“Don’t worry, Harriet,” she said. “We’ve never come off second best, you know.”
I nodded.
“And you’ve seen what Aunt Formica can do,” she went on.
I nodded again. I felt a little bit safer, I suppose, but now that it was dark all the rocks seemed to be menacing dark shapes and everything looked so big and so empty. I looked up at the sky. High above me, field upon field of stars hung in the clear air, tiny dots of white light.
Aunt Formica stood up and tapped me on the shoulder.
“Time to move on,” she said. “If we go on just a bit, we should see their campfire.”
I rose to my feet and followed Aunt Thessalonika. Aunt Formica led the way, with Aunt Japonica behind her, and the two of us bringing up the rear.
We crept through the darkness, taking care not to bump into rocks or cactuses as we went. I tried not to imagine all the things that we could tread on. I tried especially hard to avoid thinking of rattlesnakes. It would be easy to step on one, I thought. Even Aunt Formica could be outsmarted by a rattlesnake in the pitch dark.
Suddenly Aunt Formica stopped. “Look!” she whispered. “There it is!”
I peered through the darkness. At first I saw nothing, but then I saw it in the distance, a tiny point of flickering yellow light.
“That’s their campfire,” said Aunt Formica in a low voice. “Cowboys are often afraid of the dark. Campfires make them feel safer.”
I was astonished to hear this. “And cowgirls?” I asked. “Do they make campfires too?”
“Hush,” said Aunt Formica. “No, they don’t. Cowgirls aren’t afraid of the dark, you see.”
I felt much better when I heard this. I could imagine the rustlers huddling together around the campfire, glancing over their shoulders, trying not to think what the shadows were.
“Now,” went on Aunt Formica, “we can get a good deal closer. But once we get really close, then we’ll have to get down on our hands and knees and crawl the last little way. And whatever you do, don’t make any noise.”
We approached the rustlers’ camp very slowly, but at last we were close enough to make them out—all five of them—sitting around the fire, eating their beans. They looked pretty frightening to me. They were all tall, strong men, wearing red plaid shirts and high boots. One of them, who had finished his beans before the others, was strumming on a guitar.
We knelt down behind a bush and looked at the rustlers.
“Galloping gophers!” exclaimed Aunt Formica. “What nerve they’ve got! Look! There are our horses.”
The rustlers had tied our horses to a nearby tree, along with their own horses. And in the background somewhere, we could hear the cattle moving around in the darkness. We had caught them red-handed with stolen cattle and stolen horses!
How Cowgirls Fix Rustlers
I was still not sure what we were going to do. We were miles and miles away from anywhere, and you couldn’t just run off and call the sheriff. Besides, as Aunt Formica had pointed out, the sheriff was worse than useless, and I was sure that he would never get out of his bed at night, even to arrest a group of rustlers.
“What now?” I whispered.
Aunt Formica turned to me and smiled. I could see the smile because the flickering light from the fire reflected on her face. She looked as if she were about to have some fun.
“Can you crawl quietly?” she asked me.
I nodded. “I think so.”
“Then will you crawl over to my horse and get the rope from its saddlebag?” asked Aunt Formica. “You’re smaller than we are, and you’re bound to make less noise.”
I gulped. The thought of getting that close to the rustlers was scary, and yet I could not refuse to play my part in the plan, whatever the plan was.
“Off you go then,” said Aunt Formica. “And good luck!”
I crawled as quietly as I could. But even being as careful as possible, I couldn’t help but make some noise. At one point I even knelt on a twig, which broke with a loud snapping sound.
The rustler who was strumming his guitar stopped in the middle of a line of song.
“Those ghost riders in the sk—”
I froze, my heart thumping within me like a giant hammer. But after a moment, he must have decided that it was one of the cows, as he started to sing again.
I continued with my task and eventually reached the horse. Once there, I felt in the saddlebag and took out a large coil of rope. Then I crawled back, greatly relieved, to where my brave and exciting aunts were waiting for me.
“Well done, Harriet,” whispered Aunt Formica as she took the rope from me. “Now for some fun!”
Aunt Formica signaled to Aunt Japonica and Aunt Thessalonika to join us in a huddle.
“Can you howl?” she asked.
“I beg your pardon?” asked Aunt Japonica in a low voice. “I thought you said, ‘Can you howl?’ ”
“I did,” said Aunt Formica impatiently. “Well, can you?”
“I can,” I said. “I think.”
“Good,” said Aunt Formica. “Now, I’ll count to three. When I reach three, we will all howl like coyotes who had something unpleasant to eat and all have a stomachache. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said. I had heard coyotes howl in a cowgirl film once, and I knew roughly what they sounded like.
“One,” began Aunt Formica. “Two. Three!”
When she reached three, we all lifted our chins, fixed our eyes on the moon, and howled like sick coyotes. It was a terrible, frightening noise.
As the ghostly sound rang out through the darkness, I glanced toward the rustlers. The one who was singing had dropped his guitar, and all the others had dropped their spoons and plates. One was so frightened that he had swallowed his beans the wrong way and one was stuck in his nose. They were clearly terrified.
“Carry on,” encouraged Aunt Formica as we paused to get our breath back. “It’s working just as I thought it would.”
When the second howl came, which was much longer and much more frightening than the first, all five rustlers sprang to their feet and hugged one another for safety, their knees knocking with fright in their blue jeans.
Aunt Formica now stood up. Picking up her rope, she knotted the end into a noose and began to swing it around her head. Wider and wider it went, a perfect lasso, and then, with a final flick of her arm, she sent it snaking out toward the terrified rustlers.
