding to the hospital in the back of a ’fifty-seven Chevy pickup, I said to myself, “’Wilkie, the next pony is liable to break your neck. Maybe you ought to think about college.’ I’d always been interested in archeology and here I am. I’m a contract archeologist, and I’ve been hired to do this excavation at the county park.”
Little Alfred had been restless through this conversation, and now he couldn’t wait any longer. He tugged on his mother’s dress. “Mom? Can I go?”
Sally May gave him a hard look. “Camp out on the hard ground? Sleep in a tent?” She turned to Mr. Wilkens. “Wouldn’t he be in the way?”
“Not at all. We’ll teach him to use a trowel and give him a little unit all to himself. By the time he leaves, he’ll know a lot about archeology.”
Alfred clasped his hands in the begging position. “Mom, please? I want to dig up a dinosaur.”
Mr. Wilkens got a chuckle out of that. “Son, I’m afraid you won’t find any dinosaurs on this dig. Our site isn’t nearly that old. We think it’s going to date somewhere around 1300 a.d. But it’s an interesting site with a stone-enclosed house.” He turned to Sally May. “What do you think?”
Sally May pondered. “It sounds like a wonderful opportunity. I’ll discuss it with my husband when he comes back for lunch.”
“Good. Well, I’d better get back to the dig. Alfred, thanks for the lemonade, and I’ll hope to see you this afternoon.”
As the pickup pulled away from the house, I caught a glimpse of Sardina Bandana. I’m almost sure that tears were flowing down her cheeks. The poor dear! She was leaving without me and now she was crushed.
And come to think about it, I wasn’t feeling so chirpy either. I had thought that I would be launching myself into a new career as a Digger of Ancient Bones, but now . . .
I didn’t have time to think about the future, because Drover arrived at that very moment. He greeted me with his usual foolish grin. “Gosh, what happened?”
The Case of the Most Ancient Bone Page 5