Faded Love. John R. Erickson
that the only reason?”
“Uh-huh. Oh, and I’m scared of snakes, especially rattlesnakes. They bite.”
“I see. Did it ever occur to you that I might be bitten?”
“No.”
“Or that I might be afraid of snakes?”
“Oh heck no, ’cause you’re not a chicken-hearted little mutt like me.”
“That’s true, unfortunately.” I took a deep breath. “Well, I guess there’s nothing left to say.”
“No, just kill the snake and that’ll be it.”
I glanced over at Little Alfred, so innocent, so absorbed in his play. “Where’d you see the snake?”
“In the flowerbed, right behind the baby.”
“Very well. So long, Drover.”
“So long, Hankie. I’ll be waiting right here.”
“We can bet on that.”
I turned and started walking toward my fate. It’s funny, the memories that come back to you at such moments. I saw myself as a pup, playing tug-of-war with my sister Maggie while Ma watched us with a contented smile.
Seeing Ma that way kind of gave me courage. She’s the one who taught me right from wrong, and I didn’t want to disgrace her memory. My steps grew bolder and I marched up the flowerbed.
Little Alfred turned and smiled. “Goggie! Goggie!”
I dipped my head, as if to say, “How’s it going, son?”
Then I turned to the grim task before me. I cocked my ear and listened. If the snake rattled, at least I would know his position and could plan my attack so that if I got bitten, it would be on the foot instead of the face. I wanted to save my face for . . .
Oh geeze, that started me thinking about Beulah again, my true and perfect collie love, the only woman in the world who could make me think of romance just before going into combat with a giant rattlesnake. But dang her soul, she loved a bird dog, and how could she love a bird dog . . .
I shook those thoughts out of my head. This was no time for romantic notions.
I cocked my ear and listened. Nothing. The snake wasn’t going to give me any warning, which was a piece of bad luck. I had no choice but to sniff out the flowerbed and force the snake out into the open, offering myself as a target in order to save Little Alfred.
I was shaking again, and I mean all the way down to my toenails. I crept forward—sniffing, listening, waiting for the ineffable . . . uneffitable . . . inedible . . . whatever the dadgum word is, to occur. Inevitable.
Even though I was expecting a strike, it shocked me when it came. I heard a hiss, saw a blur of motion to my right, and felt a sting on the end of my nose—the very worst and most fatal place to take a snakebite.
I staggered back. My eyes began to dim. I felt the poison rushing through my bloodstream. My heart pounded in my ears. As I sank to my knees, I uttered not a cry and faced my untimely end with the little shreds of courage I could muster.
As the gray veil moved across my eyes, I heard a strange voice: “Sorry about that, Hankie. You woke me up and I thought you were a big mouse.”
HUH?
Hadn’t I heard that whiny voice before? That was no snake. That was Pete the Barncat!
I opened my eyes and sure enough, there was Pete’s insipid grin peeking out of the iris. “What are you doing in there? I thought you were a rattlesnake.”
Pete licked his paw. “No, he was here but he crawled under the house. Snakes are very afraid of cats, you know, which is why a lot of people think cats are better at ranch security than dogs.”
“Is that so?”
“Um-hum. Because cats have something no cowdog in history has ever possessed.”
“Such as?”
He throwed an arch in his back, took a big stretch, and scratched the ground with his front paws. “Intelligence.”
All at once I felt my energy coming back. I stood up. “Oh yeah?”
“Um-hum, and you can run along now, Hankie, and . . . oh my goodness, your poor little nose is bleeding!”
“Oh yeah? Well, that’s real bad news for you, cat, and here’s what I’m going to do about it.”
I went crashing into the iris patch, landed right in the middle of Pete, I mean, just buried him. He was going to pay dearly for his mistake. He’d drawn first blood and I was fixing to draw second blood—about two gallons of it.
I lifted one paw and waited to grab him with my teeth. He didn’t come out. I lifted the other paw and . . . you might say that he’d slipped out of my trap.
Funny, how a cat can be right there in your clutches one second and gone the next. Makes a guy wonder how they do that, and I mean right there in front of your eyes. Beats me, but we can be sure that it saved Pete from a tragic and messy death, because Hank the Cowdog does not take trash off the cats.
I didn’t have much time to study on Pete’s escape, because just then Little Alfred came toddling over and got me in a headlock. He was still talking that “Goggie” stuff, which means “Heroic Guard Dog” in kid language.
Little Alfred may have been little, but he was built a lot like his old man, High Loper—plenty stout in the arms and shoulders. Kind of surprised me when he throwed that headlock on me and started dragging me around. Didn’t figger a kid that age could do that, but he sure as thunder did.
And one of the first things that happened was that, all at once, I couldn’t breathe. Little Alfred had got a good start on strangulating me.
Now, we need to get something straight right here. Your top-of-the-line, blue-ribbon, higher-bred cowdogs are famous for their incredible strength. As a group, we’re probably the strongest breed of dogs ever known to mankind. I mean, shredding monsters, destroying obstacles, breaking into locked buildings—that’s commonplace to us, just part of the job.
But what many people don’t know is that, while we’re licensed by the federal government as Dangerous and Lethal Weapons, we also have hearts of gold. We love children, and at an early age, we have to take a solemn oath never to bite or harm a child.
So here’s the point. Anyone else who had throwed a headlock on me would have had tooth tracks over ninety percent of his body, and I mean within a matter of seconds. It’s impossible to strangulate a cowdog without several winch lines and heavy equipment.
Unless it’s done by an innocent child, and see, our Cowdog Oath forbids us from biting or scratching a child. So there I was, being dragged around the yard by Little Alfred and I couldn’t get my wind and things was getting a little serious.
I just went limp and hoped for the best.
Just before he got me snuffed out, he let go and I dropped into the grass. I sat up and caught my wind and was beginning to think about making my exit before Sally May came back, when the little scoundrel ran his finger across the cake and put a big glob of icing in front of my nose.
Ordinarily I’m not tempted by sweets. I’ve always figgered that too much sweets makes a dog soft. It ain’t the hardship that ruins a good dog; it’s the easy life.
On the other hand, we don’t often get recognition in this line of work. We don’t demand it, we don’t expect it, we go on and do our job without it. But when it comes, a guy kind of hates to turn it down.
Here was this little fellow,