The Case of the Buried Deer by John R. Erickson

Author:John R. Erickson [Erickson, John R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Maverick Books, Inc.
Published: 2019-03-28T05:00:00+00:00

Yes. This was getting serious and he needed to be warned that…well, that the interior of his pickup was in danger of getting spray-painted the color of used gizzards. The man had no idea what we were facing here.

I swiveled around to the left and fired off three blasts of Alert and Alarm Barking, right over the top of Drover’s head. I had a feeling that three good, stout A&A’s would wake Slim up.

They did. He flinched so hard, he jerked the wheel to the right and skewered me with a glare. “Quit barking inside the pickup!”

Yes, but…good grief, we were heading toward the ditch!

Just in time, he jerked the wheel and got us back on the road. “One of these days, you’re going to get us killed. Now hush.”

Well, that flopped and we were back to Iron Discipline, and we’re talking about the very ironist of Iron Discipline, the kind of rigid self-control unknown to your ordinary run of mutts. The technical term for it is Mind Over Easy. Mud Over Matter. Mind Under Water. Skip it.

Wait. Mind Over Matter, there we go.

Have you detected that I was feeling nervous about this? I was. I mean, we were creeping along the county road at FIFTEEN MILES AN HOUR and still had another mile to go! I didn’t dare bark again, so I beamed him a look of Utter Sincerity that said, “Will you quit poking around and speed this thing up?”

It didn’t work, of course. Looks of Utter Sincerity don’t work unless our people are paying attention, and he wasn’t. He had fallen back into the bottomless well of his own private thoughts.

I would have to tough it out, endure one more mile of misery. It would be one of the sternest tests of my whole career. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. I mean, bad things were going on down there in the dungeon of my body. Just in case the situation blew up, I began rehearsing my story:

“Slim, we’ve been friends a long time, right? And we’re talking about the kind of serious bonding that only happens between a cowboy and his dog. Okay, remember those gizzards you pitched out the back door? You warned me not to eat them, but here’s a blast of truth: I disobeyed your orders and, well, ate them anyway.

“It was a careless, bone-head decision and it pretty muchly explains the material you see on your windshield and dashboard. I’m afraid that some of it might have leaked into the defroster vents, and we might have lost the radio too.

“Old friend, dearest pal, cowboy companion, I want you to know HOW SORRY I am about this whole situation. I am desolate, devoured by grief and remorse, hardly able to drag myself through another hour of life.”

Would it sell? Maybe. Probably not.

We were still a half-mile away from headquarters, and still poking along at fifteen miles an hour. Okay, I would have to double-down on the Iron Discipline and make sure that we didn’t have any disasters.

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