Okay, I did the deep breathing so-forths, then went plunging right into a series of exercises, and once again, we run up against the Wall of Secrecy, which surrounds so much of our work in the Security Division. I can’t describe the exercises. Sorry. I can tell you only that they were calculated to direct a tremendous energy field into my barking procedure.
You see, the task of barking the sun above the horizon required huge amounts of ozmottic energy and . . . I really can’t say any more about it. No kidding. If this information fell into the wrong hands . . . well, think about it. We could never be sure who was raising the sun. It might be going up in the middle of the day or the middle of the night. It could be very bad.
Okay. I zipped through my checklist of exercises and routines and so forth, until at last I felt prepared for the awesome task that awaited me. I turned myself in a precise east-west orientation, stiffened my tail, took three deep breaths, and began barking—and fellers, we’re talking about deep heavy-duty ozmottic barkings, the kind that rumble into the distance and cause full-grown cottonwood trees to rattle and shake.
Yes sir, we had launched ourselves into some serious barking.
I barked and I barked.
Hmmm.
Then I barked and I barked.
Hmmmm.
Then I threw everything I had into it, and I barked and I barked and I BARKED!
You probably think that the, uh, sun came shooting up from below the horizon. I had kind of expected that myself, to be honest about it, but . . .something had . . . once in a while we get the wrong mix of . . .
Okay, maybe the sun didn’t exactly come skipping into view, but I hasten to add that I did notice a few strink peaks of light on the horizon . . . pink streaks, I should say, on the horizon, a sure indication that, while the sun may have been too lazy and dumb to leap into view, it had . . . uh . . . heard my massive barkings and was at least thinking of . . .
It didn’t go just exactly as I had planned, but even more important was the fact that my amazing burst of barking seemed to have triggered a mysterious echo effect. Yes sir. I’d never heard anything quite like it. See, after launching three huge rounds of barking, I paused to catch my breath and to . . . well, to watch the sun leap into the air, which we already know didn’t happen.
But what did happen was that, suddenly and all at once, I began hearing my own barks returning! I was amazed by this at first, but then it began to make sense. Your high-energy ozmottic barkings will sometimes travel hundreds of miles, strike a solid object such as a mountain range or a grain elevator, and then return to the ear of the barker.
You’ve heard of your radar and your sonar? Same deal, high-energy pulses of ozmottic so-forth bouncing off a whatever and coming back.
But the amazing thing about this deal was that the barks kept coming. According to our records at Data Control, we had launched . . . let’s see, 2+2+3=7 . . . we had launched exactly seven barks. But do you know how many barks came back? Not seven, as you might have guessed, but eleven. Yes sir, we had launched seven and eleven had returned.
This was very strange, very strange indeed. We put Data Control to work on it right away, crunching the numbers and searching for a pattern here. At last we got the solution. Here’s what it said, and this is an exact quote:
“Seven-come-eleven. They must be shooting dice.”
Shooting dice? That made no sense at all. Who or whom or what was shooting dice? In a flash I punched in the codes and commands for “Retread”—“Retry,” actually—but we came up with the same message.
Hmmmm. There was something fishy going on here and I had to get to the bottom of the barrel. It was bad luck that Data Control had failed to answer the vital questions, and now I had to follow it up on my own.
I issued a Test Bark, then cocked my right ear and listened. Two barks returned. I issued a second Test Bark. Three barks returned. Was there a pattern here? No. I didn’t know what we had, only that it was pretty derned mysterious.
I issued a third Test Bark and got one back this time, but aha! This time I picked up a crucial piece of information. The returning bark seemed closer than the ones before. I fired off a fourth and fifth Test Bark, and yes, the pattern continued.
Those returning barks were definitely getting closer.
How could this be? What could be causing the echoing barks to . . . wait. Something moved in the darkness. Yes, right out there in front of me, near the base of Sunrise Hill. A shadowy form seemed to be . . . two shadowy forms seemed to be creeping up the hill in my . . .
HUH?
Glittering yellow eyes?
I was beginning to feel a little uneasy about this. I mean, echoes don’t have glittering yellow eyes, right? Echoes don’t even have eyes, right? So what the heck . . . and echoes don’t have voices either, but all at once I was pretty sure that I heard . . .
“Uh! That you, Hunk? Pretty foolish you come out in black dark and play Talk Back Bark with most dangerous guys!”
Hunk? Talk Back Bark?
I cut my eyes from side to side. Data Control was flashing a warning light. Okay, it was all coming clear now. Remember all that stuff about “seven-come-eleven” and “shooting dice”? That was nothing but a garbage report from Data Control. What we had confronting us now had nothing to do with shooting dice or high-energy echoes.
What we had confronting us now was a whole lot worse—Rip and Snort, the coyote brothers. Have we discussed Rip and Snort? There had been times in my career when I had shared some laughs with them, but there had been other times when I’d gotten the feeling that they wanted to . . . well, to eat me.
And now it appeared that they had broken my codes and intermessed my messages, followed my barking patterns, and traced them back to ME.
Me, standing alone on Funeral Hill. Me, away from the safety of the house.
I swallowed a big lump in my throat, then addressed them in their own coyalect diote . . . coyote dialect, shall we say, a primitive grunting version of Universal Doglish. “Hey, Rip and Snort, how’s it going, fellas? Nice morning for a walk, huh?”
“Ha! Big phooey on walk. Nice morning for fight. Hunk ready for big noisy fight?”
“I . . . uh . . . no, not really.” I began backing away. “See, I was just . . . did you guys hear about the big dice game? Yeah, big dice game. You know, ‘seven-come-eleven’ and all that stuff. I know for a fact that you guys love to gamble.”
“Us guys love to fight, beat up dummy ranch dog, kick and bite and scratch, oh boy.” They were getting closer. I could smell them now. Boy, did they stink. “How come Hunk stand on hill, in plainest sight, and bark louder and loudest?”
“Well, I . . . if you must know, Snort, I was trying to bark up the sun a little earlier than usual.” I continued backing away, but this time they noticed. I heard them growling.
“Hunk not try sneaking back to house and boom-boom.”
“Me? Sneak back to the house? Ha, ha. Not me, guys, no sir. Really. No, I have to stay out here until I get that old sun barked up.”
By this time they were right in front of me and I could see the outline of their sharp noses and sharp ears. I must admit that the sight of them, and the smell too, sent shivers of dread down my spine. I couldn’t believe I had gotten myself into this mess. Why hadn’t I . . . oh well, it