Faded Love. John R. Erickson

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      I just went limp and hoped for the best.

      Just before he got me snuffed out, he let go and I dropped into the grass. I sat up and caught my wind and was beginning to think about making my exit before Sally May came back, when the little scoundrel ran his finger across the cake and put a big glob of icing in front of my nose.

      Ordinarily I’m not tempted by sweets. I’ve always figgered that too much sweets makes a dog soft. It ain’t the hardship that ruins a good dog; it’s the easy life.

      On the other hand, we don’t often get recognition in this line of work. We don’t demand it, we don’t expect it, we go on and do our job without it. But when it comes, a guy kind of hates to turn it down.

      Here was this little fellow, offering me a small reward for a job well done. What could I do? I licked the icing off his finger. He got some more and, well, I took that too. Pretty good stuff. He kept dipping and I kept licking.

      He really got a kick out of that. He was laughing and squealing and having a wonderful time. Here was a happy child. I knew Sally May wanted her child to be happy—wouldn’t any mother?—so when Little Alfred stuck his whole hand into the cake and offered me a big hunk, I took that too—primarily out of a sense of duty.

      I took a bite and he took a bite. Me and Little Alfred had become the best of friends, is what had happened. It was one of them unexpected magic moments when two of God’s creatures sit down and share some of the good things in this life: friendship and cake.

      I mean, we were different. We didn’t speak the same language or come from the same stock, but all at once that didn’t matter.

      Seemed to me Little Alfred was working awful hard, digging that cake out with his hand and feeding me every bite, so I scootched a little closer to the box and showed him how to eat cake with no hands: just by George stick your face into it and go to lickin’ and chewin’.

      He loved that! And let me tell you, the kid was good at it. Well, we had our faces stuck in the cake and had just about eat the west side out of it, when all at once . . .

      “Here I come, Sweetie. Daddy put the camera in the wrong place and the phone rang and . . . ALFRED! WHAT ON EARTH . . . HANK!!”

      Huh? Our heads came up. I looked at Little Alfred and he looked at me. He giggled. I didn’t. If I had anywhere near as much cake on my face as he did, fellers, I was in trouble.

      It’s hard to deny the crime when you’re wearing the evidence.

      Sally May’s face turned red. She grabbed a rake and started toward us, in what you might call an angry walk. (Long, sharp steps.)

      At a glance, I could see that this was going to be another misunderstanding between me and Sally May. She didn’t understand about the giant rattlesnake or me protecting her baby or the wonderful relationship me and Little Alfred had built up.

      She probably thought I was in her yard, eating her cake. And she might have even suspected me of flattening her iris bed.

      I hated to walk out on Little Alfred, but I had a pretty good idea which one of us was going to get the rake used on him. “YOU’VE RUINED MY CAKE, YOU, YOU, YOU HOUND!! GET OUT OF THIS YARD! AND MY FLOWERS!”

      Just as I suspected.

      I tucked my tail and started slinking away. When she throwed the rake at me, I slank no more. I ran.

      I had solved The Case of the Giant Rattle­snake. You might even say it had been a piece of cake. But consider the price of success: my reputation was now in shambles.