I have even eaten Sally May’s Desert-Dry Corn Bread, which came close to bumping me off, but I survived, and survival is the bottom line.

  Finally, let me borp…excuse me, let me address the testimony of Wallace the Buzzard, who claimed that dogs can’t handle any food material that shows up on Buzzard Radar. That was nonsense, exactly the kind of rubbish you’d expect to hear from an arrogant, self-serving, small-minded funeral-home crow.

  Let me remind this court that Wallace the Buzzard, like Slim Chance, HAD NEVER BEEN A DOG, and was totally unqualified to be an expert witness on what dogs should eat. Your Honor, with that, we rest our case.

  I didn’t mean to get so worked up, but by George, this is still America, and we dogs must stand up for our right to eat aged chicken gizzards at any hour of the day or night. It’s all about Freedom.

  So there’s our Unit on Food Freedom. You’ve probably never given much thought to Food Freedom, but now you know that it’s a very big deal to us dogs.

  Now…where were we? I have no idea. Rabbits? Maybe that was it. Sometimes my thought processes remind me of the rabbits we see in the springtime, hopping around in circles and acting silly. We never know if they’re drunk, crazy, or in love…wait, we weren’t talking about rabbits.

  Drover. There we go. I had gone around to the south side of Slim’s shack, where I found the runt hiding behind a yucca bush. He saw me coming. “Oh, hi. Did they leave?”

  “The rabbits?”

  “No, the buzzards.”

  “Oh, them. Yes, we talked for a while and I ordered them off the property.”

  “Oh good. They’re creepy. I wouldn’t know what to talk about with a couple of creepy buzzards.”

  I sat down beside him. “It’s easier than you might think, son. Your average buzzard has only one note on his horn.”

  “They have horns?”

  “Drover, that was a figure of speech, a clever, imaginative way of saying that buzzards have a one-track mind. All they can talk about is food.”

  “Gosh, that sounds like us.”

  “It does NOT sound like us.”

  “That’s what I meant.”

  “The mind of a dog is deep and borp.”

  “What?”

  “Deep and wide. Expansive. Without limits.”

  “Do you smell cheese?”

  “Do you want to hear the rest of this or not?”

  “Sorry. I thought I smelled cheese.”

  “Well, you’re free to smell anything you want, but I was trying to educate you on the subject of buzzards. Now, you can either remain an ignoramus for the rest of your life, or you can learn something.”

  His gaze lifted to the sky. “You know, I get tired of being an ignoramus.”

  “Really? Are you being sincere about that?”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of depressing, being an ignoramus all the time. It makes me wish that I could be a smartoramus.”

  “Soldier, I’m proud to hear you say that! I think we’re making progress, and we’ve even invented a new word: smartoramus.”

  “Yeah, I made it up.”

  “Drover, it was a team effort. Never forget that we’re all part of a team.”

  “Yeah, but I made it up all by myself. I’ll bet I could make up a song about it too. You want me to try?”

  “No, thank you, we’re on a tight schedule this morning.”

  He glanced around. “Doing what?”

  “How long is this song of yours?”

  “Oh, it’s pretty short.”

  I heaved a sigh. “Okay, let’s get it over with.” And with that, he performed his latest masterpiece, “Smartoramus.”

  I’m tired of being just an ignoramus.

  A smartoramus is what I want to be,

  (When I grow up),

  I’ll have to take a test, I’ll do my level best,

  Smart-o-ramus-isation is for me,

  (When I grow up).

  When he had finished the song, he faced me with a wide grin. “What do you think? Pretty good, huh?”

  I began pacing, as I often do when my mind is troubled. “Look, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but…Drover, that was awful! A proper song is supposed to consist of verses followed by a chorus. That thing was nothing but a chorus, repeated four times.”

  “Well, I couldn’t think of any verses.”

  “It was a tiresome little chorus, looking for a song.”

  “Yeah, but it came straight from my heart.”

  “All right, it was a tiresome little chorus that came straight from your heart, which proves that you need bypass surgery.”

  “I don’t get it. What does that mean?”

  “Never mind. What were we talking about? Oh yes, buzzards. My point was that they’re obsessed with food.”

  “Yeah, and all they eat is garbage. What were they doing here?”

  “As a matter of fact, they were looking for food. Their radar picked up three pounds of chicken gizzards that Slim chunked out the back door.”

  “They ate ‘em?”

  There was a long moment of silence. “Not exactly.”

  His eyes grew wide. “You didn’t eat ‘em, did you?” My sly grin must have given the answer. He gasped. “You did? Oh my gosh, what if you get sick?”

  “I won’t get sick. Dogs who are careful, thorough, and disciplined in their eating don’t get borp.”

  Drover sniffed the air. “There’s that cheese again. You don’t smell it?”

  “No, and we’re out of time for questions. Slim just walked out the front door and it’s time to go to work. Let’s move out.”

  We raced around to the front of the house, just as our cowboy pal stepped off the porch. He had put on some clothes and looked much better now, wearing something besides his drawers, and we were ready to launch ourselves into a new adventure that involved…

  I almost said “a mountain lion,” but it’s too soon to go public with that. Maybe it will come up later and maybe it won’t. To find out for sure, you’ll have to keep reading.

