The Case of the Vampire Vacuum Sweeper (4 page)

I should have known he couldn't stick with a job for more than thirty seconds, that his idle childish cowboy mind . . .

Just skip it. I'm not going to tell you the rest of it.

Chapter Five: Okay, Maybe It Was the Vacuum Sweeper

W
e've discussed cowboys and their pranks, right? Give them a simple job of work and before you know it, they're goofing off and thinking of jokes to pull on helpless bystanders—such as their loyal dogs.

Okay, I was sitting there in the middle of the living room, minding my own business and the next thing I knew, Slim was coming after me with the vacuum sweeper. Can you believe a grown man would do such a thing? I couldn't. But he sure did, and before I caught on to his foolish, childish, infantile foolishness, he had managed to suck most of my tail into the sweeper pipe.

What did I do? I ran, of course. I snatched my tail out of the Bottomless Sweeper Pipe, tucked it between my legs (my tail, that is), and made a dash for the nearest corner, where I sat down on my tail—just to make sure he couldn't get it again.

Oh, and I also beamed him Looks of Wounded Pride and Complete Astonishment.

Did that help? Did he take the hint that I didn't enjoy this? Oh no! Here he came again, grinning like a . . . I don't know what. Like a vampire, a crazed vampire who ate dog tails, and of course he had that screaming hissing sweeper pipe out in front of him, and in spite of all my hints and facial messages that
this wasn't funny
, he went after my tail again.

That did it. A dog can only take so much. I scrambled out of the corner, ducked under the coffee table, scrambled out the other side, and made a dash down the hall. Would you believe it? He followed me! I mean, he ran down that hall, limping on his bad foot and dragging the sweeper behind him and attacking my tail section with the hissing pipe!

I was shocked. Astonished. Outraged. Who did this guy think he was and what kind of zoo was he running? Didn't he realize that it's very undignified for Heads of Ranch Security to flee from vacuum sweepers and take refuge under beds?

And what about cleaning the house? Just moments before, he had been in a panic that Miss Viola would see that he lived in a junkyard and know the awful truth—that he was nothing but a dirty bachelor whose habits would shame a hog.

It's impossible to explain the behavior of abnormal people and cowboys, and I gave up trying. I scrambled under the bed and found myself looking into Drover's moon-shaped eyes.

“Hi, Hank. Did you hear a funny sound?”

“I heard a sound, Drover, but it wasn't funny. I don't want to alarm you, but there's a crazy man out there, and he's armed with a tail-eating vacuum sweeper.”

“Oh my gosh, I don't have much tail left!”

“Well, you'd better hang on to it, pal, because . . .”

My words were buried under the scream and hiss of the Vampire Vacuum Sweeper, as the dreaded hissing pipe invaded our sanctuary and began searching for our tails. Drover screeched. So did I, and we both banged our heads against the bottom of the bed as we scrambled to save our tails from that awful hissing Thing.

Do you know what saved us? Slim ran out of cord and jerked the plug out of the wall. Otherwise . . .there's no telling what might have happened. We might have been sucked into some terrible black hole or we might have lost our tails or we might have . . . I don't even want to think about it.

But the important thing is that our courageous behavior and stern barking caused the plug to pop out of the socket, and our lives and tails were saved just in the nickering of time. The scream of the motor and the hiss of the pipe died away. An eerie silence moved over us.

I glanced at Drover. “How you doing, pal?”

“Terrible. I can't feel my left front leg. I think it's cut off.”

“Holy smokes, do you see any blood?”

“Well . . . I see dirt and lint and three dirty socks.”

“I know, but blood, do you see any blood? If your leg had been torn off, you would notice some blood.”

“How much?”

“I'm not sure. A quart, a gallon?”

“I don't see that much.”

“Okay, how about a pint?”

“Nope.”

“All right, how about a cup?”

There was a moment of silence. Then “Oh my gosh, Hank, there's a cup!”

“This is worse than I thought, Drover. It appears that you've been maimed by the Vampire Vacuum Sweeper. Your life will never be the same again.”

“Yeah, and it was never the same to start with.”

“What?”

“Every day's always been different. Now it'll be even worse.”

“Hmmm, yes, of course. You'll have to make many adjustments, Drover. Life without a leg is leg­less in many ways.”

“Oh my gosh, I won't be able to limp any more!”

“That's true. You know the old saying: A threelegged dog never limps.”

