A shiver passed through my biver…through my body, let us say. Why the shiver? Because I knew that Slim would be mad or half-mad for the rest of the day, and the job of cheering him up would fall squarely on us—his dogs.

  Chapter Three: Bachelor Breakfast

  Okay, Slim had been sitting in a chair on the porch, and suddenly sprang out of the chair. That was pretty remarkable, because the man wasn’t famous for springing around in the early morning hours, but he sprang out of his chair and headed for the rain gauge, which was nailed to the top of a gate post.

  Wait. Should the word be “sprang” or “sprung?” You know me, I want to get it right. Why? The kids. We don’t want them going around, talking like a bunch of peanut-crunching chimpanzees. Here, let’s take a closer look at this:

  Tic, tack, toe.

  Rick, rack, roe.

  Ting, tang, tongue.

  Spring, sprang, sprung.

  And there’s our answer. “Slim sprung out of his chair.” Wow, is this amazing or what? Your ordinary mutts know nothing about this stuff, and we’re talking about your town dogs, your poodles and your Chihuahuas. They’re pampered and lazy, and they never give a thought to the future of this nation. If the kids start talking like monkeys, they don’t care.

  You know who cares? Cowdogs. Heads of Ranch Security. ME.

  Now…where were we? Hmm. Bananas? Yes. When monkeys aren’t crunching peanuts and leaving shells all over the place, they’re consuming large quantities of bananas and speaking gibberish. This nation will never prosper as long as…

  Wait. We were on the porch, right? And Slim Chance had sprung out of his chair and was walking barefoot toward the rain gauge, right? Now we’re on it.

  You know, dogs see a lot of things we can’t talk about. Imagine this scene. In day’s first light, a full-grown, half-naked cowboy-scarecrow was walking barefoot across an expanse of mud, in an area that normal people would describe as “the yard.” Ha. See, most of the grass in Slim’s so-called yard had perished in the drought, leaving a few brave stalks of ragweed that were still clinging to life. Mostly, the “yard” was pure dirt, only now it had turned into mud.

  The guy was walking barefooted through the MUD, on his way to the rain gauge, and he didn’t seem to care that mud was oozing up between his toes. I’m not kidding. Even on the porch, I could see it.

  He made it to the gate and snatched the glass tube out of the rain gauge holder. He brought the tube close to his face and glared at it. “Twenty-five hundredths and a spider!” He turned a flaming pair of eyes toward the sky and shook his fist. “Sissy clouds! We need five inches and you give us twenty-five hundredths!”

  And then…this was hard to believe…he drew back his arm and threw the rain gauge as far as he could throw it, which was pretty far. It sailed across the gravel drive and shattered against the south side of the saddle shed.

  A ghoulish smile leaped across his mouth and he yelled, “There, by grabs, see how you like that!”

  Amazing.

  He stomped back to the porch and threw himself into his chair. Hard. He seemed to be expressing his anger by throwing his body into the chair, don’t you see, and never suspected that it would tip over backwards. Guess what? It did. His muddy bare feet shot up from the floor and arched above his head, and he and the chair went crashing into the wall.

  What can you say?

  I turned my gaze away from him and pretended that I didn’t notice. As I’ve said, we dogs have stories that must be locked away in the safety deposit box of our heart—stories we can’t share with anyone, and stories that nobody would believe anyway.

  As Slim was picking himself off the floor, I went to Taps of Sympathy on the tail section and switched on a facial expression that said, “I saw nothing. Honest.”

  He set the chair back where it belonged, brushed a briar patch of hair out of his eyes, heaved a sigh, and sat down, this time in a civilized manner. He threw one leg over the opposite knee and stared at his foot, which was caked with mud.

  A heavy silence fell upon us, then he spoke. “A man gets a little crazy in a drought.”

  Oh? I had hardly noticed.

  “When we need a good soaking rain and get a stinking little shower…well, it hurts, pooch. You can understand that.”

  Right, exactly, and I was doing my best to share his pain.

