Maybe that was a joke. Anyway, everyone laughed.

  Chapter Five: A Bad Wind

  We loaded the heifers and hauled them to Viola’s place and turned them out in a pasture that Woodrow was furnishing at no charge. In other words, they were getting free pasture, which lowered their expense. After frost, Slim bought sacks of cubed feed, and through the winter, he and Viola fed them twenty pounds of cake every day.

  In February, the heifers started calving, and you know how it is with first-calf heifers. They’re young and small, and sometimes they have trouble delivering that first calf. When they get close to calving, you have to watch them day and night, and help them if they have problems.

  Viola went down to the calving barn every four hours and checked the heavy heifers, and on two occasions, she had to call Slim to come help her pull a calf. By the first of March, they had calved out all ten heifers, and ten healthy calves were romping around on the feed ground. Slim and Viola were proud. That was the start on their cow herd and the future.

  That brings us to the sixth of March, a day that nobody around here will ever forget. It was early morning at Slim’s place and the wind was blowing outside. That’s all the wind ever does in March. It blows from the north, then it blows from the south, the southwest, and the west, back and forth like a fiddle bow, and we’re the fiddle.

  We were sick of it. It had been going on for a week, every day, wind and dust. Couldn’t the wind find something better to do? Those of us in the Security Division had been pulling double shifts, I mean, hour after hour of standing out in the cold and blasting away with Anti-Wind Barking, but nothing had worked.

  But today, wind was worse than usual. It had blown hard through the night and was making some creepy sounds in the house: whistles, pops, groans, and rumbles. A dog notices things like that, and Slim noticed. He cocked his head and listened.

  I was watching him and gave a bark to let him know that I’d heard them too.

  “Will you dry up?”

  Oh brother. You know, trying to communicate with that guy in the morning is a waste of effort. What’s the point in having a dog…never mind.

  Dressed in his Morning Attire (boxer shorts, T-shirt, and bare feet), he went to the door and stepped out on the porch. I didn’t offer to go with him. Once a dog has been rebeeked, he loses his enthusiasm for the job and stops caring. Rebuked, I guess it should be.

  Our Normal Procedure calls for the dog to follow his people wherever they go, whether that’s room to room or out on the porch, and to show some interest in their lives. We follow them because we care.

  But he had ruined that by screeching at me and telling me to dry up, and I no longer cared. Dogs have feelings too. We’re not just furniture.

  He came back into the house. “That’s a bad wind.”

  Did I care? No. I turned my back on him.

  He noticed. “Hey, pooch, it’s liable to be a bad day for fires.”

  Oh, he wanted his dog back now, someone to sit there and listen to him ramble about wind and fire. Too bad.

  “You get your feelings hurt too easy.”

  I had nothing to say to him, nothing.

  “You want to split a cookie?”

  Huh?

  “Viola made me a batch of oatmeal-raisin cookies. I might share one.”

  Let’s be clear about this. Nobody buys me off with half a cookie, but one of the most endearing qualities of cowdogs is that we forgive. All dogs get their feelings hurt once in a while, and ordinary mutts hold a grudge. They pout like little cry-babies. Cowdogs see the big picture and rise above such childish behavior.

  Somebody had to show some maturity. Maybe Slim and I could work out our differences. Okay, sure.

  He went to the spot where he had stashed the cookies, and I made careful note of the location: on the dinner table. Heh heh. A guy never knows when the opportunity might arise…no, let’s don’t go there. I wouldn’t want the little children to get the idea that…just skip it.

  Viola had packed the cookies in a pretty little box lined with red tissue paper, and there it slurp on the table, there it sat. Slim gave me a hard look. “Don’t get any big ideas, pooch.”

  What! I couldn’t believe he’d said that. Did he think I was some kind of half-crazed cookie gobbler? Oh brother.

  He opened the box and brought out a cookie, broke it in half and studied the two halves. He stuffed the bigger half into his mouth and pitched the other one in the air. I tracked it on radar for half a second, launched myself and snapped it right out of the skyosphere. SNARF!

