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Brisco County Jr. had learned, through painful experience, that when a man rode into a town and found every citizen staring at the same object, it was generally wise to ride straight back out again.
Unfortunately, the object in question was a mechanical prairie dog wearing a tiny waistcoat.
It stood in the middle of the dusty main street of Poker Flats, clicking politely.
“Cheese?” it said.
Brisco pulled Comet to a halt.
Socrates Poole, arriving behind him in a hired buggy that had lost one wheel cover somewhere outside Reno, stared over his spectacles.
“Did that prairie dog just offer you cheese?”
“Yep.”
“Is it alive?”
“Nope.”
“Is it dangerous?”
Brisco considered the little machine. Its brass paws opened. A neat square of pale yellow cheese rose from its stomach on a silver tray.
“Probably.”
The prairie dog’s head turned with a tiny whirr.
“Wensleydale?”
From the saloon came a crash, a shout, and the unmistakable voice of Lord Bowler.
“BRISCO!”
Bowler burst through the swinging doors with his revolver in one hand and a copper kettle in the other.
“There you are! You explain this.”
Brisco looked at the kettle.
“Looks like a kettle.”
“It followed me.”
The kettle gave a cheerful whistle and rolled toward Bowler on six little wheels.
Socrates closed his eyes.
“I miss legal briefs.”
At the far end of the street, a tall, cheerful Englishman in a green knitted vest hurried toward them, waving both hands.
“Ah! There you are! Oh, thank goodness. Gromit, lad, I think we’ve found Bernard.”
Behind him trotted a small beagle carrying a toolbox.
Brisco watched the dog. The dog watched Brisco.
There was something in the dog’s expression Brisco recognized immediately: the exhausted competence of a man—or dog—who had spent years keeping someone else alive.
Brisco tipped his hat.
Gromit nodded.
Wallace arrived out of breath. “Wallace. Inventor, window cleaner, occasional pest controller. And this is Gromit.”
“Brisco County Jr.”
“Ooh! A junior! Lovely.”
Brisco decided not to explain.
The trouble had begun three days earlier when Wallace, inspired by a newspaper advertisement promising “THE LIMITLESS FRONTIER OF AMERICAN DAIRY OPPORTUNITY,” had purchased two tickets west and shipped his newest invention separately.
The invention was the Automatic Frontier Refreshment Distribution System: a collection of mobile mechanical animals designed to locate tired travelers and provide them with tea, crackers, and cheese.
“It’s hospitality,” Wallace explained, “but mobile.”
“Armed hospitality,” Bowler said.
“Well, only the badger.”
“There’s a badger?”
Wallace winced.
Gromit covered his eyes.
The machine had been stolen from the railway depot by a gang led by one Jasper “The Professor” Vane, a former patent clerk turned outlaw who believed every useful invention ought to belong to the man clever enough to steal it.
Vane had discovered that Wallace’s mechanical animals could be reprogrammed. The prairie dogs now watched the roads. The kettles carried messages. And somewhere in the hills, the mechanical badger was being fitted with dynamite.
Socrates stared at Wallace.
“You built a dynamite-compatible badger?”
“I wouldn’t say compatible.”
Gromit produced the original design sheet.
In red pencil, beneath a drawing of the badger, he had written:
DO NOT PUT EXPLOSIVES HERE.
Brisco smiled.
“I like him.”
“So do I,” Wallace said proudly.
Gromit sighed.
They rode for Vane’s hideout at sunset. Wallace traveled in Bowler’s saddle because nobody had been willing to lend him a horse after he had asked where the handbrake was. Gromit rode with Brisco, sitting neatly behind the saddle with the toolbox strapped to his back.
Comet glanced around at him.
Gromit patted the horse’s neck.
Comet approved.
The hideout was an abandoned silver mine guarded by six mechanical prairie dogs. Brisco crouched behind a boulder.
“Can you shut them down?”
Gromit opened the toolbox.
Inside were three spanners, a screwdriver, a length of wire, a packet of crackers, and a small portrait of Wallace.
Brisco looked at him.
“You pack light.”
Gromit raised an eyebrow.
Twenty minutes later, every prairie dog had been reprogrammed to face the wrong direction.
Bowler stared.
“That dog scares me.”
“He’s very modest,” Wallace whispered.
They slipped into the mine.
Vane’s gang had assembled Wallace’s machines around a great wooden table. Copper wires ran everywhere. In the center stood the badger, its metal belly packed with dynamite.
Vane himself was thin, black-coated, and possessed of the sort of moustache that seemed to have been designed by an architect.
“Mr. Wallace,” he said. “At last.”
“Oh! Hello.”
“You are a genius.”
Wallace brightened. “Well—”
Gromit slapped a paw over Wallace’s mouth.
Vane smiled. “Your inventions will transform the West.”
Brisco stepped from the shadows.
“Funny thing about the future. Everybody wants to own it.”
Vane turned.
“County.”
“Vane.”
“You always did have a talent for arriving at inconvenient moments.”
“I practice.”
Gunfire erupted.
Bowler overturned the table. Socrates dived behind a crate and immediately began shouting about federal property law. Wallace crawled beneath the badger. Gromit scrambled after him.
Brisco and Vane traded shots among the mine supports while the badger began to tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Wallace stared upward.
“Oh, dear.”
Gromit pointed urgently at the wiring.
“Yes, lad, I see it.”
Tick.
“Perhaps if I remove the blue wire?”
Gromit shook his head violently.
“The red?”
More violent shaking.
“The little stripy one?”
Gromit paused.
Shrugged.
“Right!”
Wallace pulled it.
The badger’s eyes lit up.
“TEA?”
Gromit’s ears fell.
The badger shot forward.
Straight toward Brisco.
Brisco leapt aside as it rocketed past, smashed through a stack of crates, and carried the dynamite directly toward Vane.
Vane’s eyes widened.
“No.”
“TEA?”
“No!”
“CRACKER?”
“NO!”
“CHEESE?”
Vane ran.
The badger followed him out of the mine.
Everyone froze.
Brisco looked at Wallace.
“Does it stop?”
“Eventually.”
Outside came Vane’s fading scream.
“GET THIS THING AWAY FROM ME!”
Bowler began laughing so hard he had to sit down.
They found Vane two miles later clinging to the top of a telegraph pole while the badger waited patiently beneath him.
The dynamite, Gromit discovered, had never been armed. Vane’s men had connected the detonator backward.
Socrates took custody of the outlaw.
Wallace recovered his machines.
And the next morning, Poker Flats awoke to discover that every mechanical prairie dog in town had been arranged outside the saloon.
At exactly eight o’clock, they opened their little waistcoats.
“WENSLEYDALE?”
Brisco took a piece.
He chewed thoughtfully.
“Well?”
Wallace leaned forward.
Brisco nodded.
“Not bad.”
Wallace beamed.
Gromit smiled.
Bowler bit into his and frowned.
“Needs chili.”
Wallace looked horrified.
The prairie dog nearest Bowler clicked.
Its eyes narrowed.
Gromit slowly lowered his newspaper.
Brisco grinned.
The future, he thought, was going to be strange.