The Further Adventures of Hank the Cowdog

by John R. Erickson

  I don’t believe the trick could have been done any better. It was a real smasher.

  I was so busy with the trick that I didn’t notice the sour look on Sally May’s face. “Hank, you big bully! You ought to be ashamed of yourself for picking on that poor cat!”

  “HUH?”

  “Just for that, you don’t get this egg. Here, Pete, kitty, kitty, kitty.”

  In a flash, Pete was there. I mean, when it comes to freeloading, he has amazing speed. He gave me a surly grin and went through the gate and started eating my egg. That really hurt.

  Sally May gave Kitty-Kitty a nice motherly smile, then she turned a cold glare on me. “And besides being a bully, you smell awful.”

  How could she say that? I had just taken a bath, shampooed, the whole nine yards. I mean, a guy can’t spend his whole life taking a bath. He’s got to get out sometimes and when he does it’s just natural that he picks up a few of the smells of the earth.

  Besides that, I knew for a fact that Pete hadn’t taken a bath in years. He hated water even more than Drover did. And he had dandruff too. You could see it all over him, looked like he’d been in a snowstorm.

  What kind of justice do you have when a dog that takes a bath every day, and sometimes two or three times a day, gets accused of smelling bad, and a rinky-dink cat . . . oh well.

  Pete was chewing my egg, and every now and then he’d turn his eyes toward me and give me a grin. Let me tell you, it took tremendous self-discipline for me to sit there and watch, when all of my savage instincts were urging me to tear down the fence and pulverize the cat.

  Sally May went back into the house. I should have left right there, just walked away and tried to forget the whole thing. But I didn’t.

  Pete had laid down in front of the plate. I mean, he was too lazy to stand up and eat. He was purring and flicking the end of his tail back and forth and chewing every bite twenty-three times.

  I found myself growling, just couldn’t help it. His head came up. “Hmmm, you hungry, Hankie? You’d like this egg. It just melts in your mouth.”

  “No thanks, I got better things to do.” That was the truth. I did. But I stayed there.

  Pete shrugged and went on eating. I watched, and before I knew it, I was drooling at the mouth.

  Pete got up, took a big stretch, and ambled over to where I was. He started rubbing against the fence. He was so close, I could have snatched him baldheaded, which I wanted to do very sincerely, only there was a wire fence between us.

  “I’m not sure I can eat all that egg,” he said. “I’m stuffed. You want the rest of it, Hankie?”

  I should have said no. I mean, a guy has his pride and everything. But my mouth went to watering at the thought of that egg and . . . “Oh, I might . . . yeah, I’ll take it.”

  He grinned and ambled back to the plate. He picked up the egg in his mouth and brought it over to the fence and dropped it right in front of my nose.

  Well, I wasn’t going to give him a chance to reconsider, so I made a grab for it. Hit the derned fence with the end of my nose.

  But it was right there in front of me. I mean, I could smell it now, it was so close. It was giving off warm waves and delicious smells. I could even smell the butter it had been cooked in.

  I made another snap at it, hit the fence and scabbed up my nose. Made my eyes water. When my vision cleared up, I saw Pete sitting there and grinning. I was losing patience fast.

  “Gimme that egg. You said I could have it.”

  “Here, I’ll move it a little closer.” He got his nose under the egg and nudged it right against the fence.

  Well, I just knew I could get it now, so I made another lunge for it. Got a taste of it this time, but also wrecked my nose on that frazzling wire. I could see a piece of skin sticking up, right out toward the end.

  “Gimme that egg!”

  He licked his paw and purred.

  Okay, that settled it. I’ll fool around and nickel-and-dime a problem for a while, but there comes a time when you’ve got to get down to brute strength.

  I backed off and took a run at it and hit the fence with all my speed and strength. I expected at least two posts to snap off at the ground, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if I had taken out the whole west side.

  Them posts turned out to be a little stouter than I thought, and you might say that the wire didn’t break either. The collision shortened my backbone by about six inches and also came close to ruining my nose.

