Chapter Eight: A Major Theft on the Ranch
Why would I go looking for Pete? Good question. Under ordinary circumstances I wouldn’t have, but it just happened that in my last conversation with the little sneak, he had said something about “impressing Beulah the Collie,” if I recalled his words exactly.
I had to find out what he meant by that.
Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t in the habit of seeking the advice of cats, but Pete was an expert on sneaky plans and I needed some kind of special sneaky plan to take Beulah’s mind off her bird dog friend.
It was for her own good, don’t you see. She needed the help of a true friend.
I knew where to find the cat. In the middle of the day, he hung out on the shady side of the house, in the iris patch, to be exact. There, he lurked and waited and stared out at the rest of the world with his big yellow eyes.
What was he waiting and lurking for? Scraps. A helpless bird. A leg to rub on. Who knows why cats spend so much of their time lurking? It’s just their nature to lurk in sneaky places.
I felt very uncomfortable as I made my way past the gas tanks and up the hill behind the house, as though I were going into a den of thieves. I found myself glancing over both shoulders, and hoping that no one was watching.
If word ever got out that I had gone to Pete for advice, my career would be finished.
I didn’t leap over the fence and enter Sally May’s precious yard, for obvious reasons. Dogs were forbidden and I had no wish to tangle with the lady of the house. Sally May and I had suffered our share of misunderstandings, don’t you know, and I had no wish to throw gasoline on that open wound.
We had been getting along pretty well, see, and I wanted to keep it that way.
I sneaked past the yard gate and around to the north side. From that vantage point, I could see him—Pete, that is—hunkered down and lurking in the irises.
I tossed a glance over my shoulder and dropped my voice to a whisper. “Pssst! Pete, come here.”
His eyes swung around. He was grinning. “Hi Hankie. How’s the quail hunting?”
“Not too swell, Kitty. Come over here to the fence.”
“But I’m so comfortable, Hankie. I just love to lie here in the shade and watch the world go by.”
“I know, but this is important. Come.”
He ran his tongue over his left paw. “But Hankie, you haven’t said the magic word. I can’t move until you say it.”
I noticed that my lips were beginning to rise into a snarl, but I shut them down just in time. “I don’t know any magic words.”
“Well just darn the luck. I can’t move until I hear the magic word.”
I gritted my teeth. “Okay, magic word. Abracadabra?”
“Nope. You missed. Try again.”
“Try again, magic word . . . okay, I think I’ve got it: shazzam.” He shook his head. “Pete, that’s a perfectly good magic word.”
“I know, Hankie, but it’s not the right one. Keep trying. I’ve got all day.”
Once again, I glanced over both shoulders. So far, I hadn’t been spotted. “Okay, Pete, I’ve got it this time. It’s slightly longer than one word but it ought to work.”
“Well, give it a try and we’ll see.”
“Here we go: Come here immediately, and that’s a direct order from the Head of Ranch Security.”
He shook his head. “Won’t work, Hankie, but I’ll give you a hint. It’s a six-letter word that begins with P and ends with E, and it’s one of the most powerful words in the world.”
I ran all that through Data Control. “How about a five letter word that begins with P and ends in D? Pound, as in ‘If you don’t get your carcass over here this very minute, I’ll pound you into the ground like a tent stake.’”
“No, no. You’re getting it all wrong, Hankie, and I guess I’ll have to tell you. The magic word is . . .” His eyes popped open like two big moons. “. . .‘please.’”
I stared at him in disbelief. “Please? You think I’m going to say . . . ha, ha, no I don’t think so, Kitty. I came here to do a little business with you, but I can’t do business with a cat who’s totally unreasonable. Sorry, Pete, I’ll just take my deal down the street.”
“Bye, Hankie.”
I turned and marched away. “See you around, Kitty. Too bad for you. You’ll be sorry, of course, but . . .” I turned and marched back to the fence. “Pete, will you please come over here so that we can talk?”
“Hmmmm. What was the magic word again?”
“Please. There, I’ve said it twice.”
He lifted a paw and slapped at an iris leaf. “You know, Hankie, if you’d said it right away, I think ‘please’ would have been good enough. But you didn’t, so maybe you should say . . . ‘pretty please with sugar on top.’”
I glared at him. “What? Pretty please with . . . no, I will never say that to a cat, never! Sorry, Pete, you’re just . . .” I turned and marched away. “You’re being totally unreasonable about this and . . .” I stopped and marched back to the fence. “All right, Pete, one of us has to walk the extra mile, so . . . pretty please with sugar on top.”
I almost choked on those words.
He grinned, pushed himself up, stretched each of his four legs, and took his sweet time about ambling over to where I was standing—and waiting. First thing, he started rubbing on the fence between us.
“All right, Hankie. What can I do for you?”
Again, I glanced around to be sure that nobody was watching this. “Pete, I hate doing business with creeps like you.”
“I know you do, Hankie. It probably just kills your cowdog pride. But living in Plato’s shadow hurts even worse, doesn’t it, Hankie? I mean, he’s doing so well with the quail, and everyone is so impressed.”
I beamed him a glare of laser beams. “You think you know everything, don’t you? Well, you don’t. There are many things you don’t know, but yes, you seem to have scored a bull’s eye on this deal, so let’s go straight to the point.”
“The point.” He rolled over on his back and rubbed around in the dirt. “What could the point be, Hankie?”
“You know what I want. Quit stalling.”
“Let’s see if I can guess, Hankie. Could it be that you want my advice on how to impress Miss Beulah?”
I glanced around. Nobody was listening. “That’s correct.”
“Hmmm. Some heroic act that might pull her attention away from her bird dog friend?”
“Yes, and get on with it. This hurts me more than you can imagine.”
“Ohhhhhhh, poor doggie.”
He rolled over on his belly, pushed up on all fours, and shook the dust and grass off his coat. Then he turned to me with those weird cattish eyes.
“Hankie, did you happen to notice that Sally May put out a bucket of corn this morning?”
“No, I missed that, Pete, and to be frank about it, corn doesn’t interest me much.”
“I understand, Hankie. You’re a very busy dog.”
“Right, and corn doesn’t fit into my . . . why did she put out a bucket of corn? I mean, that doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know, Hankie, that’s exactly what I thought. Do you suppose she set it out to dry?”
“Maybe. Could be. Yes, I suppose that’s as good an explanation as any. She was drying her corn, and so what?”
“Well, she set out a bucket of corn in the pasture, maybe fifty yards in front of the yard gate.”
“Fifty yards. Got it. Go on.”
“It was in the sun, so I assumed she was drying the corn.”
“Sun. Drying. Got it. Keep truckin’.”
“But then . . . well, it must have been while you were asleep . . .”
“Objection. I wasn’t totally asleep. Keep your opinions out of this, Kitty, and stick to the facts. Go on.”
“Well, while you were lying down and resting your eyes . . .”
“Yes, yes? We’re getting close to something, Pete, I can feel it.”
“While you were resting, a bunch of wild turkeys came up from the creek bottom and . . .”
“Turkeys, wild turkeys. Okay.”
“. . . came out of the creek bottom and, well, I’d hate to jump to hasty conclusions, Hankie, but it certainly appeared to me that they were stealing Sally May’s corn.”
That word sent a shock throughout my entire body. I stared at the cat for a long time, wondering if he knew what an important piece of information he had just given me.
No, of course he didn’t. He was just a dumb cat—overweight, overbearing, and over the hill.
But I knew, and suddenly a clever plan began taking shape in the vast caverns of my mind.
Oh yes, and at that very moment Drover showed up.