  Slim chuckled. “Heh. You looked like Larry Bird on that one.”

  I looked like a bird? Well, so did he, standing there with his stork legs.

  Anyway, it was a great catch and a great cookie, and you’ll never hear me complain about getting the smaller half.

  Slim went off to his bedroom to put on some clothes and I drifted into the living room to stir Squeakbox out of bed. As you might expect, I showed a high level of sensitivity, I mean, he’s very fragile in the morning.

  I gave him Train Horns in the left ear.

  BWONK!

  “Arise and sing, Half Stepper! We’ve got a ranch to run.”

  Hee hee. What a show! He went off like a box of mousetraps and flew eighteen inches off the floor. When his eyeballs quit rolling around, he croaked, “I smell cookies!”

  “Hey, great job on the smeller, but you don’t get one.”

  “No fair! I never get cookies.”

  “Because you spend most of your waking hours asleep. Let’s go to work.”

  We followed Slim out of the house, and right away got slapped by a west wind that was loaded with dust, sand, bits of grass, and hay leaves. Tumbleweeds loped across the gravel drive in front of the house and Slim’s hat went airborne. If it hadn’t snagged on a fence, it might have rolled all the way to Arkansas.

  Drover let out a pitiful moan and went into a sneezing fit, I mean five in a row, almost blew off the end of his nose. “I hate this wind! And dow by siduses are really aggdig ub! I wad do go bag to bed! Helb!”

  Before I could give him a lecture on the Importance of Good Work Habits, he parked himself in the southwest corner of the porch, curled up in a little white ball, and covered his ears with his paws.

  Well, we wouldn’t be getting any work out of Drover today—not that we ever did—and that’s where he would spend the rest of the day.

  Slim chased down his hat and managed to open the pickup door and hold on to it, so the wind didn’t tear it off the hinges. “Load up, pooch, let’s go feed cattle!”

  Aye aye, sir! I went flying into the cab. Slim dived in, tugged on the door, and finally got it shut. The wind was blowing so hard, we could feel it rocking the pickup. Slim muttered, “Man alive, I hope nobody makes a spark today. Dry as we are, the whole Panhandle could burn up.”

  As we drove away from the house, I looked back and saw a ball of white fur quivering on the porch. I thought, “What a funny little guy!” It never crossed my mind that he might be there when…or that I might never…you just don’t think it will ever turn out that way.

  That’s all we can say about it right now.

  We were feeding cattle every day because the weather was still chilly and we hadn’t gotten any winter moisture, so the grass hadn’t greened up yet. I mean, we were as dry as a powder house. Until we got some rain or snow, our grass would stay brown and the cattle would need some protein in their diet, especially cows that were nursing calves.

  We drove to the county road and turned right at the mail box, then chugged along at fifteen miles an hour to ranch headquarters. It was only a three-mile drive but it seemed longer. Slim had never been one to rush into a new day, and he sure wasn’t pushing things now. He still had coffee to drink.

  Up ahead, a big brown tumbleweed came rolling down the middle of the road. Slim steered the pickup to the left, so as to miss it, but the wind shifted and we met it head-on. It went under the pickup and got hung, and we drove into headquarters with that thing making an awful scraping sound.

  I was pretty sure Slim would stop and clean it out. I waited and watched. He slurped coffee and drove on.

  Was this some kind of clue or dark omen of things to come? Maybe not. Sometimes a tumbleweed is just a tumbleweed.

  Chapter Six: Smoke!

  Loper was down at the corrals when we drove up, and he met us when we got out of the pickup. He wore a scowl. “You’re fixing to lose a wheel bearing on that pickup.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I heard you coming fifty yards away. I’ve got ears and I know when a bearing’s going out.”

  “It ain’t a bearing.”

  “You know what happens when you burn up a bearing?”

  “Wheel falls off.”

  “That’s right, and if you happen to be driving down the road, it can be hard on ranch equipment. You’d better run it in the barn, pull all four wheels, and check for a hot bearing.”

