Tags:
adventure,
Mystery,
Texas,
dog,
cowdog,
Hank the Cowdog,
John R. Erickson,
John Erickson,
ranching,
Hank,
Drover,
Pete,
Sally May
crunch and smack and grunt, and nobody cares because theyâre only hogs who eat like pigs.â
âThat makes sense.â
âBut weâre not hogs, Drover. We aspire to something higher and better. We try to bring a certain air of dignity to the ritual of eating. The act of imposing dignity on the chaos of experience is called civilization, and protecting civilization has always been hard.â
âYeah, but I meant the kernels were hard.â
âOh.â
âHard to chew.â He crunched a kernel.
âYes, I see what you . . .â I crunched a kernel, âmean. They are hard, arenât they? In fact, they hurt my teeth.â
âYeah, and they hurt my gums.â
âYou shouldnât be chewing gum while you eat, Drover. Not only do you run the risk of swallowing it and gumming up your entrails, but itâs also in very poor taste.â
âYeah, it tastes kind of like sawdust to me.â
âExactly. But taste and manners are like grease in the ball bearings of experience. Without the grease, we would have nothing but friction and disharmony.â
âYou reckon they add a little grease to improve the taste?â
âThereâs no explaining taste, Drover. Some dogs have it and some donât. Those of us who do, and I include myself in that group, have the added burden of defending it against the endless assaults of the mindless rubble.â
âYeah, and the chickens.â
At that very moment, a chicken came up to our dog bowl and appeared to be thinking of pecking into our food. I lowered my head, lifted my lips, exposed my teeth, and snarled.
âGet away from our food, you feather merchant!â
She squawked and ran, and we went back to our eating. Drover wore a big grin on his face as he smacked and crunched.
âBoy, weâre pretty good at defending our taste, even if it tastes like sawdust.â
âSomeone has to do it, Drover, and it might as well be us.â
All at once we heard a commotion coming from somewhere down below. My ears, which are very sensitive and operate pretty muchly independent of the rest of my body, picked up the sound, and within seconds had passed the information along to Data Control.
There the sound was analyzed, broken down into vectors and parameters, and given a specific location. The mental printout which appeared behind my eyes contained this brief message:
âDISTRESSED CAT NEAR SEPTIC TANK.â
I went on eating. We respond to most distress calls at once, but a cat in distress can always wait until we finish our meal.
But then I heard the back door slam. I paused, switched my ears from automatic to manual, lifted them a half-inch, and opened the exterior flaps to increase their sound gathering capacity.
Footsteps on the sidewalk. The squeak of the yard gate. The snap of the gate latch. Footsteps on gravel. Sally Mayâs voice.
âAlfred? Alfred? Where did you go?â
More footsteps on the gravel, moving down the hill towards the gas tanks. âREEEEEEEER!â That was the cat again, no problem there. Ah ha! A splashing sound. A child laughing. Then Sally May again.
âAlfred! What on earth?â
I sighed and stood up. âSwallow your food, Drover, weâve got a Code Three down at the septic tank.â
Drover had a mouthful. âAcktock cwqbhd sclcke bdkdkejald.â
âI canât understand you. Your mouth is full.â
âCvkwlcled ckwoeidke bjeildhck flwe.â
âSwallow, clear your moth . . . your mouth, that is, and try it again.â
He chewed and swallowed hard. âI said, my mouth is full.â
âNo, itâs clear now. Iâm getting a good copy on you.â
âI know, I just swallered what it was full of.â
âI know you just swallered it. Thatâs what I told you to do, thatâs what you did, so whatâs the problem?â
âI donât know. My mouth was full and