The Phantom in the Mirror Read Online Free

the truth, never mind the consequences, your typical cat will go out of his way to tell a shabby distortion of the truth. I mean, they do it just for sport.
    Which is why I have never paid the slightest attention to anything Pete . . . but on the other hand, it was kind of a fascinating lie. It showed some imagination and . . .
    Phantom Dog, huh? Living in the mirror? I wondered where a dumb cat like Pete had . . . I mean, you wouldn’t expect a dumb cat to . . .
    But as far as giving Pete’s story a second thought—no way. I had work piled up and investigations to make, and then there was the matter of supervising Mister Never Sweat, my Assistant Head of Ranch Security, which would have been enough of a job in itself.
    No, I had plenty of things to . . . take over the ranch, huh? You know, there are some things I’ll tolerate in another dog, but when it comes to MY TERRITORY, I get real serious, real quick. I mean, the last dog who tried to take over my ranch . . .
    Anyways, I didn’t give it another thought. Within minutes I’d forgotten about it. It just went in one ear and out the other.
    No problem.
    I threw myself into a very busy schedule that would have exhausted three ordinary dogs. Hey, I was covered up with work! I barked at the mailman at 10:00, chased two cars and a pickup on the county road, rushed back to do a routine patrol of the corrals, and did some long-range observation of Loper as he struggled through Operation Honeydew.
    He and Sally May stayed very busy down there at the house, raking the yard, picking up limbs, putting up Christmas lights, sweeping, and cleaning. This party for the church choir was looking more and more like a big deal.
    At one point, around noon as I recall, I overheard Loper say to his wife, “Nobody’s worth all this trouble. This is the last party we’ll ever have.”
    But the important thing is that throughout the entire afternoon, I didn’t give one minute’s thought to Pete’s yarn.
    By five o’clock I was worn out and still had night patrol ahead of me. I trotted down to the gas tanks and found Drover curled up on my gunny­sack bed.
    Why can’t Drover sleep on his own gunnysack? I don’t know, but given a choice, he will always pick MINE.
    â€œArise and sing, Half-Stepper, and make way for the night patrol. And get out of my bed.”
    â€œMurgle muff mirk.”
    â€œOut, scram, be gone.”
    It took some pretty severe growling to get his attention, but at last he staggered out of my bed and fell into his own. At that point I fluffed up my gunnysack, circled it three times, and collapsed.
    Oh, that felt good! I melted into its warm embrace, closed my eyes, and drifted off into . . . hmmmm. I couldn’t sleep. Heck, I was tired enough to sleep, but for some reason . . .
    I kept thinking about a stray dog in the machine shed. Yes, I knew that was ridiculous, but sometimes a guy gets a ridiculous thought in his head and he can’t get rid of it.
    So at last I gave up trying to sleep. I stood up, gave myself a good stretch, and decided . . . well, if I couldn’t sleep, then maybe I ought to check out the machine shed.
    For several days I had tried to work the machine shed into my busy schedule, and it had nothing to do with Pete’s wild, improbable, silly story about the so-called Phantom Dog. I wasn’t about to change my schedule, just to prove to myself that Pete was a chronic, habituating liar whose story I didn’t believe.
    In other words, Pete’s story had nothing to do with my going into the machine shed that afternoon. I’d had it on my schedule for days. Weeks, actually.
    A long, long time.
    Checking out the machine shed was just a routine matter.
    I did it all the time.
    And so it was perfectly natural, perfectly normal that at 5:07 I poked my head into the space between the two sliding doors and peered into the half-darkness of the machine shed.
    And I want the record