The Disappearance of Drover. John R. Erickson

      It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. Slim was really steamed when he got to town and figured out that he had two dogs in the back of his pickup, but it wasn’t our fault. We had perfectly good reasons for being there, but it might take a while to explain it.

      Do we have time to go through all the details that led up to our spending the night in the back of his pickup? Before you answer, let me warn you that it might get pretty scary. And sad. I mean, when Drover vanished without a trace . . .

      What do you think? Should we go on with this story or put it in the vault where we keep stories that are too scary or too sad for human consumption? You probably didn’t know that we have such a vault, and there’s a reason why you don’t. Everything that goes into the vault has either been classified Top Secret, Top Sad, or Top Scary, and I’m one of the few dogs on earth that even know it exists.

      I’m in on the secret because . . . well, I’m Head of Ranch Security.

      It’s a huge vault, made of solid steel, and it occupies a whole wall on the twelfth floor of the Security Division’s Vast Office Complex. There’s only one way in and one way out, and guess whose gunnysack bed is parked right in front of the vault.

      Mine. Nobody goes in or comes out without dealing with me. That’s how serious we are about the stuff that’s locked inside the vault, and that’s why I can’t tell you about it. As far as you’re concerned, it doesn’t exist.

      Sorry I brought it up. Or, to come at it from another angle, I didn’t bring it up. Maybe you thought I did, but I was misquoted. It happens all the time. There is no vault in our Vast Office Complex, and if there were, I couldn’t tell you about it. If I did . . . well, we might all be fried for treason.

      Tried for freezing.

      Tried for treason, there we go. We might all get fried for freezing, and we don’t need any of that.

      Hmmm. We seem to have gotten off the subject, and I’m not sure where we started. Somehow you coaxed me into talking about the secret vault and . . . wait, here we go.

      The story. It’s going to get pretty scary and sad, that’s the point, so you have to decide whether we should mush on with it or find something else to do. What do you think? Keep going? Are you sure about that?

      Well, I guess you’re old enough to be making decisions, but if things get out of hand, don’t blame me.

      Okay, let’s set the stage. It was April, as I recall. We’d made it through the worst of the winter and had begun to notice the first signs of spring: buds on the elm trees, flights of cranes honking overhead as they made their way back to the north country, and a number of stopover birds that visit my ranch every fall and spring. They’re not invited, but they stop anyway. They occupy my trees, mooch birdseed out of Sally May’s feeder, and twitter all day long.

      As you might know, I’m not fond of birds, but there’s not much I can do about them. If a dog spent all his time barking at birds, he’d have no energy left for the more important jobs, such as barking at the mailman and humbling the cats. Hencely, for a couple of weeks every fall and spring, I have to put up with all their tweeting and twittering.

      Drover and I had spent the day at Ranch Headquarters, supervising a project that involved Slim and Loper. They had discovered a spring of water down at the corrals. I mean, all of a sudden and overnight, it had just popped out of the ground and had formed a nice little pool.

      In a dry country like ours, you’d think that might be cause for celebration, but it wasn’t. Just the opposite, and here’s why. Around here, natural springs don’t just pop out of the ground, and the cowboys suspected that our bubbling spring had something to do with a leaky water pipe that was buried about three feet underground.

      Fellers, you talk about something that will poison the atmosphere on a ranch! An underground water leak will do it, because it involves the use of shovels and manual labor. As you might know, cowboys are allergic to shovels. Bring one out in front of a cowpuncher, and he’ll break out in hives.

      And mad? They were uncommonly mad. See, the ground in our corrals wasn’t what you would call easy digging. Over the years, it had been packed by the hooves of thousands of cattle and horses. If you were going to choose a spot on the ranch where you never wanted to dig a hole, it would be in the middle of the wire lot—exactly where the “spring” had popped out of the ground.

      And that’s the job I was supervising. You never heard such whining and complaining. It started the moment the first shovel touched the ground and went on most of the afternoon. You want to listen in on some of their conversation? I don’t suppose it would hurt anything. Stand by to roll tape.

      Transcript of Water Line Episode #205

      Top Secret

      Slim: You know, a guy spends the first half of his life investing in leather and horseflesh and dreaming of the day he can take a real cowboy job, and he spends the second half of his life digging holes in the ground.