The Almost Last Roundup

by John R. Erickson

  On and on we went, through heat and dust. By the time we made it down the caprock and looked off into the valley below, we saw six big double-decker cattle trucks parked on the county road, waiting to load.

  When we reached the road, Loper rode over to Cesar Rodriguez and shook his hand, wished him good morning and thanked him for being on time. Then he gazed at that long line of trucks and…well, I guess it hit him for the first time that they were going to haul every cow he owned to the sale barn. In two hours, the ranch would be empty.

  We bunched the herd in front of the corrals and started pushing them through the gate. In the past, we’d seen days when the cattle had given us trouble and had tried to stampede back to the pasture, but these cows were tired and thirsty, beat down from months of drought, and they didn’t have any fight left in them.

  They walked through the gate in a huge cloud of dust and stared at us with red, empty eyes.

  After we’d penned the herd, we had to separate the cows and calves, and you probably wonder why, since sorting a big herd of cattle is a lot of trouble. The reason is that if you haul cows and calves in the same truck, some of the calves are liable to get stepped on by the cows. The calves might weigh only 300-400 pounds, don’t you see, while a grown cow might weigh 1100-1200 pounds, and if you crowd ‘em together in a tight space…you get the point.

  So we separated the cows from the calves. It’s called “cutting” cattle, and I happen to be very good at it. Some people think…

  “Hank, get out of the gate!”

  …that cutting has to be done horseback, but…

  “Hank, go to the house!”

  …but I can testify that horses don’t know beans about cutting. It’s a job for a top-of-the-line, blue-ribbon…

  “Alfred, get your dog out of the pens!”

  Huh?

  Okay, sometimes the cowboys prefer doing their cutting horseback. It’s slower and cruder than doing it with dogs, but…anyway, Alfred needed some company, so I, uh, joined him outside the corrals. There, we watched the action and choked on the dust, and I licked him on the cheek.

  Pretty touching, huh? You bet. A boy and his dog, but no cake this time.

  Oh, and here’s a little detail I forgot to mention, a detail that nobody else noticed. After giving the lad’s face a good washing, I happened to look up and saw something I hadn’t seen in months.

  Dark clouds in the sky.

  Chapter Twelve: A Change of Plans

  The sorting took an hour—slow, hot work in a set of pens that hadn’t seen a drop of rain in months. Every time an animal took a step, it created a puff of dust, and don’t forget, we had four hundred cows and calves in the corral. When you multiply Puff x 400, you get a constant fog of dust, as well as red eyes, runny noses, and dirty faces. It was awful.

  By the time the sorting was done, Cesar had backed his truck up to the loading chute and had opened up the compartments to receive the first bunch of cows. He stuck his head out the trailer door and called out the numbers he wanted: “Five, twenty, twenty, and five!”

  That was my signal to spring into action. We were ready to load. I left Alfred, sprinted across the corral, wiggled under two fences, and took up my position outside the crowding alley. I turned toward the riders and barked the orders. “Okay, we’re ready to load. Bring five head!”

  This was going to be a big job and somebody needed to take charge.

  Loper, Slim, and Viola spurred their weary horses, cut off five cows, and drove them into the crowding alley. I took over from there. Darting my head through the spaces between the boards in the fence, I chewed hocks, snarled, snapped, and barked the cows up the loading chute and into the truck.

  Cesar closed a compartment door inside the cattle trailer and yelled, “Twenty!” I turned to the riders and relayed the orders. “Bring twenty head, and let’s not have any fooling around!”

  Here they came, twenty head, each with four legs, which meant that I had a total of eighty ankles to bite. Huge job. No ordinary dog could have…

  Rain drop?

  No ordinary dog could have done it. Did you notice that rain drop? Maybe not, since you weren’t there, but I noticed. It was a big one and it splattered right on the end of my nose. Several more landed in the pen and, oddly enough, they kicked up little puffs of dust.

