The Case of the Three Rings (5 page)

Chapter Seven: Winkie Does Some Damage

O
kay, let's get something straight before we move into the dark and scary parts of this story. If I'd had time to think about the situation, I wouldn't have taken refuge behind Slim's legs.

In the first place, he had skinny legs that offered about as much protection as a pair of toothpicks. If you're running from a buffalo, take refuge behind something made of concrete and rebar, not the bird-legs of a cowboy.

In the second place, I never dreamed that Slim would…well, trip over me and fall to the ground. Honest. It never entered my mind, and when he hit the ground, I felt terrible about it—so bad that I forgot about everything else and rushed to administer Healing Licks to his…

“Get away from me!”

Why was he pushing me away? And screaming? Gee, had all our years together come down to this? I was crushed. Hey, I'd invested my whole life in this guy and it just about broke my heart when he…

Huh?

The earth beneath my feet seemed to be trembling. I cocked one ear and heard…that was odd. Did we have trains around here? I didn't think so, but I was almost sure that I'd heard…

Gulk.

Did you forget about Winkie? I did. How could an intelligent dog forget about a snorting killer buffalo that was back-hoeing dirt only ten feet away from him? That's a great question and I have no great answer. All I can say is that…well, we cowdogs have tender feelings, even though we try to hide them most of the time, and when our friends take a tumble…uh oh.

HERE CAME WINKIE!

Just for an instant, time seemed to stop and my mind held a snapshot of something huge, shaggy, mad, and dangerous coming straight at me. And I heard this voice inside my head: “Bud, you'd better get out of here…fast!”

Out of the cornea of my eye, I saw Slim roll up into a ball and cover his head with his arms. I also saw an enormous animal with sharp horns and a real bad attitude about dogs. I pushed the throttle to the floor and went to Full Afterburners.

Behind me, I heard Uncle Johnny yell, “Winkie, come back here! Be nice!”

Yeah, right. Be nice. What a joke.

You know, in many ways buffalo look and act like cows, but we should point out a few important differences. First, buffalo have amazing acceleration. They can go from a dead stop to full gallop in the blink of an eye.

Second, over a short distance they can run as fast as a horse. Your average ranch dog can stay ahead of a cow without a whole lot of effort, and can even look back and bark a little trash. With buffalo, you run for your life and don't even consider barking trash.

Third, this buffalo had some kind of twisted hatred of dogs. I mean, cows don't like dogs, but multiply that times ten and you get Winkie. What had I ever done to him? Nothing. I'd never even seen him until today, but fellers, he hated my guts and wanted to wear a few of them on his horns. And he wasn't kidding.

While I ran circles around the gravel drive in front of the barn, Slim and Uncle Johnny took to their heels and scattered like chickens. I mean, Winkie cleared the arena and was gaining ground on me and I could feel his blow-torch breath on my tail, so I feinted left and turned right, and went sprinting north down the lane.

I headed straight for Slim's pickup-trailer rig that was blocking the road. That would be my salvation…if I could stay alive that long.

Oh, what a chase! You should have seen it. I had become Rocket Dog. Grown trees bent to the ground in the wake of my jet engines. Dust swirled, fence posts shuddered, birds fell from the sky, stunned by the sonic booms.

Even so, Winkie was closing the gap on me and I could feel his blow torch burning the hairs on my tail. My legs ached and my lungs burned, my entire body begged for relief.

But fifty feet away from the pickup, I knew I was going to win this deal! If the race had gone another hundred feet, he would have rolled me and…I didn't even want to think about the rest of what might have happened. But the important thing is that I made it to the pickup and went sailing through the open window.

Oh yeah! I'd made it! I was alive!

And at that point, I did what any normal American dog would have done. I whirled around and cut loose with a withering barrage of barking. “Hey Winkie, you're pathetic! What a loser! I saw your momma walking down the street the other day and she was so ugly…”

CRASH!

I never would have dreamed that a buffalo would try to jump through a pickup window, but THERE HE WAS!

You've seen stuffed buffalo heads hanging on walls, right? That's what I was looking at, only this one wasn't stuffed. Lucky for me, he didn't get all the way inside the cab. I mean, the shoulders and hump of a buffalo won't fit through a pickup window, but he'd gotten enough of his head inside to scare the living bejeebers out of me.

