Moonlight Madness. John R. Erickson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ middle of a hot game of Horse. Loper had been making some pretty fancy hoolihan throws and Slim was behind with a score of H-O . . .

      Just then, Sally May came out the back door. And when the screen door slammed, guess who suddenly appeared and came sprinting out of the iris patch—which, by the way, was supposed to be off-limits to ALL animals on the ranch.

      Pete the Cheat.

      Mister Greedy.

      Mister Scrap Chaser.

      Mister Never Satisfied with What He’s Given.

      Mister Always Wants Another Handout.

      He spends most of his life loafing and lurking in the flower beds, don’t you see, just waiting for Sally May to come out the back door with a plate of scraps.

      The rest of us have jobs. We have to work for a living. Not Pete. He’s a full-time moocher and he lives for the moment when Sally May comes out the back door with table scraps.

      Okay, maybe I sort of look forward to Scrap Time myself, but there’s a huge difference between my attitude and Pete’s. He’s greedy, whereas I merely want all the scraps.

      That’s a huge difference.

      I could probably tolerate Pete’s laziness and greediness if he had even a shred of humility about him. But he doesn’t. He thinks everyone loves him! He thinks he has a perfect right to come up and purr and rub and . . .

      Have we discussed my views on cats? I really dislike them a lot.

      So here came Pete, scampering out of the iris patch. By the time Sally May had stepped off the porch, he was trotting along beside her—looking up at her, meowing, purring, holding his tail straight up in the air, and trying to rub on her leg.

      A neutral observer might have been fooled by this shameless display, might have thought that Pete was just being friendly and lovable. Hey, I knew exactly what he was up to. He was begging for scraps and waiting for a free handout.

      I was outraged. Not only was this cat bothering my master’s wife and making a pest of himself, but he’d gotten a head start on ME.

      See, I obeyed the law and stayed outside of Sally May’s yard. Her law was clear on this matter: “No animals inside the yard.” Yet Pete had built his shabby little career on cheating and violating the law, and somehow he always got by with it.

      And I had to watch all of this from the other side of the fence—I being the Head of Ranch Security and the very embodiment of ranch law and order.

      It was tough. I found myself getting restless, then angry. A snarl formed on my lips and a growl began to rumble in the dark cavern of my throat. My ears leaped upward into the Full Alert position and suddenly I noticed myself glaring daggers at this cat who was mocking a makery of our ranch’s system of law and order.

      Sally May opened the gate and stepped out of the yard. The cat followed. Hmmm. Kitty had just, shall we say, moved into the range of my, uh, torpedoes and missiles. I lifted my eyes to see if Sally May . . .

      Perhaps the growling had tipped my hand and revealed my darkest and most wicked thoughts. In any event, she seemed to know what was going through my mind.

      Our eyes met. She leaned over and said, “Leave the cat alone.”

      I stared at her in shock and disbelief. Me? Leave the . . . I hadn’t even . . . what made her . . . how could she . . .

      I made a mental note to myself: “Next time we’re arming the torpedoes, we should observe silence. Growling seems to alert suspicion.”

      Not that I had actually intended to . . . Sally May was a pretty shrewd observer, and yes, it appeared that I would have to be more secretive in planning my, uh, military adventures.

      I whapped my tail on the gravel and gave her my most sincere wounded look: “Sally May, there’s been some mistake. You’ve got me figgered all wrong.”

      She continued to look down at me. “Hank, I know you. Your thoughts are written all over your face in neon lights. You can’t fool me.”

      Well, I . . . neon lights, huh? My goodness, I would have to do some work on my face, it ap­peared, although I hadn’t actually . . .

      She turned her attention to Slim and Loper. I turned my attention to the cat—curled my lips, showed him some fangs, glared ice picks at him, and unleashed a low rumbling growl.

      She thumped me in the ribs with the heel of her shoe. “Hank!”

      Good grief, did she have eyes in the back of her head? She wasn’t even looking at me! How did she . . .

      Okay, it must have been the growl. That thing was getting me in a lot of trouble, and yes, I would have to spend some time polishing my Silent Operations.

      “Boys,” she said to Slim and Loper, “I’ve finally got the picnic planned for Wednesday morning. Loper, I’d like for you to watch the kids, and Slim, maybe you could find us a nice picnic spot along the creek. Can you remember that, Slim?”

      “Oh sure. It’s branded in my memory with a hot iron.”

      She rolled her eyes. “I’ll call you Tuesday night, just to be sure the iron was hot. Well, let’s eat, boys.”

      She didn’t have to call ’em twice. They dropped their ropes and went trooping toward the house. As they passed me, I looked at them and gave them Extra Sincere Wags, just in case they might . . . you never know when somebody might invite you into the house for, well, lunch or something.

      That deal fell like a gutted sparrow, but the morning wasn’t a total loss. On the way to the house, Slim got his feet tangled up in Pete and stepped on his tail.

      “Reeeeeeeeer!”

      Ha ha, hee hee, ho ho. I loved it. And around two o’clock that afternoon, Slim and I prevented a murder from happening.

      Chapter Two: A Gang of Hoodlums on the Ranch

      Whilst the cowboy crew were stuffing themselves with Sally May’s roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy, fresh peas, radishes and lettuce from the garden, creamed corn, and hot apple cobbler—whilst they were doing all that, I Who Had Not Been Invited maintained my virgil at the yard gate.

      I mean, somebody on the ranch had to WORK while everybody else was eating and gorging and stuffing themselves. My work consisted mainly of guarding the gate against intruders and laughing at Pete for getting his tail stepped on.

      Oh yes, and there was the wasp, the yellowjacket wasp, who buzzed around my head for a while and then landed on the ground nearby. I couldn’t think of a single reason why he needed to be there, and so I set out to rid the ranch of . . .

      A СКАЧАТЬ