The Case of the Vampire Cat. John R. Erickson

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СКАЧАТЬ box of matches. He lit a match, lit a burner on the stove, found the coffee, turned on the water faucet, and . . . nothing came out. I raised my ears and rolled my eyes around and waited.

      There was a long throbbing silence, followed by a deep sigh of deepest despair. Then, “Thanks, Lord. I guess I needed the water to be froze up this morning. I’m sure you wouldn’t do that to a poor old cowboy without a good reason.

      “Dadgum water! I knew I should have wrapped them pipes. I knew it would turn off cold one of these days and I’d get caught, and sure ’nuff, I did.”

      He wandered out into the room where we were. He sure looked lost and pitiful. I mean, here was a guy who was having to face the cold cruel world without a cup of coffee, and even though I don’t drink coffee myself, I know it’s important to these cowboys.

      He yawned, raked the hair out of his eyes, and shuffled over to the stove. That’s when he greeted me with his first words of the day: “Move, pooch, or I’ll chunk up the stove with your carcass.”

      Not “Good morning, Hank,” or “Hi, doggie,” or “Thanks for protecting the house last night, Hank.” Oh no. Just “Move, pooch, or I’ll chunk up the stove with your carcass.”

      And I, being an intelligent dog and not wanting to be chunked or stoved, moved my carcass—and just barely in time to avoid being clunked on the head by the stove door when he opened it.

      He opened it and peeked inside. “Huh. Still got a few coals of bodark left. Good.” He reached into his wood box, brought out some bark, twigs, and kindling, and tossed them into the stove. He blew on the coals. Then he . . .

      That was strange. He jerked his head back, jumped to his feet, and started . . . this was very strange . . . started slapping himself on the face! Now, why would he . . .

      Okay, I’ve got it now. See, Slim used big chunks of bodark in his stove at night. Bodark, being the very hardest wood on the ranch, made the best all-nighter logs for the stove, because the hardest wood burns the longest.

      The only problem with bodark is that it tends to pop and make sparks, and that’s not exactly what Slim was thinking about when he got down on his hands and knees and blew on the embers. They popped and threw a spark into his beard, and that’s why he was slapping himself on the face.

      Putting out the spark, don’t you see.

      Well, he got the kindling going and added a few small sticks of cottonwood and a few medium-sized chunks of hackberry. He closed up the stove, opened the draft and the damper, and wandered over to the window. That’s when he saw the snow.

      “Thanks, Lord. I sure needed some snow, since my plumbing is froze up and I have to step out on the porch.” He scratched his beard for a moment. “Guess I could put on my slippers, but I’d have to walk all the way back to the bedroom. Too much trouble.”

      He yawned, went to the door, and stepped out on the porch. He came back a whole lot faster than he went out, and he ran to the stove on crumpled toes and stood there, shivering and warming his hands. Then his eyes fell on me.

      “You need to go out too, Muttfuzz. I don’t want to be steppin’ on any surprises this morning.”

      Well, uh, I really didn’t care much for the idea of going out into the frozen cold and snow and so forth, and if it was okay . . .

      “Out! Come on. You too, Stub Tail.”

      And so it was that we were tossed out of house and hearth. It was bad enough, just going out into the cold and snow, but on top of that, I had to listen to Drover’s moaning and groaning. He took two steps off the porch and locked down in his tracks, and there he stood, crying and whining.

      Not me. I made a quick tour of the area, checked out the grounds, sniffed a few trees, and, yes, it was pretty cold and miserable out there, so I hurried back to the front of the house and stationed myself right in front of the picture window, where Slim couldn’t miss seeing me.

      There, I went into a little routine called “We’re Freezing Out Here,” which consists of Shivers, Sad Eyes, Slow Wags, and Heavy Begs. It’s a crackerjack routine and it should have worked.

      I mean, there I was, standing out in the frozen wastes of Antarctica, and there he was, pulling on his red long-john underwear in front of a nice warm stove. I could see him in there, and he saw me out there. I know he did because he waved at me, and I saw his lips move and form the words “Hi, puppy.” And then he grinned.

      He thinks he’s so funny. Hi, puppy! Who did he think he was? How would he have felt if . . . oh well.

      The Heavy Begs routine didn’t work. We stayed out in the snow and the frozen tundra, shivering and so forth, until he had put on all his layers of clothes and came out of the house.

      He was wearing galoshes, a sheeplined coat, and his wool cap with the ear flappers. He fired up the pickup and we were ready to drive up to headquarters and begin the day.

      And what a day it turned out to be.

      Chapter Two: Loper Melts a Water Pipe

      Well, at least he was kind and decent enough to let us ride in the cab with him, although it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d made us ride in the back.

      He has this strange theory, you see, that snow makes dogs wet and wet dogs stink. I’ve tested that theory myself and I can report that it just doesn’t hold water, so to speak. If you ask me, wet cowboys stink, but nobody ever asks my opinion.

      He let us ride in the front, and we made our way through the snow and ice to headquarters. Along the way, we passed several bunches of cows. Their backs were covered with snow, and they were humped up and facing away from the north wind. And every time they breathed, which was fairly often, their breath made fog in the air.

      Yes, it was a cold, miserable day, and according to the weather report Slim picked up on the radio, the day promised to get even colder and miserabler.

      When he heard the report, he pressed his lips together and shook his head. “And I have to face all that without a cup of coffee.”

      We pulled around in front of the machine shed and came to a stop beside the water well. Loper was there, doing something with the cutting torch, and whatever he was doing didn’t appear to be bringing him much happiness. He wore a frown.

      Slim watched him for a moment. “Plumbing froze up?”

      Loper looked up from his work. “Yeah. You got any cute remarks about it?”

      “No, only that if you’d take the time to wrap them pipes when it’s warm, they wouldn’t freeze up when it’s cold.”

      “No kidding? Thanks.” He went back to heating the pipe with the torch.

      “This happens every year, Loper. A good ranch manager would catch on after a while. You’ll notice that my pipes don’t freeze. That’s because I take care of my business.”

      What? I stared at Slim and thumped my tail on the seat. Unless I had heard him wrong, he СКАЧАТЬ