Webster (13 page)

After saying good night, the dog galloped across the
meadow. As always, it felt good to stretch his legs. And, with no Greyhound mixes or other ringers around, he could tell himself that he was unusually speedy, with fabulous first-step acceleration, which was the envy of all other dogs.

He could see that the damaged part of his former kennel had been repaired, and that the fallen tree had been cleared away. Apparently, the remains were being chopped up for winter firewood, based upon the pile of newly split logs next to what was left of the tree.

The main door leading out to the meadow was probably going to be the one left open for him, although there was no guarantee that Duke had managed to remember any of his instructions correctly. But, he could see a sliver of light, so apparently, some version of the message had gotten through.

Just as he started to nose the door open, it crossed his mind that it might be a trap, and he would be lured back into his kennel and never have a chance to escape again.

And that would be bad.

So, he backed off and paced nervously inside the meadow for a few minutes, trying to decide what to do. Should he just dash away? It would certainly be safer.
He could go back into the woods, make a bed on some pine needles, and get a chilly night's rest.

On the other hand, it wasn't like they were all missing him so much that life was no longer worth living, and they would be desperate to have him stay. They would probably just be happy to have him stop by to say hello, eat some kibble, and be on his jolly way.

Kibble. Having some kibble would be so completely excellent right about now.

And if they were going to watch more
Masterpiece Classic
, he really didn't want to miss it.

Okay. That tipped the balance.

He pushed tentatively at the door with his nose, and nudged his way inside.

“Well, finally!” a voice said.

A British accent. Florence.

“And what do you have to say for yourself?” she asked, tapping a paw testily on the floor. “Joan and Thomas have been beside themselves with worry.”

Did they like him that much? Hard to believe. “Um, that I'm powerless to change the tides of my destiny,” he said.

“Balderdash,” Florence said.

That was another interpretation, yeah. “What do you want from me?” the dog asked. “I'm
bad
.”

“I don't know about that, but you are certainly obstinate,” Florence said. “And rather willful.”

Probably. “I'm also really hungry,” he said.

Florence looked at him with critical, crooked eyes. Then, she turned around clumsily and began stumping down the hall. “Very well,” she said. “Follow me.”

Didn't have to ask
him
twice. “Keep in mind, I'm only stopping by,” the Bad Hat said, as he trailed behind her. “I'll be on my way after I say hello to everyone.”

“Oh, no doubt,” Florence agreed. “I daresay you won't even pause to have anything to eat before you go.”

What a cruel and awful thought. “I might have a few bites,” the Bad Hat said. “Just to be polite.”

Florence nodded. “And I'm sure you won't want to stick around to see a movie, or anything of that nature, either.”

She was really boxing him into an uncomfortable corner, wasn't she? “Well, if you think it would be good manners, I will,” he said. “But, that's
it
. After that, I am gone, for good. You can count on that.”

Florence smiled. “If you say so.”

He did.
Emphatically.

More or less.

T
hey went straight to the den, which was crowded with animals, eating and chatting and looking cheerful.

“If it isn't Wayward Webster, the Prodigal Punk,” Benjamin said.

“You're back!” Duke said happily.

Yep. Here he was. “Hi, Benjamin,” the Bad Hat said. “Hi, Duke.”

Duke shook his head. “No, I'm Marquess now.”

Seriously? The Bad Hat turned to stare at Florence. “You demoted him? Why?”

“He didn't bring you home with him,” Florence said. “That was his assignment, and he failed to complete it.”

“Well, I'm here now,” the Bad Hat said. “Doesn't that count?”

Florence delicately nibbled a piece of kibble, taking her own sweet time, before answering. “I'll think about it.”

“That's really mean,” the Bad Hat said. “You're like, evil to the core.”

Florence shrugged, her expression not even remotely perturbed. “I'm a
cat
.”

Well, yeah, that pretty much spoke for itself, didn't it. “He made some very good arguments,” the Bad Hat said. “It's not his fault that I'm, you know, incorrigible.”

