Wagons West. John R. Erickson
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Название: Wagons West
Автор: John R. Erickson
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Учебная литература
Серия: Hank the Cowdog
isbn: 9781591887676
isbn:
Anyway…where were we? I don’t remember.
Does anybody remember what we were discussing?
Huh. I’m drawing a blank.
Wait, hold everything. Springtime. Now we’re cooking.
Okay, as usual, my day started before daylight and I had already barked up the sun by the time Loper and Slim showed up at the machine shed. They climbed into a pickup and drove off to a field east of headquarters. As I recall, they were plowing the ground and planting feed, and seemed to be in a hurry to get it done before a rain.
The weather report on the radio was calling for a 50% chance of thunderstorms, don’t you see. Normal people see that as a 50% chance of nothing, but ranchers and cowboys get excited about it.
I gave them an escort all the way to the mailbox, then returned to headquarters and put in a few hours doing Bird Patrol. See, the down-side of springtime is that we get an invasion of tweet-tweets. They come from everywhere and perch in my trees, without permission to perch in my trees, and we’re talking about thousands of little birdie trespassers.
And you talk about NOISE! They tweet. They twitter. They squeak, squawk, whistle, warble, flitter, flutter, flap, and fly. A dog can hardly take a decent nap…that is, it’s almost impossible for us to conduct Ranch Business with all the noise.
We have to attend meetings, don’t you know, endless meetings: the Budget Committee, the Long Range Planning Group, the Weather Committee, the Commission on Cats…the list goes on and on. So, yes, after doing Bird Patrol, I was chairing a meeting of the Long Range Planning Group, when a stranger burst into the room and delivered some alarming news.
“Hank, you’d better wake up. A bird just hit the window.”
I didn’t recognize the guy. He must have been a new employee. I looked up from the sprawl of spreadsheets that covered the conference table, blinked my eyes, and studied his face. It was located on the front of his head and consisted of one nose, one mouth, and two eyes.
That checked out, but I still didn’t recognize him. “Calm down. You said a herd bit the window?”
“No, a bird hit the window.”
“A herd of what—cattle, buffalo, deer, sheep? Be specific.”
“Not a herd. A bird.”
“Okay, you heard a bird, so what? Listen, pal, I’ve been hearing birds every second of every day for the past two weeks. They’re driving me nuts, so don’t tell me about birds. Furthermore, you’ve interrupted this meeting.”
“What meeting?”
“The meeting that was meeting. You’ve interrupted a very important…” I took a closer look at his face. “How long have you been working here?”
“Oh…forever, I guess.”
“Then you should know better than to burst into the muddle of a meedle.”
“I think you were asleep.”
“You keep talking about sheep. What are they doing on this ranch?”
“Not sheep. SLEEP.”
“Of course sheep sleep, but sheep have no business sleeping on this outfit. This is a cattle ranch and…” I rose from my chair, with the intention of pacing around the room. It’s something I do to concentrate the hocus of my pocus, only this time something went awry with my legs. I lurched to the left and collapsed on the floor. “Sorry. My leg must have gone to sleep.”
“Yeah, along with everything else.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’ve been sleeping all morning.”
“How dare you…” I hoisted myself up on all-fours and took a moment to gather my thoughts. “All right, let’s get to the bottom of this. Who are you and what are you doing here?”
He heaved a sigh and rolled his eyes around. “I’m Drover.”
“Wait, hold it right there. I have a runt on my staff named Drover. Does that strike you as odd?”
“No, ‘cause it’s me. I’m the real Drover. Hi.”
I looked closer at him and…hmm…paced a few steps away. “Drover, you could have saved us a lot of trouble if you had identified yourself, instead of blabbering nonsense about sheep and goats and buffalo.”
“You were asleep.”
“I was NOT asleep, and I’ll thank you to stop spreading lies! Now, for the last time, tell me about the sheep.”
“There aren’t any sheep. A bird hit the window.”
“We don’t have any windows.”
“Up at the house. It keeps flying into the window glass.”
I gave that some thought. “Oh, I see now. Yes, those birds do this every spring, crash into windows. They’re such fools.”
“It’s a little owl. I think you know her.”
“I don’t know any owls. I don’t socialize with owls.”
“Remember Madame Moonshine?”
“Never heard of her. Now, if you’ll…did you say Madame Moonshine? A little owl?”
“Yep, that’s her.”
I stared at the ground for a long moment. “I know her.”
“Hee hee. I told you.”
“Please don’t giggle and gloat when you happen to get something right.”
Then Drover moved closer and delivered some shocking news. “If she knocks herself out on the glass, Pete’s waiting to eat her.”
PETE?
And so the crisis began, with Drover bringing the news that one of our precious little birdie friends was in danger of being devoured by the cat.
Pretty scary, huh? You bet.
Chapter Two: Rocket Dog to the Rescue
Drover’s words caused my head to snap to attention. “What! Pete is going to…stand by, soldier, we’re fixing to Launch All Dogs!”
Have we discussed my Position on Birds? Maybe not, but maybe we’d better. A lot of your ordinary mutts consider birds a nuisance. Ordinary mutts bark at the birds and try to chase them away.
Me? СКАЧАТЬ