Faded Love. John R. Erickson

      It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. It was your normal, average, run-of-the-mill spring afternoon on the ranch—until Drover brought the news that Sally May’s baby was being attacked by a giant rattlesnake.

      And suddenly it became un-normal, un-average, and un-run-of-the-mill.

      I was up by the chicken house, as I recall, taking testimony from J. T. Cluck, the head rooster. He had reported “strange sounds in the night.” I had gone up to check it out.

      “All right, J.T., start at the beginning and tell me the whole story.”

      “You want the whole story?” He had a speech inpedamun—whatever you call it when a guy whistles all his S’s. Speech unpedamin.

      “That’s correct. And remember: tiny details are often the most important. And try not to whistle.”

      “All right, Hank. This thing has me worried. Elsa says I worry too much. Only last week she told me . . .”

      “Wait a minute. Is that the beginning?”

      He stared at me and blinked his eyes. “Oh. You want me to start at the beginning, you say?”

      “Let’s try it that way and see how it works.”

      “All right.” He rolled his right wing around in its socket. I took careful note of the movement, knowing that it might turn out to be an important clue. “Derned wing’s been giving me fits.”

      “Hold up. Was it bothering you before you heard the strange noise in the night or after?”

      “Huh? What are you talking about?”

      “Strange noise in the night.”

      “Oh, that. No, has nothing to do with it. This sore wing’s been coming on for six months, maybe a year. Elsa says . . .”

      “Let’s get on with the story.”

      “Okay, here we go.” He closed his eyes and concentrated. Then the eyes popped open. He glanced over his shoulder, leaned toward me, and whispered, “You know what bothers me most about this whole darned thing?”

      “What?”

      “What bothers me most about this whole thing is the way these darned kids act. If you ask me, we’ve raised up a whole generation of ungrateful chickens that don’t know manners. And you want to know what else I think?”

      “No.”

      His beak froze open. “Huh?”

      “No. I didn’t come up here for your latest sermon. Just give me the facts about a strange noise in the night.”

      “Oh. Well, I was a-getting to it, but yes, we definitely had a strange noise in the night. Very strange, Hank. It must have been close to dark, see, and we’d gone to roost and the chicken house had got real quiet and still.”

      “All right, go on.”

      “And you see them two little roosters over there?”

      I looked to the right and saw them. I memorized their conformation. Actually, they looked like every other young rooster I’d ever seen: two wings, two legs, two feet, a lot of feathers, and a stupid expression. “Yes, I see them. Go on.”

      “Them’s the laziest two boys that ever walked on this earth, and you know what else? They’re MY boys! Now, how do you explain something like that?”

      I was having a little trouble tying this all together. “What do the boys have to do with the strange noise?”

      “I’m a-gettin’ there. I remember waking up from a light sleep and saying to Elsa, ‘Elsa, did you hear a strange noise?’ And Elsa, she said she’d describe it as peculiar, not strange.”

      “Hmmmm.”

      “So we agreed, me and Elsa, that it was somewhere between strange and peculiar.”

      “Very good. Now you’ve got to concentrate. Do you have any idea what might have caused that kind