  “My feet got muddy.”

  Well…yes. Duh. When you walk barefoot through mud, your feet get muddy.

  “Hank, I’ve got an idea on how we can fix that.”

  Oh brother. I knew this was coming.

  “Come here.” I went. “Lie down and hold still.”

  I did as I was told. I lay there like a door mat, whilst he wiped his muddy feet on the hair of my back and ribs, and cleaned his toes with the flap of my left ear. Drover watched from the other side of the porch, out of harm’s way, and GRINNED.

  “There! Good dog. Anybody who says you’re worthless just don’t know the full story.” He yawned and stretched. “I wonder what we could rustle up for breakfast.” He pushed himself out of the chair and looked down at me. “How’d you get so muddy?”

  He thinks he’s funny.

  He brushed some of the mud off my coat. “I guess you can come in, and I might even share my breakfast. How does that sound?”

  Breakfast? I was no pushover, but…well, a good breakfast can heal a lot of wounds.

  I followed him into the house, and I’m proud to report that Drover wasn’t invited. Good. He didn’t deserve to be part of our Inner Circle. Don’t forget that he had grinned while I was being used as a foot-scraper. That would go into his record—grinning at the misfortunes of a superior officer.

  I followed Slim into the kitchen—a loyal dog preparing to share Precious Breakfast Moments with his cowboy companion. He gave me a wink. “How ‘bout some bacon and eggs?”

  Slurp. Perfect. Yes!

  He opened the ice box door, bent over, and looked inside. “Well, I see that we’re out of bacon, but that’ll work, ‘cause we’re out of eggs too.”

  Oh brother.

  He reached inside. “Wait. Lookie here, pooch, some left-over boiled chicken gizzards.”

  Chicken gizzards! For breakfast?

  He brought out a plastic bread bag containing three pounds of gizzards that he had boiled up who-knows-when. He dumped them out on a paper plate. I guess that was his idea of “food presentation,” dumping a mess of cold grayish-green chicken gizzards onto a paper plate.

  Have you ever looked at a bunch of boiled gizzards in the morning? Let me tell you something, it’s shocking. A cold gizzard reminds you of something that came out of a dead chicken, and you have to wonder…what kind of man eats those things for breakfast? And why?

  I mean, this is the modern age and we have grocery stores. Even Twitchell has one. They sell things like bacon and eggs, steak and pork chops. All you have to do is drive into town and do a little shopping.

  Oh well. A dog can’t spend his life grieving over all the bacon and eggs that didn’t show up. Remember the Wise Old Saying? “There will be days when Life offers nothing but cold chicken gizzards for breakfast.” That’s a great Wise Old Saying, and it hits Truth right between the nose.

  But to be fair about it, I had to admit that while the gizzards didn’t look very appetizing, they smelled pretty…sniff, sniff…what was that smell? Gag!

  Even Slim noticed, and he had the nose of a brick. His eyes widened and his lip curled. “Good honk, I think they’ve started to decompose.”

  Decompose! What kind of zoo was this?

  He rushed to the back door and threw them outside. On his way back, he looked at me and said, “Don’t eat ‘em, pooch. They’re past their prime.”

  I had never been so insulted. Did I look dumb enough to eat a pile of decomposing chicken gizzards? Let me address that question in two stages.

  Stage One: I most certainly was NOT dumb enough to eat a pile of crawly decomposing chicken gizzards that smelled so gruesome, he’d pitched them out into the back yard. What kind of moron…

  Stage Two: On the other hand, a dog must keep his options open. Until we actually ran tests, we wouldn’t know whether they had become toxic or were just, well, passing through a Cheesy Phase.

  See, cheese smells cheesy because it’s aged, and that’s crucial to this whole discussion about our food supply. Many types of food improve during the Aging Process, don’t you know, and we would have to suspend judgment on the material in the back yard until we, uh, received an update on the Breakfast Situation.

