The Bare Bum Gang Battles the Dogsnatchers (3 page)

‘He's called Rude Word, or Rudy, for short.'

They all laughed, and then when I told them why he was called that they laughed even more.

‘Is he trained to attack?' asked Jamie, our Gang General.

‘Probably,' I replied. ‘He certainly attacked Trixie last night. She ran away. It was brilliant.'

They all cheered, except Noah. Noah was half in and half out of the den, ready to escape in case Rude Word turned savage.

‘Does he bite?' he asked, looking nervous.

‘I don't really know. He hasn't bitten
me
. But he might have bitten Trixie.'

‘Shall we see if he likes it in the den?' said Jennifer.

‘No way,' said Noah.

But all the rest of us thought it was a good idea. Rudy wasn't quite so keen, and we had to push and shove him through the door. He made a sort of growling noise, which sounded a bit as if he was saying ‘rubbish' over and over. Actually, even in the short time that he'd been my dog, I'd
noticed that Rudy quite often sounded like he was saying something. It was almost as if he used to know how to speak, but had now forgotten and only had a few words left, which annoyed him. One of his favourite words was ‘ashtray'. He also sometimes said ‘Saskatchewan', which is a place in Canada.

Finally we got him into the den. Noah was hiding in the corner being scared, and the first thing Rude Word did was to go and sit on top of him.

Noah didn't like that.

‘He's sitting on me,' he said, in a sort of wailing voice. ‘He's doing it with his bottom.'

‘Well what else could he use for sitting on you?' said Jennifer.

‘His bottom's all smelly.'

‘He's got a clean bottom,' I said. ‘In fact he's probably got the cleanest bottom of any of us. He licks it all the time.'

And then Rude Word began to lick Noah's face. That really made Noah unhappy.

 

‘I don't want dog-bottom-lick all over me,' he said, almost in tears.

Even though it was quite funny, I felt sorry for Noah and pulled Rudy off. The trouble was that then he went snuffling around the rest of the den, and his snuffle took him straight to our secret stash of sweets, buried in a shoe box under the floor. Rudy started to scrape away at the earth, with a big long line of drool dangling down from his mouth.

‘Let's get him out of here,' I said, and it took all four of us, two pulling and two pushing, to do it. When we finally managed it, I threw a stick into the trees and told Rudy to go and fetch it. He looked at me like I was the stupid one, but then decided to wander off anyway, probably to test out the trees for weeing purposes. The rest of us went back into the den.

‘Is he going to be our gang dog then?' Jamie asked.

‘Well,' I replied, ‘a lot of gangs have a gang dog. Like Timmy in the Famous Five.'

I'd been reading quite a lot of the Famous Five adventures, because I was worried that I was going to grow out of them soon, so I wanted to use them up.

‘But that's a completely different sort of a dog,' said Noah, who was still in a huff. ‘Timmy doesn't lick his bum and then lick your face. He finds treasure and rescues the others when they get locked into dungeons by the baddies.'

‘What do the rest of you think?' I said to the gang.

Although I was Gang Leader, I always liked to find out what everyone wanted to do because that was only fair. If you never ask the Ordinary People what they think, then you're an Evil Dictator. I'm more of a Good King, like King Arthur or Queen Elizabeth I, even if she was a girl.

‘I think a big scary gang dog would be quite cool to have,' said Jamie. ‘And we can
train it to destroy our enemies.'

‘Yeah, I think it would be good too,' said The Moan. ‘But if it eats our sweets, Ludo has to replace them.'

‘I think he's quite nice,' said Jenny. ‘But maybe instead of training him to attack our enemies, we should teach him not to sit on Noah, or lick his bum so much.'

That made us laugh, because it sounded like she meant that Rudy licked Noah's bum rather than his own.

‘I don't think we can train him not to lick his bum,' I said. ‘It's how dogs keep clean. It's instead of toilet paper for them. But every time he sits on Noah I'll tell him off and he'll soon learn. Is that OK, Noah?'

Noah said that it was, but he still looked like someone who'd been sat on by a smelly dog's bottom and wasn't happy about it.

‘Shall we have an adventure then?' asked Jamie, after we'd sat around for a while.

We all agreed that having an adventure was a good idea, but then we got a bit stuck
about exactly what kind of adventure. The Moan wanted us to use Rude Word to go hunting rabbits, but Noah said it was wrong to kill creatures for fun, and anyway we didn't know where there were any rabbits. I pointed out that Rude Word was such a stumpy dog he'd never catch the rabbits even if we found any. There was some talk about attacking pirates, cannibals, aliens, etc., etc., but that was just silly.

Then I had a brilliant idea.

‘
SHALL WE SEE
if Rude Word can find some treasure?'

I admit it was Noah who first mentioned how Timmy used to find treasure all the time for the Famous Five, but it was my idea to copy it. Anyway, it got their attention. Treasure is good for getting people's attention, because people like treasure more than almost anything.