  “Gimme that egg, cat, or I’ll . . .”

  Pete throwed a hump into his back and hissed, right in my face. That was a serious mistake. No cat does that to Hank the Cowdog and lives to tell about it.

  I started barking. I snarled, I snapped, I tore at the fence with my front paws, I clawed the ground. I mean, we had us a little riot going, fellers, and it was only a matter of time until Pete died a horrible death.

  And through it all, I could still smell that egg, fried in butter.

  The back door flew open and Loper stormed out. He had shaving cream on one side of his face and the other side was bright red.

  “HANK, SHUT UP! YOU’RE GONNA WAKE UP THE BABY!”

  I stopped barking and stared at him. Me? What had I . . . if it hadn’t been for the cat . . .

  I heard the baby squall inside the house. Sally May exploded out the door. “Will you tell your dog to shut up! He just woke the baby.”

  “Shut up, Hank!”

  Shut up, Hank. Shut up, Hank. That’s all anybody ever says to me. Not “good morning, Hank,” or “thanks for saving the ranch from the silver monster bird, Hank, we really appreciate you risking your life while we were asleep.” Nothing like that, no siree.

  Well, I can take a hint. I gave Pete one last glare, just to let him know that his days on this earth were numbered, and I stalked back to the gas tanks.

  I met Drover halfway down the hill. He’d just pried himself out of bed. “What’s going on, Hank? I heard some noise.”

  I glared at him. “You heard some noise? Well, glory be. It’s kind of a shame you didn’t come a little sooner when you might have made a hand.”

  “You need some help?”

  I glanced back up the hill. Sally May was still out in the yard, talking to her Kitty-Kitty. “Yeah, I need some help. Go up there and bark at the cat.”

  “Just . . . just bark at the cat, that’s all?”

  “That’s all. Give it your best shot.”

  “Any special reason?”

  “General principles, Drover.”

  “Well, okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

  He went skipping up the hill and I went down to the gas tanks to watch the show.

  Maybe it was kind of mean, me sending Drover up there on a suicide mission, when he was too dumb to know better. But look at it this way: I get blamed for everything around here, and most of the time I don’t deserve it. I figgered it wouldn’t hurt Drover to get yelled at once or twice, and it might even do him some good.

  Getting yelled at is no fun, but it does build character. Drover needed some character-building. That was one of his mainest problems, a weak character.

  So I watched. The little runt padded up to the fence, plopped down, sat up on his back legs, and started yipping. Sally May put her hands on her hips, gave her head a shake, and said, “Well, if that isn’t the cutest thing!”

  She pitched him my egg and he caught it in the air and gulped it down.

  A minute later, he was down at the gas tanks. “I did what you said, Hank, and I won a free egg. Are you proud of me?”

  I was so proud of him, I thought about blacking both his eyes. But I was too disgusted. I just went to sleep.

  That seems to be the only thing I can do around here without getting yelled at: sleep.

  Chapter Three: Stricken with Eye-Crosserosis

 
Islept until late morning, maybe ten o’clock or so. What woke me up was Drover’s wheezing.

  He wheezes in his sleep, don’t you see, and makes a very peculiar sound. Sometimes I can sleep through it and sometimes I can’t. As a general rule, I’m a light sleeper. That’s one of the prices you pay for having sensitive ears. You hear every sound in the night, including some you’d rather not.

  Don’t know what causes Drover’s problem. He claims he’s allergic to certain weeds. Maybe so. He’s also allergic to hard work and danger in any form. Anyhow, there’s definitely something wrong with his nose.

  And speaking of noses, mine was in poor shape after that tussle with Pete and the wire fence. The black leathery part was all scraped up. By crossing my eyes like this . . . well, you can’t see—by crossing my eyes I could sight down my nose and see the little flaps of skin rolled up.

  I studied the damage for a long time. Kind of made me sad to see my old nose banged up that way. It’s a well-known fact that a cowdog tends to be a little vain about his nose.

