The Dungeon of Doom. John R. Erickson

really? Such as?”

      “Such as . . . the list is so long, I don’t have time to discuss it. Furthermore, it’s classified information and I’m not at liberty to reveal it to a cat. Sorry.”

      He sat down, wrapped his tail around his body, and began licking his paw with long slow strokes of his tongue. “It hurts to be left out, doesn’t it?”

      “I wouldn’t know about that, Pete. For your information, the Head of Ranch Security is wired into everything that happens on this . . .” I stuck my nose into his face. “What are you getting at? Is there some point to this conversation, or are you merely wasting my time?”

      “We cats are very observant, Hankie. We notice little details.”

      “Hurry up.”

      “We notice little details such as . . . a cowdog who isn’t invited to help with the cow work.”

      “I’ve already told you . . .”

      “Then a long face and a look of deepest despair.”

      “Lies, Pete.”

      He looked at me with his weird yellow eyes. “They left you out, Hankie, and now you’re feeling worthless and unwanted.”

      A growl began rumbling in depths of my throat, and in the back of my mind, I could hear the voice of Data Control: “Target is acquired and the weapon is ready for launch! Stand by for countdown.” Every muscle in my enormous body was tense and ready for the launch. “Three! Two! One!”

      I buried the little snot under the missile of my body, I mean, I rolled him up in a ball. But, you know, the funny thing about cats is that they never stay buried for long, so it came as no surprise, no great shock that he managed to . . . uh . . .wiggle out of the grisp of my grasp and buzzsaw my face with his claws. But that merely poured gasoline upon the embers of my righteous anger and made me even more determined to . . .

      BZZZZZZZT!

      A guy forgets how much damage a sniveling little cat can do with those claws, but the impoin­tant point is that I bulled my way through his defensive measures, took my lumps, and kept truckin’, sending the Kitty Army into blind, cowardly retreat. I chased him for twenty yards and ran him up a chinaberry tree.

      It was beautiful, delicious. Poetry in motion. A magnificent symphony of Pure Dogness. I’m not sure the Security Division has ever known triumph on such a grand scale.

      Standing at the base of the tree, I looked up and yelled, “And let that be a lesson to you!”

      “Enjoy the roundup, Hankie.”

      “I will, and you enjoy the tree.”

      And with that stinging reply, I marched away from the tree, leaving Kitty Kitty sitting in the rubble of his own shubbles. Shambles. Sitting in the ramble of his own shambles. Sitting in the rubble of his own . . . phooey.

      The point is that I had delivered the cat another humiliating defeat, and no dog could have been prouder. I held my head at a triumphant angle and . . . my nose was killing me! I sat down near the saddle shed and felt a cloud of gloom moving across my mind. Not only had I been cut out of the roundup work, but the cat had almost cut off my nose. Things had gone from bad to awful.

      Just then, Drover walked up. “I heard a bunch of noise. What . . .” He stared at the wounds on my nose. “Gosh, what happened?”

      I told him the whole miserable story. “The cowboys have lost confidence in me, Drover, and now I feel worthless and useless. I thought that thrashing the cat might brighten my day, but . . . well, you can see how that turned out.”

      “Yeah, he brightened your nose.”

      “Exactly. He brightened my nose with blood and made a gloomy day even gloomier.” I stood up and began pacing. “And now my whole life seems pointless. I just wish there was something I could to do to show the cowboys . . .” I stopped pacing and stared at three mounds of fresh dirt in the middle of the corral gate. “Drover, come here and look at this.”

      He walked over to the dirt piles and sniffed them. “I’ll be derned, gopher mounds. I guess there’s a gopher digging underground. I hope the cows don’t trip when they go through the gate.”

      I stared at him. “What did you just say?”

      “I said, I hope the gophers don’t trip . . . I hope the cows don’t dig . . . oh drat, I can’t remember.”

      “Drover, you may have just come up with a brilliant idea!”

      “I did?”

      “Yes, I know that sounds unlikely, that you’d come up with a brilliant idea, but listen to this.” My mind was soaring by this time and I started pacing. “Where gophers dig, they leave the surface undisturbed, but the ground beneath the surface is a maze of tunnels and shafts, right?”

      “I guess so.”

      “Okay, listen closely. What happens when a herd of large animals walks across that surface?”

      “I don’t know. They step on a gopher?”

      “No. Their hooves break through the surface and they fall into the gopher tunnel.”

      “Yeah, but . . .”

      “Don’t you get it? Nobody knows how deep those tunnels go. Why, they might go for miles and miles, right into some boiling pit at the center of the earth.”

      “Well, I don’t think . . .”

      “Just imagine, Drover, what would happen if all the cattle on this ranch plunged to their deaths in a bottomless gopher tunnel. Loper would be broke. Slim would be out of a job, and so would we.”

      “Yeah, but . . .”

      I marched over to him and whapped him on the back. “Congratulations, son, you’ve just given me a way of redeeming myself!”

      “You mean . . .”

      “Yes. I’ll stand in the gate and make sure that we don’t lose any cattle in the Bottomless Gopher Tunnel.”

      “Yeah, but Loper told you . . .”

      “He didn’t notice the gopher evidence, Drover, and that’s why we’re here, to save Our People from their own errors and mistakes. Loper was careless, his mind was on other things.” I stepped back and gave him a broad smile. “What do you think of that, soldier?”

      “Well, it sounds . . . it sounds a little crazy.”

      “Crazy! Hey, this was your idea and I’m trying to . . .” Just then, I heard the sound of cattle in the distance. “Shhh. Listen. The cowboys are coming in with the herd. We haven’t a moment to spare. Quick, to the corral gate!”

      “See you later!”