The Ghosts of Rabbits Past

by John R. Erickson

  Recalling those awful words, I felt a wave of dread washing over me like a wave of dread. I had to do something…but what?

  At that point, it occurred to me that my best hope of saving little Drover would be to get the cowboys involved in the case. Why? Because coyotes have a natural fear of people and will flee when one of them shows up.

  Fleeing coyotes are much easier to deal with than coyotes that don’t flee, don’t you know. Coyotes that don’t run are inclined to attack, beat up, and eat ranch dogs who show up to save their friends, so you can see that having a human along on a Search and Rescue can cut through a lot of red tape.

  Slim Chance was just the guy who could provide cover for the operation. All I had to do was convey the message that Drover was missing and that I had a powerful need for his help.

  Slim’s help, that is, not Drover’s. Drover seldom provided help for anything, and now that he was missing in action, he would be even more unhelperly. Even less helpful, shall we say, and maybe this is obvious, so…just skip it.

  The point is that I left the office and went charging up the hill to the machine shed. There, I found Slim Chance, the hired hand on this outfit, changing the oil in his pickup.

  To be more precise, he was sitting on an overturned five-gallon bucket, waiting for the oil to drain out of the motor. Whilst he waited, he cleaned his fingernails with his pocketknife and hummed a tune. “Doe dee doe dee dee doe.” In other words, he wasn’t doing much of anything, so this would be an ideal time for me to approach him.

  To solicit his help in this deal, I chose a program we call “Something’s Wrong,” and here’s how it works. You approach the person with Looks of Distress and switch the tail over to Slow Worried Wags. If he doesn’t respond right away (on this ranch, they seldom do, I mean, we’re talking about cowboys who are out to lunch half the time)…if he doesn’t respond right away, we switch on Whimpers and Moans. WAM usually snags their attention.

  I started the program and went into Stage One, Looks of Distress. Slim didn’t notice (no surprise there), so I punched in the commands for Slow Worried Wags and activated the tail section. It was a great presentation and everything worked slick, yet Slim was so deeply involved in giving himself a manicure, he didn’t notice.

  Okay, I dialed in the codes and activated Stage Three, Whimpers and Moans. At that point, our entire program for recruiting volunteers was rolling, and let me pause here to point out something that you might not have noticed. In fact, you might want to take some notes on this.

  See, when a highly-trained professional cowdog does a presentation of “Something’s Wrong,” a casual observer might get the impression that it’s easy, that any old ranch mutt could pull it off. Ha. That’s far from the truth. The truth is that “Something’s Wrong” is an extremely difficult application that requires precise coordination of facial expression, tail movement, and special audio effects. The slightest error can produce wild distortions of the message.

  I know, this seems complicated, so maybe I should provide a few examples. Pay attention.

  Let’s suppose that the dog gets the face right and the tail right, but hits a sour note on Whimpers and Moans. It can blow the whole program, and instead of transmitting the “Something’s Wrong” message, you get some kind of garbage message, such as:

  A.“Something’s Right”

  B.“Everything’s Right”

  C.“Nothing’s Wrong”

  D.“Everything is Nothing”

  E.“Right is Wrong”

  F.“What’s For Supper?”

  G.“Can We Play Ball?”

  If that happens, the dog might as well pack up and go home, because his chances of recruiting help will drop to zilch. That’s why it’s so very, very important that we train for these exercises and get the coordination of all three stages just right.

  Sorry, I didn’t mean to go into so much technical detail about my work, but you’d be surprised how many people—and even dogs—aren’t aware of just how difficult and complicated these “simple” presentations are. When we do it perfectly, it looks simple and easy, but now you know the truth: it’s not.

  Okay, I had activated all three stages of “Something’s Wrong” and was waiting for Slim to respond. You know what? It went right past him, I mean, like a dove on the first day of hunting season. The guy didn’t see any of it! I couldn’t believe it.

  When “Something’s Wrong” flops, we have no choice but to go to Sterner Measures. I hated to do that, but the clock was running on this deal. We needed to locate little Drover and bring him back home—fast. I drew in a huge gulp of air and barked.

  That woke him up. His mind had been far away, but it came rushing back to the present. He flinched and his head snapped into an upright position. He glared down at me.

  “Meathead, don’t bark when a man’s cleaning his nails with an open blade.”

  Sorry.

  “I could have chopped off a finger.”

  We need to talk.

  “You’ve got no more manners than a goat.”

  Something’s wrong. I need your help.

  At last, he looked into my eyes. “What are you trying to say?”

  Something’s wrong and I need your help!

  “Oh, I get it.”

  Well, glory be. It sure took him long enough.

  He pushed himself up to a standing position, put away his knife, and…why was he walking into the machine shed? Drover was out in the pasture, not in the barn. Moments later, he emerged, carrying a red coffee can filled with Co-op dog food. He dumped it into the overturned Ford hubcap that served as our dog bowl.

  “There. Eat it and dry up.” He slouched back to his bucket-seat, flopped down, and resumed his silly exercise of cleaning his fingernails and listening to the drip-drip of motor oil.