  Loper gazed up at the sky but went right on with the work. I mean, getting a few counterfeit drops of rain was nothing new to this outfit. It had been going on for months and we’d seen it all before: clouds moved in, bunched together, built up into towering thunderheads, kicked out a few pitiful drops of rain, and fell apart, leaving hearts broken and expectations crushed.

  Nobody on our outfit was going to fall for that trick. We kept working. “Twenty cows!” They brought the cattle, pushed them into the crowding pen, and closed the gate, and I took over from there.

  “Up the chute, you codfish! Load up, you’re going to town!”

  Boy, you should have seen me in action! Bite, bark, snap, and snarl, what a piece of work it was, and I hardly noticed the rain drops. More than one. More than ten. Quite a few, actually, but we’d been to this rodeo before and nobody on our crew was going to play the fool—because we no longer believed in rain. It was all a big cruel joke.

  “Five head!”

  They brought the cattle and I barked ‘em up the chute and into the truck. Cesar was right there, straddling the loading chute, and he jumped down and closed the sliding door. He grinned at me and winked. “Nice work, Lassie.”

  Who? Oh, maybe it was a joke. No problem. But he was right about the nice work. By George, we had turned in a pretty slick piece of…a cold blast of wind sent cottonwood leaves clattering across the pen.

  Cesar shielded his eyes with a hand and looked off to the northwest. “Holy cow, is that rain?” He cupped his hand and yelled, “Loper, we’re fixing to get wet!”

  Loper snorted at that. “We’re fixing to get some wind. Let’s load trucks!”

  Cesar jumped into the cab of his Peterbilt and pulled away from the loading chute, just as the second truck came down the hill towards the pens. The two trucks had just passed each other…when it hit.

  I could hear it coming, a roaring sound off to the northwest. I turned to look and watched as parts of the ranch began to disappear behind a veil of…surely that wasn’t rain. We didn’t believe in rain, right?

  You know, one thing I’ve learned about rain is that it really doesn’t care what you believe. And fellers, we got plastered. Forget the raindrops, this was buckets, driven by a wind that tore limbs off of trees.

  What a crazy world. Five minutes earlier, we had been blinded by dust. Now we were blinded by water. The cattle turned their backs to the wind, dropped their heads, and dripped streams of water off their noses and tails.

  Loper, the guy who didn’t believe in rain, lost his hat and almost lost his horse when Dude got beaned on the head by a hailstone. Loper bailed out of the saddle and yelled, “It’ll pass in five minutes, but we’d better take cover.”

  I don’t know who or whom he was yelling at, ‘cause the rest of us were already heading for cover under the calf shed. I was there when Slim and Viola arrived, leading their horses. Viola dived under the shed, while Slim went to work, jerking cinches and pulling saddles and bridles. He had to leave the horses out in the rain, don’t you see, and didn’t want the saddles to get soaked.

  By the time he got that done, his shirt was plastered against his skin and his straw hat had taken on the shape of…I don’t know, it resembled a chicken with its wings hanging down, and he looked pretty silly.

  The rain roared on the tin roof. Little rivers of water ran through the corrals, floating dried cow chips that had been there since last fall. I had no idea where the rest of the crew had gone: Loper, Sally May, Baby Molly and Little Alfred. It was every man for himself, and we were all taking shelt
er wherever we could.

  Over the drum of the rain, Viola yelled, “Will this end the drought?”

  Slim’s glasses were so wet and fogged, he couldn’t see beans. He yelled, “This won’t last long. It’s the pattern in a drought. In fifteen minutes, the sun’ll pop out and it’ll be hotter than a skillet.”

  “Well, I’m freezing!”

  Slim’s face went blank for a moment, then he reached his arm across her shoulder and pulled her close. “Well, I’m warmer than a wet shirt.”

  “Really? I’ve wondered about that.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  So there we stood, under the shed whose roof was gushing sheets of water, and waited for the rain to quit, just as we knew it would. It kept raining. The wind died down but the rain continued in a steady pour.

  Fifteen minutes later, Loper came splashing through the corrals. He’d found a yellow rain slicker in the saddle shed and it had about fifteen mouse holes in it. His hat was a ruin and his hair hung down in his eyes.

