"Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug": Chapter II

An Opening at the Brass Bull

It was a busy night at the Brass Bull Cafe in Spearfish, South Dakota. I was the only one of the crew left in town after a hectic two weeks in our ongoing search for gold. I had come to the Brass Bull for the weekend special, a combination Mexican food dinner.

The hostess told me I would have a 30 minute wait so I stood to one side, near the exit, watching a baseball game on wide screen television at one end of the bar. I had never seen people as friendly as they passed me on their way out. One fellow paused a minute and flicked his eyes downward a couple of times as I stood with my hands in my pockets. A couple of good looking young ladies tittered and stopped to look me over again before exiting. I was beginning to think the $40 oxfords and new style slacks had restored something that had been lacking for years.

About this time a middle aged waitress waved me forward with a menu and led me to a table near the rear and closer to the bar. As she handed me the menu she whispered something, but the noise of the television drowned out her words. I touched her arm and shook my head just as the inning ended. At the exact moment of switching to a commercial and near silence among the patrons she repeated the message in a much louder voice, "Your trousers are unzipped." I looked down and they damned sure were. Not only were they unzipped, but a generous portion of my shirt tail had worked it's way through poised like a flag in a stiff wind.

We were both embarrassed. As she shuffled salt and pepper shakers from end to end I restored order on the lower half and prayed that Brett would hit a home run and turn heads from my direction.

Old Tom was Color Blind

A week after that debacle I returned to Colorado to find our old tomcat banished from the comfort and warmth of his former quarters. Sitting with ears drooping, making a feeble effort to sharpen his claws on a burl of a cottonwood stump, he flashed a warning that all was not well with our mistress.

I am used to facing one crisis or another in our reunions. They generate with amazing consistency during my tours in the field. The old gal catches me up on the pleasant news first then slips in carefully worded phrases like:

"We got our tax refund yesterday."

"The stool is plugged."

"You had a call from Everette."

The element in the oven blew again." Without giving me time to sort things out.

I announced myself, "I'm home, Inie." as I held the door open for Old Tom and scratched him behind the ears.

"Mr. Tom stays outside." came the order from the kitchen. The story unfolded after my bags were in and she had poured me a cup of coffee. It seems my bride was hurrying here and there on daily errands, one of which was to carry garbage to outer receptacles. She stepped from the door and slid several feet down the sidewalk before recovering her balance whereupon she found the remains of a bird, recently removed from the airborne, plastered on a shoe sole. Without completing her journey she stormed back in the house where the cats were romping near the stove. Old Tom looked up, right into the eye of the hurricane and burped. A single blue feather spiraled from his tongue to float near her face then fluttered to the floor. The prosecution rested it's case and all Tom could do was throw himself on the mercy of the court.

I know exactly how he felt. I belched 90 proof in her face at a late hour one night and was slapped silly before being ejected to brave the chill and confines of the back seat of our car for the remainder of the night.

The fourth quoted phrase, "The element in the oven blew again," is printed without an opening quotation mark; it is kept as printed, and a page break in the book falls between "Everette" and "The element." This is a variant of "Tom the Blues" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," told there without the Spearfish frame story, the "You had a call from Everette" line, or "Inie," and with "the judge and jury" where this book has "the prosecution rested it's case." Inez is Inez Mae Schriver, John's wife.

Reigning Cats and Dogs

Our pets have been strays or hand-me-downs for the most part. While in Creede, Inez befriended a black tomcat who was sadly in need of a warm meal and worming. Within a couple of weeks he was a regular at the table or curled up in a recliner. Little Lucy, Robert Kukuk's black female who had journeyed to Colorado via a Boeing Jetliner from Illinois, became enamored of Tom, refused to return to the Kukuk quarters, and was signed over to us.

