Free The Case of the Three Rings by John R. Erickson

to the jeans sprawled in the middle of the floor and gave them a sniffing. Hmm, horse sweat.
    â€œHank, hurry up! It’s almost six o’clock!”
    For a man who was in a helpless situation, he sure didn’t waste much time on manners. I mean, you’d think he could have spoken in a civil tone and maybe even said “please.”
    Oh well. I fitted my jaws around the jeans and dragged them over to the tub. Slim raised himself off the bottom of the tub and leaned out as far as he could, until he managed to snatch one of the pant legs. And he started pulling.
    I had my jaws clamped down on the belt-region. Slim pulled and I pulled, and all at once I understood. He wanted to play Tug !
    Well, that was okay with me. I mean, it seemed a strange thing to be doing, but we dogs are often called upon to do things that don’t…
    Good grief, he snatched the jeans right out of my mouth, and almost took my teeth along for the ride! Hey, take it easy with the teeth, pal, or you’ll end up playing Tug by yourself!
    He wasn’t paying any attention to me. His trembling hands went to the leather case on his belt and he came up holding something made of shiny metal. Okay, it was his Leatherman’s tool and maybe that’s what he’d been wanting all along. But why hadn’t he just said so? I mean, how’s a dog supposed to know?
    He fumbled around with the device and brought out a little saw, about three inches long. He leaned forward and started sawing on…was he going to cut off his toe? I looked closer. No, he was sawing the spigot, about an inch above the end of his toe.
    Well, good. A guy should never cut off his toe until he’s tried everything else.
    He sawed and he sawed, and finally gave up. “It won’t cut metal.” He fumbled around with the tool again and brought out another attachment, a little file. Again, he went to work.
    I don’t know how long he scraped with the file, but it seemed hours. At last, he leaned back in the tub and stared straight ahead with a look of total defeat in his eyes.
    â€œIt would take me a month to file that thing off. It can’t be done. I’m whipped. I’ve lost Viola and I guess I’ll die in my own bathtub. Two months from now, they’ll find my bones.”
    Well, you can imagine what an effect those words had on little Mister Squeakbox. His eyes almost bugged out of his head. “Oh my gosh, I’m scared of skeletons!”
    He started running in circles, dashed out into the hall, made a right turn, and headed for the bedroom as fast as his legs would carry him. I didn’t actually see him crawl under Slim’s bed, but I knew that’s where he went.
    He always crawls under the bed when Life veers out of control.
    Well, Life had certainly veered out of control, and I must admit that I was having my own struggle with panic. Think about it. I was twenty-five miles from town, locked in a house where people seldom came to visit, and the only human on the place had his big toe stuck in a bathtub spigot .
    Should I follow Drover’s example and hide under the bed? It was tempting, I won’t deny it, but sometimes a dog has to choose between what is comfortable and what is RIGHT.
    No sir, I wouldn’t leave my cowboy. When darkness came and the fire went out in the stove, we would shiver together in a cold house and listen to our stomachs growling. We would grow old together and turn into skeletons together, and when they found our bones, they would know that Hank the Cowdog had remained faithful to the bitter…
    Huh?
    Did you hear that? Maybe not, because you weren’t there, but I sure heard it. Would you like to guess what it might have been? Here are some possibilities:
    The house was on fire.
    A water pipe had burst under the kitchen sink.
    We were having an earthquake.
    Wolf Creek was flooding and water was pouring into the living room
    Termites were eating the house and the roof