  It’s pretty amazing that a dog would pay such close attention to diet and nutrition, isn’t it? You bet. Your ordinary run of mutts never give it a thought. They’ll eat anything—scraps, garbage, and the factory-made sawdust products that come in a fifty-pound sack and are passed off as “dog food.”

  On this outfit, we make a serious study of what we put into our mouths. We never forget that what we eat is who we are. Food feeds the mind, and the mind of a dog is an awesome thing.

  Now, where were we? I have no idea. Tell you what, let’s erase the blackboard, change chapters, get ourselves organized, and regroup on the other side.

  I hope you enjoyed our Unit on Nutrition.

  Chapter Four: Bad News on the Radio

  Oh yes, breakfast. Slim was tramping around the kitchen in his underwear, and I was waiting for some hints on what he might offer for breakfast.

  It wasn’t looking good. He was out of bacon and eggs. He had thrown parts of a dead chicken out the back door. Pancakes and waffles weren’t even a possibility because he would never make anything that required measuring or stirring, thought, preparation, or patience.

  Toast? How about some toast with Sally May’s wild plum jelly? There wasn’t much he could do to mess up a piece of toast.

  Nope, toast was out too. The half-loaf of bread he found in the cabinet was sprouting hairy green mold. You know what he said? “You wouldn’t think that mold could grow in a drought, would you? I guess I need to do an inventory once in a while.”

  Inventory. Oh brother.

  He held the package of bread above his head, bent his knees, and sent a nice, soft, arching shot toward the trash can on the other side of the room. It was a long shot, and I wouldn’t have bet that he could make it…plunk…but he did.

  He was proud of himself and flashed a grin. “That was a three-pointer, pooch. You know, the Celtics tried to draft me right out of the eighth grade, but I was too serious about my studies to go off and get famous.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, but it sounded like a windy tale.

  He opened a cabinet door and squinted at a collection of canned goods. “How ‘bout some green beans?”

  I dropped my gaze to the floor. No.

  “How ‘bout stewed dummaters?”

  Dogs don’t eat tomatoes.

  He rummaged around some more. “Here we go! I’ve got fifteen cans of mackerel. How does that sound?”

  Was he serious? Dead fish for breakfast? NO!

  He gave me an ugly scowl. “Listen, dog, you ain’t Mrs. Vanderbilt’s toy schnauzer. Sometimes we have to cowboy-up and live off the land.” He heaved a sigh. “Okay, canned mackerel don’t sound so great to me either. Let’s skip breakfast and listen to some happy music.”

  He switched on an old radio he kept on the counter and we heard a news report. He listened for about thirty seconds, made a sour face, and…well, began talking to the radio.

  “Listen, you. I’m living in the middle of a drought and that’s all the bad news I can stand.” He twisted the dial to another station, and got another blast of breaking news. I could see that he was getting mad. “You hammerheads report all the bad news you can drag up. You want to give me a headache so you can sell me some aspirin. Well, I don’t need any aspirin.” He looked down at me. “If they can’t find any good news, why don’t they just shut up and go find an honest job?”

  I agreed. In fact, I barked at the radio, just to let ‘em know that, by George, we dogs didn’t want any more of their dreary news. Or their aspens.

  There! Slim and I had struck a blow for dogs and cowboys all across the globe.

  Wearing a ferocious scowl, Slim turned the dial from station to station, until he finally found some soft, soothing music. Whew, just in time to save us from…I don’t know what he might have done if this had gone on another minute, probably something crazy. Maybe some soothing music would pull his brink back from the edge of the periphery.

  But you know what? The song turned out to be not as soothing as you might have expected. You want to hear it?

  Bad News

  Bad news. Worse news.

  Ca-tas-tro-phe.

  Scandals. Wrecks. Explosions.

  Live on teevee.

  Gold is down. So’s the Pound.

  Investments are in the tank.

  Hide your cash beneath the mattress.

  Chances are, they’ll close the bank.

  Angry mobs are throwing garbage at their leaders,

  And a hurricane destroyed a beach.

  Infectious germs are getting stronger by the minute,

  And the president will give another speech.