  If you thought I said “mountain lion,” keep it to yourself, okay? Thanks.

  Chapter Seven: A Gizzardly Problem

  By the time Slim reached the pickup door, I was already there, poised to leap into the cab. He noticed that I was quivering with anstickipation. “You think you deserve to ride up in First Class?”

  Well…yes, of course. Important dogs always ride in the cab. Ordinary mutts can ride in the back with fence posts and sacks of feed.

  “I hope you understand what an honor it is to ride up front with me.”

  Could we get on with this?

  He reached for the door handle and…bonk…what a dirty trick! You know what he did? He opened the door just a crack, see, knowing that I would launch myself into the cab, and, naturally, I banged my nose against the door and fell into a heap on the ground.

  “Not so fast, pooch. I want to make double-sure that you’re grateful and humble and proud to be riding around in a pickup with me.”

  Oh brother. All right, I was honored.

  At last, he swung open the door, but this time, I just sat there, waiting to see if he was going to pull any more tricks. To be honest, I was having second thoughts about riding in the cab with him.

  He shrugged. “Fine. You can ride in the back.”

  Huh?

  As I’ve said before, someone on this outfit has to show some maturity. If the dogs don’t do it, who or whom does that leave? Nobody. I flew inside the cab and took my usual place of honor on the shotgun-side, next to the window.

  Drover entered the pickup in his usual manner, grunting and clawing his way onto the seat. He puts no style into the Ordinary Events of Life. He just slops through them, but at last, he managed to climb inside and took his spot in the middle of the seat. Slim started the pickup and off we went to new adventures on the ranch.

  Once we were moving, Drover said, “How come you never let me ride Shotgun?”

  “Because you lack the proper training, and besides, you don’t even own a shotgun.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t either.”

  “Exactly my point. Neither of us owns a shotgun, but I didn’t own one long before you didn’t. That’s a huge difference.”

  “Yeah, but it’s no fair. I feel so unequal, sitting in the middle all the time.”

  “Wait. You feel ‘unequal’? What number are you feeling?” He gave me a blank look. “A number, Drover. If you talk about something being equal to something else, that’s a Numbers Situation.”

  “Oh. Well, let me think.” He rolled his eyes around. “Three?”

  “Ah! There’s your problem. See, you forgot to carry the one over to the left-hand column. You should be feeling thirteen, not three.”

  He stared at me. “No fooling?”

  “Absolutely. You just added wrong.”

  He blinked his eyes. “I’ll be derned. So I’m not as unequal as I thought?”

  “Exactly. When we add wrong, nothing adds up.”

  A smile lifted the limp rope of his mouth. “You know, I think that helped.”

  I whopped him on the back. “Good, good. Fundamentals, son, it all comes down to bupp.”

  “What?”

  “I said, it all comes down to cheese. Do you notice an odd smell?”

  “Yeah, but it’s worse than cheese. I hope you’re not…”

  “Never mind, sorry I bought it up.”

  I returned to my spot on the Shotgun side and thrust my nose out the window. All at once the air inside the cab seemed stale and stuffy, and I found myself overwhelmed by thoughts of…CHEESE.

  You know, some kinds of cheese are pleasant to smell, but others really stink. They remind us of something we might feed to a buzzard, and that wasn’t the kind of …

  I would NOT give any more thought to cheese or food. There’s a time to think about food and a time to think about…well, flowers and bees and butterflies. A disciplined mind can always…

  Uh oh. Something was stirring in the depths of my deeps. I stole a quick glance at Slim. His mind was far away and he had no inkling of what kind of disaster might be lurking in our future. Did I dare intrude into the carnival of his mind and alert him to the dangers we were facing?

  Yes. This was getting serious and he needed to be warned that…well, that the interior of his pickup was in danger of getting spray-painted the color of used gizzards. The man had no idea what we were facing here.

  I swiveled around to the left and fired off three blasts of Alert and Alarm Barking, right over the top of Drover’s head. I had a feeling that three good, stout A&A’s would wake Slim up.

  They did. He flinched so hard, he jerked the wheel to the right and skewered me with a glare. “Quit barking inside the pickup!”

  Yes, but…good grief, we were heading toward the ditch!

  Just in time, he jerked the wheel and got us back on the road. “One of these days, you’re going to get us killed. Now hush.”

  Well, that flopped and we were back to Iron Discipline, and we’re talking about the very ironist of Iron Discipline, the kind of rigid self-control unknown to your ordinary run of mutts. The technical term for it is Mind Over Easy. Mud Over Matter. Mind Under Water. Skip it.

  Wait. Mind Over Matter, there we go.

  Have you detected that I was feeling nervous about this? I was. I mean, we were creeping along the county road at FIFTEEN MILES AN HOUR and still had another mile to go! I didn’t dare bark again, so I beamed him a look of Utter Sincerity that said, “Will you quit poking around and speed this thing up?”

  It didn’t work, of course. Looks of Utter Sincerity don’t work unless our people are paying attention, and he wasn’t. He had fallen back into the bottomless well of his own private thoughts.

