Tags:
adventure,
Mystery,
Texas,
dog,
cowdog,
Hank the Cowdog,
John R. Erickson,
John Erickson,
ranching,
Hank,
Drover,
Pete,
Sally May
coyote tradition. When theyâre done singing, they eat.â
âOh dear.â
âWeâve got to work fast. Now, I know itâs risky to use your backwards power, but before, when you told it to reverse the scene, it yanked me up here in the tree. Maybe . . .â
âYes, I see what you mean. Maybe, if I try it again, it will sweep them off the ground and hang them in a tree.â
âExactly. And then weâll try to work ourselves loose and get the heck out of here.â
âWhat a marvelous plan!â
I gave her a wink. âHey, youâre running around with the Head of Ranch Security. I didnât get this job strictly on my good looks. Letâs give it a shot.â
âVery well.â She closed her eyes and concentrated. Then her eyes popped open. âOh, dear!â
âOh dear what?â
âI canât remember the words!â
âWell, make up some new ones. And hurry.â
âI hate to experiment with incantations. SomeÂtimes they backfire.â
âYeah, but if we donât do something pretty quick, we wonât have any backs left to fire.â
âVery well. Here we go.â She squeezed her eyes shut and said the magic words:
Topsy-turvy, rickets scurvy, barley rye and wheatly,
Backwards power, sweet and sour, reverse this scene completely!
Now all we had to do was wait for the power to . . .Â
Well Iâll be a son of a gun. You know what the power did? Do you think it swept Rip and Snort off the ground and hung them up in a grapevine? Do you think it saved us from becoming coyote bait?
No sir. Instead of reversing the whole entire scene, as we had hoped, it zeroed in on Rip and Snortâs song and, dern the luck, made them sing all their words backwards! Hereâs how it went:
Coyote worthless a just me,
Moon the at howling me,
Holler and sing to like me,
Loon a as crazy me.
Duties or job want not me,
School Sunday or church no,
Coyote worthless a just me,
Fool nobodyâs ainât me but.
Beat anything I ever saw. But you know what? I couldnât see that it made much difference. The song sounded just as bad backwards as it did forwards, which is really saying something. Furthermore, I donât think Rip and Snort even knew they had just sung their national anthem backwards.
âOh dear,â said Madame Moonshine. âI think I missed again.â
âYes, it appears that you did, Madame, which is a piece of bad luck for us.â
âYes, because you might have noticed that itâs begun to rain.â
âSay, youâre right, it has started to rain. Thatâs okay, these pastures could use the moisture.â
âIâm sure thatâs true, but I donât think that we need the moisture.â
âWhat do you mean?â
âThe rain is wetting my foot, and unless Iâm badly mistaken, my foot is beginning to slip out of the vine.â
HUH?
If her foot slipped out of the vine, then she would most likely . . . and if HER foot was slipping loose, the chances were pretty good that MY foot . . .
Holy smokes, my foot was slipping out of the vine! And fellers, if it pulled loose, my life expectancy could be measured by the time it would take for me to free-fall from the tree to the ground.
Short, in other words. Real short.
âMadame, I have one last idea.â
âOh my goodness, I do hope itâs not your last!â
âWell, if it doesnât work, it will be. Weâre fixing to fall into a crocodile pit.â
âYes, and Iâm so annoyed at my power! It was working so well last week, I just donât understand . . .â
I hated to butt in on a witch, but I could feel my foot slipping out of the vine. We only had a few seconds left.
âListen, Madame, hereâs the plan. On the count of three, weâll push ourselves out of the vine.â
âOn the count of three,
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