“No you do.”
“Yes I don’t.”
“No you do.”
“Yes I don’t! I don’t have anything better to do than . . .” I had somehow lost the thread of the argument, although we weren’t actually arguing because I had . . . “I have said my last word on the subject.”
“You have?”
“Yes.”
“Oops, there’s another one.”
“That wasn’t a word.”
“No it wasn’t.”
“Yes it was.”
“No, it was not a word.”
“YES IT WAS A WORD!”
“I don’t want to argue about it, Hankie.”
“Well, that’s too bad, because when you try to play with the big boys, you’d better be prepared to defend yourself.”
“May I ask you a question, Hankie?”
“No.”
“Good, because I’m not going to talk to you anymore.”
I gave him a growl. “Ask the question, cat, and be quick about it.”
“Promise not to argue?”
“I promise nothing to the likes of you. I’ll argue any time I choose. Now ask the question.”
He licked his paw. “What were you doing in the middle of the gate?”
“That’s simple, cat. I was . . . HUH?”
I glanced to my left and saw that cattle were, so to speak, passing through the gate. Suddenly, all the clues began . . .
I turned back to Pete, and this time I was ready to sweep the ranch with his mangy carcass, but he was sitting under the pickup, grinning at me and flicking his tail back and forth.
“Let that be a lesson to you, cat!” I yelled, and rushed back to my combat position.
Even though I was stepped on three times and horned once, I fought my way through the stream of moronic cows, seized control of the gate, set up a strong defensive position, and began barking.
A small number of animals, perhaps eight or ten, had slipped through my lines before I got there, but that was a small price to pay for my triumph over the cat. Yes, Benny the Imposter had scored a few points on me, but it was still early in the game.
I barked. I snapped. I snarled. I gave them old sookies the full nine yards of defensive strategy. In a matter of seconds, I had them milling in front of the gate, and one minute into the maneuver, they turned south and broke into a wild stampede.
Oh, success! Oh, triumph! Oh, happy day! Single-handledly, with nothing but guts and brains and brute strength, I had foiled Benny the Imposter’s plot, saved the ranch, and rescued my reputation from the edge of the brink.
And best of all, Miss Scamper had watched the entire battle from her box seat in the pickup bed. I would have died a thousand deaths to see that sparkle in her eyes, but, fortunately, that wasn’t necessary.
Well, I had cleaned up another mess and was about to go strutting over to bask in Miss Scamper’s adoring gaze, when I noticed a lone horseman riding my way—perhaps to congratulate me on my triumph over Benny the Imposter?
It was High Loper. He was riding hard. He was swinging his rope. He was yelling naughty words. He appeared to be . . .
In this line of work, it’s virtually impossible to please everyone all the time. Sometimes, in the course of accomplishing one objective, a guy runs afoul of other objectives, and this appeared to be . . .
Okay. Let’s get it over with. Loper was mad, furious, and I had reason to suspect that his anger was directed at . . . well, me. I began to suspect this when he came thundering toward me, shouting evil things and swinging his rope.
“YOU IDIOT DOG, GIT OUT OF THAT GATE!”
I have said many times that Hank the Cowdog can take a hint. That’s the truth. It’s been true for years and it remains true to this very day. Okay. I wasn’t wanted there in the gate? Fine. I would just leave.
I left, taking the shortest distance between two points, which happened to be right between the legs of the colt. Had I remembered that I was dragging a ten-foot rope, I might have chosen a different route, for even though Loper had threatened my life and shouted wicked things about me, I had no wish to frighten his colt and get him . . .
It’s a well known fact in ranch circles that many green colts are afraid of ropes, especially ropes dragged between their . . .
It’s a rare colt indeed that will stand still for such a thing, and this particular colt, whose name was Jughead, did not even come close to standing still.
I happened to be looking back over my shoulder and saw the entire incident. All four of Jughead’s legs went out in different directions and his neck somehow wrapped around the underside of his chest, so that I caught a glimpse of his moon-shaped eyes, looking back at me through the corridor of his legs.
An instant later, his back end shot skyward, and poor Loper, who was still shaking his fist at me, went along with it.
The colt’s rear end came back down but Loper didn’t. He flew out of his stirrups, arched over the saddle lot gate, and entered the saddle shed without opening the door, so to speak.
It wasn’t a heavy door or very fancy, made of three-eights plywood, as I recall, and he went right through it, made quite a crash.
Well, naturally I was concerned. I mean, Loper and I have had our differences through the years, but still, we worked for the same outfit and certain bonds . . . so I stopped to see how badly he was hurt.
I thought about rushing to his side and licking his face. Sometimes that helps, you know.
He picked himself up off the floor and staggered to the door and looked out. His hat was on crooked. He saw me and leveled a finger at me. And here’s what he said to his loyal friend and companion, the dog who had stopped to check on his condition:
“Where’s my gun? Bring me a gun! IF I HAD A GUN . . .”
Well, that was enough for me. I wasn’t foolish enough to suppose that he wanted to go quail hunting at that time of the morning, so I turned south and headed for the timber along the creek.
