“Mumlumnum hoosh.”
“Lumnum hooshy morkin skumble.”
“Zzzzzzzzzzzz.”
“Zzzzzzzzzzz.”
I must admit that some of this conversation didn’t make sense to me, for you see, Drover fell asleep. Another thing that didn’t make sense was that, suddenly, I heard the jingling of distant bells.
My ears shot up and I leaped to my feet. “Zzzwait a minute, pork chops don’t sound like that! Wake up, Drover, I think I’ve got it.”
His eyelids popped open, revealing two crossed eyes behind them. “Clouds ride chicken bone motorcycles. What?”
“I said, wake up, I think I’ve got it. It’s all coming clear now. If the bells are jingling, this must be Christmas!”
He staggered to his feet and walked around in a circle. “Oh my gosh, do they bite?”
“What?”
“Where am I?”
“How should I know where you are, and what difference does it make? The point is that there’s something very strange going on here and it’s our job to sound the alarm, so don’t just bark there. Stand!”
“Oh, okay.” The little dunce just stood there.
“Are you going to bark or not?”
“You said to stand here. I think that’s what you said.”
“It’s time for you to stop thinking, Drover, and trust your cowdog instincts, even though you’re not a cowdog. There’s a time to stand up for what you believe in and there’s a time to think, but this is the time to bark your little heart out.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Because something very strange is going on around here.”
He rolled his eyes around. “What is it?”
“I . . . I don’t remember what it is, but that’s neither here nor there. Bark, Drover, that’s the important thing right now!”
And that’s just what we did. We gave whatever it was a good old-fashioned barking, I with my deep masculine roar and Drover adding his yip-yip-yip. We must have barked for a solid minute, and at the end of that time my head had begun to clear.
“Wait a minute, hold on, Drover. What are we barking at?”
“I don’t know. I asked you that a while ago, and you said . . .”
“Never mind what I said. It’s foolish for us to waste our reserves if we don’t know what we’re barking at. Let me think.” I thought. “Yes, it’s coming back to me now. I heard bells, Drover, the jingling of bells. And I guess you know what that means.”
“No, I don’t think I do.”
“Good, because I don’t either, but that’s the whole point. If we heard bells jingling and can’t define the source, then what we have here is the Case of the Jingling Bells.”
“Oh my gosh!”
“Yes indeed. Now listen very carefully.” He was staring up at the sky. “Are you listening very carefully?”
“What? No, I was just looking at the clouds. There sure are a lot of clouds this morning.”
“Never mind the clouds. Pay attention. In thirty seconds, we will proceed to Checkpoint Charlie. I’ll go first. You guard the flanks and the rear. We’re going to find out who or whom has been jingling those alleged bells, and I don’t need to tell you that this could get us into some combat. You ready?”
“I guess.”
“All right. Form a line, pick up your feet, and let’s move out.”
We went streaking toward the saddle shed, the point from which the jingling bells had come from. I took the lead and Drover brought up the rear.
By this time it had become clear to me that both Drover and I had fallen asleep beneath the gas tanks and that this probe of the enemy’s position had grown out of a fairly incoherent conversation.
Nevertheless, it had to be checked out. Sometimes your best leads in this business come from strange sources. A good cowdog will check them all out. It’s just part of the job.
We went crashing through some tall weeds, and by the time we reached a point adjacent to the point at which the garden lay adjacent to the saddle shed, I heard the bells again. And this time I couldn’t dismiss it as a mere dream or a product of Drover’s shriveled intelligence.
Yes indeed, we had bells on the ranch. I hadn’t cleared anyone to jingle bells on my ranch, and I was fixing to pull rank and give somebody a rude surprise.
“All right, Drover,” I yelled over my shoulder, “let’s initiate Barking Mode One. Ready? BARK!”
Fellers, we barked! Maybe I don’t need to point out how difficult it is to go into Barking Mode One while running at top speed, but it’s a pretty nifty trick that requires concentration and a good deal of raw athletic ability.
When I saw the saddle shed door hanging open, I knew we had ourselves a live one. Something or someone had broken in there—without clearance, I might add—and we had caught the culprits in an unauthorized entry. As you might have guessed, I don’t allow unauthorized entries on my outfit.
In other words, they had made a very serious miscalculation and had walked right into my trap. For you see, there was only one door into the saddle shed, which meant there was only one door OUT. We had them cornered.
“All right, Drover, we’ll take up positions in front of the door and initiate Barking Mode Two. When they come out, give them the full load. I’ll go for the first one, you take the second one.”
“What if there’s three?”
“If there’s three, Drover, we’ll play it by ear. Ready? Bark!”
We sent up an amazing barrage of barking, just by George fractured the silence of morning with alarms and threatening sounds. Even though we had the situation pretty well under control, it wouldn’t have made me mad if High Loper had come rushing down from the house with his gun.
Well, we were in the midst of our barking procedure when all of a sudden a two-legged, human-type monster leaped out the door. He had two clawed hands and a ferocious expression on his face. Oh yes, and he made a terrible sound: “HEE-YAHHHH!”
The hair shot up on the back of my neck and my deep roar of a bark suddenly turned into a squeak, and you might say that I plowed little Drover under trying to get away from the monster, thought I would give a little ground, see, and then establish another . . .
Let me say here that the cowboys on this outfit have a twisted sense of humor, and sometimes I get the feeling that they don’t take my job as seriously . . .
Okay, maybe it was Slim. Maybe the jingling bells had actually been his spurs. Maybe he was trying to be funny, jumping out the door with his claws out. But the point is that nobody had cleared . . . never mind.
Chapter Two: A Working Hippopotamus Takes Shape
Oh, he got a big chuckle out of it, Slim did, just laughed and howled and held his sides and fell on the ground. I didn’t think it was so funny myself.
“Did you think I was going to get you, Hankie? You’d better be more careful what you bark at.” He went back into the saddle shed, chuckling to himself. It’s always a little shocking to realize how childish these cowboys can be.
Well, it took me a whole minute to