Dead Blow

by Lisa Preston

  A good stock dog has to watch his person, has to have access.

  One or two fellows checked out Charley and me. Eager to show my dog’s skill, I strolled over and asked the most relevant question of the day to a man leaving the check-in booth. “When’re dogs working?”

  “You got something to exhibit, little lady?” His lop-sided grin gave way to a leer. Flirt Boy seemed to have an idea that he was all kinds of charming, which didn’t exactly sugar my grits.

  “Maybe so.” I spoke gruff enough that he’d rethink whether I was meaning my words, like him, in extra ways. I’m average-plus height or more and made out of trim muscles, nothing little about me.

  “Then you’re up.” He jerked a thumb over his left shoulder to the main arena then pressed a button on his radio to tell someone to release six steers to let a demo run before the official program started.

  That’s more like it. Ready to run my dog in this thunderdome, I whistled. Flying yellow fur bailed out Ol’ Blue’s driver window and we slipped into the ginormous arena, first of the day.

  The Kelpie that was officially entered downed at the gate with a word from his handler in that way we call honoring. The dog wanted to work but was going to honor Charley and me.

  At the far end of the arena, a gate clanged, admitting a half dozen rowdy cattle. They snorted, stamped, and scattered. Near me, two green metal fence panels were set up with a ten-foot gap between them. Charley would have to drive the cattle between the panels.

  “Away to me,” I told Charley.

  Distinctive in his work, my Charley is. Plenty of eye, confident, with a knack of knowing when to use which kind of manipulation to make cattle stop or move where needed. Younger dogs have faster out runs, sure, but Charley possesses the wisdom of experience. He ran to the end of the arena and gave the milling steers the benefit of his glare. They pretty well gathered up and began to move along the long line of the fence. Charley would have to force the loose steers toward me through the panels, then around again and out a gate again at the far end.

  One crusty half-breed steer decided he liked the original end of the arena better. He whipped around and charged my dog.

  Feinting, Charley whirled and told the steer to get back, told it he wasn’t giving up ground. In two seconds of stubborn, Charley further explained that he was fine with either one of them dying over the issue of whether that steer should move along peaceably and join the others.

  It went like that. These rough cattle didn’t cotton to being herded at all, but Charley wasn’t intimidated.

  Without a wave of my hand, I verbally directed Charley to bring the stock through the panels. Charley bossed them right and proper, until he could deliver them again to the end of the arena where we re-penned the lot.

  The nods we got, well, we’d earned ’em.

  “That’ll do, Charley,” I told my old fellow.

  Both our hearts were brimming with pride and love. We thought we were pretty much the coolest thing on the planet. I’d run my dog, my Charley, at the Black Bluff bull sales, first run of the day. Bucket-list life item, check.

  It’s a herding-dog thing. Maybe everyone wouldn’t understand.

  A microphone clicked on with a squeal. They were ready to get started with the day’s official program. An announcer asked my name, my dog’s name, and where we were from. He repeated it all over the loudspeaker to clapping and cheering from the hundred or so early spectators, and he welcomed everybody to the last day of this year’s Black Bluff bull sale.

  They released more burly cattle, rough enough, barely dog-broke. The first official man up gave me a considered, congratulatory nod, then sent his Kelpie, who spent a lot of air yipping. The tough little dog would need that energy for the extra out-runs he’d have to do when his stock scattered. And now Charley had to honor the Kelpie, ignore the fresh steers he wanted to work.

  A big fellow across the way looked above the crowd to eye me and mine. Seemed like too much attention. Not a good thing at all. Another feller—this one smaller and dark-skinned with straight black hair and no hat—eyed the one eyeing me and then stared at me way too long. He edged my way and paused, then faded back, ’til I lost him in the milling crowd.

  Then I saw him again. I’m not all that given to the heebie-jeebies but that dark-haired wiry man moved toward us in a way that made me not want to turn my back.

  It’s always a sign when I start to think ill of others that someone around here needs a nap. And I was hungry, having not so much as a stale half-box of Milk Duds to munch on since I’d left the Buckeye. I’d done my road trip in hard hours. If I caught a few more winks, I could maybe unofficially run Charley again during one of the program breaks, take a gawk around, then hit the road. I just needed a small corner of the world, some open space at the end of the sale property. I fired up Ol’ Blue and cranked the wheel hard, rumbling slowly through the less traveled parts of the sale grounds to gain a patch to myself.

  Shady, without such long grass that the bugs would have me for breakfast, and quiet, way back from the hollers and truck sounds and stock smells of the mighty sale, this was a spot where a gal could catch herself ten or twenty winks before she turned her sweet self around and rolled north again.

  I slid out of Ol’ Blue then started to ask Charley for an opinion on where we should rest, the grass or the cab.

  Crack! Something smacked the back of my skull.