The Case of the Swirling Killer Tornado (4 page)

Chapter Six: Three Pounding Hearts in the Kitchen

I
had to give Drover Growls and Fangs to convince him that I was taking charge of the case, but that was no big deal.

And then I had to follow Little Alfred into the kitchen to collect my bacon. He had come with only one piece, don't you see, and had to raid the friginator again.

Frigoriginator.

Figerator.

Phooey. The ice box.

He had to raid the ice box again to get my Special Bacon Award. Following the beam of his flashlight, we crept on silent toes and paws into the kitchen. There, we halted in front of the frigin . . . ice box.

Alfred put a finger to his lips and said, “Shhh.” And he gave me a wink. I didn't wink back because, well, dogs don't wink.

Do we? I don't think so. Seems to me that our eyelids more or less work together, and where one goes the other is likely to follow.

Anyways, I didn't wink back but I did move my paws up and down, signaling Enormous Anticipa­tion, and I did lick my chops and went to Broad Joyous Swings on the tail section.

I'm sure the boy knew at a glance that this was a very important moment in my career, and would you like to guess what the little stinkpot did?

Instead of just handing me the bacon or holding it out so that I could lift it gently from his out­stretched fingers, he laid it over the top of my snout.

You can't imagine what a commotion this caused. I mean, there I was, dying inside from bacon lust, and he draped my award over the top of my snout—where I was getting extreme and maximum smells but where I couldn't reach it with my tongue and teeth.

I tried a correction maneuver, moving my jaws at a high rate of speed—chomping, that is—but that didn't seem to help. I then shifted into a second correction maneuver: shot my tongue straight out to Max Length, threw a 180-degree curl into it, and sent it arcing back over the top of my nose.

Did you follow all of that? It was pretty complicated, actually, and if you missed some of the steps, don't worry. As long as I know what I'm doing, it doesn't matter if you do or not.

I definitely knew what I was doing and I did it about as well as it could be done. That Reverse Curl was pretty amazing but I ran out of tongue about half an inch short of the prize.

At that point, I initiated Correction Three: went to Full Reverse on all engines, in hopes that . . . well, the thought had occurred to me that if I ran backward fast enough, my mouth might somehow catch up with the, uh, elusive bacon.

Not a bad idea but it didn't work either. What it did accomplish was to crash my tail section into a kitchen chair, which more or less scooted and scratched across the limoleun floor and caused all three of us to freeze in our tracks.

In the dead silence, we heard a bed squeak in a distant room. Then, a voice that sent cheers of fill down my spine, chills of fear, and we're talking about serious heavy-duty fills of cheer, because the voice belonged to the most feared woman on the ranch.

In all of Ochiltree County.

In the whole state of Texas.

Sally May.

Yes, it was her voice. She didn't have much to say at that hour of the night, but then Sally May didn't have to say a whole lot to scare the living bejeebers out of two dogs and one little boy.

She said, “Alfred?”

Dead silence, fellers, except for all the throbbing hearts in the room. Three throbbing hearts. Nobody breathed or moved. We were frozen, petri­fied . . . although that bacon was still draped over my snout and I found myself twisting my head around to see if I could . . .

You know, if a guy twists his head far enough in one direction, he'll fall over backward. Try it some time. Just lean your head back as far as she'll go, and then lean it back some more. It works.

Boy, I felt pretty silly, falling over backward right in the middle of such a scary scenery, but by George, it happened before I knew it.

Alfred almost had a stroke. His eyes were this big around . . . I guess you can't see how big around they were . . . his eyes got as big around as, I don't know, real big and real wide, and he had his finger up to his lips and he was trying to tell me to shut up and be still.

I froze. Alfred froze. Drover shivered. In the silence, we heard another dreaded squeak of the bed. Then, the dreaded voice: “Alfred? Is that you?”

Alfred's eyes flew from side to side. He didn't know what to do: answer, say nothing, stand still, or run like a striped ape. I sympathized because I didn't have a great plan for my own, uh, health and survival, shall we say.

And I was getting worried about Drover. You know Drover. When he gets scared, he just falls apart. He'll run in circles, squeak, crash into things. You never know what the little mutt's going to do next.

So far, he was holding himself together. That was good because we had pretty muchly drifted into one of those situations from which some dogs never return alive. I mean, if Sally May ever caught us in her kitchen in the middle of the . . .

Ooooo boy, we didn't need to go very far down that road to find a couple of tombstones.

How had I gotten myself into this mess? Oh yes, the storm. And the bacon, speaking of which . . . I still hadn't been able to snag that bacon and the aroma of it was about to drive me . . .