  “I’ll bet you five bucks it ain’t a wheel bearing.”

  Loper glared at him. “Since when did you know squat about grease and bearings?”

  “Five bucks, American cash money, says it ain’t a wheel bearing.”

  “I’ll take it. Let’s go pull the tires. You drive. If a wheel falls off, I want you to get the credit.”

  “Loper, look under the front end.”

  “What?”

  “Just look.”

  Loper bent down and looked. When he straightened up, his sour expression had deepened. “You could have said you hit a tumbleweed.”

  “I didn’t hit the tumbleweed, it hit me, and you were on such a snort about wheel bearings, I didn’t want to interrupt the sermon.”

  Loper shook his head and looked away. “I’m sure there’s a simple reason why you didn’t pull it out.”

  “It ain’t bothering me.”

  “So…how long are you going to drive around with that thing scraping under the pickup?”

  “Till it comes a-loose, I guess.”

  “Pull it out before it drives me nuts.”

  “Okay, but you owe me five bucks.”

  “I’ll include it in your severance package. Hurry up, we’ve got work to do.”

  Those guys go on like this all the time. If you didn’t know better, you might think they were ready to duke it out, but it never seems to amount to much. If they asked my opinion…but they never do, so we can skip on to something else.

  But I will go on record as saying that they waste a lot of time, yapping back and forth at each other. There.

  Once Slim had removed the tumbleweed, he and I drove to the feed barn and loaded twenty sacks of feed into the bed of his pickup, then began the routine of feeding all the pastures on the east side of the ranch. The wind was really howling and Slim had to put a shovel on top of the empty paper sacks to keep them from blowing all over the ranch.

  Boy, it was a nasty day. The cattle looked wind-blown and miserable. Slim’s eyes were red-rimmed from the dust, and he couldn’t keep his hat from blowing off. You know, cowboys look pretty silly, chasing after their hats. There’s something undignified about a grown man with big feet and skinny legs, chasing after a hat like he was trying to catch a rabbit.

  After the tenth time, he finally smartened up, parked his hat in the pickup, and pulled on a baseball cap that would stay on his head. As windy as it is in the Panhandle, I don’t know why those guys waste money on an expensive hat anyway.

  It seems kind of extravagant, doesn’t it? They could be using that money to improve the ranch. They could buy steaks for their dogs or at least put their money into a higher grade of dog food, something better than Cheapo and Co-op.

  On the other hand, he looked pretty silly in that cap. I mean, there’s a certain dignity about a man who wears a nice cowboy hat. It tells the world that he’s got pride and good taste in clothes. A few sweat stains along the crown reveal that he might have even done some work.

  A baseball cap tells the world, “This guy’s too cheap to buy a decent hat and too dumb to know that he looks dumb in a cap that advertises chain saws.”

  There, I’ve said my piece on fashion.

  It must have been around two o’clock. Slim had just poured out two sacks of feed and we were walking back to the pickup. He stopped and lifted his head. “I smell smoke.”

  I turned my nose into the wind and switched on Snifforadar. I was picking it up too. Smoke from a grass fire.

  “Get in, dog, we’d better find out where that’s coming from.”

  We were down along the creek, don’t you see, and didn’t have a good view of the country to the south and west. We drove north and followed a feed trail that led to the top of a caprock, parked there and stepped out. Slim shaded his eyes and looked off to the west. So did I and we both saw it: a thin layer of white smoke in the distance, above the horizon.

  Slim swallowed hard. “That’s a grass fire and if the wind doesn’t shift, we’re going to be in the path of it. This is liable to be a bad day, Hank, maybe a real bad day. Load up!”

  Remember what I said about Slim poking along and driving slow? Well, he got over that. We went ripping down those pasture roads as fast as he could drive, I mean fish-tailing around curves and all four tires off the ground on bumps. It scared the liver right out of me, and I’m not scared of anything.