“I've never heard that one.”

“Actually, I just made it up, but it's true. Think about it, Drover. How could a three-dogged leg limp? I think it's impossible.”

“Yeah, and any leg that had three dogs would sure get tired.”

“Exactly. The sheer mathematics of it . . . hmmm, I seem to have lost my train of thought.”

“Railroad tracks?”

“What?”

“You were talking about trains and trains always leave tracks.”

I glared at the runt. “We were not talking about trains. I said I had lost my train of thought.”

“You mean you lost track of what you were saying?”

“Yes, that's another way of putting it. I suppose.”

“That's what I said.”

“That is NOT what you said.”

“I'll be derned. What did I say?”

“I don't know what you said! I've lost my track of trainless thought and . . . shut up, Drover, and let me think.” It took me a minute to unscramble my brains. “Oh yes, we were discussing your former leg. You had just lost it to a vacuum sweeper.”

“Oh yeah, good old leg. I'll sure miss that limp. We've been together all these years.”

“Like losing an old friend, I suppose.”

“Yeah, it's kind of sad. I even had a name for it. I called it George.”

“You called your limp George?”

“Yeah, I named it after Abraham Lincoln.”

“He was a great American.”

“Yeah. He was the best limp I ever had.”

At that very moment my gaze fell upon a strange object beneath the bed. I narrowed my eyes and studied it. It appeared to be a cup, a coffee cup. Closer inspection revealed that it was a coffee cup with Ace Reid cartoons printed on the sides.

“Drover, at some point in this conversation, we were talking about blood from your severed leg. I asked if you could see a cup, and what did you say?”

“Let's see here. I don't remember.”

“You said yes. Now, can you show me that cup of blood?”

“Oh, it wasn't a cup of blood. It was just a cup. See, there it is over there, and it's an Ace Reid cup.”

I gave him a withering glare. “Count your legs, Drover, and you'll find that all four of them are still attached.”

“One. Two. Three. Four. Oh my gosh, Hank, I've got my leg back, and my limp too! Thanks, Hank, I don't know how you did it, but I sure am grateful.”

I stared at the little mutt. He was so happy. I didn't have the heart to tell him that he might be insane. Oh well. I didn't have time to think about it anyway, because at that very moment a face appeared between the floor and the bed.

It was upside-down. The face, that is. It suddenly appeared out of thinned air and it was upside­-down and the sight of it sent a shock out to the end of my tail.

My ears shot up. My eyes popped open. The hair on my back went to Automatic Lift-Up and a ferocious growl began to form in the dark deepness of my throat.

Drover noticed all of this. “Is something wrong?”

“Drover, I don't want to alarm you, but a disembodied face has just appeared to our left. At this very moment, it's looking under the bed.”

“Oh my gosh, that's where we are.”

“That's correct. I'm afraid we're trapped.”

“Oh my leg!”

“Wait, hold it, halt. Cancel everything. It's Slim. What a relief.”

“Boy, what a relief.”

“I just said that.”

“Thanks, so did you.”

“What?”

I didn't have time to make sense of Drover's nonsense, because at that very moment he spoke. Slim spoke, that is. I don't know what Drover did, nor did I care. That last five-minute conversation with him had almost destroyed my mind.

Anyway, Slim was standing beside the bed and had bent himself into a U-shape, so that all we could see of him were his bare feet and his face. The rest of him was invisible. It was an odd sight, to say the least, and a lot of dogs would have been alarmed. Not me. I saw right away . . .

Okay, I was alarmed for just a second or two, not for long. It's hard to fool a true Head of Ranch Security.

“Hi, puppies. What you doing under my bed?”

I held my head at a proud angle and gave him Graveyard Glares. We were under the bed to escape an infantile maniac and his runaway vacuum sweeper. Thank you and good-bye.

“Don't you want to come out?”

No. He'd had his chance to enjoy our company in a mature adult manner, but he had chosen to goof off and play silly, childish games. My dignity had suffered a terrible blow, and it would take days or weeks for me to get over it.

And I had no intention of coming out—ever. He would just have to finish his life without a loyal dog.

Too bad for him.

Chapter Six: Miss Viola Comes to Visit Me

I
had made up my mind to never leave the underside of the bed, and to let Slim suffer the consequences of his foolish behavior. But suddenly he was gone and the siege was over. My guess was that he glanced at a clock, because I heard him say, “For Pete's sake, she'll be here in ten minutes!”