I made a pet door from scraps of lumber and carpet so the hunters could come and go as they pleased. It took some prodding and pushing, but once acquainted with the swinging door they loved it. The old black tomcat poured himself through it like thick molasses, then stepped aside to avoid being sacked by Lucy as she slammed through at full steam. We always knew when Lucy had returned from the hunt by a loud, double "kerwhop" as the carpet flipped up and back.

I was cleaning up the back porch one day when Tom slid through like a tired snake. Thinking no more about it, I stacked a couple of storage boxes by the door as I swept a corner. About this time Little Lucy revved up to full throttle from a position by the west fence and zeroed in on the black patch. I heard the thud and saw dust rise from the carpet as 18 inches of cat compressed to 3 inches or less.

By the time I could move the boxes and open the door, she had recovered enough to untangle her rear legs from her front quarters, but she never again used the pet door without first testing it with one paw.

Tom couldn't handle retirement. He had set a goal for himself during his primary years in Creede to place a kitten in every household of the town. A veterinarian's scalpel shortened his ambitions along that line. He was later transferred to new quarters, over the divide to Spring Creek, where there was a crying need for his services in keeping mouse, vole and mole populations under control. During this time he warmed a small space by the bay window while a well oiled digestive tract made room for the next victim.

He didn't like it when the real cook left us, the one with the soft lap who ran her fingers around the spots that needed scratched or tickled, and carried him to the back porch bed at night instead of whomping him with a rolled up newspaper and pointing in the direction he was to take. He liked it even less when I had to leave for extended periods and his production suffered in his wildlife forays until I returned. He liked to show me his catch, bragging past the limp ball of fur clenched in his mouth as I chopped kindling wood and took care of other outside chores. When satisfied that I had seen the catch and heard the tale of the chase, he would crawl over the chicken wire gate to his dinner table where with gnashing teeth and guttural sounds the plump body would be reduced to a head, paunch and rear feet. Those remains were spared for his trophy pole.

The black cat was very old, how old we never learned, but when cold weather settled in and I had to move him and his companion, Lucy, to Montrose he turned feeble overnight. He picked at his food, slept more and moved from one rug to another with effort. The string with the button on the end no longer drew his attention and he cried in pain when Lucy jumped from her hiding places to bowl him over in the scrambles he used to love so much.

I had fashioned an open cage for their journey and placed it on a box in the front seat of our truck so they would have full view of the passing scenery to lessen the impact of this latest move. Lucy acted like a spoiled brat, but old Tom turned his head from side to side surveying every outcrop, every tree, every ranch-house and meadow, storing each sight and sound to draw on in his new surroundings, sensing he would never return.

In a year by year assessment he was probably more trouble than he was worth, but he thought he was important to the household and our well being and, after all, that is what matters. He was my support and comfort when our mistress became ired and left me low and whimpering from a run-away tongue. And he helped me battle spirits that slipped from the necks of Brandy bottles. I appreciated that and I knew I would miss him.

So, old Tom's suffering and our anxiety were ended with a hypodermic injection and we buried our black member of the family, wrapped in his favorite chair cover, in one end of the garden plot near the wood-pile that smelled of his Cebolla home, and where he lay on warm days to watch the neighbors and their dogs cutting through the vacant lot behind us.

I cried, Inez cried, but Little Lucy, his last love, finished his leftovers of liver and tuna then returned to the living room chair of her choice. She knew, better than we, from whence we come and whither we returneth.

Due to a mental lapse or through some cruel twist of fate we became indentured to a Siberian Husky and it appears we will have to serve him for the rest of our lives. Skeeter is nearing 12 years of age which isn't terribly old for his species, but he has a lot of miles on his paws and he has put a lot of miles on me.