The Voice That Chills came again from the other room.

“Loper, wake up.”

“Uuuuuu.”

“Loper, somebody is in this house.”

“Uuuuuuu a;ckeit cl0e89dskcgh slckbnbedn—3um.”

“Loper, wake up!”

“Huh? What?”

“I heard a sound in the kitchen.”

“I'll be derned.”

“Would you like to go check it out?”

“Nope.” Silence. “Ouch! Those are my ribs.”

“Dear, please.”

“Okay, okay. Okay.” The bed squeaked. Foot­steps on the floor. “Okay. Kitchen. All you people in the kitchen stand at attention. Here I come.”

He was coming. That was pretty serious but not nearly as serious as if Sally May Herself had come. Somehow the thought of getting murdered by Loper didn't terrify me as much.

Still, we had to do something. I glanced at Alfred. He looked rather pale, seemed to me, and scared beyond recognition. The sound of bare feet moving across the floor filled the dreadful silence. They were coming our way.

The feet, that is. Loper was coming our way too, walking on his . . . you get the idea.

I was still watching Alfred, waiting for him to give us a sign.
Son, do something. Don't just
stand there. Several lives are at stake here.

The footsteps were coming closer and closer. My heart was pounding. The boy was frozen in his tracks. I was so scared that I could no longer smell that wonderful bacon draped over my snout. That's pretty scared.

Footsteps in the darkness.

The rumble of thunder outside.

Hearts racing and pounding.

Then . . .

Chapter Seven: Inside the Coverous Cavern

A
t last he made his move, and not a second too late. Too soon, I guess it ought to be. He made his so-forth not a second too soon.

He darted through the nearest doorway and into his bedroom, which lay just to the south of the kitchen. That was a piece of good luck for us, that his room was close by.

Alfred didn't say a word to me or Drover about following him, but then again, he didn't need to say a word. I was ready to get out of there.

On silent paws that made not a sound, I brushed past Drover and whispered, “You stole my bacon, you little creep.”

We whisked ourselves through the door and into Alfred's room. The boy oozed himself into his bed and, well, I guess he wanted us to crawl UNDER the bed, but in the excitement and confusion of the . . .

We jumped into bed with him, is more or less what we did, and went slithering beneath the covers, straight to the bottom. See, I'm not fond of the underneath-side of beds. Too many spiders.

And dust. Drover has allergies, don't forget, and the last thing we needed was for him to go into a fit of sneezing.

But back to the spider deal, I'm no chicken liver but I don't get along with spiders. Don't laugh. We have a variety of spiders in this country called the Brown Fiddlebow and they're nothing to play around with.

They bite, don't you see, and they don't rattle or hiss before they bite. Rattlesnakes are bad enough but at least they give you some warning. Those spiders merely bite, and I've heard stories about what happens.

Your legs rot away. Your tail falls off. Your ears turn brown like autumn leaves and then they fall off too.

You want to crawl under a bed with a nest of Brown Fiddlebow spiders? Neither did I, and if Little Alfred didn't want two wet dogs under the covers with him, that was, as we say, too bad.

And besides the spiders and so forth, I like soft beds.

So there we were, under the covers and at the bottom of the bed, with Little Alfred's feet sticking in our faces. It was then and there, in the silence and in the darkness, that I came to a terrible realization.

“Drover,” I whispered, “I've lost my bacon.”

“Oh darn.”

“And if you find it before I do, I would appreciate it if you would turn it in to the proper authorities.”

“You bet.”

“Because if you don't, if you steal another piece of my bacon, you little chiseler, your mother won't recognize your face when I get finished with it.”

“Yeah, good old Mom. I wish she was here.”

“If she were here, Drover, it would be very crowded.”

“Oh, she didn't take up much space. They always said Mom was so thin, you couldn't see her if she turned sideways.”

“Hmmm. That's very interesting.”

“Yeah. And Uncle Spot always said she was too skinny to cast a shadow.”

“I'll swan.”

“They said she had worms.”

“No kidding.”

“And she didn't take the time to eat right.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Too busy raising pups.”

“Drover, did you hear anything I said about the bacon?”

“Oh yeah, she loved bacon. I'd almost forgotten how much she loved bacon.”

“Drover, are you there?”

“Good old Mom. I wonder what she's doing today.”

Sometimes . . . oh well. I had more serious matters to think about than Drover's mother, the poor woman. Just imagine the sleepless nights she'd spent, wondering what could have produced her feather-brained son.