  On the one hand it’s a very delicate piece of equipment. On the other hand it’s an object of beauty. Entire books have been written about the natural beauty of a cowdog’s nose—or if they haven’t been written, they ought to be. I bet they’d sell millions of copies and make somebody tubs full of money.

  They used to tell that my Uncle Beanie packed his nose in mud every night. He lived to a ripe old age, and right up to the last the women were just nuts about him. He said it was his nose, said the mud treatment kept it soft and pretty.

  Anyway, I sat there looking at my nose and listening to Drover wheeze and had my eyes crossed for a long time. And you know what?

  They got hung up—my eyes, I mean. I couldn’t get them uncrossed. It’s a serious condition called Eye-Crosserosis.

  Kind of throwed a scare into me. I shook my head and tossed it up and down. Didn’t help, eyes stayed crossed. I hit the side of my head with my left paw and that didn’t help, so I scratched at it with my hind leg. Nuthin. I was getting a little concerned by this time, because my eyes being crossed throwed everything out of focus, don’t you see, which sort of left the ranch defenseless.

  Ma used to tell us not to cross our eyes when we were pups, said they might not go back to normal. I never believed her, but she was right.

  Well, I finally decided I’d better sound the alarm. “Drover, wake up, we’re in a world of trouble.” He wheezed and snored, didn’t wake up. “Drover! Get up, son, this is no time to sleep. We could be on the brink of a disaster.”

  His head came up and he opened his eyes. “Beulah?”

  “Beulah!”

  He blinked a couple of times. “You’re not Beulah.”

  “I’m certainly not, and what do you mean, dreaming about my woman? You got no right . . . look at me, Drover, and tell me what you see.”

  He studied me for a long time, squinted one eye and then the other, looked me up one side and down the other.

  “Well, what do you see? Go ahead and say it, just spit it out.”

  “A dog.”

  “Look deeper. Details.”

  He looked deeper. “A cowdog?”

  “The face, Drover, study the face.”

  He cocked his head. “Oh yeah, I see it now. It looks terrible, Hank.”

  “I was afraid of that. It’s pretty obvious, huh?”

  “Sure is.”

  “Do you think I look disfigured? I mean, I don’t want to go around looking like a loon or a freak or something.”

  “I’d say you look kind of disfigured, Hank.”

  That was discouraging news. I tried walking around and ran into one of the legs on the gas tanks. “The worst part of it is that it’s messed up my vision. Can’t see worth a rip.”

  “Huh. That’s really strange, Hank. I wouldn’t have thought it would do that.”

  “Oh, it’s not so strange, when you think about it. What do you reckon I ought to do to cure it?

  “Beats me. Maybe a mud pack would help.”

  When a guy can’t see, he’ll try most anything. I followed Drover down to the sewer and he helped me up to the edge of the water. I dug balls of mud with my paws and plastered them over both eyes. Then I laid down to let the healing set in.

  Must have laid there for half an hour. “What do you think now, Drover? Have we waited long enough?”

  “Well . . . it still looks the same to me. Maybe you better go another hour.”

  “Maybe so.” About fifteen minutes later, I began to think about what he’d said. “Wait a minute. What do you mean, it still looks the same?” I heard him snore and wheeze. “Drover, wake up! What do you mean, it still looks the same to you?”

  “Huh, what? What do I mean? Well, I guess that means it don’t look any different.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your nose. It still looks beat-up and scabby to me.”

  “My nose! I wasn’t talking about my nose, you little dunce.”

  “Oh.”

  “How could a scabby nose have anything to do with my vision?”

  “I wondered about that.”

  I scraped off the mud and opened my eyes. I saw two Drovers staring at me. “It didn’t help. I’m still afflicted.”

  “Hey! Your eyes are crossed!”

  “Very good, Drover. It only took you . . . what, forty-five minutes to pick that up?”

  “More like an hour.”