We were heading up Mineral Creek several years ago planning to prospect a half day then catch a few brooktrout on the way out. He was clearing a path ahead with forays both left and right until we reached the upper meadows where a trail joins from Rough Creek. He disappeared up the branch to the east as I rested near a rocked in post supporting trail signs and adjusted my back pack. Scarcely five minutes had passed when I heard the darndest commotion in the direction he had taken. Through the early morning air echoed sounds of snarls, growls, brush breaking and pitiful yelps. I was sure he had finally found the bear we had seen spoor from on other trips. I threw the pack near the post and took off on a run yelling to assure him help was on the way. The fracas was off the trail to the left in a grove of aspen trees where I could see his tail frantically waving from time to time. When I got to the combatants, not knowing what in hell I would do if it was a bear, I saw that a female fox had him by the nose and had no intentions of letting go. He had evidently jumped over a windfall and landed square in a den of Red Fox young. I yelled at her and swung my walking stick over her head whereupon she turned her full attention toward the new enemy and let loose of Skeeter's wounded schnozzle. I learned there and then that Husky dogs feel people are expendable in life threatening situations. He turned tail and ran.

Skeeter is getting senile. He remembers to scour out the culverts on our country road and takes off like his tail was afire at times when he sees movement off the trail, but the signs are increasingly evident that some of his brain cells went to sleep and forgot to wake up. He forgets where he hides his bones and he forgets a bush or two when he marks his territory. Sometimes he appears to remember, but rather than go back he just stretches his frame and piddles on the spot without lifting a leg thinking he'll hit them twice next time around.

This morning, as we checked the west 40 in fresh snow, he was several yards in front looking for new tracks and scents. We passed the second gate where a patch of willows shields a ditch and hummocks slump off to a couple of gooseberry bushes where a cottontail rabbit sometimes hides. Skeeter took a quick sashay around the willows, pounced on a bush a time or two without flushing the rabbit, then completed his circle. He came back on his own tracks and down went his nose. He rooted snow for several feet, blowing and sniffing, and headed off around that patch of willows at top speed. For a full twenty minutes he churned up snow in an ever widening circle until he was plumb tuckered out. As he lay there lapping up snow and gasping for breath he saw, for the first time, that I was standing watching him in all his futility. I have never seen such a look of disgust on a dog's face in my time. He was telling me, "Look Buster, I chased that critter past you 40 or 50 times and you never did clobber it." So...we slowly made our way home. Old Skeeter with both his head and tail drooping and me, wondering if maybe he had chased something by me and I hadn't seen it.

Skeeter lost some of his working parts as a pup and is unable to father Husky offspring, but he has a girlfriend who visits when Forest and Curt Cadwell make an early morning run to feed cattle near us. I'm not sure of Megan's lineage though there's little doubt it contains a gene or two of the Greyhound breed. That lean gal is so fast she sometimes leaves her shadow several yards behind.

I was chopping and clearing ice from a watering hole one cold winter morning when the Cadwell truck entered the feeding grounds followed by Megan who had smothered the Husky with kisses and other greetings including a full dog-power race across the hard packed snow where she grabbed him by a hind leg and rolled him up in a ball. I couldn't help but laugh. He was insulted and retired to the house.

I continued with my chores on the ice and was packing tools back when I was enveloped in a flurry of ice crystals as a whitish blur whipped by followed in short order by a grayish blur. Megan had rousted a jackrabbit and the chase was on.

Now this rabbit has been chased by coyotes and he had been chased by Skeeter, but he had never before been chased by something that looked like a ballistic missile with a tail. When Megan got lined out that jackrabbit knew only divine intervention would prevent his fur from being scattered over 40 acres.

I struggled to a high spot to watch the action. There was Mr. Rabbit in a straight line for the nearest cover and there was Miss Megan fast narrowing the gap between them just as I spotted the drift fence. Disaster for our high speed cow dog was in the making. "Megan" I yelled. She didn't hear me. "The fence, the fence!" I screamed, but the little lady was caught up in the vibrations of the sound barrier and my voice couldn't catch up.