Yes, I had very serious matters to think about, such as the footsteps that by this time had reached the kitchen. I lay perfectly still and listened.

The light switch clicked on.

“Hello?” said Loper. “Any ghosts around? Hon, nobody's here. You must have heard the storm.”

“Check Alfred and make sure he's all right.”

“Hon . . .”

“Please.”

“Okay. Okay, I'll check Alfred. I don't have anything better to do at this hour of the . . .” His voice trailed off into silence. Then, “Hon, did you spill some water on the kitchen floor?”

“No, I didn't.”

“That's funny, I just stepped in a puddle.”

Upon hearing this, I turned to Drover. “Did you hear that?”

“What was it? Gosh, I hope it's not one of those monsters.”

“It was Loper. He's in the kitchen and he stepped in a puddle of water. And I think I know where it came from.”

“Yeah, all this rain and stuff.”

“Not rain and stuff, Drover. You.”

There was a moment of silence, and then I heard him sniffle. “Well, I was scared. I heard Sally May's voice and I thought she was going to come into the kitchen and find us and chase us with a butcher knife, and it scared me so bad . . .”

“Okay, okay. I knew you'd do something, I just didn't know what.”

“Yeah, and I feel terrible about it.”

“And don't forget that you ate my bacon. Little Alfred brought that first piece just for ME and you stole it.”

“Oh, the guilt's just piling up! I'm not sure I can live with myself.”

“Never mind, Drover. We'll take this up at another time—if we should happen to survive the night, that is.”

“Oh my leg!”

“Shhhhh.”

Where were we? Oh yes, Loper was in the kitchen and had just discovered the Mysterious Puddle—which wasn't so mysterious to those of us who knew Drover. And now he, Loper, that is, was making his way into Alfred's room.

If he turned on the light, we were sunk. I mean, two dogs under the covers in a little boy's bed make humps, right? If he turned on the light, he would see the humps, jerk off the covers, and we would be exposed for all the world to see.

The rest of what might follow was too scary to think about.

We held our breath and waited. Would he turn on the light? No, he didn't.

Going strictly on the sounds picked up by my ears, here's what I imagined that he did. He walked over to the bed and looked down. Alfred was asleep—or so it appeared. Loper straightened the covers and said, “Well, everybody's in bed except me, and what am I doing walking around in the middle of the night?”

He yawned and then . . . uh-oh. He sniffed the air. “Smells like goats in here. We may need to haul some sneakers to the dump.”

He yawned again and went back to bed. Back in the bedroom, I heard him say, “Hon, I think you were dreamin'. Everything's fine.”

“Loper, I heard something, I know I did.”

The bed squeaked. “Well, you can take the next patrol. I've got a date with a beautiful pillow. Night.”

Silence. The sounds of Loper's snoring reached my ears, and at last I dared to breathe. Alfred's toe gouged me in the ribs and the next thing I knew, he was under the covers with us.

“Hi, doggies. We sure fooled my dad, didn't we? He thought I was asweep, and he didn't even know y'all dogs were here.”

Right. We lucked out, but there was no sense in pushing our luck. It was time for us to go back outside.

“We're in a cave, aren't we? You want to pway Expwore the Cave? Don't ya think that would be fun?”

Uh . . . no, we really needed to be going, but thanks anyway.

“It's still waining outside, and thundoo and wightning too, and I'm gwad we're all together in my bed. I was scared, but I'm not scared anymore. I've got my doggies wiff me.”

Yes, that was touching, a boy and his dogs, but the other side of that particular coin was “a boy's MOTHER and his dogs,” and that one gave me the creeps. We could fool Loper, but Sally May was another story.

She couldn't be fooled. She had eyes in the back of her head, ears that heard everything, a nose that could find a sugar ant in a ten-section pasture.

And worst of all, she was always suspicious. I mean, every time she came around me, she seemed to read my innermost thoughts, some of which . . . many of which . . . okay, most of which aroused her disapproval.

And if it was okay with everyone, I was ready to take my chances with the storm outside, now that we were fairly sure that it was just a storm and not an invasion of . . . I had never totally bought into that business of the Little Green Monsters anyway.

“So you weckon I ought to wet you back outside?”

Uh-huh. Yes. That was the best idea, in and out with no major bloodshed.

The boy heaved a sigh. “Well, all wight. Come on and we'll sneak y'all back outside.”

Whew!

All three of us crawled out of the coverous cav­ern. Once outside the sheets, I turned to Drover and was about to tell him to hurry up when I heard . . .

Smack, smack, gulp.

I froze and sniffed the air. All at once I caught the smell of . . .