The Further Adventures of Hank the Cowdog. John R. Erickson

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СКАЧАТЬ gets accused of smelling bad, and a rinky-dink cat . . . oh well.

      Pete was chewing my egg, and every now and then he’d turn his eyes toward me and give me a grin. Let me tell you, it took tremendous self-discipline for me to sit there and watch, when all of my savage instincts were urging me to tear down the fence and pulverize the cat.

      Sally May went back into the house. I should have left right there, just walked away and tried to forget the whole thing. But I didn’t.

      Pete had laid down in front of the plate. I mean, he was too lazy to stand up and eat. He was purring and flicking the end of his tail back and forth and chewing every bite twenty-three times.

      I found myself growling, just couldn’t help it. His head came up. “Hmmm, you hungry, Hankie? You’d like this egg. It just melts in your mouth.”

      “No thanks, I got better things to do.” That was the truth. I did. But I stayed there.

      Pete shrugged and went on eating. I watched, and before I knew it, I was drooling at the mouth.

      Pete got up, took a big stretch, and ambled over to where I was. He started rubbing against the fence. He was so close, I could have snatched him baldheaded, which I wanted to do very sincerely, only there was a wire fence between us.

      “I’m not sure I can eat all that egg,” he said. “I’m stuffed. You want the rest of it, Hankie?”

      I should have said no. I mean, a guy has his pride and everything. But my mouth went to watering at the thought of that egg and . . . “Oh, I might . . . yeah, I’ll take it.”

      He grinned and ambled back to the plate. He picked up the egg in his mouth and brought it over to the fence and dropped it right in front of my nose.

      Well, I wasn’t going to give him a chance to reconsider, so I made a grab for it. Hit the derned fence with the end of my nose.

      But it was right there in front of me. I mean, I could smell it now, it was so close. It was giving off warm waves and delicious smells. I could even smell the butter it had been cooked in.

      I made another snap at it, hit the fence and scabbed up my nose. Made my eyes water. When my vision cleared up, I saw Pete sitting there and grinning. I was losing patience fast.

      “Gimme that egg. You said I could have it.”

      “Here, I’ll move it a little closer.” He got his nose under the egg and nudged it right against the fence.

      Well, I just knew I could get it now, so I made another lunge for it. Got a taste of it this time, but also wrecked my nose on that frazzling wire. I could see a piece of skin sticking up, right out toward the end.

      “Gimme that egg!”

      He licked his paw and purred.

      Okay, that settled it. I’ll fool around and nickel-and-dime a problem for a while, but there comes a time when you’ve got to get down to brute strength.

      I backed off and took a run at it and hit the fence with all my speed and strength. I expected at least two posts to snap off at the ground, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if I had taken out the whole west side.

      Them posts turned out to be a little stouter than I thought, and you might say that the wire didn’t break either. The collision shortened my backbone by about six inches and also came close to ruining my nose.

      “Gimme that egg, cat, or I’ll . . .”

      Pete throwed a hump into his back and hissed, right in my face. That was a serious mistake. No cat does that to Hank the Cowdog and lives to tell about it.

      I started barking. I snarled, I snapped, I tore at the fence with my front paws, I clawed the ground. I mean, we had us a little riot going, fellers, and it was only a matter of time until Pete died a horrible death.

      And through it all, I could still smell that egg, fried in butter.

      The back door flew open and Loper stormed out. He had shaving cream on one side of his face and the other side was bright red.

      “HANK, SHUT UP! YOU’RE GONNA WAKE UP THE BABY!”

      I stopped barking and stared at him. Me? What had I . . . if it hadn’t been for the cat . . .

      I heard the baby squall inside the house. Sally May exploded out the door. “Will you tell your dog to shut up! He just woke the baby.”

      “Shut up, Hank!”

      Shut up, Hank. Shut up, Hank. That’s all anybody ever says to me. Not “good morning, Hank,” or “thanks for saving the ranch from the silver monster bird, Hank, we really appreciate you risking your life while we were asleep.” Nothing like that, no siree.

      Well, I can take a hint. I gave Pete one last glare, just to let him know that his days on this earth were numbered, and I stalked back to the gas tanks.

      I met Drover halfway down the hill. He’d just pried himself out of bed. “What’s going on, Hank? I heard some noise.”

      I glared at him. “You heard some noise? Well, glory be. It’s kind of a shame you didn’t come a little sooner when you might have made a hand.”

      “You need some help?”

      I glanced back up the hill. Sally May was still out in the yard, talking to her Kitty-Kitty. “Yeah, I need some help. Go up there and bark at the cat.”

      “Just . . . just bark at the cat, that’s all?”

      “That’s all. Give it your best shot.”

      “Any special reason?”

      “General principles, Drover.”

      “Well, okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

      He went skipping up the hill and I went down to the gas tanks to watch the show.

      Maybe it was kind of mean, me sending Drover up there on a suicide mission, when he was too dumb to know better. But look at it this way: I get blamed for everything around here, and most of the time I don’t deserve it. I figgered it wouldn’t hurt Drover to get yelled at once or twice, and it might even do him some good.

      Getting yelled at is no fun, but it does build character. Drover needed some character-building. That was one of his mainest problems, a weak character.

      So I watched. The little runt padded up to the fence, plopped down, sat up on his back legs, and started yipping. Sally May put her hands on her hips, gave her head a shake, and said, “Well, if that isn’t the cutest thing!”

      She pitched him my egg and he caught it in the air and gulped it down.

      A minute later, he was down at the gas tanks. “I did what you said, Hank, and I won a free egg. Are you proud of me?”

      I was so proud of him, I thought about blacking both his eyes. But I was too disgusted. I just went to sleep.

      That seems to be the only thing I can do around here without getting yelled СКАЧАТЬ