The Phantom in the Mirror. John R. Erickson

coyotes didn’t see him or weren’t interested in eating him for breakfast, and the chase went on—back up the hill, through the front gate, through Sally May’s precious yard, and things were looking pretty grim for the Head of Ranch Security, when all at once and thank goodness, Loper stepped out on the porch.

      It appeared that he had come out to hang a Christmas wreath on the door, and in a matter of seconds I had taken refuge behind and between his legs.

      That kind of surprised him. “Hank, what in the . . .” And then he saw the cannibals. “Hyah, go on, get out of here!”

      Well, they wanted none of Loper, even without his shotgun, and they pointed themselves east and set sail. At that point I ventured a step beyond Loper’s legs and cut loose with a withering barrage of barking.

      “That’s right, and if you ever come into this yard again, I’ll give you the other half of what I did to you out in the pasture! And you didn’t fool me for a minute with that Freddie business.”

      I went all the way to the edge of the porch and barked until the cowards disappeared over that first hill east of the house, and then I barked some more, just to be sure they got the message.

      (By the way, we’ve come to the end of the Secret and Classified Information. In a matter of seconds, the pages containing this highly sensitive infor­mation will hiss, sizzle, smoke, and disappear before your very eyes. Please stand back during this procedure).

      HISS! SIZZLE!

      SMOKE!

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      Okay, where were we? Standing on the porch.

      Loper whistled under his breath. “My gosh, that’s the first time I ever saw coyotes come right up in the yard. They must be operating on short rations. Did you give ’em a pretty good whupping, Hankie boy?”

      I . . . uh . . . yes. A good whupping had indeed occurred.

      In other words, yes.

      I’d given them the thrashing they so richly deserved, and even though it had appeared there for a moment that they’d gotten the upper hand, they’d actually gotten the, uh, lower hand.

      They were lucky to have escaped with their lives, and next time, if they were foolish enough to try it again, next time they might not be so lucky.

      I barked them one last time, just to give em­phasis to my warning.

      Loper grinned and scratched me on top of the head. “Pooch, it looks like you got a Mohawk haircut all the way from your ears to the end of your tail.”

      He was referring to the strip of raised hair on my back. In some quarters it has been said—incorrectly, as you’ll see—it has been said that these so-called “raised hackles” reveal that a dog has just been scared beyond recognition.

      Nothing could be further from the truth. Those reports are based on gossip, faulty research, and misquotations. Raised hackles and hair standing on end have nothing whatsoever to do with fear.

      Rather, they are part of a dog’s natural defense against, uh, severe cold.

      Chill.

      Loss of body heat.

      Hypothermometer, it’s called.

      Don’t forget, this incident occurred in Decem­ber, and it can be very cold in the Texas Pan­handle in December, especially in the early morning hours.

      Extremely cold.

      Bitter.

      And loss of body heat can be a serious problem for a dog in this climate, why, if we didn’t raise our hackles once in a while, the entire countryside would be littered with . . . well, frozen dogs.

      It’s that serious, so it should come as no big shock or surprise that I had my Thermal Hair Panels raised to collect the first warm rays of the sun.

      It would have been foolish of me NOT to have initiated the THP procedure. In cold weather, we just can’t run the risk of a total freezedown, and that’s why . . . I think we’ve covered the Thermal Hair Panels.

      Okay. There we were, Loper and I, together on the front porch, enjoying another glorious Pan­handle sunrise. He was lavish in his praise of my handling of the Coyote Crisis and congratulated me for running the scoundrels off the ranch.

      Then he informed me that I would have to handle all the ranch’s business that day because he had been “drafted,” to use his word, for . . . how did he put it? “Operation Honeydew,” which meant that he would spend the entire day helping Sally May get the house, yard, and so forth ready for the church choir’s Christmas party.

      “Honey, do this. Honey, do that.” Honeydew. Get it?

      No problem there. I mean, running the entire ranch was no big deal for me, and I assured him through wags and barks that everything would be just fine.

      I was about to leave when he said, “Hey, Killer, what’s this?”

      He seemed to be pointing a finger down at . . . hmmm, was that a small puddle of water? Yes, his finger seemed to be directed at a small puddle of water on the, uh, porch.

      Our eyes met. “Is that some of your work? It ain’t mine.”

      I, uh, gave my tail a slight wagging motion and . . .

      Okay, remember those Thermal Hair Panels? You won’t believe this but every so often, or actually more often than you’d think, they form tiny clouds of condensation, and under the right conditions, these tiny droplets of water will condense and fall to the earth—or to the porch—and actually form pools.

      Or puddles.

      Puddles consisting of natural mist and tiny droplets.

      And so what we had there was just a simple case of water condensation caused by the raised . . .

      It WASN’T what you think.