The Case of the Midnight Rustler by John R. Erickson Page A

same mad scramble to patch up the machinery, and the same long faces.
    We dogs might be dumb, but no dog in history has ever tried to farm 30 acres of alfalfa hay with equipment that ought to be in a museum or a junkyard.
    I’ll say no more about it, except that if they had listened to the Head of Ranch Security, things would have gone a whole lot smoother.
    So there we were, in the midst of our annual Farm Equipment Wreck. Slim and Loper hauled the mower over to the machine shed and tore into it.
    What we had was two cowboys, stomping around the machine shed in greasy clothes, baseball caps, and lace-up boots. And mad? They hardly spoke to each other, but they did quite a bit of speaking to the machinery, which was spread out in a thousand parts on the cement floor.
    Here’s what I mean:
    Slim: “Stupid sickle blades! The way they break off, you’d think we’d been mowin’ redwood trees instead of alfalfa.”
    Loper: “The guy who engineered this mess must have been drunk for two months.”
    Slim: “Too bad there ain’t a Tooth Fairy for busted sickle blades. We’d be rich.”
    Loper: “The way this piece of junk eats bearings, we ought to buy stock in Timken.”
    Slim: “I’m sure proud I signed on with a COWBOY outfit.”
    Yes sir, the atmosphere was pretty tense. I was lying down just outside the door, watching Slim as he kicked and talked to various parts of the mower, and wondering if Loper knew that he had a big smudge of grease on the end of his nose, when all at once the cat arrived on the scene.
    I glared at him and noticed that the folds of skin that covered my teeth had begun to twitch. I can’t explain why that happens, but every time Pete enters the picture, my mouth and lips move into Snarling Mode.
    Have I mentioned that I don’t like cats? I don’t like cats, have no use for ’em at all. They’re about as useless as a hog in a hospital. All they do is eat and purr and rub and make a nuisance of themselves.
    Well, old Slim was bent down over the sickle bar, whamming on it with a ball-peen hammer. A fly was buzzing in his ear and big drops of sweat dripped off the end of his nose. Pete came gliding across the floor, purring like a refrigerator and holding his tail straight up in the air, and he started rubbing up against Slim’s leg.
    â€œGet away, cat.”
    As you may know, cats don’t take hints. They seem to think that everybody loves them and is just waiting around for a chance to become a rubbing post. Pete rubbed and purred and meowed.
    â€œGET AWAY, CAT.”
    Slim picked him up and pitched him over in Loper’s direction. Loper was squatted down on the floor, staring at his project of the moment, which looked like what you’d have if you stuck two sticks of dynamite in a bearing housing and lit the fuse. His lips were forming words but no sounds came out.
    Any dog with a brain in his head would have read the warning signs and kept his distance, but do you suppose Pete saw any of that? Oh no. What he saw was something else to rub on, and that’s just what he did.
    I sure liked what Loper did. Instead of yelling at the cat or erupting in a childish outburst of temper, he reached for the air wrench nearby, hit the button with his finger, and tried to unscrew Pete’s tail with a 3 ⁄ 4 -inch socket.
    Hee hee, ha ha, ho ho! I loved it. I’d never realized that Pete could move so fast, but he sure did. The last we saw of the cat, he was heading south at a high rate of speed.
    Slim looked up from the mess he was making with the sickle blades and said, “Loper, you ain’t much for fixing hay equipment, but I believe you own the patent on fixin’ cats.”

    I barked and thumped my tail on the floor. Loper’s eyes came up and speared me. “Hush, Hank, you might be next.”
    I, uh, decided to keep my opinions to myself.
    It was then that my ears picked up the sounds