  “Cesar’s stuck in the mud and can’t get his truck up the hill. We’d better get the tractor.”

  Slim rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Hey Loper, I know you don’t want to believe this, but it’s raining. Them ain’t bird feathers falling out of the sky. Even if we pull him up the hill, he’ll still have seven miles of muddy road before he gets to the blacktop.”

  Loper set his jaw. “We’re shipping cattle. Come on.”

  He went back out in the rain. Slim shook his head and grinned at Viola. “He won’t rest until we tear up some equipment. I’ll see you later at the house…if I survive.”

  He trotted out into the rain. I was very tempted to stay behind with…well, You Know Who, but if my guys were fixing to tear up some equipment, I needed to be there to cheer them on. I dashed out into the rain and followed Slim up to the machine shed.

  The John Deere tractor hadn’t been driven in two months and had a mouse nest in the exhaust pipe. It caught fire and blew sparks all over the place, but since the air was as humid as a wet rag, the place didn’t burn down.

  Loper grabbed a big nylon tow rope and Slim drove the tractor to the base of the hill where Cesar was stuck. The tractor didn’t have a cab, by the way, so he got even more soaked than he’d been before, and he could hardly see. The tractor slid in the mud and banged into the front bumper of the truck.

  He yelled at Loper, “What did I tell you!” Loper, who looked like a drownded rat, ignored him. He hooked one end of the rope to Cesar’s bumper and the other to the tractor. “Take ‘er up the hill!”

  Slim throttled up, shifted into first gear, and hit the end of the rope. It was nylon, so it stretched. The tractor tires ran like a buzz saw, slinging mud all over Slim and Loper. Cesar gunned the motor in the Pete…and guess what happened.

  The rope broke, the truck slid into the ditch, and Slim and the tractor went flying off the side of the little hill and landed at the bottom.

  Wow. In no time at all, they had stuck the tractor, stuck the truck, and broken a brand new nylon tow rope.

  And the rain was still coming down in buckets. Slim came slipping and sliding up the hill—soaked, covered with mudballs, and mad. He was about to scream something, but Loper raised his hand for silence. “You were right, so dry up. Get Cesar and let’s go to the house. Maybe Sally May can brew up some hot chocolate.”

  Slim glared at him, but finally grinned and muttered, “Loper, you’re a piece of work, I’ll swan.”

  Cesar left his truck in the ditch and we all trotted to the house. The men were in ruins—soaked from head to toe, limp hats, muddy boots, smelly, the whole nine yards of playing trucks and tractors in a pouring rain—so they didn’t go inside the house. They pulled up lawn chairs and sat on the front porch.

  And guess who was right there beside them to place his head in their laps and share his wet-dog aroma. Me.

  Moments after they had settled into their chairs and propped their muddy boots on the porch rail, Loper grumbled, “Enjoy it while you can, boys, because it won’t last five minutes.”

  Two hours later, we were still sitting on the porch, watching the rain. The guys had finished two cups of hot chocolate and Slim dashed across the yard to check the rain gauge. Five inches. When he got back, he said, “Well, what are you going to do with your cows?”

  Loper shrugged. “We can’t fight nature.”

  “Sure we can. You do it all the time. We’ve still got a couple of pickups that ain’t stuck or tore up. Don’t let a little rain ruin your plans.”

  Loper managed a chuckle. “If you ever move to Montana, I’ll miss your warped sense of humor.” He turned to Cesar. “Can we jump those cows out of the truck or will we need a portable loading chute? And by the way, we don’t have a portable loading chute.”

  Cesar laughed. “They’ll jump. I’ve done it before.”

  “Well, let’s open the gates and turn ‘em out. I hate to be a sucker for good news, but it looks like this rain has broken the drought. And thank you, Lord.”

  We opened all the gates and let a bunch of tired, hungry cows go looking for green grass.