  “That’s just great.” I tried to think through my problem, one step at a time. “Well, this is a fine mess. What am I going to do now?”

  “Well . . . if your eyes are crossed, maybe you could uncross ’em.”

  “What a wonderful idea, Drover.”

  “Yeah, it just came to me in a flash.”

  “I bet that was quite a flash.”

  “It was pretty good.”

  “Well, here’s another flash. I already thought about that.”

  “You did?”

  “And I tried it.”

  “You did?”

  “And it didn’t work.”

  “Oh.”

  “So do you have other flashes? I mean, with my eyes out of commission, this ranch is in real danger. If the coyotes ever got wind of this, we’d be almost helpless.”

  “Well . . . my eyes are pretty good. Maybe we could use my eyes and your judgment. How does that sound?”

  I thought about that for a long time. I didn’t want to rush into anything. Making cold, hard decisions is a very important part of being Head of Ranch Security. A guy just doesn’t leap into those kinds of decisions.

  “Maybe so. It may be our best shot. But remember: you’re still working for me.”

  “Okay.”

  “You furnish the eyes and I’ll furnish the brains, and . . .”

  I stopped in the middle of the sentence. My left ear shot up. A pickup had just pulled in at the mailbox and was coming toward headquarters.

  My reaction was completely automatic. I set up a bark and moved toward the sound and ran into Loper’s roping dummy.

  “Who is it, Drover, where are they, point me toward them, this could be serious stuff, bark for Pete’s sake, sound the alarm!”

  He let out his usual yip-yip-yip, which wouldn’t have scared a fly, but I guess it was his best lick. “Okay, Hankie, follow me, here we go!”

  Made me mighty uneasy, following Drover, but I didn’t have much choice. We went tearing down the hill, me barking and Drover yipping. I kept right on his tail. I could see that much, even though it was double and out of focus.

  All at once he came to a halt. I got myself shut down just in time, almost plowed him under. I mean, you get that much bulk and muscle going in high gear and you don’t just stop on a dime.

  Drover was spinning in circles and acting awfully stra
nge. “Oh, Hank, I just can’t go on, I never know what to say . . .”

  “You’re not supposed to say anything, son, just bark until we can check ’em out and give ’em clearance.”

  “But Hank, can you see who it is?”

  I squinted and tried to focus on the pickup. About all I could come up with was that it was green. “No, who is it?”

  “It’s . . . Beulah.”

  My goodness, just the mention of her name made me weak and trembly in the legs, had to sit down and rest a minute.

  “And Hank, there’s somebody with her.”

  “It’s . . .”

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess. Spotted bird dog, long skinny tail, kind of a goofy expression on his face?”

  “Well . . . maybe so.”

  “It’s Plato. She’s been sweet on him for a long time and I’ve been waiting for a chance to clean house on him.”

  “What are we gonna do?”

  “Stay behind me and stand by for further orders. We could get ourselves into a little skirmish here.” I marched out into the lead and headed toward the pickup.

  “Hank?”

  “Later, son, I got violence on my mind.”

  “But Hank . . .”

  I was too deep in concentration to be bothered with his yap. I marched up to the pickup and displayed my hardware. (In the security business, that’s our way of saying that I showed him my teeth—teeth being the hardware, don’t you see.)

  I displayed my hardware. “So, fate brings us together at last, Plato. I thought you had better sense . . .”

  “Hank.”

  “I thought you had better sense than to walk into my territory, Plato, but it’s pretty obvious that I overestimated your intelligence.”

  “Hank?”

  “Shut up, Drover. But seeing as how you were foolish enough to come on my ranch, I’m calling you out. Come on, let’s have a little violence and bloodshed.”

  Well, that must have throwed a terrible scare into him. I mean, he didn’t move a muscle or make a sound, not even a squeak. “What’s the matter, Plato, you lose your voice all of a sudden? It’s kind of embarrassing to get exposed in front of your girlfriend, ain’t it?”