Webster (18 page)

After a while, they had looked at so many houses and barns and other properties, that the buildings were all starting to blur together. The Bad Hat started worrying that maybe they had
already
passed the right house, and the people just hadn't been home, so the truck wasn't there.

Which meant that they might have to do all of this
again
later.

“Gotta rest,” Lancelot said, at one point, breathing hard.

Everyone
was worn out, even Rachel and her long Greyhound legs, so they all dropped in their tracks. The Bad Hat didn't even notice that he had landed right in the middle of a mud puddle—until he had already gotten wet. But, he was too tired to move, so he just stayed there and panted for a while.

Finally, they dragged themselves to their feet, and resumed the search. Up streets, down streets, around corners, and then, on to the next section of town. Pickup
trucks, full-size vans, minivans, SUVs, small wagons, hybrids, motorcycles, bicycles, skateboards, tractors—lots of forms of transportation, in lots of different driveways.

Many of the houses and cottages were clearly closed up for the season, but they were careful, and checked them, too. Just in case.

The sun was beating down, and it felt very hot. The Bad Hat was hungry, of course—because he was
always
hungry—but, he was also thirsty, and the water in mud puddles tasted terrible. Maybe they should take a detour over to the lake, and drink from it? But, he was too tuckered out even to make the suggestion to the others.

They turned down yet another street. More houses. Big houses. Small houses. Ramshackle houses, which looked more like—

“Hey!” MacNulty said suddenly. “Check it out!”

Just up the road, there was a beat-up old house, with tilted shingles, and an unmown lawn. But, parked in the rutted dirt driveway was a navy-blue truck, with a dented fender, a hanging piece of yellow rope, and a blue tarpaulin draped over the back.

“Wow, my hypnosis was
excellent
,” Jack said. “Look how well I made you remember, Bad Hat!”

It was because of dumb luck, not hypnosis, but yes! They had found the house!

The Bad Hat wanted to run down the driveway, barking his head off, but he held back for a second to think.

“Let's charge the house!” Jack said.

Which sounded like a good idea to the Bad Hat, too. But, if bad, thoughtless people lived here, it might make more sense to be sneaky.

“We should take it a little slow,” the Bad Hat said. “Get a feel for things, first.”

“Reconnaissance!” MacNulty said happily.

Yes, they should do recon first. And it was such a totally cool word, too. The Bad Hat nodded, and followed the others as they retreated into the bushes and observed the house for a while.

There were no signs of activity, although they could hear a television blaring inside somewhere. The house needed a fresh coat of paint, and none of the windows had curtains, although a few had broken shades, all of which were pulled down most of the way. One of the windows was broken, and had been
patched with some duct tape and a piece of cardboard.

There was a mildewed old woodpile next to one side of the house, and what looked like a propane gas tank on the other side. There was a weather-beaten porch in the front, with a missing step, and some crooked wooden lattice pieces propped up along the bottom.

The Bad Hat was going to sniff the air, carefully, to catch a whiff of cat or kitten—but, before he could, he heard the sound of a cat crying miserably to herself, from—where?

“I hear a cat,” he said. “Does anyone else hear a cat?”

They all listened intently, with their noses pointed in the air, in case they could pinpoint the scent, too.

They listened, until they located the sound under the porch.

What an awful thing to hear. She sounded so desolate.

“Since I'm the captain, I'll go up ahead, and check things out,” the Bad Hat said, and the others nodded.

“Don't get caught!” Rachel warned him.

Which would
never
happen, of course. The Bad Hat crept out from the bushes, and made his way slowly across the unkempt yard, to the porch. He poked his
head through one of the openings in the boards and was greeted by a loud hiss.

“Get away from me!” the animal said.

It took a moment for the Bad Hat's eyes to adjust to the dim light, but then he saw a black-and-white cat, who had obviously given birth recently, lying on her side in the dirt.

“Hello,” he said, with a big smile. “We came to rescue you!”