“True,” Florence agreed, “but what am I going to do, start calling you the
Really
Bad Hat?”

Hmmm, he sort of liked that. It maybe even capture his, you know, essence. But, it didn't exactly come tripping lightly off the tongue, did it?

The Bad Hat turned back to Duke. “Marquess, you've just been upgraded. You're Duke again.”

Duke's eyes glistened with tears. “Really? You wouldn't joke about a thing like that, would you?”

“Nope, I'm a dog, we don't play the game that way,” the Bad Hat said. “You have officially been promoted.”

“Oh my goodness,” Duke said, sounding as though he was completely overcome. “Wow. This is wonderful
news. Glorious news! I have
so many
animals to thank.”

Everyone in the room turned, cooperatively, to look at him.

“Where to begin? Well, I never met my father,” Duke said. “But, I'm sure he was a brave and strong Shepherd, and that I should be proud to be his son. My mother took such wonderful care of me and my brothers. Five pups! My goodness, we were a handful. But she never complained, and she was never cross. Naturally, she always used to call me Lambie-pie. ‘Lambie-pie,' she would say, ‘don't mind your brothers when they tease you, because you have such a good heart, and I love you.' ”

The Bad Hat had a sneaking suspicion that this was going to be a very
long
thank-you speech.

“I know that Lambie-pie is a very common nickname,” Duke said.

Really? Since when? The Bad Hat glanced at MacNulty, who shrugged.

“But,” Duke went on, “I still always felt special when she called me that. After the nice people rescued us from the puppy mill, and we went to the service place and everything, my family got separated, and I miss them terribly. And so, I want to thank my dear brothers
and mother, along with the lovely rescue people, whose names were—” He stopped. “Well, I'm sure they had very
good
names, just like Jan and Tim, who are so kind to us here on the farm.”

Jan and Tim. The Bad Hat didn't laugh, because everything Duke said was so clearly genuine and spoken from the heart. But, it was hard to keep a straight face.

“Oh, and the cooking lady!” Duke said. “I can't forget her! I feel so happy every time I see her. And, of course, I want to thank all of the volunteers, even the ones whose names I don't know.” Duke frowned. “Which is mostly all of them, I guess. But, still, I love them very much.”

“Don't forget to thank the Academy, and your agent,” Benjamin said.

Duke nodded. “Yes, of course. I want to thank the Academy of—um, Cats and Dogs, and my agent, who I didn't know I had, but who I'm sure I really appreciate. And I want to thank
every
animal here at our rescue home, especially Florence and Mad Cap and—”

“The orchestra has started playing,” Benjamin said, twirling one paw in the air. “You need to wrap it up, so we can go to commercial.”

“Okay,” Duke said agreeably. “Thank you, thank you,
thank you, everyone! And—I really
like
all of you. I do! And I hope you like me, too. Thank you!”

Now that the speech was finally over, all of the animals in the room applauded.

“All right, then,” Florence said, after a moment. “That was a unique diversion. Thank you, Duke.”

Duke smiled shyly, and ducked his head.

The Bad Hat looked around the room until he located Jack, who was up on a love seat, with a smug expression.

“Did you have gravy?” he asked.

Jack nodded. “With our suppers. For lunch, we had fresh chicken mixed into our food!”

The Bad Hat
loved
chicken. “Well, I had fresh chicken, too,” he said. “In fact, I killed it, and ate it raw, right in the middle of Main Street!”

There was a brief, pensive silence in the room.

“Yuck,” Matilda, the Spaniel mix, said. “That must have been messy.”

“And I don't think this town has an actual Main Street,” Kerry, the sly multicolored cat, said. “So, your story is unconvincing.”

Foiled again. “Okay, it was fried chicken,” the Bad Hat said. “A drumstick. I found it in a trash can.”

“Yummy!” Duke said, and the other dogs nodded happily, while the cats all winced.

He climbed up onto the love seat next to Jack. “You really shouldn't have abandoned me like that today,” he said quietly.

