Tap . . . tap . . . tap.

  I studied their faces again, and suddenly realized that they weren’t going to use me in the roundup. They weren’t even looking at me. They had cut me out of their plans, thrown me aside like an old boot. This was crazy! I mean, what’s the reason for keeping a highly trained cowdog on the place if you’re not going to let him use his talents? Over the years, I had proved myself . . .

  Okay, maybe I’d messed up a time or two. Stood in the wrong gate. Barked at the wrong time. Stirred up a cow or two. Caused a couple of, uh, stampedes. But, hey, I’d learned from my little lapses in judgment, and those experiences had made me an older dog, a wiser dog. I was sure I could control my savage instincts and be a productive member of the Team.

  No more careless barking. No more picking fights with stupid . . . no more getting into childish scuffles with the cows, and yes, I had learned valuable lessons about standing in the middle of gates. I had graduated from the School of Hard Knots and was ready . . .

  They left, I mean, just walked away and left me sitting there! I hadn’t even finished pleading my case. They swung up into their saddles and rode off across the dew-covered pasture, and not one of them even bothered to look back and see that they had left me there . . . a broken dog, a dog who was no longer wanted.

  Chapter Three: Drover Gives Me an Idea

  Okay, that was IT. I was finished with this ranch and the ungrateful people who lived on it. I had given them the best years of my life and this was the thanks I got. I had no choice but to resign my position as Head of Ranch Security, quit in disgrace, leave the hateful place, and spend the rest of my days wandering in the wilderness, eating bugs and grub worms.

  I whirled around and was about to march off to a lonely exile in the wilderness, when I ran into someone. A cat. Where had he come from? Only seconds before, he’d been nowhere in sight, but now . . .

  Have you ever noticed that at the very moment when you crave silence and wish to be alone with your thoughts, a cat shows up? I’ve noticed. It happens all the time around here. His name is Pete, and though he’s just a dumb little ranch cat, he has a genius for showing up at exactly the wrong times. If he were anything but a cat, you might begin to wonder if he’s really so dumb, but he is a cat, so that leaves just one explanation: dumb luck.

  The little creep was incredibly lucky, and his good luck is always bad luck for me, because I have no use for a cat. I have no use for a cat even on a good day, and on a bad day, such as the one we’re discussing, I’d sooner have warts than be in the company of a cat.

  But there he was—purring, rubbing on anything that didn’t kick him away, and wearing that insolent smirk that drives me nuts.

  I greeted him with a withering glare. “What are you doing here, you little sneak?”

  “Good morning, Hankie.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s so good about it?”

  “Well, the sun’s up and the dew is sparkling on the grass.”

  “Big deal. It was the same yesterday and the day before. So what?”

  “I noticed that we have a cowboy crew on the ranch, Hankie. Do you suppose they’re going to round up the pasture?”

  “Yes, I suppose they are. What’s your point?”

  He glanced around in a circle. “Well, Hankie, to be truthful, I was a little surprised that you didn’t . . . go with them.”

  His words caused my lips to twitch, exposing two rows of long white fangs. “I didn’t go with them, kitty, because I didn’t want to.”

  He heaved a sigh of relief. “Oh good. I was so afraid that . . . well, the thought occurred to me that maybe . . . you weren’t invited.”

  He started rubbing on my front legs. I moved a step backward. “Don’t touch me, you little reptile. Of course I was invited. They begged me to go, but I had other things to do.”

  “Oh really? Such as?”

  “Such as . . . the list is so long, I don’t have time to discuss it. Furthermore, it’s classified information and I’m not at liberty to reveal it to a cat. Sorry.”

  He sat down, wrapped his tail around his body, and began licking his paw with long slow strokes of his tongue. “It hurts to be left out, doesn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that, Pete. For your information, the Head of Ranch Security is wired into everything that happens on this . . .” I stuck my nose into his face. “What are you getting at? Is there some point to this conversation, or are you merely wasting my time?”

  “We cats are very observant, Hankie. We notice little details.”

  “Hurry up.”

  “We notice little details such as . . . a cowdog who isn’t invited to help with the cow work.”

  “I’ve already told you . . .”

  “Then a long face and a look of deepest despair.”

  “Lies, Pete.”

  He looked at me with his weird yellow eyes. “They left you out, Hankie, and now you’re feeling worthless and unwanted.”

  A growl began rumbling in depths of my throat, and in the back of my mind, I could hear the voice of Data Control: “Target is acquired and the weapon is ready for launch! Stand by for countdown.” Every muscle in my enormous body was tense and ready for the launch. “Three! Two! One!”

  I buried the little snot under the missile of my body, I mean, I rolled him up in a ball. But, you know, the funny thing about cats is that they never stay buried for long, so it came as no surprise, no great shock that he managed to . . . uh . . .wiggle out of the grisp of my grasp and buzzsaw my face with his claws. But that merely poured gasoline upon the embers of my righteous anger and made me even more determined to . . .

  BZZZZZZZT!

  A guy forgets how much damage a sniveling little cat can do with those claws, but the impoin­tant point is that I bulled my way through his defensive measures, took my lumps, and kept truckin’, sending the Kitty Army into blind, cowardly retreat. I chased him for twenty yards and ran him up a chinaberry tree.