I shot a glance at Drover. He was still shivering.

“I think maybe it's safe to leave our drunker, Bover.”

“No thanks, I never touch the stuff.”

“What?”

“I said . . . I don't know what I said. When I get scared, I'll say almost anything.”

“Yes, I noticed. I said—and please listen this time—I said, I think it's safe to leave our bunker.”

“Oh good. What's a bunker?”

“A bunker is a bunker.”

“Oh, then maybe it's safe to leave.”

“Exactly my point. And I'm going to let you leave first. It's a small promotion, and it shows that I have confidence in your ability to perform a task.”

“That's weird.”

“What?”

“I said, ‘Oh boy, a promotion.' I just hope I can do it.”

“You can do it, son. Just crawl out from under the bed.”

“I thought it was a drunker.”

“Hush, Drover. Just do as you're told for once in your life and let me give the orders. I have my reasons for sending you out first.”

“Yeah, that's what bothers me. What if I run into the Vampire Vacuum?”

“The rest of us will be right here, backing you up. Now go.”

“Oh drat.”

He stuck his nose out from under the bed. He rolled his eyes to the left and to the right. “It looks clear. Slim's in the living room, throwing junk into the closet.”

“Great. Nice work, soldier. Let's move out.”

I wiggled myself out from under the bed and shook the lint off my coat. Sure enough, the coats was clear. Coast, that is. I made my way past the Vampire Vacuum, gave it a careful sniffing, and joined Slim in the living room.

Well, at last he had gotten serious about cleaning up his house. After goofing off and wasting valuable time, he was now grabbing entire armloads of stuff—socks, pants, towels, papers, magazines, books, plates, cups—and throwing it into the hall closet. Then he put his shoulder to the door, rammed it three times, and finally got it shut.

He paused a moment to catch his breath and brush the hair out of his eyes. “John the Baptist had it right: Live in the desert and eat grasshoppers, then nobody'll ever come to visit.”

He heaved a deep sigh and ran to the vacuum sweeper. I watched this with great interest and concern, and was ready to hit Escape Speed the moment I saw a grin on his mouth. But there were no grins this time. A small miracle had occurred before my very eyes. Slim had decided to quit goofing off and to clean up the house.

He dragged the sweeper down the hall and into the living room. He plugged in the cord and started sweeping the floor—and we're talking about wild, frantic activity, fellers. He had become a sweeping demon, totally dedicated to the task of . . .

Hmmm. I noticed a small cloud of dust forming at the rear of the sweeper. I cut my eyes from the cloud to Slim, then back to the cloud. It seemed to be growing. Slim didn't notice. His gaze was frozen in a wild expression, his teeth were clenched, and he was jerking that sweeper pipe up and down, back and forth.

Something was wrong here. Why was all that dust coming out the back of the sweeper? I barked an alarm. He didn't hear, so I barked again, louder this time.

Suddenly, his eyes came into focus. His head came up. He sniffed the air and coughed. Slowly his head turned around and he saw what I had seen, and what I had tried about which to warn him. About. Which.

Phooey.

The house was filled with a huge cloud of dust.

His eyes rolled back in his head. He smacked his forehead with his hand. He jerked the plug out of the socket.

“Holy cow, I forgot the sweeper bag!”

Well, I had tried to warn him.

He stood there for a long moment, as a whole movie of expressions flashed across his face: fatigue, weariness, disgust . . . then irritation, slight anger . . . then wide-eyed, teeth-gritting anger . . . then RAGE!

You won't believe what he did. A crazy gleam flashed in his eyes. He gathered up the sweeper and all its parts, stomped straight over to the back door, and threw the whole works out into the backyard. He closed the door with a bang, dusted his hands together, and gave me a grin.

“By grabs, next time I clean this house, I'll do it with a good old honest broom, and I'll leave them lying, cheating vacuum sweepers to whoever wants 'em.” He coughed and fanned the air, which was pretty muchly solid dust. He shook his head and stared into the fog with the look of a beaten man. “Boy, I really done it this time. I hope Viola's running late 'cause . . .”

At that very moment, we both heard the same sound, the hum of a motor in the distance, followed by the rumble of a vehicle passing over the cattle guard.

Once again, Slim's eyeballs rolled back into his head.

“Why didn't I just tell her that I ain't got any coffee? I don't know how these things happen to me.”