  If Drover had been there, I guarantee he would have had made a puddle on the floorboard. We were lucky he didn’t come.

  By the time we reached headquarters, that band of smoke had moved over the sun and turned it an ugly shade of yellow-brown, and the burned smell had gotten stronger. We saw Loper coming out of the house with an armload of stuff and loading it into the car.

  When we reached him, Slim said, “What’s the news? How bad is it?”

  “Bad. Sheriff’s office called and said to evacuate. It started east of Borger and it’s coming this way. The leading edge is fifteen miles wide and it’s getting bigger by the minute, totally out of control.”

  “Good honk. What should we do?”

  Loper wiped the sweat off his face. “I’m sending Sally May and the kids to town. They’ll have to go the back way in case the highway is closed. I’ll take my pickup and open pasture gates on the way out, so the cattle can drift.”

  “I’ll start filling the spray rig with water.”

  Loper looked him straight in the eye and shook his head. “Forget the spray rig. This is like no fire we’ve seen before. It’s a killer. Deputy Kile said, ‘Drop everything and run like a rabbit.’”

  “And with that advice, you’re going to open pasture gates. Most rabbits don’t do that.”

  “I’m the guy who signed the note at the bank, but don’t worry, I’m getting out of here too.” He looked off to the west. “Look at that smoke cloud!”

  “Has anyone talked to Viola or her folks?”

  Loper shook his head. “Sally May tried to call, no answer.”

  “I’ll check on ‘em. Woodrow won’t leave, I know he won’t. He makes a mule look like an honor student.”

  “Well, make him leave! Tie him up and throw him into the back of the pickup. If that fire gets into the creek bottom, there won’t be a house left standing. Get out of here! I’ll see you in town.”

  “Don’t try to be a hero. You wouldn’t make good barbecue.”

  Loper laughed.

  Sally May and the children came out of the house. Alfred was lugging a suitcase and Sally May carried the baby and an overnight bag. She paused at the gate and looked back at the house, then hurried to the car.

  She put Molly into the car seat and went back to the gate. “Pete? Here, kitty kitty! Pete?” She glanced around the yard. No cat. “Pete! Come here, now!”

  What have I been telling you about cats? Call ‘em and they disappear. Tell ‘em to buzz off and they’ll wrap around your ankles. I didn’t wish the cat any bad luck, but it appeared that he might get some anyway.

  Slim trotted to his pickup. He didn’t call me but he didn’t need to. There was no way I was going to get left behind. We dived inside the cab and roared away from the house, made a ripping right turn at the mail box, and headed east on the county road.

  I won’t be bashful: I was scared. If you’re not scared, something’s wrong.

  Chapter Seven: Evacuation

  If I ever complain about Slim driving too slow, please wash my mouth out with soap. Remember that low-water crossing east of headquarters, where the creek runs over a cement slab? When you hit that sucker at forty miles an hour, it does bad things to a pickup.

  We bottomed out on the shocks and springs, heard awful noises, and things went flying around inside the cab: fencing pliers, gloves we hadn’t seen in years, a bottle of vaccine, two pounds of dust, twenty-seven miller moths, and me.

  I scraped myself off the floorboard and beamed him a glare. “Will you slow this thing down? The fire won’t have a chance to kill us, because you’re going to…”

  I choked on the dust and couldn’t finish my sentence. Whilst I coughed, Slim gave me a solemn look and said, “Hang on, pooch.”

  Oh right, sure, hang on. I returned to my shotgun-side seat and…good grief, we were fixing to smash head-on into an army surplus six-by-six fire truck! Have you ever seen one of those things up close? They’re huge! Well, this was IT. Our geese were cooked.

  Slim hit the brakes and swerved into the ditch on the right side. I got spilled into the dashboard, but we missed the six-by-six. Whew!

  It was a truck from the Lipscomb Volunteer Fire Department, and right behind it came two red fire trucks with lights flashing. These were from Canadian, and behind them came a water truck from Higgins. They were all heading for the front lines, carrying men dressed in green fire suits.