  It was beautiful, delicious. Poetry in motion. A magnificent symphony of Pure Dogness. I’m not sure the Security Division has ever known triumph on such a grand scale.

  Standing at the base of the tree, I looked up and yelled, “And let that be a lesson to you!”

  “Enjoy the roundup, Hankie.”

  “I will, and you enjoy the tree.”

  And with that stinging reply, I marched away from the tree, leaving Kitty Kitty sitting in the rubble of his own shubbles. Shambles. Sitting in the ramble of his own shambles. Sitting in the rubble of his own . . . phooey.

  The point is that I had delivered the cat another humiliating defeat, and no dog could have been prouder. I held my head at a triumphant angle and . . . my nose was killing me! I sat down near the saddle shed and felt a cloud of gloom moving across my mind. Not only had I been cut out of the roundup work, but the cat had almost cut off my nose. Things had gone from bad to awful.

  Just then, Drover walked up. “I heard a bunch of noise. What . . .” He stared at the wounds on my nose. “Gosh, what happened?”

  I told him the whole miserable story. “The cowboys have lost confidence in me, Drover, and now I feel worthless and useless. I thought that thrashing the cat might brighten my day, but . . . well, you can see how that turned out.”

  “Yeah, he brightened your nose.”

  “Exactly. He brightened my nose with blood and made a gloomy day even gloomier.” I stood up and began pacing. “And now my whole life seems pointless. I just wish there was something I could to do to show the cowboys . . .” I stopped pacing and stared at three mounds of fresh dirt in the middle of the corral gate. “Drover, come here and look at this.”

  He walked over to the dirt piles and sniffed them. “I’ll be derned, gopher mounds. I guess there’s a gopher digging underground. I hope the cows don’t trip when they go through the gate.”

  I stared at him. “What did you just say?”

  “I said, I hope the gophers don’t trip . . . I hope the cows don’t dig . . . oh drat, I can’t remember.”

  “Drover, you may have just come up with a brilliant idea!”

  “I did?”

  “Yes, I know that sounds unlikely, that you’d come up with a brilliant idea, but listen to this.” My mind was soaring by this time and I started pacing. “Where gophers dig, they leave the surface undisturbed, but the ground beneath the surface is a maze of tunnels and shafts, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Okay, listen closely. What happens when a herd of large animals walks across that surface?”

  “I don’t know. They step on a gopher?”

  “No. Their hooves break through the surface and they fall into the gopher tunnel.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “Don’t you get it? Nobody knows how deep those tunnels go. Why, they might go for miles and miles, right into some boiling pit at the center of the earth.”

  “Well, I don’t think . . .”

  “Just imagine, Drover, what would happen if all the cattle on this ranch plunged to their deaths in a bottomless gopher tunnel. Loper would be broke. Slim would be out of a job, and so would we.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  I marched over to him and whapped him on the back. “Congratulations, son, you’ve just given me a way of redeeming myself!”

  “You mean . . .”

  “Yes. I’ll stand in the gate and make sure that we don’t lose any cattle in the Bottomless Gopher Tunnel.”

  “Yeah, but Loper told you . . .”

  “He didn’t notice the gopher evidence, Drover, and that’s why we’re here, to save Our People from their own errors and mistakes. Loper was careless, his mind was on other things.” I stepped back and gave him a broad smile. “What do you think of that, soldier?”

  “Well, it sounds . . . it sounds a little crazy.”

  “Crazy! Hey, this was your idea and I’m trying to . . .” Just then, I heard the sound of cattle in the distance. “Shhh. Listen. The cowboys are coming in with the herd. We haven’t a moment to spare. Quick, to the corral gate!”

  “See you later!”

  Chapter Four: A Small Error in Judgment

  We moved our troops ten feet to the north, and there, in the middle of the open gate, we established the lines of battle. But when I glanced around, it occurred to me that some of our troops were missing. I took a head-count and . . . hmmm, we appeared to be one dog short. I counted again and . . . suddenly remembered that Drover’s last words to me had been, “See you later.”

  Do you see the meaning of this? You’ll be shocked. No, maybe you won’t, because it was Typical Drover. See, the little never-sweat had seen some hard work looming on the horizon and had left the country. I directed my gaze toward the machine shed and, sure enough, there he stood in the crack between the two big sliding doors—watching me.

  I yelled, “All right, pal! Go ahead and hide from responsibility. I’ll see you later, after I receive my award for heroism.”

  He vanished inside the barn. That was okay. I would do better without him anyway. If he’d stayed around, I would have had to listen to him moan and groan, and answer his foolish questions about the assignment. He thought this was a “crazy idea”? My best response was not to argue, but merely to prove him wrong.

  What did he know about gophers? Nothing. But I knew a lot. They’re rodents who spend their whole lives underground. We very seldom see them because . . . well, because they spend their whole lives underground, and maybe it’s obvious that you never see an animal that lives . . . never mind.

  They dig these underground tunnels, and every three or four feet, they push their dirt outside the tunnel, creating the piles of soil we refer to as “gopher mounds.”

