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adventure,
Mystery,
Texas,
dog,
cowdog,
Hank the Cowdog,
John R. Erickson,
John Erickson,
ranching,
Hank,
Drover,
Pete,
Sally May
bat?â
âYou certainly did.â
âMy goodness. I meant to say cat. I donât work well under pressure.â
The brothers were moving towards us, a wall of gleaming yellow eyes and long white teeth and raised hackles. âOne last chance, Madame. See if you can make a correction.â
âI donât like this pressure! I simply hate doing spells before a crowd.â
âHurry!â
âOh, all right!â She closed her eyes. âPower, power, I said bat but I meant . . .â
Too late. Snort grabbed her up in his jaws, but at the last second, she yelled out the right word. âCat! Cat! Oh my goodness, cat!â
By that time Rip had jumped into the middle of me, and before I had time to fight back, he had bedded me down and was standing astraddle of me. Iâm not sure fighting back would have done much good anyway. I mean, those guys lived on the wild side, and their idea of good clean fun was to go out and beat up on badgers and get sprayed by skunks.
You could bite âem and kick âem and scratch âem, throw dirt in their eyes and chew on their ears, spit on âem and yell at âem and hit âem between the eyes with a bodark club, and all it would do was make âem a little madder.
I could see all thirty-seven of Ripâs teeth. He had an odd number, see, because several had been knocked out in fights. Boy, they were just about the longest and sharpest teeth Iâd ever seen, and I didnât like the way they decorated his smile.
He flicked out his tongue, swept it around the right side of his drooling lips, and then took it all the way back across his mouth and mopped up the left side.
And then he said, âUH!â Which sounded pretty threatening to me.
âNow Rip, donât do anything you might . . . letâs talk this thing . . . tell you what, we might work out a . . .â
I didnât know how Madame Moonshine was doing, but my deal was looking worse by the second. Rip gave a yip and a howl and clamped his jaws around my throat, and fellers, I thought my lights were fixing to go out for the last time.
But suddenly he stopped.
He raised up and made a sour face. He spit several times and said, âUhhhh!â I lifted my head to check on Madame Moonshine. Snort had her in his huge enormous terrible toothy mouth and seemed about ready to chew her up into small bites.
But then he spit her out on the ground. Snort looked at Rip and Rip looked at Snort, and they both had puzzled expressions on their faces.
âSnort not want owl.â
âUh,â said Rip.
âSnort hungry for . . . BAT!â
Oh no! Madame had messed up the spell, it wasnât going to work, all my planning had gone to . . .Â
But then Rip shook his head and said, âUh-uh!â
Snort stared at his brother. âSnort not want bat?â
âUh-uh.â
âUh. Maybeso Snort want . . . rat?â
âUh-uh!â
âUh. Then maybeso Snort want . . . cat?â
Rip jumped up and down. âUh huh!â
Good old Rip. Maybe he wasnât too bright, but at least he knew the difference between a cat and a bat.
Snort came lumbering over to me and stuck his long sharp nose right in my face. âRip and Snort not want eat Hunkbird and little owl. Hunkbird and little owl taste bad. Rip and Snort want cat to eat!â
âA cat? Well, I . . . that does sound delicious, doesnât it?â
âHunkbird find cat for Rip and Snort or Rip and Snort get mad, tear up whole world, berry big madness.â
I pushed myself up off the grass. âAll right, Snort, youâve got yourself a deal. Now you guys just back off and give us some air and weâll see if we can find you a cat.â
âUh!â they said in unison.
âLetâs see, what kind of cat are you hungry for, Snort? How about a little
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