No Trouble for the Prickly Pup
The Prickly Pup whistled a cheerful tune to the beat of his companion’s hooves. Cadence’s heavy hoof-steps bounced off the cracked desert soil at a leisurely but steady rhythm, a few paces behind the Prickly Pup. The pair had been on the trail for nearly a fortnight, camping out on the range and supping on preserves. And they could’ve kept it up for a while longer—Cadence could bear quite the load and there was plenty of water in the canteens still—, but now they didn’t have to.
“Reckon that’s it? Been a while.” The Prickly Pup shook his cactus tail in hopeful anticipation; the pink flower that had grown on its end bounced lightly.
“Thar’s the railway line,” Cadence drawled, “couldn’t be wrong.”
Nights out on the range sleeping under the milky way were all well and good, for a while. Now, the little town they had spotted from far off on the hills promised a fresh meal, a sweet farewell to the layer of dust that had settled on the pair’s gear and coats, and most importantly, a famed root beer float from Pistol Annie’s very own saloon.
“It’ll be a lot quicker t’get here once the locomotive’s up and running."
“Hm, and less peaceful-like,” Cadence lamented. They quite valued their solitude.
“Reckon you’re right. Anyway, a root beer float is always tastiest when you’ve gone without ‘em creature comforts for a spell, and you’ve been walking under the stinging sun all day, and you’ve had the chance t’work up a thirst.”
Cadence snorted in agreement.
Treading down the main road, out in the open, The Prickly Pup and Cadence reached the outskirts of town. The Prickly Pup watched the Cactus Forest growing off to the West and mused that there would’ve been a time when he’d have walked through the thick of it to approach town unseen.
Those times were behind him now; the Prickly Pup had been on the straight and narrow since his dear old dad withered. A pup had to honor a father’s dying wish, and so he’d put his impressive skills with a lasso to use as a ranch hand for a reputable company, he’d settled his debts, and he’d buried his hatchets.
Sneaking through the Cactus Forest would’ve been mighty uncomfortable for Cadence, so it was better this way.
Suddenly, a glint of something caught the Prickly Pup in the eye—like a stray ray of sunshine trapped in a reflection. He stopped and blinked hard a couple of times, scanning the saguaros for the source of it.
“A’ight?” Cadence asked.
“Yeah, I thought I saw…it’s nothing.”
Cadence seemed unconvinced, but they didn’t prod further. Old habits die hard, and trouble still had the old habit of trailing in the Prickly Pup’s paw-steps. Whereas he’d have met it head on before, the Prickly Pup did his darnedest to stay out of it nowadays, so he decided to rope his curiosity in and keep course toward town.
The Prickly Pup’s ears twitched as they picked up his very favorite jaunty tune being expertly picked on a guitar, backed up by a banjo and fiddle. It drifted easily from a large building in the outskirts, and he couldn’t help but match his whistling to it, quietly first, and then exuberantly! He wouldn’t have noticed the music stop and a figure exit the building if Cadence hadn’t given the ground a hard clop out of tune.
“Well, I’ll be! He wasn’t fibbing after all! You’re a fantastic whistler!” A dog with a bandana around their head and a polished guitar across their back approached them. “Name’s Bobbie Jo.”
“Was that you playing the Prickly Pear Honky-tonk?” the Prickly Pup asked.
Bobbie Jo beamed, “Eyup, on the guitar. Say, are you just passing through town or are you staying a while? You wouldn’t happen to need a place to crash? Me and my friends are getting ready for an up and coming celebration since the town’s fixing to get a train up and running soon. They’ve asked us to play and we’re aiming to get everybody shaking and grooving. We could really use a whistler like yourself. How’re you on a harmonica?”
The Prickly Pup’s tail was nearly vibrating—Bobbie Jo’s enthusiasm was powerfully contagious and he’d all but forgotten himself before Cadence interjected, “unfortunately, we’re on a pretty tight schedule.” They sounded right sorrowful about it too, “we gotta be gettin’ back to work. We’re jus’ here for Annie’s floats, spendin’ the night, and then we best be on our way.”
Bobbie Jo took the sad news in stride, “that’s a right shame, but if you got places to be, that’s just the way it goes, ain’t it?” Dwelling on the sorry things wasn’t in their nature, they were big on sticking to the sunny side of life. “Anyway, the offer stands if you need a place for the night. Gotta warn you, it might get a bit rowdy but won’t go too late past midnight. ‘Sides if you wanna join in on the merrymaking, you’re more than welcome. Maybe you can give us some pointers to get our whistling crisp and sonorous like so.”
The Prickly Pup questioned Cadence with a look. “I ain’t above savin’ some dollars,” they acquiesced.
“We’ll be back after we’ve paid the saloon a visit! Half the reason we’re riding in is t’quench our thirst on one of Pistol Annie’s root beer floats. Can’t pass that up.”
The Prickly Pup was in a right cheerful mood for the rest of the way, but he noticed Cadence looking over their shoulder from time to time, as if they could feel trouble trailing behind.