  I would have to tough it out, endure one more mile of misery. It would be one of the sternest tests of my whole career. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. I mean, bad things were going on down there in the dungeon of my body. Just in case the situation blew up, I began rehearsing my story:

  “Slim, we’ve been friends a long time, right? And we’re talking about the kind of serious bonding that only happens between a cowboy and his dog. Okay, remember those gizzards you pitched out the back door? You warned me not to eat them, but here’s a blast of truth: I disobeyed your orders and, well, ate them anyway.

  “It was a careless, bone-head decision and it pretty muchly explains the material you see on your windshield and dashboard. I’m afraid that some of it might have leaked into the defroster vents, and we might have lost the radio too.

  “Old friend, dearest pal, cowboy companion, I want you to know HOW SORRY I am about this whole situation. I am desolate, devoured by grief and remorse, hardly able to drag myself through another hour of life.”

  Would it sell? Maybe. Probably not.

  We were still a half-mile away from headquarters, and still poking along at fifteen miles an hour. Okay, I would have to double-down on the Iron Discipline and make sure that we didn’t have any disasters.

  I filled my tanks with a large gulp of carbon diego and stared straight ahead. I saw…stale bacon grease oozing down the windshield. The world seemed to be drifting out of focus. Suddenly, I felt hot and my head began moving up and down…

  Uh oh.

  Chapter Eight: A Roadside Incident

  At this point, you’re probably in a state of nervous expectoration. Me too. I mean, the stakes were so high on this deal, failure would be Buzzard Bad, the kind of tragedy that can change lives in mere seconds.

  We’ve come this far with the story, but do we dare to go on? Can we tough it out a while longer? I guess we might as well give it a shot and go plunging to the Great Unknown.

  Okay, there we were, chugging down the county road at the pace of a turtle. Slim was lost in his thoughts and I was lost in a raging storm that was sweeping me into places I didn’t want to go.

  The cab was hot, stuffy, suffocating, and the world had taken on the look of oozing bacon grease. Unseen forces deep inside my body had taken control. My head began moving up and down and I began hearing those dreaded sounds.

  Ump. Ump. Ump.

  Are you sure we ought to go on with this? I mean, when a dog starts making those noises, it’s usually too late to put the toothpaste back into the frying pan.

  What do you think? Keep going? Okay, you asked for it.

  Somewhere in the echoing chambers of my caverns, I heard a man’s voice, a loud harsh voice. “Hank, don’t you dare!”

  Was he joking? Whatever it was that I wasn’t supposed to “dare” had moved beyond my control. I had become as helpless as a feather in a tornado.

  I heard the screech of brakes and felt myself being launched into the dashboard. On another occasion, I might have cared. This time, I didn’t care.

  I heard a door open and got the impression that someone was dragging me across the floorboard. At that point, everything became a blur. Then…an explosion…several explosions…awful noises…and it was over.

  I blinked my eyes and looked around. I was sitting on the side of the road. Drover was looking out the pickup window, staring at me with full-moon eyes. Slim stood nearby. He gazed down at something in the grass. His face collapsed into an expression of…I don’t know how to describe it, a look of horror or disbelief, I suppose, and his eyes rolled up inside his head.

  “Good honk, you…you ate those gizzards?”

  Since the evidence was right there in the grass for the whole world to see, this seemed a good time to be honest. I lifted my head to an angle that expressed…well, grim determination, I suppose.

  “Yes, I ate them. It was one of the dumbest stunts I’ve ever pulled, and that is really saying something, because…it kills me to admit this…I have done this sort of thing before. You might even say that I have a long, gloomy history of Dietary Mistakes.”

  There, it was out in the open.

  You know, if Drover had done something like this, we all would have shrugged and said, “Well, he’s just Drover and what do you expect?” But this had happened to ME, the Head of the Entire Security Division!

  And don’t forget that I had been warned. Oh yes, Slim and Drover had done their best to warn me, but had I listened to my very best friends? Of course not. I had even been warned by a nincompoop buzzard, and that really ripped me.

  Fellers, when buzzards come out looking smarter than dogs, this world has sunk about as low as it can sink.

  And you know what else? I couldn’t even blame this one on the cat! The little sneak had been two miles away, at ranch headquarters.

  So there’s the Awful Reality I faced in a ditch on the side of the county road, in the middle of a spirit-killing drought, and expressed it with Saddest Eyes and Wags of Repentance on the tail section. The presentation left me feeling empty, exhausted, used up, defeated, and as worthless as spilled milk.

  Slim had buried his face in his hands and was shaking his head. How do you suppose that made me feel? Terrible.

  Well, it was clear what had to be done. I had made a complete dunce of myself and disgraced my ranch. I would have to resign my commission with the Security Division, empty my desk, and move on to a new life as…I didn’t know what, as a hermit-dog, a wanderer, a lost soul in the night.

  Some dogs have no sense of shame, you know, and they’ll try to hang onto their job after a scandal. Me? I’d always served my ranch with pride, and the other side of cowdog pride is SHAME. When you mess up big-time and make a dunce of yourself, you should feel ashamed. No arguments, no phony excuses. Admit your mistakes and move out. It’s the only decent thing to do.