The Case of the Blazing Sky. John R. Erickson

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “Okay, buddy, that did it! Go to your room and stick your nose in the corner for one hour.”

      “One hour! How come?”

      “Go! I’ll be watching, so don’t try to cheat.”

      He whined and begged for mercy, but my heart had turned to stone. The very idea, the little mutt thinking that I might eat one of Sally May’s slurpens . . . uh, chickens. If there was ever a dog who needed to stand with his nose in the corner, it was Drover.

      He went to his room and I found myself all alone with my, uh, thoughts. To be honest, I was having some pretty wonderful thoughts about . . . well, you know, sunsets and rainbows and . . . okay, maybe food.

      Dogs think about food, right? It’s normal and healthy. You’d worry about a dog that didn’t think about food every once in a while. Mackerel, that’s what I was thinking about. No kidding.

      I lifted my eyes and did another scan of the treetops. I saw no sign of the, uh, mackerel, the lost mackerel, shall we say, so I lowered my nose to the ground and began searching for tracks . . . mackerel tracks, of course.

      You didn’t know that mackerels leave tracks? Ha ha. Okay, maybe they don’t, because they don’t have feet or legs, and it’s hard to leave tracks when you have no feet. But a guy never knows until he checks these things out.

      I found no fish tracks, but the ground was covered with chicken tracks. Interesting. Perhaps if I followed the chicken tracks far enough, I would find . . . well, you know, a mackerel or something.

      Remember the old saying? At the end of every rainbow is a pot of mackerel.

      I put my nose to the groundstone and followed the line of tracks in a northerly direction. After sniffing my way through a grove of young china­berry trees, I looked up and was surprised to find myself standing in front of the . . . well, in front of the chicken house.

      Okay, maybe that wasn’t exactly the biggest surprise of the year. I mean, if you follow a line of chicken tracks far enough, they’ll lead you to the chicken house, so we’ll cancel what I said about being surprised.

      I wasn’t exactly surprised. What I felt was . . . slurp . . . a sudden rush of water and digestive juices into my mouthalary region, and once again I had to, uh, lick my chops to mop up the excess water.

      It’s funny, how that happens. The mouth of a dog seems to have a mind of its own, don’t you see, and certain thoughts or mental pictures seem to set off the water business.

      Hmmm. You know, I’m not sure we should be discussing this. I mean, all dogs have secret thoughts. I wouldn’t want the little children to think that I . . . well, spent half my life dreaming about . . . slurp.

      I mean, we’re talking about the Head of Ranch Security, right? The Head of Ranch Security is charged with the responsibility of guarding Sally May’s chickens against attacks by coyotes, skunks, raccoons, hawks, owls, and your various forms of Night Monster, and nobody would ever believe that we might consider . . . well, eating the very chickens we have sworn an oath to protect.

      Slurp.

      How absurd. You would never believe such a pack of lies, right? Thanks. I knew you wouldn’t. These rumors are started by our enemies, you know. Yes. They scheme day and night on ways to weaken our security systems, planting their poisoned seeds that grow into . . . something. Poison oak trees, I suppose.

      And speaking of schemers, speaking of letting the cat out of the sandbox, would you like to guess who showed up at the very moment that I was . . . well, at the very moment that I was absolutely no-way thinking about chicken dinners?

      Mister Kitty Moocher. Mister Never Sweat. Mister Loaf in the Iris Patch. Pete the Barncat.

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