The Case of the Hooking Bull by John R. Erickson

I’d thought maybe . . . but no, he was still alive. He placed the palms of his hands on the ground and pushed himself up to a kneeling position.
    Good heavens, I hardly even recognized him! His eyes and mouth had vanished, and his face had become a featureless white mask that . . .
    Okay, that was mostly sand. His face had gotten mashed into the sand, see, and there for a second it had . . .
    He brushed the sand off his face and let out another moan. He sat there for a moment, with his head hung down and his left hand resting on the right side of his rib cage. He blinked his eyes and looked at me.
    â€œWell, Hank, we’ve got ourselves in a real jack­pot here.”
    With great effort, I hobbled over to him and began administering special Certified Red Cross CPR licks to his face. Those Certified Licks will bring a guy around as fast as anything.
    I had given him several before he pushed me away and said, “Quit.” Then he turned and studied Mr. Bull, who stood between us and the pickup. He was watching our every move and appeared to be thinking bad thoughts.
    â€œHank,” said Slim, setting his teeth against the pain, “I’ve messed up some ribs and maybe some more things too. I need to make it to the pickup and get back to the house. Reckon you can keep that bull off me?”
    Uh . . . ME? Keep the . . . hey, I was injured pretty badly myself and I’d already learned about as much from that bull as I care to, and besides . . .
    He put his hand on my head and rubbed my ears. “See, I might be messed up inside. That colt mashed me pretty bad. What do you say, can you help old Slim?”
    I thought it over. Sure, I could help him.

Chapter Nine: This Is the Scary Part

    H olding his ribs and grinding his teeth against the pain, Slim pushed himself up. The bull was watching. He snorted and dropped his head and pawed up sand with his hoof.
    Slim took a step. The bull’s head shot up. I could tell by the look in his eyes and the way he held his ears that he was fixing to come a-hookin’.
    Slim reached down and patted me on the neck. “Okay, son, it’s time for us to find out what we’re made of. See what you can do.”
    It would be an exaggeration to say that I went streaking into the fight. I pushed myself up and hobbled out into the empty space between Slim and the bull. I glared at him and he glared at me. I raised the hair on my back, stiffened my tail, and extended my neck so that my nose was pointing at him like an arrow. And then I unleashed a low growl.
    From the pickup, I heard Drover squeak, “Hank, be careful, he might try to hurt you!”
    And then Little Alfred yelled, “Beat him up, Hankie! I hope you bite the snot out of him.”
    Behind me, I heard Slim groan and take a step. The bull’s head snapped around and his eyes locked on Slim. He had just picked his target. He took a step toward Slim, and that’s when I gave him some education on cowdogs.
    A lot of dogs would have barked and gone through a little warmup procedure. Not me. I figgered what we needed here was a strong and lasting impression. When you want to make an impression on a bull, you don’t bark and you don’t bluff and you don’t talk. You merely take a death grip on his nose and hang on.
    And so I rushed forward, fitted my jaws around his nose before he had time to think about it, and then I went to Maximum Crunch.
    Say, Old Bully didn’t like that! He snorted and bellered and started slinging his head around. Since I was pretty well attached to his nose, he was slinging me around at the same time.
    I went up, I went down, I went in circles, I bounced off the ground and bounced off his horns and bounced off that big ugly hump in his neck. And yes, all this bouncing and crashing around did take its toll on my body, but the thought of slacking my grip on his nose never entered my mind.
    What DID enter my mind after several minutes of this trashing