  Oh brother. How do you communicate with these people? If I had been trying to tell him that the ranch was on fire, he would have been barbecued alive.

  Okay, he’d left me with no choice. I would have to do something really…huh? Before I could do anything outrageous to get his attention, an unidentified pickup pulled up in front of the machine shed.

  All at once, I found myself pulled into a Traffic Alert. I rushed toward the vehicle and unlooshed a withering barrage of barking.

  You’ll never guess what happened then. I guarantee you won’t.

  Chapter Seven: A Cow Swallowed a Bone

  When we’re called out on Traffic, we’re never sure whether we’ll encounter trespassers or Friendlies, and we have to assume the worst until we can get a positive ID. We treat them all the same. We rush to the scene with Sirens and Lights, and bark until Data Control gives us the order to stand down.

  In this case, it came pretty quickly. The pickup matched our profiles of a Friendly and the driver turned out to be…well, the guy who owned the ranch, Loper. I switched off Sirens and Lights and rushed around to the left side of the vehicle to greet him the moment his boots touched the ground.

  You probably think that my presence filled his heart with joy, and that he greeted me with smiles, kind words, and pats on the head. Ha. Not only did he not smile or speak, I don’t think he even saw me. He wore a deep scowl and his eyes were locked on Slim, who sat on the bucket with one leg thrown over the other knee, and was cleaning his fingernails.

  Loper walked toward him. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything important.”

  “I’m waiting for the oil to drain out of the crankcase.”

  “How many days is that going to take?”

  Slim sighed and looked up. “Loper, dirty motor oil don’t ask my opinion of how fast it ought to drain. It moves slow.”

  “Well, we picked the right man for the job.”

  “Would it make you feel better if I stood up and led cheers to make it run faster?”

  Loper said nothing, just star
ed. Slim stood up and…hang on, this is going to sound weird…he started doing a little dance, like a cheerleader at a football game.

  “Lazy oil, run run run!

  Lazy oil, fun fun fun.

  Gush and rush like falling rain,

  Faster, faster, down the drain!”

  Loper shook his head and gazed off into the distance. “Am I paying you wages to do this stuff?”

  “That’s right, and it’s a bargain too. I ain’t charging you one penny extra for the cheerleading. It’s all part of the package.”

  “Lord, have mercy.”

  “Loper, what’s at the root of all this is that you don’t trust gravity. See, oil obeys the Law of Gravity. It was all worked out years ago by a famous scientist, Sir Isaac Neutron.”

  “No wonder you flunked the ninth grade.”

  “And what he said was that oil drains out of a crankcase at a certain rate. It don’t change from one day to the next, and it don’t care what you think.”

  “Get in the pickup, we’ve got a job to do.”

  “What did you tear up this time?”

  “We’ve got a cow with a bone in her throat.”

  Slim gave that some thought. “Well, we’d better get the horses up.”

  “Don’t have time for that. I’m supposed to meet Bobby Barnett in town at three. I’m hoping we can lease his wheat pasture.”

  “Loper…”

  “Hurry up, let’s get this over with.”

  Loper headed for the pickup. Slim followed, muttering under his breath. When he opened the door on the passenger side, guess who was right there, coiled like a loaded spring and ready to leap into the cab. Me.

  Hey, I knew they would need my help, and…well, Loper had said something about a bone, right? It just happened that I was the ranch’s leading expert on bones. I leaped inside and claimed my usual spot beside the…

  “Move, dog.”

  …shotgun-side window, only Slim hogged the spot and I had to move over to the middle of the seat. He climbed inside and spoke to the driver. “Did you want to take the dog?”

  Loper’s eyes flicked from me to Slim. “Sure, why not? Sometimes I get to craving intelligent company.”

  Slim cackled a laugh. “Loper, I’ll swan, you beat anything I ever saw.”

  Off we went. We turned right at the mailbox, then took a feed trail that led to the north pastures. After a period of silence, Slim said, “How’d she get a bone in her throat?”

  “I guess she needed some calcium and started chewing on a bone.”

  “Put out some mineral blocks.”

  “We’ll put out mineral blocks, but she’s still got a bone in her throat.”

  Slim nodded. “Well, what’s your plan? The last time I checked, most cows won’t stand still while you stick an arm down their guzzle to pull out a bone.”

  “We’ll pitch a rope on her and tie her to the pickup.”

  “A grown cow? Loper, I’ve been to this rodeo before and what I remember is a wreck.”

  “She’s weak. We can do it, trust me.”

  “We should have brought horses.”

  “We won’t need horses.”

  On and on we drove over rough pasture roads, until finally we came to that old wooden windmill in the northwest pasture. Up ahead, I could see a cow standing alone beside the stock tank—actually between the stock tank and the overflow pond.

  What is an overflow pond? I’m glad you asked. It’s a small body of water, maybe fifty feet across, that catches the overflow water when the stock tank gets full.

  It was easy to see that we had a problem here. When you find a cow standing off to herself, away from the other cattle, you can almost bet that something isn’t right. Cows are herd animals. They stay with the bunch and don’t like being alone.