Seemed to me this might be a good time to vanish for a while. Little did I know what trouble lay in store for me.
Chapter Nine: Found by the Coyote Brotherhood
I had done such an excellent job of turning the cattle away from the gate that they had not only left the gate, they had pretty muchly left the country.
I could see them in two’s and three’s, running toward the north side of the pasture, with cowboys whipping and spurring in pursuit.
Actually, I hadn’t planned to throw such a scare into them. Scoring a few points against Benny the Imposter was one thing, but wrecking the entire roundup . . .
One of the dangers of being as big and ferocious as I am is that it’s hard to make a small impression. Everyone takes you seriously, don’t you see, and the next thing you know, the small impression you intended to make becomes larger than life, so to speak.
And, as I’ve indicated, this seemed a good time to lay low for a while. I headed down to the creek and vanished in the heavy undergrowth of willows that grew along its sandy banks.
This was an excellent place to hide out, since the willows were virtually imponderable . . . implausible . . . implacable . . . impeachable, I know there’s a word that just fits what I’m trying to say here, it’s a big word, begins with “im-” and I get a kick out of using big words once in a while, but it appears that I’ve lost it for the moment. Imperceptible? No.
Well, never mind. Sometimes big words are more trouble than they’re worth and a guy would be better off using simple language.
The willows were so thick that a man on horseback couldn’t ride through them, and now that I’ve said it, I remember the derned word: im-pen-e-tra-ble. That’s a big rascal, no wonder I couldn’t spit it out.
Where was I? Oh yes, in the imperceptible willows. Once inside the willows, I vanished without a trace. My plan at this poin
t, to the extent that I had a plan at all, was to stay out of sight and camp out for several days, until my little misunderstanding with Loper blew over and the cowboys were ready to forgive and forget.
Peeking out of the brush, I saw Loper climb back on his colt and ride hard for the east side of the pasture. I could also see Benny the Imposter, trying to turn a couple of cows and calves that were heading for the brush. I didn’t wish him any bad luck, but since he seemed to be having it anyway, that was okay with me.
I went down to the creek and got a drink, looked at the handsome face in the water and found myself admiring the nose, the shape of the head, the ears, the stern set of the eyes, the hard curve of mouth which suggested a bold and shrewd mind at work, the hair, the massive shoulders that rippled with muscles and tapered down to feet that could have been used as a pattern for all feet, for while they appeared to be graceful and delicate at first glance, they were in fact the perfect tools of a sprinting machine.
It has been said that all understanding begins with the feet, which just goes to show how important they are.
Anyway, for half an hour or so, I stood by the water’s edge, near hypnotized by the reflection I saw. All great works of art don’t hang in museums. Sometimes you find them in unlikely places.
I liked everything I saw in the reflection except the rope, which was still tied around my neck.
I had no use for that rope and decided it was time to get shed of it. It occurred to me that by lowering my jaw and moving my head backward on its pivotal spinal whatever-you-may-call-it, I could get the rope into my mouth and then make hash of it with my long sharp teeth.
I tried this for quite a while without what you would call great success. I discovered: A) that it is virtually impossible to get a good biting position on a rope around one’s neck; and B) if one moves one’s head backward far enough, what often happens is that one topples over backward.
So there you are. Sometimes it’s easier to accept life’s imperfections than to chew them in half.
Having finished my business at the water’s edge, I became bored and decided to move on down the creek to look for new adventure and fresh scenery, yet I had not planned to find the type of adventure and scenery upon which I stumbled upon.
As I was passing through the jungle, the end of my ten-foot piece of rope lodged itself in the fork of a willow. I tried to uproot the tree but found this near-impossible—or, to express it another way, impossible.
Most trees do not uproot well.
Denied this solution to my problem, I abandoned the solution, yet the problem remained. What to do? That was the question. I was in the process of studying it from many different angles when, suddenly, I heard footsteps approaching through the jungle.
Since I couldn’t think of anyone I wanted to meet at that particular moment, I flattened myself out on the ground and tried to blend in with the surrounding fauna and fluoride.
The footsteps came closer, and then they stopped—very near to the spot where I lay, invisible to naked eyes. And speaking of eyes, I rolled mine around in their sprockets until I could see two heads suspended above me.
Further inspection revealed that the heads were attached to necks, the necks to bodies, and the bodies to legs and so forth. Upon seeing the sharp-pointed noses and yellow eyes of the suspects, I said to myself, “I think I’ve seen these guys before somewhere.” And no sooner had that thought skipped across my mind than one of the suspects spoke.
“Uh! We find Hunk Dog lying in jungle, far away from house and boom-boom!”
Perhaps I should intrude here to give a translation, for you see, the suspects in this case turned out to be none other than the notorious coyote brothers, Rip and Snort.
Little wonder that I felt I had seen them before, because I had seen them before—not once or twice or thrice or frice, but many times, and always under awkward conditions.
For you see, any time a guy runs into a pair of cannibals, the conditions are likely to be awkward. These guys were terrible!