With an effort, she turned away from him. “Leave me alone,” she said, still crying. “I don't
want
to be rescued.”

Wait, that wasn't part of the program. Maybe she was kidding. “What?” the Bad Hat said. “But—I mean, we looked for you for
hours
.”

“So?” She slumped down into the dirt. “Go away.”

Okay, she had thrown him a real curveball here. The Bad Hat sat and panted for a few seconds. There was probably like, clever psychology he should be using right now, but he didn't know any.

“Are they feeding you?” he asked. “And giving you fresh water? And a soft place to sleep?”

The cat shrugged without lifting her head from the ground. “I don't care what happens to me.”

Should he maybe run back to the bushes, and ask the others for advice? Surely, one of them would know what to do. But, he didn't want to risk alerting anyone inside by making any unnecessary noise. “Are, um, the people here nice to you?” he asked. “Is that why you want to stay?”

“No,” she said vehemently. “I
hate
it here. But, I'll never leave. I have to stay right in this spot, in case my babies come back.”

Whew. That meant that this wasn't possibly beyond him, and he could actually fix this. “Any chance you have, say, six babies?” he asked.

The cat raised her head slightly.

Score! “Including one named Harold?” he asked. “Who faints a lot?”

The cat burst into the hardest animal tears he had ever seen—or heard, and he had certainly been around a lot of animal tears. “My sweet delicate little Harold!” she said. “And Joyce, and Kermit, and Lola, and Mavis, and Ivan! Have you seen them? Are they all right? Do you know where they are?”

As Duke would say, wow, what a lot of questions, and what a lot of names to remember. The Bad Hat
nodded. “I found them yesterday, when those creeps”—he motioned towards the house with his head—“threw the bag into the road. And I brought them all to the Green Meadows Rescue Farm. So, they're safe now.”

The cat looked at him tremulously. “But—they weren't fully weaned yet. Are you sure they're okay?”

“Yep,” he said. “The vet came over and checked them yesterday afternoon, and the people who run the place stayed up all night, feeding them out of baby bottles and keeping them warm on heating pads and all.”

Now, the cat looked stunned. “I don't understand. You mean, there are
good
people in the world?”

Amazingly enough, the answer seemed to be yes. He'd met quite a few of them recently. “Yep,” he said. “And I'm going to bring you there, too.”

The cat started crying again, and he stood there awkwardly, waiting for the gushing tears to pass.

“Is it okay if my friends come out of the woods, so we can figure out the best way to do this?” he asked.

The cat nodded, still weeping.

Whew. He would feel a lot better with some—well—
buddies
to help out. He turned towards the bushes.

“Come on!” he called softly.

The other dogs—his
team
—burst out of the underbrush and raced across the lawn, and watching them made the Bad Hat feel proud. MacNulty and Rachel were in the lead, with Lancelot and Matilda right behind them, while Duke strode in his dignified way through the weeds, and Jack chased after everyone, trying to keep up.

The cat cringed slightly. “That's a lot of dogs,” she whispered.

“It's okay,” the Bad Hat said. “They're my friends, and you're going to like them.”

The dogs gathered in a semicircle around the porch, and everyone barked at once, asking questions and tossing out ideas.

“Cool it,” the Bad Hat said in a low voice. “That television in there isn't
that
loud.”

The other dogs simmered down a little, but they were still all excited, and anxious, and bumping into each other.

“What do we do?” MacNulty asked. “Do we herd her?”

“I don't think I can walk,” the cat said weakly. “I haven't had any food for a while, and it's hard to stand up.”

The Bad Hat shouldn't have been shocked that people who would discard kittens wouldn't feed their poor mother—even though she was presumably their pet. “
Can you ride on my back?” he asked. “That's how I carried the kittens.”

She shook her head. “I don't think I'm strong enough to hang on.”

And she was kind of heavy and unwieldy, too, so it would be hard for him to balance her up there. But, they had to do
something
.

“What do we do, if she can't walk, and we can't carry her?” he asked the other dogs.

They all looked at each other, and shrugged, and started panting nervously.