  What isn’t so obvious about gophers is that they’re destructive little brutes. Where they dig, the ground becomes softer than the soil nearby, creating a situation the cowboys refer to as “rotten ground.” When a horse moves across “rotten ground,” his feet can break through the surface, causing him to stumble or even fall.

  And we’ve already discussed what might happen if a herd of cows walked over a piece of ground that had been burrowed and booby-trapped by a villainous little gopher. Don’t forget, he’d done his mischief right in the middle of the corral gate.

  It’s pretty impressive that a dog would know so much about wildlife, isn’t it? You bet. Ordinary mutts never take the time to memorize the names and habits of the various faunas and floras on their ranches. In fact, a lot of your ordinary mutts don’t even have a ranch to supervise. All they have is a yard in town or a front porch, and what’s to memorize about a front porch? June bugs? Buzzing flies? Maybe a mouse, if they’re lucky?

  That’s why they spend most of their time sleeping and don’t know beans about wildlife. Me, I take pride in knowing every little detail about every little creature that inhabits my country, right down to the ants.

  You want to know about ants?

  They’re tiny bugs. They live in a hole in the ground and work a twelve-hour day. Darkness falls and those guys are gone, back in the hole. Their sleeping quarters are very crowded, with bugs stacked on top of bugs, and no doubt the place stinks of sweating ants.

  They will eat almost anything: seeds, leaves, crumbs, and grasshopper legs. They seem to be very fond of grasshopper legs, and almost any day in the spring or summer, you’ll see an ant trying to drag one back to the den. These grasshopper “drumsticks” are much bigger than the ants who carry them, and some dogs wonder why an ant would go to the trouble to heave and tug a piece of food that’s ten times bigger than the guy who’s going to eat it.

  Are you shocked that I know the answer? Heh heh. Here’s the scoop on grasshopper drumsticks. Ants eat ’em on Thanksgiving Day instead of turkey legs, for the simple reason that a turkey leg would never fit inside an ant den.

  Oh, one last detail about ants. They love picnics. They’re too stingy to hold their own, so they invade the picnics of others. Marching in long columns, just as though they’d been invited, they move into the picnic ground and set up shop. They are particularly fond of sandwiches, ice cream, and cake crumbs. In fact, they’ll steal any kind food except pickled okra.

  You never see an ant eating pickled okra.

  So there you are, a pretty amazing lesson on ants—what they do, what they eat, and why you often see them dragging huge grasshopper drumstick-legs back to their holes. Actually, this is only a tiny part of my knowledge of ants, but we’re out of time and need to get back to . . .

  What were we discussing before we got involved in Ant Lore? I have a feeling that it was pretty important and that we need to get on with the story, but at this moment I can’t . . . hmmmmm.

  WAIT! Hold everything, stop, halt. We were right in the middle of a very important mission to keep the cows out of the corral and save the entire herd from plunging into a bottomless gopher hole. Are you ready? Okay, here we go, back to the corral gate.

  Yes, this was a very important assignment, and it was a good thing that my interrogation of Drover had brought this crucial Gopher Information to our attention. It appeared that I had gotten it just in time to avoid a terrible disaster.

  But I would have to hurry if I wanted to check things out before the cows came in. The bawling of the herd was growing louder and . . .

  Huh? Cows? They had already arrived at the gate? Well, that was too bad. We had taken this gate out of service and they could just bug off and wait. (A little humor there. Bug off, ants. Get it? Ha ha.)

  Why were they gathering around the gate and staring at me? How can a dog concentrate on his business when he’s got fifteen dull-eyed cows gawking at him? He can’t. It’s terribly distracting.

  I glared up at the circle of eyes. “Look, we’re doing repairs and we’re not ready for you yet. Anyone with half a brain could see that. Take a hike. Take a powder. You can’t use this gate until I do a Gopher Search.”

  They didn’t move, but continued staring at me.

  “What part of ‘Go away’ don’t you understand? Buzz off. Scram. Beat it. Nobody passes until I give the word.” They didn’t move. “Okay, you don’t seem to take hints, so take this!”

  Heh heh. Boy, did I give those cows a surprise. I threw myself at them, a lightning bolt of . . .

  “Hank, get out of the gate!”

  . . . a lightning bolt of flashing teeth, snapping jaws, flaming eyes, and ferocious barks that . . .

  “Hank, move!”

  . . . sent them scattering in all directions like a covey of . . .

  “Idiot! Stop barking!”

  . . . fluttering quail.

  “Hold the herd, boys, they’re gonna run!”

  Yes sir, I got the point across. I hated to be rude, but how else can you communicate with a bunch of brainless cows? I mean, we weren’t discussing physics. It was a very simple message: “We’re making repairs. You can’t pass through the gate until . . . ”

  Gee whiz, those cattle were really spooked, running in all directions, almost like a . . . uh . . . stampede or something. Maybe I’d come on a little strong with my message, but when a guy’s big and tough and about half-mean, sometimes he forgets . . . and, oops, it appeared that the cowboys were whipping and spurring to hold the herd . . . and yelling in angry tones . . . and crashing through the willows and tamaracks along the . . .