The Case of the Mysterious Voice. John R. Erickson

to me that we were talking about something pretty exciting, but all at once . . . boy, one second you can be as focused as a laser bean, and the next, everything just goes to seed.

      Wait. Beans are seeds, right? Maybe that’s a clue that we were discussing seeds. Okay, here we go. Your average ranch in the Texas Panhandle has a whole bunch of weeds and plants, and every year they produce about ten zillion seeds. We have your grass seeds, your milkweed seeds, your cottonwood seeds, and your wildflower seeds.

      We have other objects on the ranch that never make seeds, such as your rocks, your fence posts, and your . . . Wait, we weren’t talking about seeds.

      This is frustrating. Could I have been talking about Miss Beulah? Maybe so, because . . . well, I won’t say that I think about her all the time, but several times during the course of an average day, I find myself staring at her picture on the bookshelf of my mind.

      Refined nose, gorgeous eyes, perfect ears. What a woman! But you look into those deep, intelligent eyes and you wonder . . . HOW COULD SHE LOVE A BIRD DOG? If she’s so smart, why can’t she figure out . . .

      Wait, hold everything. The cat. We were about to launch the cat into the stock tank, remember? Try to work on your concentration, and please don’t interrupt me again.

      Okay, now we’re cooking. There we stood at the edge of a stock tank full of stinking moss-water, trying our best to keep from laughing out loud, because we knew what was coming next.

      Hee hee. Kitty would go flying into the tank and we would enjoy several minutes of good, wholesome family entertainment.

      But before that could happen, I made a . . . before that could happen, Drover made one of the dumbest mistakes he’d ever made. He said (and this is a direct quote), he asked the cat, “Have you ever considered swimming?”

      Oh brother. I couldn’t believe my ears. Of all the bone-headed things he could have said! Do you have any idea what happens to a cat when you mention swimming?

      A lot. Within mere seconds, Kitty transformed into a helicopter, a buzz saw, a meat grinder, a hissing, yowling explosion of arms, legs, paws, and nasty little cat-claw razors.

      He gave Little Alfred the scratching of his young life, and then the little lunatic . . . I’m not going to tell you what else he did.

      I mean, there are some things we can report and some things that . . . uh . . . need to be shielded from public scrutiny, shall we say. Our main concern is the little children, no kidding. How would they respond if they ever found out that one of their heroes got buzz sawed by a rinky-dink little ranch cat?

      It could have a terrible effect. They might not be able to sleep for weeks. They might forget to brush their teeth. Some of them might make puddles in the bed. We just can’t risk it, and that’s why you will find a big hole in the middle of this story.

      I’m sorry to take such extreme measures, but our Security Division has pretty strict rules about this stuff. You’ll never know all the details of this case, because we’ve slapped Top Secret on all those files and they’ll stay in the vault for two hundred years.

      Please don’t whine about it. Believe me, you don’t want to hear all the grizzly details.

      But the port we can repair . . . the part we can report, let us say, is that Little Alfred gained important information about bathing cats: It’s something you might not want to try very often. I mean, he had red marks on one cheek, both arms, both hands, and the left side of his neck.

      And what about the villain? Well, after I finally got him off the back of my neck . . . hold it! Forget I said that. It’s classified and we could get in big trouble. I said nothing about a DELETED on the back of my DELETED.

      What I meant to say was that the hateful little mutter-mumble hit the ground and set sail for the house, but you’ll be proud to know that I seized this opportunity to strike a blow for children and dogs all across America.

      I leaped into my Rocket Dog suit (lucky I’d brought it along), and twisted the Blast Dial all the way to the right. The Portable Rocket Engine Backpack (PREB) kicked in and I chased the cat all the way back to the yard.

      There, I removed my flight helmet and yelled, “And that’s what you get for scratching innocent children! If you ever do it again, I’ll do it againer!”

      Pretty impressive, huh? You bet. I got him told.

      You might be wondering, “Where was Drover while all this was going on?” Great question. At the first sign of trouble, he just vanished, and we’re talking about “poof,” like a puff of smoke in a tornado.

      But never mind. I caught up with Little Alfred. He was heading for the house in a fast walk. It was kind of a touching scene, a boy and his dog, marching home after a big triumph on the field of . . . okay, we didn’t have much to celebrate, might as well be honest about it. We’d been ambushed by a sniveling, scheming little buzz saw of a cat. I was embarrassed about it, and Alfred had collected enough scratches to last him for six months.

      We weren’t feeling too proud of ourselves is the point. In fact, Alfred’s lower lip was stuck out so far, I was afraid he might step on it.

      We found Slim in the backyard, pushing a gasoline-powered lawn mower and dripping sweat, and looking permanently mad about it. When he saw us coming, he shut off the mower, mopped his brow on his shirtsleeve, and looked down at Alfred.

      “Good honk, what got a-holt of you?”

      The boy was so mad, he was about to cry. “The dumb old cat scwatched me! Look.” He pointed to the red lines on his cheeks.

      Slim studied the marks and laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Son, you’ve had a little brush with something called ‘education.’” He leaned down and lowered his voice. “When you try to throw a live cat into the water, he’ll scratch you—not every other time, but every time. Now, you ought to feel proud, ’cause Pete just raised your IQ about twenty points.”

      Alfred’s lip was still pooched out. “Can you put some medicine on my scwatches?”

      “Sure, come on.”

      Slim went slouching toward the yard gate, and Alfred said, “Hey, Swim, the medicine’s in the house.”

      “Mine ain’t. It’s in the machine shed. Come on.”

      Hmm. That seemed odd, but we followed him up the hill to the machine shed. Inside, he selected a gallon jug with big black letters that said, Kerosene. He found a grease rag that was halfway clean, dumped some kerosene on it, and dabbed it on Alfred’s wounds.

      The lad’s eyes grew wide. “Hey, that burns!”

      Slim nodded. “Yes sir, coal oil’s the best medicine you can buy. Shucks, it’ll even cure a cough if you drink it with some sugar.”

      “Yeah, but it stinks!”

      “Too bad. By grabs, when you hang out with a cowboy, you get cowboy cures. If that don’t suit you, find another babysitter. Now, leave the cat alone and let me get back to . . .”

      At that moment, we heard a vehicle pull up in front of the machine shed. You’ll never guess who it was, so I’ll tell you. No, maybe I won’t. If I told, it might scare you, and then nobody would read the next chapter.

      I guess you’ll have to keep on reading.