He limped into the bathroom to do something about his appearance, which was pretty awful. Even I could see that. I mean, his hair looked like a buzzard's nest. He had lint in his beard and a layer of dust on his forehead, dust on his glasses, sweat rings on his shirt, and a hole in his jeans.

I felt sorry for the poor guy, but what could I say? He'd chosen to chase his loyal dogs around the house with a vacuum sweeper, and now he would have to pay the pauper.

I barked the alarm and ran to the door to greet our visitor.

When Drover heard a car pulling up to the front door, he started barking too. Or whatever you call that thing he does. It's not a deep manly bark, but rather a high-pitched yip-yip-yip. He came half­way down the hall, yipping his little head off.

“Hank, someone's coming! I think it's a car. Alarm, alarm! Alert, alert! Car on the place, car on the place!” At last he noticed me sitting beside the door, watching his performance. “Oh, hi Hank, I heard a car coming and thought I'd better do Alert and Alarm.”

“Yes, I see.”

“Are you proud of me? I was the first one to pick it up, wasn't I?”

“Drover, I hate to be the bearer of bad news.”

“Oh good, 'cause I hate bad news, and I'm scared of bears.”

“Nevertheless, it's my duty to inform you that your Alert and Alarm was a full two minutes late.”

The smile wilted on his mouth. “Oh darn. Now I'm all upset and disappointed. I thought I'd done so well.”

“I'm sorry, son, but we've had that vehicle on Earatory Radar from the very moment it pulled off the county road and entered our property.”

“No fooling?”

“Yes. And I can even tell you that it's being dri­ven by Miss Viola. Furthermore, I can tell you that she's come to borrow a can of coffee.”

He stared at me in amazement. “How'd you know all that?”

“It's all in the ears, Drover. It comes from years of practice and drill.”

At that point I turned my attention to other matters. There was a knock at the door. I began to wonder why Slim didn't come out of the bathroom to let Miss Viola in. Then I heard an odd sound coming from the bathroom door—several odd sounds, actually. The first was the squeak of the door knob turning, followed by a rattling sound. This was followed by a loud whack, as though someone had . . . well, kicked the door.

None of this made sense to me, but then I heard Slim's voice. “This dadgum door! I can't get the dad­gum door open. Come in! Viola, come on in and make yourself at home!”

Oh, so that was it. He was trapped in the bathroom. Gee, this wasn't Slim's lucky night.

The front door opened a crack and Miss Viola stuck her head in. “Slim? Yoo hoo, Slim, are you here?”

We heard his voice inside the bathroom. “Come on in, Viola. I'll be right with you.”

She came in and closed the door. She was wearing a long coat with a fur collar, and some kind of furry hat on her head. My goodness, she was pretty. Her eyes were sparkling and she had a smile that seemed to light up the whole room.

I'll tell you, fellers, there's just something about a woman's presence that can change a shack into a palace.

I rushed over to greet her. So did Drover, the little stupe, even though he should have known that she hadn't come to visit him. I got there first and managed to position myself between him and Viola. Then I went into Adoring Looks and Worship­ful Wags.

“Hello, Hank. I see that you managed to talk Slim into letting you in the house. Hi, Drover.”

Somehow the runt managed to worm his way under my legs, and when he heard her call his name, well, I guess he decided that he actually belonged there and was welcome to stay. He wiggled past me and had the nerve to jump up on her leg.

I was shocked and embarrassed. He should have known that jumping up on guests, and especially lady guests, was crude, rude, uncouth, and socially unacceptable. I mean, jumping up on cowboys and pawing their clothes with dirty feet was okay, but doing it to a lady? No sir. They don't go for that kind of stuff.

He should have known better. Hadn't I taught him any manners? Apparently not, although I had tried. I was shocked and . . .

But on the other hand, she didn't shriek or kick at him or push him away, and in fact she reached down and patted his head, and it suddenly occurred to me that he was butting into my business . . . and that I, uh, needed to do something to save her from his silly displays of phony affection.

I mean, Drover hardly even knew Viola, where­as she and I had been dearest friends for a long time. If any dog was going to jump on her, it ought to be ME, not Mister Hide-Under-the-Bed.

And so it was that I followed the only course of action available to me, the one dictated by hospitality, good manners, public health, and true friend­ship. I vaulted over the top of Drover, stepped on his nose, and threw myself into her awaiting arms—where I, and I alone, deserved to be.