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and noticed . . . dog tracks in the snow? Hmm, that was interesting. Had I walked down this hill earlier in the day? No. Had Drover? No.
    Hmmm. Then apparently we had some stray dogs on the place, and you know where I stand on the issue of stray dogs. I don’t . . .
    Coyote tracks?
    Suddenly I remembered my passing remarks to the coyote brothers, something about their mother wearing . . . what was it? Gunnysack under­­garments?
    I, uh, suddenly became aware of the fact that I was walking down the middle of the road, exposed for all the world to see. Very shortly after this thought occurred to me, I found myself creeping through the taller forms of vegetation in the vicinity, such as the clumps of little bluestem grass, Indian grass, skunkbrush, mountain mahogany, and wild plum thickets.
    No, I certainly didn’t need another encounter with those guys. I’d learned just about all I needed to know about cannibal life . . . and there they were!
    Fifty yards ahead of me and I almost had a heart attack. I stopped in my tracks and sank down to my belly and watched them through the little bluestem—which, by the way, was a reddish-brown color, not blue or even close to blue, so why did they call it bluestem?
    Not that I cared, you understand, because I had bigger problems on my hands. I watched them through the grass. They trotted across the road some fifty yards ahead of me. I could hear them laughing and belching, which is fairly typical behavior for happy cannibals.
    Lucky for me, the wind was coming straight out of the north, so it carried my scent away from them. Otherwise, I might have been a cooked goose, because those guys have noses like you won’t believe.

    They crossed the road, just about where we had seen them earlier, and disappeared up a short deep canyon to the north. I waited for a long time, just to be sure they had gone. Then I switched over to Ultra-Crypto Creeping Mode and moved out on silent paws.
    I hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards when . . . holy smokes, a branch snapped and I whirled around to face . . .
    Okay, the wind had caused a branch to creak in a hackberry tree to my right and that was no big deal, but I had enjoyed about all of that creeping I could stand, and I went to Full Throttle on all engines and zoomed the rest of the way back to the camp house.
    It would have been very nice, very satisfying if I had found the truck there waiting for me. That would have closed out the day on a happy note. But the truck was not there.
    Instead of being greeted by Slim and all my old friends, I was greeted by this . . . this long-haired yowling thing that came bounding out of the yard.
    â€œA crust of bread? Baloney, cheese?
    Spare a morsel, if you please.
    Marooned, I am, oh hateful place!
    At last I’ve found a friendly face!”
    Would you care to guess what she did immediately? She started rubbing on me, of course, and babbling.
    â€œDid you happen to bring some cheese? Just a little bite would be fine. I crave cheese, I dream of cheese, and maybe you could take me away from here. I’ve been marooned these two long years.”
    I backed away from her. “No, I don’t have any cheese. And no, I can’t take you away from here.”
    She followed me and continued to rub and purr. “You’ll stay a while, won’t you? We have so much to talk about.”
    â€œI’d love to sit and talk, Kitty, but I’m afraid I won’t be here that long. My ride will be arriving any minute now, and we’ll have to say hors d’oeuvre until another day.”
    I backed up another three steps. She followed. “Where there’s an hors d’oeuvre, there’s a piece of cheese.”
    â€œUh, no. I’m afraid you’ve missed the translation. Hors d’oeuvre is French for ‘good-bye.’ I speak many languages, you see, including French, Italian, Thousand Island, and Ranch, so I have many ways of saying