The jackrabbit had run this course before. He knew if he laid his ears back he could pass through one of the largest squares in the hog fence that separated strands of barbed wire and that square was now in sight. Megan hadn't run the course before and all she could see were snow clods pelting her nose from the rabbit's paws and a powder puff she was about to nail. The next imprints on her eyeballs were of fireballs and comets as the hog fence bulged on impact and shed frost 50 feet each way. The fence worked like a trampoline on edge vaulting her backward and airborne where the force of gravity returned a compacted mass of dog to a soft landing in snow with her legs flailing away at the sky.

The old jackrabbit may have to outwit and outrun coyotes and Skeeter again, but he will never have to contend with Megan, the Greyhound, after that encounter. The pride of Cadwell's kennel decided that any critter with a kick like that should be left well enough alone.

The Tom-retirement portion of this story is a variant of "Old Tom Just Never Could Adjust to Retirement Life" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," told there with "tired" where this book has "ired," "passersby" where this book has "neighbors and their dogs," and "empty brandy bottles" where this book omits "empty"; this book alone adds "I knew I would miss him." "Ired" is printed as shown, a slip for "tired." The pet-door passage reuses, nearly word for word, a passage in "Jackson Doctors' Medicine Says He'll Run," in Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One, which adds "has never again" after the pet-door line. The Skeeter and red fox episode is also told, with a Travelall and an east-trending branch in place of Mineral Creek, in "Dog a Big Help on Prospecting Expedition," Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Four. Megan is not named elsewhere on this site.

A Feeling of Love

Early on, in Skeeter's ownership of us, I was helping Cadwells move cattle between pastures with the Siberian Husky trying to do his part and generally making a nuisance of himself. With the last straggler inside and the wire gate closed we paused for a moment of joshing and small talk. Skeeter and the real cow dogs had been chasing each other around an old International pickup when he decided to show them he owned me. He brushed through my legs, circled, and came back to my right side where he raised his left hind leg and gave my lower pants leg and boot a thorough drenching. Curt and Forest laughed like it was the funniest thing they had ever seen and told him to be sure and hit the other leg as I pulled myself together, not knowing just how I was supposed to react in such a situation. Forest said, "Aw hell, he's just showing you how much he loves you." and they laughed again. I was reluctant to bruise the dog's ego or anything else in front of his peers.

We bid them good day and walked to the house. I had scuffed cow manure off the soles of my boots and was sweeping bits of hay from the wet pants leg when our hyperactive tomcat, Feisty, trotted up and began smelling where Skeeter had perfumed me. Before I could put the broom away he switched ends, thumped both hind paws on the ground a couple of times and sprayed his affections over Skeeter's stain. I had never before experienced such an outpouring of love.

I told Inez of my misfortune and draped the overalls over a handrail to dry before putting them in her clothes basket. She thought it as humorous as the Cadwells. Several days later she was taking her evening walk with three of her five cats following and begging for attention. We have a meandering ditch in a lower meadow where ducks nest in the summer. My bride stopped on a knoll overlooking the ditch to see if any ducklings had hatched. Feisty decided that was an opportune time to show Inez he loved her too. He curled his tail over his back, wiggled his butt furiously and sent several well aimed spurts at her right jeans cuff and sock. In that brief instant Feisty learned that females aren't as broad-minded as males. He flew off the toe of her shoe for a ten yard gain then ran in circles for five minutes before he was able to get the curve out of his spine. Love's labor lost.

The jeans-cuff incident with Feisty appears again, briefly, in "Badger, Tomcats, Skunks Make Spring Lively," in Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three.

Feisty Loses His Vital Signs

While we are bemoaning our fate we might take a moment to be thankful weasels are not as large as hunting dogs. If they were, the only creature left alive on this continent would be the strongest weasel.

I was following a trail of death in upper Spring Creek one summer day when I surprised a weasel on it's last victim, a snowshoe hare. I had passed the still warm bodies of pine squirrels, pikas and a cottontail rabbit on the route of a lone weasel's killing spree.

