The Frozen Rodeo. John R. Erickson

isn’t it? I can’t explain it.

      But there we were, huddled under the bed. I had to bring some order into the chaos. “All right, men, call in your damage reports. Has anyone suffered burns?”

      “No burns, but I can’t breathe!”

      “Why can’t you breathe?”

      “All the smoke makes me choke.”

      “Oh yes, the smoke is terrible. Install smoke filters at once.”

      “I don’t have any.”

      “Neither do I, so we’ll have to breathe through our noses.”

      “Yeah, bud by doze is stobbed ubb.”

      “What?”

      “By doze. Id’s stobbed ubb. I bust be allergig to sboge.”

      “Drover, what language are you speaking?”

      “I’b dot sure, but I gant breathe through by doze.”

      “You can’t breathe through your toes?”

      “Doe, by doze!”

      “Doe, ray, me? Are you trying to sing?”

      “You dever lizzen!”

      “A better lizard? What are you talking about? Wait, let’s try facial expressions. Give me some kind of clue.” I studied his face. “Okay, I’m getting it now. Your eyes are crossed. You saw a lizard and you crossed your eyes and now they’re hung in the crossed position?”

      “Doe, doe!”

      “Well, if I’m a dodo, what are you? You can’t even talk straight.”

      “Helb!”

      “Listen, pal, it’s too late for me to give you speaking lessons. The house is on fire and…” I sniffed the air and suddenly realized…. “Drover, I just noticed something odd.”

      “Whud?”

      “The house is on fire but there’s no smoke.”

      “There’s nod?”

      “No. It must be some kind of smokeless fire.”

      “I’ll be derned. I thought I couldn’t breathe because of all the smoke.”

      “You couldn’t breathe because your eyes were crossed. Stop crossing your eyes and let’s bark the alarm. We’ve got to get Slim out of bed. Come on, son, and load up your biggest barks!”

      I crawled out from under the bed and was confronted by the terrible redness of the fire. Oh, you should have seen it! Once out in the open, I loaded up Number Three Warning Barks and began blasting away. Drover joined me and added a few squeaks, and we began pumping them out, bark after bark, blast upon blast.

      As you know, getting Slim out of his bed is always a challenge. I mean, the guy is a hard-head. But even Slim was no match for our barrage of barking. We pumped ‘em out, until at last he sat up and…yipes, was that Slim or some kind of monster? I mean, the face looked like something you might see on a gut wagon.

      But then he spoke…roared, actually…he roared, “Hush up! Knock off the dadgum barking!” He blinked his eyes and glanced around. “Good honk, everything’s red!”

      Oh good, it was Slim after all, and he was exactly right. DUH. Everything was red because the house was on fire, and if he didn’t pry himself out of that bed, we were all going to get barbecued!

      He kicked off his blankets, dived out of bed, and trotted down the hall in his Winter Sleep Outfit: one-piece red long-john underwear, bare feet, and a buzzard’s nest of hair. Drover and I were right behind him, scared out of our wits. He ran to the door, threw it open, and stared at the…well, at the sky, I suppose, which appeared to be ablaze with fiery red and orange colors.

      Good grief, the fire was outside too! In other words, the whole world was on fire, not just the house! And when the whole world is on fire, where does a dog go to hide?

      Hey, I tried to warn you that this was going to be a spooky story, but did you listen? Oh no, you thought you were old enough and tough enough to handle anything that came along. Now look at the mess we’re in!

      So what do we do now? I can tell you what Drover did. His eyes almost bugged out of his head. He let out a squeak, “Oh my gosh!”, and fainted right there on the floor, and we’re talking about going down like a pine tree. BAM!

      That left me and Slim, staring at the flaming sky—and he was still in his underwear! How do you suppose that made me feel? The guy in charge, the guy whose house was about to burn down, was running around in underwear that was the same color as the inferno outside, RED!

      Wait, was that some kind of clue? It sounds kind of mysterious, red underwear and red sky. Maybe not.

      Even so, things were looking bad, maybe even hopeless. I can’t guarantee that there’s any way out of this deal, but if you want to stick with me, we’ll find out what happened—good, bad, or awful—in the next chapter.

      If you can’t hang on, I understand. I don’t want to hang on either, but I’ve got no choice. Wish me luck.