I could hardly believe what I saw, but it really happened. Gently and gracefully, the noose of the lasso settled down around the five huddled rustlers, to be pulled tight by Aunt Formica with one or two deft twists of her wrists. The rustlers were absolutely trapped, their arms pinned to their sides by the lasso.
They could go nowhere and do nothing. They were completely at Aunt Formica’s mercy.
We all got up and walked over toward the campfire. As we did so, Aunt Formica gave a sudden tug on the rope, and all the rustlers fell to the ground in a helpless heap. Then, when she reached them and was standing over them, she gave the rope a few further twists to make absolutely sure that they were secured.
Of course, they hardly had time to realize what had happened to them.
“Let us go!” said the biggest of them. “You’ve got no right to lasso us like that.”
Aunt Formica just laughed. “Oh really?” she said. “And did you have any right to steal all my cattle and my horses?”
Of course, the rustlers had no answer to that, and so they stayed exactly where they were, tied up on the ground, while my aunts and I retrieved our tents from the saddlebags of our horses and pitched them next to the fire.
“Goodnight,” called out Aunt Formica to the rustlers. “I hope you won’t be too uncomfortable sleeping out there on the hard ground, but then you should have thought of that before you took up rustling!”
And with that remark ringing in everybody’s ears, we all went to sleep. I was afraid that I might dream of rattlesnakes, but I didn’t. Instead, I had
very pleasant, funny dreams about helpful coyotes, and aunts, and other subjects like that.
The next morning, the rustlers all looked very uncomfortable and angry. We mounted our horses, rounded up the cattle, and then came back to the camp to pick up the rustlers. They tried to run away, of course, but they couldn’t really get anywhere and just made fools of themselves, stumbling and falling over their feet.
We rode home in comfort, with the poor old rustlers walking tamely behind us. It took a long time to reach the ranch, but at last we got there and dismounted. The rustlers were even more tired than we were and I felt sorry for them. I fetched them some cold water from the house and gave each of them a good drink, which seemed to make them a little bit happier.
“I’m sorry,” said the head rustler. “I realize that what we’ve been doing was very, very wrong.”
Aunt Formica looked at him sharply. “It’s one thing for you to say that now,” she said. “But how can we believe you?”
“I promise,” said the rustler. “I cross my heart. Boy Scout’s honor.”
“Were you ever a Boy Scout?” asked Aunt Formica sternly.
The head rustler hung his head in shame.
“Yes,” he mumbled. “I was. That was before I started rustling.”
“You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself,” said Aunt Formica. “A Boy Scout becoming a rustler! It’s shocking!”
The head rustler looked so embarrassed that I thought he was going to cry.
“I should hand you over to the sheriff,” went on Aunt Formica. “But I know that he’s not much good. I don’t think he’s ever dealt with a rustler.”
She paused. “What do you think, Harriet?” she asked me. “Do you think we should give them a chance?”
I did not hesitate with my reply. You should always be generous to people once they’ve learned their lesson, and I was sure that these rustlers had learned theirs.
“Yes,” I said. “I think they should get one last chance.”
Aunt Formica nodded.
“Very well,” she said. “I’ll let you go. But you’ll have to clean the house first. It’s been years since it’s had a good spring cleaning, and that’s your punishment. Do you understand?”
The rustlers all said yes together. So Aunt Formica untied them and they all trooped off into the house, where they were given brooms and aprons and buckets of water.
They scrubbed and polished and swept. Then they polished again and rubbed and checked to see that every surface was free of dust (and tumbleweed). Then, when they said they had finished, Aunt Formica checked their work and made them do it all over again. They did not complain, though. They had learned their lesson, and they had all decided that they actually liked honest work.
• • •
We stayed with Aunt Formica for five more days. During that time we had so much fun. Aunt Formica taught me all about being a cowgirl. She showed me how to use a lasso and how to shoot a bottle cap off a bottle with my eyes half closed. I also learned to ride well, and by the last day I could stand up in the saddle and jump up and down twice, all at a gallop.
At last we had to leave. I was very sorry to go, as I had enjoyed myself immensely in America and I looked forward to coming back one day. We all rode into Skeleton Gulch, with our suitcases on the backs of the horses. We were a little early for the train, so Aunt Formica suggested that we stop in at the local store where she had things to buy.
The store was a wonderful place, smelling of flour, molasses, and things that horses like to eat. I stood there and looked around, marveling at all the things it sold—wrenches, wire, coffee, beans, plugs … plugs! I suddenly remembered my promise to my father. But would they have the special sort of plug he needed? Probably not.
I was wrong. The shopkeeper, an old man in a white apron, had no difficulty finding what I wanted.
“Good plugs, those,” he said. “They’re mighty useful for those special camping baths somebody’s just invented!”
Our shopping done, we went to the station and watched the distant white smoke of the train draw nearer.
“You must come back, Harriet,” said Aunt Formica as she waved good-bye. “Once a cowgirl, always a cowgirl!”
As the train pulled out of the station and began its long journey back, I waved and waved from the window until all I could see of Aunt Formica was the top of her large white hat. Then I went back to my seat. A few minutes later, the conductor came around. I gave him my ticket, and he punched it.
That’s funny, I thought. I’m sure I’ve seen that conductor before. Surely he looks a little bit like … Yes, you’ve guessed right. My aunts had enjoyed their vacation, but it was now time for them to get back to their old tricks!
A Note on the Author
Alexander McCall Smith has written more than fifty books, including the New York Times bestselling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency mysteries and The Sunday Philosophy Club series. A professor of medical law at Edinburgh University, he was born in what is now Zimbabwe and taught law at the University of Botswana. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. Visit him at www.alexandermccallsmith.com.
Alexander McCall Smith, The Harriet Bean 3-Book Omnibus
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