The Case of the Fiddle Playing Fox Read Online Free PDF

harder on that piece of steel, which caused the grinder to throw out sparks that were even bigger and hotter than the ones it had thrown out before, and it was only a matter of time until his infantile wish was granted.
    Yes, at last one of the bigger and hotter fragments of steel burned through the outer protective layer of hair, dropped down to the skinalary region of my left dorsal hiney, and burned itself into the consciousness of my mind.
    At which point I erupted from the warm vapors of sleep, leaped several feet in the air, screeched, and moved my business to the northwest corner of the machine shed, where I took up sleep between Loper’s canvas-covered canoe and three dusty boxes that contained Christmas tree decorations.
    As I passed Drover, he opened one eye, which resembled a single grape suspended in a bowl of red jello, and muttered, “Murgle pork chop skittle ricky tattoo.”
    To which I made the only sensible reply: “Oh shut up!”
    Well, judging by the amount of laughter that went up over by the grinder, Loper got a big kick out of his stupid, childish, infantile, stupid prank.
    Oh yes, a big chuckle. In fact, at one point he sank to his knees and pounded the cement with his hands, while I glared daggers at him from the gloomy darkness of the machine shed and thought unkind thoughts about him.
    As far as I could determine, the thought never entered his mind that he had intruded into the precious rebuilding and restoring time of the HEAD OF RANCH SECURITY.
    Did it ever occur to him that soon, all too soon, I would be out on the front lines, alone in the darkness, facing some horrible trudging Thing of the Night? Providing his ranch with its First Line of Defense? Protecting HIS ranch, HIS chicken house, HIS wife’s daily supply of eggs without which . . .
    Oh, no, none of that. He thought only of his own childish, infantile pleasures, and tormenting a poor, overworked, unappreciated dog and depriving him of his precious sleep.
    Now, if he had done the same thing to Drover, that would have been a slightly different deal, seeing as how Drover is used primarily in a backup capacity and his role in the overall . . . but no, he chose ME as his victim and . . . oh well.
    Sometimes the mind reels at the follies of this life.
    Okay. At long last, Loper had his fill of childish follyrot and went back to . . . I almost said “work” but that might have been overly optimistic. He went back down to the corrals and did whatever it was that he had been doing before.
    But the important thing was that he left me alone so that I could sleep and prepare my body for the deadly combat that almost certainly lay ahead of me.
    At last I dropped off to sleep, but for the next four hours I dreamed of high-speed grinders and showers of sparks, and every time a fly landed upon my body, I twitched and groaned and waited to be scorched.
    It was, to put it briefly, a fistful sleep. Fitful sleep, that is.
    Then the moment came for awakening. I pushed myself up from the rags and shreds of cardboard upon which I had been forced to sleep. I saw the rays of the twilight sun pouring through the cracks in the big double doors.
    And I knew that the time had come. In slumber, my life had marched on through time to the roll of the invisible drums, bringing me closer, ever closer, to the moment when I would face . . .
    Limbering up my body, doing a few callusthinkus . . . calthelenics . . . callus—the freshly awakened mind has trouble grasping big words—while going through several exercises to promote the flow of bodily fluids, I found myself wondering who HE was.
    A deadly badger? A skunk, perhaps carrying rabies? A member of the wild coyote tribe? An enormous boar coon with teeth that could rip a dog to shreds?
    And I wondered what he was doing at this very moment, what preparations he might be making for his slouch through the darkness, what thoughts were passing through the shadows of his mind.
    I could only