  Out in the Wild West, where we live, a five-inch rain brings everything to a dead stop. Parts of our roads got washed out and the rest became a swamp of mud, which meant that everybody associated with this deal was stranded at headquarters. I mean, you talk about muddy roads! Cesar and the drivers had to spend the night in their trucks and Miss Viola slept in Alfred’s room. Slim, Alfred, and I camped on the porch and listened to the rain. What a great sound!

  So there you are. The Last Roundup turned out to be a complete disaster, and we were all so happy, we could hardly sit still. The ranch survived the drought and Slim didn’t have to move away.

  Best of all, Sally May’s rotten little cat got drenched and yowled all night long. Hee hee! I loved it, and what a wonderful way to finish the story!

  This case is…oh, by the way, while the guys and I were sitting out on the porch, Sally May and Viola baked a birthday cake for Loper. The bad news is that I didn’t get any of it.

  Oh well, this case is closed.

  Further Reading

  Have you read all of Hank’s adventures?

  1 The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog

  2 The Further Adventures of Hank the Cowdog

  3 It’s a Dog’s Life

  4 Murder in the Middle Pasture

  5 Faded Love

  6 Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

  7 The Curse of the Incredible Priceless Corncob

  8 The Case of the One-Eyed Killer Stud Horse

  9 The Case of the Halloween Ghost

  10 Every Dog Has His Day

  11 Lost in the Dark Unchanted Forest

  12 The Case of the Fiddle-Playing Fox

  13 The Wounded Buzzard on Christmas Eve

  14 Hank the Cowdog and Monkey Business

  15 The Case of the Missing Cat

  16 Lost in the Blinded Blizzard

  17 The Case of the Car-Barkaholic Dog

  18 The Case of the Hooking Bull

  19 The Case of the Midnight Rustler

  20 The Phantom in the Mirror

  21 The Case of the Vampire Cat

  22 The Case of the Double Bumblebee Sting

  23 Moonlight Madness

  24 The Case of the Black-Hooded Hangmans

  25 The Case of the Swirling Killer Tornado

  26 The Case of the Kidnapped Collie

  27 The Case of the Night-Stalking Bone Monster

  28 The Mopwater Files

  29 The Case of the Vampire Vacuum Sweeper

  30 The Case of the Haystack Kitties

  31 The Case of the Vanishing Fishhook

  32 The Garbage Monster from Outer Space

 
; 33 The Case of the Measled Cowboy

  34 Slim’s Good-bye

  35 The Case of the Saddle House Robbery

  36 The Case of the Raging Rottweiler

  37 The Case of the Deadly Ha-Ha Game

  38 The Fling

  39 The Secret Laundry Monster Files

  40 The Case of the Missing Bird Dog

  41 The Case of the Shipwrecked Tree

  42 The Case of the Burrowing Robot

  43 The Case of the Twisted Kitty

  44 The Dungeon of Doom

  45 The Case of the Falling Sky

  46 The Case of the Tricky Trap

  47 The Case of the Tender Cheeping Chickies

  48 The Case of the Monkey Burglar

  49 The Case of the Booby-Trapped Pickup

  50 The Case of the Most Ancient Bone

  51 The Case of the Blazing Sky

  52 The Quest for the Great White Quail

  53 Drover’s Secret Life

  54 The Case of the Dinosaur Birds

  55 The Case of the Secret Weapon

  56 The Case of the Coyote Invasion

  57 The Disappearance of Drover

  58 The Case of the Mysterious Voice

  59 The Case of the Perfect Dog

  60 The Big Question

  61 The Case of the Prowling Bear

  62 The Ghost of Rabbits Past

  63 The Return of the Charlie Monsters

  64 The Case of the Three Rings

  65 The Almost Last Roundup

  About the Author and Illustrator

  John R. Erickson, a former cowboy, has written numerous books for both children and adults and is best known for his acclaimed Hank the Cowdog series. He lives and works on his ranch in Perryton, Texas, with his family.

  Gerald L. Holmes has illustrated numerous cartoons and textbooks in addition to the Hank the Cowdog series. He lives in Perryton, Texas.