‘Yeah!' said everyone together.

‘But how?' asked The Moan.

‘Look,' I said, ‘everyone knows that dogs are great for sniffing things out. You should
have seen Rudy last night, snuffling away like crazy. It doesn't matter where you hide the biscuits, he'll find them. OK, so my plan is we let Rudy sniff a little bit of treasure, and then he'll be able to sniff out a whole lot of it. And we'll be as rich as emperors.'

‘Which emperors?' Jamie asked suspiciously, as if I was trying to scam him out of some treasure by picking a rubbish emperor.

‘Oh, I don't know. The emperors of China and Peru, probably.'

‘Added together or separate?'

‘Separate – there's no need to get greedy. Anyway, emperors don't like to be added together.'

He seemed happy enough with that.

‘But what kind of treasure will we find?' Jennifer enquired. ‘You don't get treasure just lying around the place, do you? Because, if you did, it would already have been discovered.'

‘Well, it could be buried pirate treasure, or
golden coins left by the Romans. Anything like that.'

‘There is one small problem,' said Noah.

That was bad news. Noah was usually on my side.

‘What?'

‘You said Rudy would need to sniff a little bit of treasure before he could find the great big load of treasure.'

‘Yes?'

‘Well, where are we going to get a little bit of treasure from? If we'd already found the big load of treasure, we could choose a little bit of it for Rudy to sniff, but then we wouldn't need him, because we'd already have it.'

Drat. He had a point. We were stuck.

It was Jamie who saved us, which was amazing, as I don't think he'd ever had an idea before, except for stuff like ‘Oh, I'm hungry', or ‘Oh, let's throw stones at that tree'.

‘Money,' he said.

‘That's clever!' said Jennifer.

‘Of course,' I said. ‘Money is a kind of treasure, so we let Rudy sniff some then he'll find some more.'

‘So has anyone got any money then?' asked Noah.

For five minutes everyone patted their clothes and reached down into pockets. At the end of it we had three pennies and one two-pence.

‘This is terrible,' said The Moan. ‘If all we've got is rubbishy coppers, then that's what Rude Word will find. Even if he finds a whole chest full of pennies it won't be enough to buy anything cool.'

Then Jamie said: ‘What about this?'

 

He held out something truly beautiful – a golden coin, exactly like the kind you'd find in a pirate's treasure chest.

‘Is it real?'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘Real gold?'

‘Real gold? Don't be stupid. Real
chocolate
. On the inside. It's the last one left over from Christmas.'

‘That'll do,' I said. ‘The outside is made of gold, isn't it, Jamie?'

‘Yes, well, I suppose so.'

‘That's fine. We only need it for the smell. So, my plan is, we let Rudy have a good big sniff and snuffle of the outside and then off he goes. And either he finds a treasure chest full of actual gold coins, or if we're really unlucky, he might just find a treasure chest full of gold chocolate coins, and everyone knows that the chocolate inside chocolate coins is the most delicious chocolate by a mile.'

‘That plan is not completely useless,' said The Moan, which, for him, was like charging around and whooping and yelling and cheering and saying, ‘Well done, you're a genius.'

At that moment Rudy came back into the den, having got bored with the outside. You could tell he'd arrived both by the smell and by the noise. The smell was a bit like manky bananas and the sound was like someone with a bad cold snorting back their runny bogeys, while also drinking a thick milkshake with a partly blocked straw.

So Jamie held out the coin for Rudy to sniff. He came over slowly on his fat legs. I mean Rudy, not Jamie. But Jamie also had quite fat legs. In fact in summer, when he wears shorts, his legs look like gigantic pink sausages.

Rudy didn't seem that interested to begin with, but then he went into hyper-snuffle mode.

‘Yuck, he's licking it,' shouted Jamie. ‘And he's got slobber all over my hand.'

‘Well, that serves you right. You should have let me be in charge of the sniffing. I'd have done it properly.'

‘Go on then,' he said, shoving the slimy coin into my hand.

I wiped the coin on my trousers to get rid of the dog drool. Then I showed it to Rude Word. He tried to jump up to eat it, but I grabbed his collar and made him sit. It was like fighting a bag of cement.

‘Listen, boy,' I said, in a commanding voice, ‘you have a very important mission.' He wagged his tail and looked like he was paying attention. ‘OK, have another smell of this.'

I let him stick his nose against the coin. Unfortunately after he'd had his snuffle, he swallowed the whole coin, including the golden outside.

‘Bad dog!' I said, and pulled my angry, angry face at him. I think that did the trick, because he looked quite sorry then.

‘Now, boy,' I continued. ‘Go find!' I pointed out of the door and away into the woods, in the general direction, I hoped, of treasure.

Rudy glanced back at me once and
shot off. Well, I suppose ‘shot' makes him sound a bit faster than he really was, which was probably about as fast as a heavy wheelbarrow being pushed by an old lady with one leg.