On a walk from our house to a lower meadow I had the company of two tom cats. Skeeter, the Husky dog, was miffed because the cats trailed along and returned to the house and a depression in the front lawn where he could watch us. Tom Tom found an interesting smell in a culvert and when I crossed the bridge over Cebolla Creek Feisty spotted movement in heavy growth near the creek that stirred his hunting instincts.

I checked a stack pen, closed a gate and headed back kicking rocks from the road that had recently been turned up. As I neared the bridge I could see Feisty with a light brown critter under his jaw and figured he had caught a ground squirrel. When I got within 20 feet of the pair I could see his eyes were glazed, his head was drooping and he was panting like he had just outran a coyote. Then I saw his problem. A large weasel had glued itself between his front legs and was fast drawing life from his jugular.

Weasels fear nothing. I thought my presence and yelling would make it release it's hold, but it didn't make the slightest move and Feisty was too far gone to try to dislodge it. I managed to separate them with my walking stick and one hand, but as Feisty staggered away the weasel went right back for the jugular. I rapped the killer with the stick and blood poured from it's mouth. He was so gorged he drug himself into weed cover as I steered the tomcat in the direction of safety.

Feisty recovered over a period of weeks, but I think he has developed a healthy respect for small creatures with hypnotic eyes and long, sharp teeth.

Holly's Lucky

A rancher would rather have a good cow dog than an obedient woman. A scroungy, flea infested part Dingo, smelling of the last rotting carcass it rolled in, that will grab a bull by the nose to direct traffic is prized above any other breed.

We were visiting my sister, Polly, one winter day when her husband, Lucky, came in for lunch cradling his latest love. Lucky has always worked with horses and cattle, loves the smell of manure and the sight of a small dog making a 600 pound steer go where it wants to go. Actually other people have dogs. Lucky has companions that resemble other people's dogs. He checks them for sniffles, sore pads, ticks and psoriasis and makes them brush with a fluoride toothpaste. This one, wrapped around his middle licking his face, was his latest attraction to take over for two aging Blue Heelers. Holly looked like a retarded flea carrier to me, but he caressed her like she had come straight from the queen's chambers.

We learned that he had just survived a severe crisis with her highness while feeding cattle. Holly liked to chase wheels. Anything that revolves gets her immediate attention so he had placed her on the rear of the hay wagon with a leash tied to a side post then took his place behind a team of horses steaming in the bitter cold of the Gunnison valley.

When they arrived at a stack pen where a ranch hand was waiting to help load and scatter hay the fellow looked up at Lucky and asked.

"How long yuh been a' draggin' that dog?"

"Good Lord," Lucky cried as he dove from his place at the reins and ran around the wagon to where his lifeless wonder lay stretched out with her eyes rolled back and her tongue gathering snowballs. He jerked off her collar and began giving artificial respiration.

The ranch hand, watching the proceedings, shifted his chaw and advised Lucky, "She's dead as a doornail."

Lucky screamed at him, "She can't be, she just can't be."

He lifted the dog by the hind legs and slapped her chest several times with no response.

"Shore looks dead to me," the ranch hand offered again as Lucky, in desperation, flopped her on her back, pried her jaws apart, and started blowing down her throat.

There was a quiver in her frame and she blinked, drew her tongue in past his mouth and began drawing air on her own. Within seconds she was on her feet ready to perform her chores as the ranch hand congratulated Lucky. "Durndest thing I ever saw," he said, "thought for sure she was a goner."

As he finished the tale of the rescue with Polly adding further details I thought of the numerous times one of their daughters would throw a tantrum, hold her breath until she was blue as cold steel and flop to the floor in a dead faint. This always scared the hell of out me and as I jumped to her side Lucky would bark, "Leave 'er alone, she'll come out of it by herself."

"The hell of out me" is printed as shown. "Polly" is John's sister Pauline Roberta Jackson Bates, and "Lucky" her husband, per family knowledge; the title-page inscription of this book is addressed to "Lucky & Polly." Their daughter is not identified here, in keeping with the practice on this site of not naming living or recently living people without their own consent.