The Mopwater Files by John R. Erickson

Chapter One: Total Meltdown on the Ranch

    I t’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. Have we ever discussed the Mopwater Files? Maybe not, because it’s still Highly Classified information and we’re not ready to go public with it.
    We may never go public with it. It’s too secret. Oh, and it has a scary ending. You wouldn’t like it.
    That’s too bad. It was a pretty interesting case but I’m just not in a position to . . .
    Do you remember Rufus the Doberman Pin­­s­cher? Big guy, little green eyes, sharp-pointed ears, long fangish teeth. A terrible bully, always tormenting Miss Beulah the Collie, and you talk about ugly! He was ugly, inside and out.
    It’s still hard to believe that I actually challenged that guy to a fight to the death, but then came the bucket of toxic mopwater and . . .
    Oops. I wasn’t supposed to reveal anything about the case. Forget I said anything. Why, if this information fell into the wrong hands . . . just forget it. That’s all I can say.
    What were we talking about? Oh yes, the weather. It was the middle of the summer, see, and hotter than blue blazes. It had been hot for days and weeks, and there I was, wearing a fur coat.
    Yellowjacket wasps hummed in the still air and you could see heat waves shimmering on the horizon. The wind had quit blowing. The windmills had quit pumping. The cowboys had quit working.
    I had started out the morning in a nice piece of shade beneath the gas tanks, but by eleven o’clock the shade had . . . I don’t know what happened to it. It had burned up or boiled away or something, and I found myself lying in the scorching glare of the sun.
    What a cheap trick! I had to summon up huge reserves of energy to move myself to another piece of shade on the west side of the storage tank. It was tough, let me tell you, and I just barely made it.
    But you know what? Something happened to that shade too, and within an hour I was roasting again. And all at once I faced the toughest decision of the day: would I get up and move my freight to another shady spot, or would I just lie there and roast?
    I raised my head and studied the situation. I could see the shade. There it was, not more than six inches from my present location, but to get there, I would have to go through the entire Jack Up and Move procedure, just as though I were moving halfway across the ranch.
    That doesn’t seem fair, does it? If a guy travels no more than a few inches, he shouldn’t have to go to all that trouble. Think about it. Raise head. Position legs under body. Push up on front legs. Push up on back legs. Coordinate the Walking Pattern for all four feet. Walk six inches to the west. Collapse.
    It wasn’t fair. It was an outrage, and I decided that I wouldn’t do it. By George, I would just lie there in the sun and roast. That would teach them . . . whoever They were . . . and I hoped They would take notice and quit messing around with my shade.

    I laid my head down and began roasting. I heard my deep breathing and listened to the stupid flies buzzing around my ears. I hate ’em. If I’d had more energy, I would have raised up and snapped ’em all out of the air.
    Snapped ’em out of the air and chewed ’em up into little bitty pieces of legs and wings, and then spit ’em all out on the ground. That’s what a fly deserves and that was how much I hated the little tormenting devils, but I didn’t have the energy to initiate a good Anti-fly Defense Program.
    So I just lay there in the sun and roasted, and let the flies walk around my ears . . . over my face . . .
    Into my nose?
    Okay, that did it! They could have the ears but no fly walks into my nose. I lifted my head and cut loose a withering barrage of snapping. I missed them all, but they got the message and left my nose alone.
    And, what the heck, once I had gone to all the trouble to raise my head, I figured I might as well go on into Jack Up and Move. I