  That was my first clue in this case. The second clue came right on top of the first one: she looked thin and poor. For several days, she hadn’t been able to eat or drink. Her flanks had a sunken appearance, which made her hip bones stick out, and her hair looked rough.

  She was in sad shape, and if we didn’t get that bone out of her throat, she would become coyote bait.

  Wait, hold everything. Hadn’t I been working a case that involved coyotes? I felt almost sure that I had, but somehow the details escaped me. I glanced over the notes and messages that were pinned to the bulletin board of my mind. I found several notes, but none that related to coyotes.

  You want to take a peek at some of those messages? I can tell you that very few people or dogs have ever been invited to view the Security Division’s bulletin board. A lot of those messages are highly classified, don’t you know. In other words, this is a rare privilege. I probably shouldn’t go public with this information, but maybe it won’t hurt anything.

  Okay, we’ll start up here in the upper left hand corner and work our way down. You ready?

  “Bark at mailman 10:00.”

  “Saturday: buried a bone in garden.”

  “Check for coons in feed barn.”

  “Cat made insulting remark.”

  “J.T. Cluck ate a roofing nail, got bad heartburn.”

  “Cat needs humbling.”

  “Talk to Little Alfred about sharing his cookies.”

  “Don’t lick Sally May on the ankles. She hates it.”

  “Dreamed about Beulah. Wow.”

  “Dog bowl is empty.”

  “Saw bobcat tracks in corrals.”

  “Mailman came armed with squirt gun loaded with soapy water, shot me twice, what a rat. Tomorrow: double barking.”

  “Take bath, Emerald Pond.”

  “Don’t jump on skunks. DO NOT jump on skunks!”

  “Just finished patrol of chicken house, dying for a chicken dinner.”

  So there you are, a little glimpse at some of the messages that come through our office on a normal day. Oh, that last message, the one about the chicken? Ha ha. I don’t know who wrote it, but it has no place on the Security Division’s official bulletin board. Let’s wad it up and throw it in the trash.

  There, that’s done.

  Shameful. Outrageous. Whoever wrote that note will be punished.

  Where were we? Oh yes, coyotes. As you can see, I had left myself no notes or messages about coyotes, so…I don’t know where that leaves us. Maybe we should get back to the story.

  Okay, this dunce of a cow had swallowed a bone and had gotten it hung in her throat, and if we didn’t do something to remove it, she would wither away and drop dead.

  That’s probably what the old hag deserved. I mean, how dumb do you have to be to swallow a bone? But that’s the kind of work we do around here, saving the lives of dingbat cows that are dumber than dirt.

  Loper shut off the pickup motor and we watched the cow for a long time. Slim stroked his chin with one finger. Both men seemed lost in thought about the big project that faced us. As you will see, whatever thinking they did wasn’t enough. Keep reading.

  Chapter Eight: A Wreck

  Slim broke the silence. “Okay, we’ve got two cowboys, one rope, and one dog. How are we going to get the bone out?”

  “You sit on the hood with the rope. I’ll drive and give you a shot.”

  “Forget the hood. I’ll ride in the back.”

  “You’d get a closer shot on the hood.”

  “Yeah, and if I fell off, you’d run over me, and probably enjoy it too.”

  Loper chuckled. “Fine, do it the hard way, I don’t care. If you happen to slop a loop on her, dally the rope to the headache rack. We’ll let her fight the rope till she chokes down, walk down the rope, open her mouth, pull out the bone, take off the rope, and go home. Ten minutes and we’re done.”

  “We should have brought horses.”

  “Hurry up, will you? I’ve got things to do.” Slim said
no more. He found a catch-rope behind the seat, climbed into the bed of the pickup, and built a loop. When he had stepped outside the pickup and slammed the door, Loper muttered, “That is the slowest human being I ever saw.”

  Slim yelled, “All right, let’s do it!”

  Loper shifted into first gear and drove toward the cow. In theory, this promised to be an easy job: drive up close to the cow and pitch a loop around her neck. If cows were made of stone, cowboy plans would work every time, but cows are alive, and when a pickup comes toward them, they move.

  She moved away as the pickup approached. Slim threw long and missed. He reloaded, made another long shot, and missed again. He was starting to get mad. “For crying out loud, get closer and give me a shot!”

  “I told you to sit on the hood. Okay, hang on.” Loper tromped on the gas and we roared after the cow. She ran, of course, but this time, Loper jerked the wheel to the left and stayed right on her tail. We waited for Slim to make his throw.

  At that moment, we heard a racket coming from the bed of the pickup. Loper looked through the back window. “Where’d he go?”

  He seemed to be asking me. How was I supposed to know?

  It was then that we saw Slim, picking himself off the ground. Gee, he must have fallen out. He slammed his hat down on his head and stomped over to Loper’s open window. He didn’t look too cheerful.

  “Did you have to stick your foot plumb through the carburetor?”

  “You said you wanted a close shot, I gave you a close shot. And I told you to hang on.”

  “Thunder, I didn’t know you were going to play NASCAR.”

  Loper grunted and glanced at his watch. “I swear, it’s hard to find good help these days.”