The Bad Hat sat down, and panted, too.

And panted some more.

“We need a branch,” Matilda said. “We could use it to drag her. Come on!”

The dogs followed her across the street, and into a small vacant lot, which was covered with trees and bushes and lots of weeds and tall grass.

“It needs to have leaves,” Matilda said. “Or a lot of smaller branches. So, she can lie down on it.”

“A pine tree!” Rachel said. “That'll be perfect!”

They prowled around the lot until they found a pine tree with branches that were low enough for most of
them to reach. The Bad Hat tried to tear one off with his teeth, but the wood was too thick. So, he started chewing the wood, even though the sap was sticky and tasted awful. But, it was taking a long time, and he got impatient.

“This isn't working,” he said. “Let's find a different tree.”

“No, just break it off,” Jack said. “Like this!” He hopped up onto the end of the branch and began jumping up and down. Unfortunately, he was so small that the branch boomeranged back at him and sent him flying through the air. “Oof!” he grunted, when he landed on the ground.

“Pipsqueak's right, though,” MacNulty said. “Bad Hat, you and Duke are the biggest—so, you jump on it, until it breaks.”

Duke looked at them all blankly. “I don't understand.”

“It's okay,” the Bad Hat said. “Just do what I do.”

The Bad Hat started jumping on the branch, putting all of his weight on his front paws, and Duke cautiously did the same. It took several tries, but finally they pried it off the tree.

“All right!” the Bad Hat said.

“All right!” Duke said, less certainly.

The Bad Hat grabbed the long end in his teeth, and dragged the branch across the street and over to the porch. The other dogs followed him, yapping happily to each other about how
totally awesome
this idea was.

But, when they got to the porch, the cat frowned. “That looks like a
dog
idea, not a practical plan,” she said.

Maybe she was feeling a little better, because for the first time, she sounded like a
cat
.

“It's going to be like a stretcher,” Matilda said. “You need to lie on the soft part, and we'll pull it along, and get you to the rescue farm.”

“I don't know if it will work,” the cat said doubtfully.

The one reliable thing about cats was that they really liked to be
difficult
, especially when it was inconvenient. “If you have a better idea, we're all ears,” the Bad Hat said.

She didn't answer for a while, and then she shook her head.

“Are you strong enough to crawl out here, and get on it?” he asked. “Or do you need us to pull you?”

The cat shook her head. “I'll
make
myself strong enough,” she said.

It took a long time, and it was hard to watch her move so painfully, but finally, she had dragged herself out from underneath the porch and onto the branches.

“I'm Clarabelle, by the way,” she said.

Oh. Right. Because he was such a Bad Hat, he usually forgot about pleasantries. “That's Jack, and MacNulty, and Rachel, and Lancelot, and Matilda, and Duke. And I'm Webster,” the dog said. “But, they call me the Bad Hat.”

Clarabelle looked at him dubiously. “Do you like that name? It seems unsavory.”

Maybe, but he still liked it very much. He nodded. “Yup. We'll try to pull the branch gently, but you need to hang on as best as you can.”

He and Duke had just started to pull her down the driveway, when something terrible happened.

The front door of the house opened!

H
ey!” A lady yelled. She was a large, heavyset woman, who was wearing torn jeans and a stained flannel shirt and looked like she hadn't washed her hair for a week. “Get out of here, you rotten curs!”

Curs?

The Bad Hat didn't realize that she was holding a beer bottle until the lady threw it at them. The bottle hit him right in the side, and he yelped.

“Run,” the mother cat gasped. “She'll hurt you. Or her awful husband will come out, and he'll do something even worse. Don't worry, I'll be fine here.”

Nope. No way. Not one single, tiny chance in the world. The Bad Hat carefully dropped his end of the
branch on the ground so that Clarabelle wouldn't fall off.

“Come on, team,” he said. “Let's take care of this varmint!” Then he swaggered up the driveway, with his best cowboy strut, feeling all of the hair on his back rise.