“Hey, Winkie, what I said about your mother…it was childish and cruel and I'm really ashamed…”

He let out a thunderous, bellowing ROAR. I hit the floor and against the door. Hey, that rhymes, doesn't it? Roar, floor, door. Never mind. All I cared about was getting as far away from that dragon as I could.

For a long moment of heartbeats, I waited to see if he would come through the window. If he did, he would have no chance to kill me because I would already be dead from fright. He didn't come into the cab (whew!) but he sure messed up the pickup. When he backed out, things made out of glass and metal made a bunch of bad sounds.

Well, there stood the fifteen hundred-pound Winkie. He snorted, flicked his ears, swished his tail, and glanced off to the north. This next part was hard to believe but I was there as a witness.
He jumped onto the hood of the pickup, mashed it like a bean can, jumped off the other side, and headed north in a trot.

As I watched him trotting away, the windshield through which I was looking began to crack and disintegrate, and I absorbed a powerful lesson that had come from this experience. When herding a buffalo, don't ever assume that you can stop him by blocking the road with a pickup and trailer. It won't stop him and he might destroy the pickup.

With broken glass falling like snow, I stood there, shaking from head to toenail. I heard footsteps approaching. It was Slim, running as fast as he could in his chaps and spurs. The man was obviously worried sick that his loyal companion had been maimed or killed. He would be SO GLAD to find that I was okay! I would have leaped out of the pickup and rushed out to meet him only I wasn't sure my legs would work.

Thirty feet away, he slowed to a walk, then stopped. His mouth dropped open as he leaned forward and stared at…well, what was left of his pickup, I guess. Uncle Johnny arrived just then, huffing and puffing.

He shook his head and heaved a weary sigh. “Well, I guess that settles it. You'd better rope him.”

Slim's head snapped around and for a long moment, he stared at Uncle Johnny. “
Rope him
!”

“Well, yes. I hate to do it, but we've tried everything else.”

Slim started laughing and couldn't stop. He laughed so hard, his face turned red. Finally he was able to speak. “Johnny, let me see if I can explain this. First of all, that horse of mine will never get within half a mile of a buffalo for the rest of his life, and if he does, he'll be bucking wide open in the opposite direction. In the second place, I might look dumb enough to pitch a loop on something that wrecks pickups, but I'm not.”

Johnny shrugged. “Well, you read about men roping buffalo.”

“Yes, and the message is always the same.
Don't try this
!”

“What about Winkie? He's going right back to those cows and my neighbor's sure going to be unhappy.”

“Johnny, the only way you're going to get that buffalo gathered is to take all the cows with him.
Hire five good cowboys to do it
.”

Johnny squinted at the pickup and flinched. “Boy, he done a number on your pickup.”

“The pickup belongs to your niece's husband and I can guarantee that when he sees it, he won't be proud of me or you or Winkie. In fact, he may have trouble deciding which one of us he wants to kill first.”

Johnny gave his head a sad shake. “I just don't understand what got into Winkie. He's never acted this naughty.”

Slim's gaze turned to him, and it seemed none too friendly. “What got into Winkie is that he's a
buffalo
. He ain't a goldfish or a parakeet. He used to be a bottle calf, but now he's a wild animal that weighs fifteen hundred pounds.”

Johnny pushed his hat back and scratched the top of his head. “Well, he was fine till your dog barked.”

“Johnny, turn up your hearing aid and listen. Before my dog made a sound, your buffalo flattened a steel corral panel, jumped a five-wire fence, and walked through your barn door. We're lucky to be alive. Winkie needs a new home. Give him to a zoo. Tell ‘em to send a fully covered, reinforced stock trailer that he can't destroy. Or I can come back tomorrow and we'll gather him with a .30-.06.”

I think Slim was joking, but Uncle Johnny didn't laugh. He rocked up and down on his toes and chewed on his lip. “I hate to say this, but Marybelle's been telling me this for six months.”

“Marybelle was right. What time is it?”

Johnny held his wrist as far away from his eyes as he could and squinted at the watch. “I don't have my glasses.”

Slim looked at the watch. “I hate to leave you in a mess, but I have to be somewhere. If this pickup will start, I'm leaving.”

Johnny gave his head a sad shake. “He was always the sweetest calf.”

When Slim started the pickup, we heard a high-pitched whine coming from the motor. He tried to open the crumpled hood to check it out, but the hood release was messed up.

Back inside the cab, he shook his head and growled, “That stinking buffalo mashed the fan housing and now I have to listen to that thing screech all the way home.”