“They can’t have grown wings and flown away now, can they?!” The Prickly Pup and Cadence exchanged an uneasy look as the sound of a commotion from the main street reached their ears. “Card tricks are one thing but ain’t no way a whole six crates of root beer can just up and disappear! They gotta be somewhere, and your job’s to find whatever criminal took them and bring them back so I can keep running my saloon here.” A shepherd dog in a plaid shirt, plaid skirt, and a smart black hat was bristling at a colorful pony wearing a shiny sheriff’s badge and a well-groomed mustache. The Prickly Pup placed Pistol Annie under the black hat by hearsay, noticing her one brown eye and her one blue eye, the latter of which seemed to almost crackle with lightning. “And what am I supposed to do in the meantime, waiting on the next shipment?! I can’t be loosing a whole week of business on top of half a shipment of root beer, that’ll run me to the ground, Earp!”
The sheriff nodded along, calmly. “I’m tellin’ ya, Annie, I’m gonna start lookin’ for them as soon as I can, but yer gonna have to shut down for the day. I gotta run the investigation by the books, and no one would love it more than me if the paperwork filled itself out, but I gotta do it with my own two hooves. Gonna take a minute and ain’t no way ‘round it.”
The Prickly Pup and Cadence joined the townsfolk who’d gathered to watch the scene unfold and have something to feed into the gossip mill in the evening.
The Prickly Pup felt Cadence tense next to him; they looked anxiously from the unfolding scene back to him, a twinkle of alarm and recognition in their eye.
“I know, my friend,” the Prickly Pup tried to reassure Cadence, “no root beer at the saloon means no root beer floats for us, and that just ain’t gonna do it There’s got t’be something t’be done.”
“Now hold it there, stranger.” The Prickly Pup snapped his attention back to the sheriff, who was now dead set on him and Cadence, “you wouldn’t happen to know anything about six crates of root beer having gone missin’, would ya? Mighty suspicious they happen to disappear just as the infamous Prickly Pup rides into town.”
The Prickly Pup frowned, Cadence huffed, and a murmur spread through the gathered crowd. The Pup felt Pistol Annie’s gaze land on him with a crackle; the prickles behind the Pup’s neck seemed to stand on end as a he began to brew a defensive anger. He focused on the sheriff, “what’re you trying t’say, friend?”
“I’m sayin’ I think it best you be movin’ on, Pup.” The sheriff’s eyes traced the distance from the pup’s muzzle to the lasso on his hip.
The Pup was certain he could beat the sheriff to his lasso, but he could also feed Cadence’s eyes on the back of his neck trying to bore a thought into his head: it would be a bad look to walk into a town that knew him only by reputation and pick a fight with their sheriff.
“Now hol’ up a minute.” A handsome dog in a red bandana and brown hat with a pony express satchel broke from the crowd, “that’s not how we welcome strangers in this town, is it? Proveably, they’ve done no wrong, and despite the modernization in these here parts, I hope we haven’t lost our sense for good, old-fashioned hospitality?“ The tension diffused somewhat.
The Prickly Pup lifted his eyes toward Pistol Annie, “‘sides yourself no one’s more sorry than us about the missing root beer. We came all this way only to partake, y’see. So if it’s all the same to y’all, we’ll do the neighborly thing and help you look for it. I’ve a pretty good nose for these things.”
Earp opened his mouth to speak but Pistol Annie beat him to the draw, “reckon I can use an extra paw and hoof while the sheriff’s off filling out his paperwork.” Earp’s mouth snapped shut.
The sheriff looked around and measured the crowd, “well, I can certainly help ya look for your missin’ crates, Annie. Theres no real need for anyone to be steppin’ on my hooves tryin’ to do some amateur sleuthin’.”
“Oh, but I’m not an amateur,” the Prickly Pup winked, recovering his good humor, “I am a cowpoke, after all, so I’m quite adept at reading sign, and I got a couple of tricks up my sleeve. Indeed, this high noon sun is just the thing—can I borrow your badge sheriff?”
“W-wh-what?! Why?!” Now it was his turn to be on the defensive, and the Prickly Pup enjoyed it much better.
“I need some shiny object. There’s no drag marks on the ground but when you’re aiming to find something glossy, like glass, you wanna shine some light on it, right?” The Prickly Pup extended his paw toward the sheriff, who shifted and looked around before handing it over after catching Pistol Annie’s lightning eye.
“Right, so, we get the sun to shine off this here shiny, and then…” the reflected light gleamed brilliantly off the badge and travelled across the town as the Prickly Pup tilted the badge throughout. Suddenly something shimmered when the gleam of the badge traveled under a parked cart outside the saloon. “There!”
The crates were precariously balanced, three crates on each of the two wheel axels!
The Prickly Pup and Cadence enjoyed their thirst-quenching root beer floats, on the house. The cart belonged to Pistol Annie so it seemed as if some prankster was just having some mean fun. Later, when the Pup and Cadence returned to the musician co-op in the outskirts of town, Bobbie Jo had already heard the whole story. They prodded the pair for details. “Who d’you reckon done it?”The prickly pup suspected the culprit, but declined to name names on circumstantial evidence.
When the Pup and Cadence moved on from town the next morning, Cadence allowed they’d worried the Prickly Pup was going to rise to the sheriff’s challenge and get himself thrown in jail. The Prickly Pup laughted, “I nearly did too! But the. I remembered I’m done with troublemaking. ‘Sides, I heard Dodge was camped out further up the track with ‘em rowdy riders. I nearly didn’t know him in the ‘stache, but now I’m sure as your footing Dodge’ll be mighty interested to hear news about the Sheriff in this here town.”
skrundle 