  Sin, decay, and corruption.

  Too far advanced to reverse.

  We hope you have a splendid afternoon

  Because tomorrow very likely will be worse.

  It will be worse.

  Ba-a-a-ad News.

  When the song ended, we heard the announcer’s voice. “There you are, folks, ‘Bad News,’ the latest smash hit from the Bathtub Choral Society. Give us a call and let us know what you think of it.”

  My eyes were locked on Slim. I held my breath and waited for what would happen next. I couldn’t even imagine. He stood as silent as a pillar of salt, twirling a strand of hair around his finger. His eyes were pinched and his mouth had become as thin as barbed wire.

  At last he spoke—again, to the radio. “Okay, buddy, here’s what I think.” He took a grip on the power cord and jerked the plug out of the socket. “Dry up!” He dusted his hands together and gave me a grin. “They ain’t going to ruin my day. I can do that all by myself. What do you think of that, pooch?”

  Well, it was…actually, it struck me as a little weird, I mean, who else does stuff like that? But it seemed to have a calming effect on his Inner Bean, and that was important. We wanted him to start the day with a good attitude in his Inner Bean.

  Wait. Inner Bean. Remember that can of green beans? Was this some kind of clue that might send the case…never mind, skip it.

  He took a big stretch and glanced around the kitchen. “Well, we got breakfast out of the way, and I probably ought to put on some clothes, before we go out and do heroic things.”

  Right. He looked ridiculous in his underwear.

  He started toward the hallway. Suddenly I noticed a flashing light on the control panel of my mind: “STARVING!”

  I streaked toward the back door and configured my entire body into an arrow that was pointing outside. Slim noticed. He stopped and turned around. “You need to answer the Call of the Wild?”

  Yes, exactly, the Call of the Wild.

  He slouched to the door and pushed it open. “I hope everything comes out all right. See you later.”

  Ay ay, sir!

  I darted outside and headed straight for…wait, hold everything. We’ve encountered a gap in the story, no kidding. Something must have gone haywire in Data Control. You know how it is. Wires get crossed, a circuit breaker blows, happens all the time, no big deal. Anyway, we’ve lost a short segment of the story.

  Don’t worry about the part you’re missing. Almost nothing happened. Five minutes later, the Starving Light had quit blinking, and I found myself sitting on the porch, waiting for Slim to begin the day’s work. Heh heh.

  Drover was there, of course. It appeared that he hadn’t moved an inch, and he looked kind of downcast. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I didn’t get any breakfast.”

  “Yes, well, you didn’t deserve any breakfast, so it all worked out.”

  “Did he fix bacon and eggs?”

  “Yes. No. It’s none of your business. All you need to know is that a solution was found.”

  “That’s a funny way to put it. Was it breakfast or a solution?”

  “It was both, but more of a solution than a breakfast.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that sometimes we have to make compromises.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Drover, you don’t get half of what goes on in your shriveled little world, and you don’t need to get it. Life will go right on without your help.”

  “Yeah, I try to be helpful.”

  I glared down into his face. “When did you ever try to be helpful?”

  “That day…oh, five years ago, but I don’t remember what I did. Do you smell cheese?”

  “What?”

  “I smell cheese…bad cheese. Yuck! You don’t smell it?”

  I ran a Sniffatory Analysis. “I don’t smell anything unusual. Maybe you need a bath.”

  He made a sour face, then his gaze drifted upward toward the sky. “I’ll be derned. Lookie there. Buzzards.”

  I lifted my eyes and saw them. “Yes, two of them. They’re circling.”

  “Oh my gosh, they’re coming here!”

  “Don’t be absurd. Why would buzzards come here?” We continued to watch the big black birds, wheeling through the air in circles that seemed…hmm, to be bringing them in our direction. “You know what? I think they’re coming here.”

  “I knew it! Let’s hide!”

  “Hide from what? Buzzards are harmless.”

  “Yeah, but they’re ugly and creepy, and all they ever do is eat things that are dead.”