Coyotes, you might recall, speak a peculiar dialect. Any dog who goes into full-time security work should be fluent in several languages, including the coyote dialect. At the risk of tooting my own horn, I should point out that I am something of a whiz at languages, always have been, even the ancient and primitive dialect of the Coyotus Cannibalus.
With that out of the way, let us proceed to the translation and take another look at the statement under our microscope, so to speak: “Uh! We find Hunk Dog lying in jungle, far away from house and boom-boom!”
The first word uttered by this savage, you will notice, was the one syllable exclamation, “Uh!” This is one of the most commonly used words in the coyote dialect. Our studies of the talkatory patterns of wild coyotes indicate that coyotes are partial to short words.
“Uh” is just about as short as a word can be. Any coyote who shortened it further would find himself saying either “U” or “h,” neither of which makes much sense, even to coyotes.
Why do coyotes prefer short words? Good question.
My own personal theory is that short words such as “Uh” are hard to misspell and mispronounce, and are therefore popular with these miserable, lice-bitten creatures of the prairie.
You’ll notice that Snort referred to me as “Hunk” instead of the usual “Hank,” and perhaps you wondered why. Here, we have a choice of explanations:
1) “Hunk” is the coyote word for “Hank.”
2) For unknown reasons, coyotes are not able to pronounce “Hank.”
3) Snort was not too bright and didn’t even know that he was butchering my name.
That should cover the “Hunk” part of the mystery. Now, let’s hurry on to the last two words in the translation: “boom-boom” and “house.”
As I have pointed out before, “boom-boom” is the coyote word for “gun.” We have found evidence suggesting that “boom-boom” has some relationship to the sound made by a gun. When fired, a weapon does not make the sound, “gun-gun,” so . . . I think you get the point.
This process of creating a word from an actual sound is called “onomatopetunia.” Just thought I’d throw that in.
And that brings us to the coyote word, “house.” As odd as it might seem, “house” in coyote language means “house.” That does seem odd, doesn’t it? But there you are.
Well, with all the technical stuff out of the way, we can proceed to the chilling, spine-tingling adventures that resulted from my chance meeting with these two bloodthirsty cannibals out in the jungle.
And don’t forget: because the end of my rope had snagged on a willow tree, I wasn’t able to run away. Not that I would have run away under different conditions, but let us say that I would have considered it a very attractive option.
On the other hand . . . yes, I would have run away. Of course I would have! No dog in his right mind would talk to cannibals in the jungle, for as Snort had shrewdly observed, they had caught me a long way from house and boom-boom.
Chapter Ten: The Wolf Creek Decathalon
Since they had caught me red-handed in broad daylight, I figgered there was no future in trying to pretend I wasn’t there.
I raised my head and tried to put on a pleasant face. “Good morning, fellers. Before we get involved in other matters, let me say a few words . . .”
Snort held up one paw. “Hunk not talk crazy stuff like last time.”
“Who me? Well, I don’t know what you’re . . .”
“Rip and Snort not like fooled all time.”
“Yes, I see what you . . .”
“Rip and Snort tired and hungry, all night singing and carrying on, not have time to hunt. Maybe we eat dog.”
I swallowed. “Uh . . . dog?” Snort nodded. Rip licked his chops. Already we were off to a bad start. “How about a cat? I know where you can find a nice, fat, juicy cat.”
“Dog quick and easy meal. And dog tied up too, not hard catch, ho ho.”
“Yes . . . ho, ho. You’re referring to the rope, I suppose.” They nodded. “And my being tied up, so to speak.” They nodded. “That is, you probably think I’m tied up and can’t run and play and so forth.” They nodded. “It does appear that way, doesn’t it?” They nodded. “Would you guys care to hear the true story about this rope?”
“Only true story. Not want more crazy stuff, like moon made of chopped chicken liver.”
I forced a chuckle. “Oh, that one. Yes, I remember the night I told you guys that story, and I admit that it was a little . . . uh . . . that is, it contained elements of fiction, as well as . . .”
“Big lie. Made Rip and Snort look stupid.”
“Stupid? Surely not. I mean, I wouldn’t have . . .”
Snort put his sharp nose right down in my face. “Hunk waste time. Talk quick. Then we eat.”
“Eat? Who could eat at a time like this? I mean, it’s too late for breakfast and too early for supper, and then there’s always the chance that after hearing my story, you’ll decide, completely on your own and with no prompting from me . . .”
He showed me his teeth and growled.
“. . . on second thought, maybe I should go right into my story, you suppose?”
“Uh.”
“All right, here we go. Are you ready for this?” No answer, just unblinking yellow stares. “All right. Now, at first glance, it appears that I’m tied to that tree stump, right?” No response, nothing. “But first impressions are often misleading, I’m sure you’ve noticed that, haven’t you, of course you have.”
Blank stares. I went on.
“But here’s the straight story, guys. Not more than an hour ago, one of the cowboys noticed that this part of the pasture was starting to move—and I mean drift, shift, float away. You can imagine what a disaster that could be if part of the pasture just by George picked up and moved away.”
Rip scratched a flea on his ear. It was hard to tell if I was getting through to them.
Every Dog Has His Day Page 5