“You left
me
last night, during the storm,” Jack said. “So, now we're even.”

Okay, fair enough.

The Bad Hat was surprised by how glad he was to see everyone—and how happy the rest of them seemed to be to see
him
. Not that he would be giving up his life on the run or anything, but he couldn't remember the last time anyone had acted as though they were pleased to have him around.

“You and Jack were on the news tonight,” Cole said, before the dog even had a chance to tell them about any of the impressive experiences he had had so far.

The Bad Hat stopped chewing his kibble. “What do you mean?”

Cole gestured towards Madeline, who was a very large tiger cat. “She saw it on the television in the kitchen, when she was teasing Monica for scraps.”

“No. I was helping her cook,” Madeline corrected him.

Well, whatever. “Did they report that I was impressing and enthralling the entire town?” the Bad Hat asked. Except that sounded awfully cuddly for a Bad Hat. “Or, I don't know, maybe that I was terrorizing and alarming people? And that all of the villagers now tremble at the very thought of me? And that the police have issued a BOLO?”
Be on the lookout.

Madeline shook her head. “They said that Jack was saving people. A man who was going to drown, and a baby who was playing in traffic—and I forget what else.”

Figures. “That
he
was saving them?” the Bad Hat asked.

Jack looked even more smug. “They said I'm a hero. I'm
sure
to get adopted now.”

“A couple of the people said that there was a mysterious black dog nearby, too. They described you as a black Lab with no collar, and asked your owners to come forward, so that you could be reunited with them,” Madeline said.

Florence looked grim. “And poor Joan and Thomas rushed right over to the news station, thinking that you were actually there, waiting for them. That's how the reporters made it sound.”

How ridiculous. “The guy who drowned said
Jack
pulled him to shore?” the Bad Hat said. “Some tiny little Terrier dragged a
huge
guy out of the water, all by himself?”

Madeline nodded. “They interviewed him, and he said he wasn't sure, but when he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was a little Yorkie.”

Forget ridiculous; that was
annoying
. And maybe even infuriating. The Bad Hat shook his head with disgust. “But, that isn't at all how it happened. Not even close.”

“Well, that's the liberal media for you,” Benjamin said. “They never get
anything
right.”

Seemed that way in this case. “And you're
sure
the townspeople aren't afraid of me?” the dog asked Madeline. “And anxious and intimidated?”

Madeline shook her head again. “No. They want people to Tweet, or post photos online, and that sort of thing, if they catch a glimpse of you.”

Well, this was a fine kettle of fish. A total disaster, even. “I may need to relocate,” the Bad Hat said. “Because that's not at all what I had in mind.”

“You could start doing really destructive and offensive things,” MacNulty suggested. “Change your reputation.”

Good idea! The dog nodded.

“Don't encourage him,” Florence said. “And if you leave town, Bad Hat, won't you have to spend a lot of time commuting for your kibble?”

Oh. Maybe. Yeah. Okay, terrible idea! Completely terrible idea.

“Of course,” she said casually, “you could just stay here, and then food wouldn't be an issue at all.”

Nope. Not a chance. Because, you know, he was wicked smart for a dog. So, the Bad Hat ignored that suggestion completely. “What are we watching tonight?”

“The fourth episode, and maybe the fifth,” Florence said.

Yay!

He enjoyed the show, and was even more pleased when the other animals agreed to change genres and watch an old Western, before everyone went to bed. It actually
did
have horses, and a saloon, and duels, and a lone stalwart cowboy named Shane, and a hero-worshipping little boy—and was altogether excellent. Perfect, even. In fact, he would have been happy to watch it over and over again, every single night, for the rest of his life. The movie made him think that maybe
he was all wrong about his destiny. Instead of being a ruthless outcast or a regular topic in pop-culture gossip columns, he should be a mysterious cowboy, and protect and oversee the villagers he encountered. An aloof, but benevolent and confident figure to be admired by one and all.

Or, maybe not. It sounded like it would maybe be too much work.