The Ghosts of Rabbits Past. John R. Erickson

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      Are you feeling nervous about this? Good. I was scared out of my wits.

      All the evidence in this case suggested that I had either bumped into a cannibal, a Charlie Monster, or a Hooligan Mole. If you were in that situation, which would you choose?

      Those were the choices I faced, only I really didn’t have a choice, because whatever I’d bumped into was whatever it was, regardless of my opinions. That doesn’t make sense, so let’s move along.

      The point is that I was out there alone in the darkness and had encountered some living thing that wasn’t supposed to be there, and fellers, I had a real bad feeling about it. I tried to calm myself and plot a response. Should I bark the alarm, run, fight, or try to establish communication with the creature? Or creatures. For all I knew, there might be hundreds of them lurking in the darkness.

      I ran these options through Data Control and got a green light for Communication. That made sense. Communicating with alien beings is much better than any of the other things you can do with them.

      Trying to hide the quiver in my voice, I sent out a message.

      “Hello there. This is the voice of the ranch’s Security Division. You seem to be walking through a secured area without permission. If you’re here by mistake, this doesn’t have to be a big deal. Just turn around and leave the compound, and don’t come back.

      “If you came with hostile intentions, you should understand that we have snipers on the walls and three divisions of heavy infantry standing by. Any hostile action on your part will be met with deadly force.”

      I waited for a reply. Nothing, not a word, but I could hear raspy breathing, so I knew he was there. Suddenly it occurred to me that the creature might not speak Ranch English, so I tried another approach.

      Have I mentioned that I’m effluent in many languages? I am. It’s one of those skills that a top-of-the-line cowdog must be prepared to use in the course of a normal day. See, we never know the cultural background or language system of the Bad Guys we encounter on the ranch, so we must be prepared to conduct our business in any one of five or six languages.

      I addressed him in Universal Speaklish. “Ooo-hay are-yea oo-yea, eecher-cray? Eek-spay.”

      This time I got a reply. “Oom-pah oom-pah.”

      “Utt-whey? Eeek-spay owder-lay.”

      “Oom-pah oom-pah, tic-tac-toe.”

      Hmmm. I didn’t know if he could understand me, but I sure wasn’t understanding him. We both seemed to be speaking in a foreign tongue, but not necessarily the same one. Or…wait. Perhaps I had forgotten some of the vocabulary. I mean, it wasn’t every day that I carried on a conversation in Speaklish.

      I would have to keep trying. “Eecher-cray: utt-whey iz-yeah oour-yeah aim-nay? Awk-tay.”

      I waited for his reply, and this time, it came loud and clear. He said, “Oom-pah oom-pah Ort-snay.”

      The “oom-pah oom-pah” meant nothing to me, but Ort-snay? The word had a familiar ring, but for a moment or two, I couldn’t get the cart before the hammer. I did a quick search of my memory banks and came up with a match.

      Ort-snay was the Speaklish word for…SNORT!

      At that same moment, I began to notice a heavy musky odor in the aerosphere. Gulp. In the darkness of night, I had just made contact with a notorious cannibal named Snort, who had a notorious cannibal brother named Rip. And they were both notorious cannibals.

      Encantering countables in the dark of night might be better than encumbering vegetables…sorry, let me back up and start that sentence again. Encountering cannibals in the dark of night might be better than encountering vampires, but it’s not exactly something to celebrate.

      See, I had done business with Rip and Snort, and knew them fairly well—as well as a dog can ever know the murky depths of a cannibal’s mind. If you caught them at the right moment, on the right day, they could be a barrel of laughs. You talk about a couple of goof-offs! They were worthless beyond all description and did things that normal dogs only dream about.

      They were experts at scratching fleas. They composed trashy coyote songs and could howl all night long. Their belching skills were the stuff of legends. They knew everything there was to know about rolling on a dead skunk and impressing the ladies with their deep manly aroma. They got into fights, beat up badgers, and banged their heads against trees just for sport. And nobody could beat them when it came to poaching chickens. Slurp. Excuse me.

      Please ignore that “slurp.” It meant almost nothing.

      The point is that when Rip and Snort were in a friendly mood, they became role models and the envy of every ranch dog in Texas—because they were bums, totally worthless, no ambition, no jobs, no duties or responsibilities, just goofing off forever.

      But there was the Other Side, where good old boys passed through a veil of darkness and became bad old boys, and their true coyote nature overpowered everything else. With Rip and Snort, it was a short step from one side to the other. One minute would find them full of fun and nonsense, and the next…yipes. Their eyes began to sparkle with unholy yellow light, and a ranch dog began to realize…these guys might eat a dog!

      So there you are, a glance at our files on Rip and Snort. And there I was, all alone in the darkness with Snort, and probably not far from Rip, since they always ran together.

      It was too late to escape. There was no place to hide. I didn’t know which mood they were in. I would have to try to get out of this with charm and diplomacy.

      I tried to put a little СКАЧАТЬ