Steve Cole

Cows in Action:                                  The Wild West  Moo-nster

Chapter One
A Wild Mission!
    
It was another sleepy, sunny day on Farmer Barmer’s organic farm. Pat Vine, a young bullock, was sitting in a field with his sister, Little Bo.
  Most farmyard animals would be content to chew the grass and laze in the sunshine.
  But Pat and Bo were not most farmyard animals.
  ‘Strike!’ Pat cried, knocking over ten twigs with a single old tennis ball. ‘Hey, Bo! I beat myself at ten-pin bowling again!’
  ‘Why not let me beat you with my hooves?’ Bo suggested, chomping on bubble gum while she painted her udder bright red. ‘I can always use some punching practice!’
  Pat rolled his eyes. His sister only cared about fashion and fighting – but Pat preferred puzzles and working things out. They both belonged to a rare breed of cow called the Emmsy Squares who were just as smart as humans.
  ‘Hey, you two!’ came a friendly voice close by. Pat turned to find a large bull with a red-and-white coat jumping over the fence with a screwdriver in one hoof and a small gadget in another. A pair of glasses was perched on his inquisitive nose, and he gave them both a massive grin.
  It was Professor Angus McMoo, the cleverest Emmsy Square of all – inventor, genius, and tea-drinking hero extraordinaire!
  Pat beamed back. ‘Hello, Professor. What are you up to?’
  ‘Say ‘cheese’,’ said McMoo.
  ‘Cheese,’ said Pat instantly.
  ‘Why?’ grumped Bo, blowing a gum-bubble.
  ‘Because I’ve just invented a micro-camera that prints full-sized pictures and I want to test it!’ McMoo held up his small, silver gadget. ‘So, come on – say ‘cheese’!’
  Suddenly, a terrible noise howled through the air, like a giant rhino with a loudspeaker stuck in its throat: ‘YEEEEEEEEE-HAAAAAAAAAARRRR!’
  McMoo frowned and lowered his camera. ‘That sounded nothing like ‘cheese’!’
  Little Bo leaped into the air, splattering Pat with red paint as she did so. ‘What was that?’
  ‘Uh-oh.’ Pat turned up his nose as a large, saggy figure appeared over the hillside. ‘It’s . . . Bessie Barmer!’
  McMoo lowered his camera. ‘I’m certainly not taking her picture – it might crack the lens!’
  Bessie was the farmer’s wife, and she was horrid. She hated all the animals and couldn’t wait to send them off to the butcher’s. But today her foul face was twisted into a gruesome gap-toothed grin, and the earth shook as she performed a strange dance.
  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ wondered McMoo.
  Bo frowned. ‘Where do you want me to start?’
  ‘Woo-hooooo!’ Bessie screeched, lumbering towards the cows in her muddy clothes. ‘Look here, you horrible beefy beggars!’ She shook her fat fist, and Pat saw she was clutching something shiny. ‘I’m RICH! One minute I’m digging a ditch with my bare hands, the next . . . I’ve struck GOLD!’
  ‘Gold!’ Pat gasped (although to human ears it came out as ‘MOOO’, as all cow conversations did).
  ‘Pants!’ said Bo, scowling. ‘Why should that sour-faced old trout have any luck?’
  Bessie gave them a nasty smile. ‘Now I can send all you animals to the butcher and turn this farm into a gold mine instead! I’m RIIIIICH!’ And with another ‘Yee-haaah!’ she charged off again.
  Pat gulped. ‘Do you think she means it about the farm, Professor?’
  But then a high-pitched bleeping noise came from McMoo’s rickety shed in the next field. ‘Never mind Barmy Barmer!’ he cried, turning and charging towards the cow shed. ‘That signal – it’s the C.I.A.!’
  Bo whooped with excitement and raced after him, and Pat did his best to keep up. Up until recently, Bessie Barmer had been their only real problem. But since they had been asked to join a crack squad of cattle commandoes from the future, the C.I.A. – short for Cows in Action – life had become a lot more dangerous. And it had all started on the same day that Professor McMoo revealed to Pat and Bo his greatest, most astoundingly secret invention . . .
  The day he turned his cow shed into a time machine!
  ‘Is that signal being sent across time, Professor?’ Pat called as they neared the noisy shed.
  ‘All the way from the twenty-sixth century, on special cow frequencies,’ puffed McMoo. ‘It means the C.I.A. are on yoghurt alert.’
  ‘Yoghurt alert?’ Bo spluttered. ‘What’s that?’
  ‘It’s like a red alert,’ McMoo explained, barging through the shed doors. ‘Only creamier and better for you.’
  ‘There must be trouble with the F.B.I. again,’ said Pat grimly as he followed them both inside and closed the doors. F.B.I. stood for the Fed-up Bull Institute – the C.I.A.’s sworn enemies. These furious future bulls had their own time machines, and were always trying to change history in their crazy attempts to take over the world.
  The professor pulled his big, bronze lever that transformed the dingy shed into a staggering time craft. With a rattling, clanking sound, the wooden walls slid away to reveal gleaming instrument panels, busy with buttons and smothered in switches. Leads and cables dropped down from the roof in the flick of a tail, and a huge bank of controls in the shape of a horseshoe slid up from the ground. Towards the back of the shed, a large wardrobe and fitting room rose up from a shallow ditch, stuffed full of clothes from the Stone Age to the Space Age and all times in between.
  But right now, Pat’s attention was fixed on the large computer screen swinging down from the rafters. It showed a tough-looking black bull with sleek, shiny horns and shades. Beside him stood a large old cow with an oversized udder, smiling kindly down at them.
  ‘It’s Yak, Director of the C.I.A.,’ Pat realized.
  ‘And his boss, Madame Milkbelly the Third,’ said McMoo, quickly bowing. In the year 2550, this grand old cow ruled kindly over all cattle.
  ‘All right, Yak ’n’ Milky?’ Bo grinned up at the screen. ‘What’s going down?’
  ‘A nice cup of tea would go down very well,’ said McMoo with a meaningful look. But Bo only folded her arms and blew another gum-bubble, so Pat hurried off instead to put the kettle on.
  ‘Greetings, my friends,’ said Madame Milkbelly in her prim voice. ‘Are you well?’
  ‘We’re a bit worried,’ Pat admitted. ‘Do you know if this farm is ever turned into a gold mine?’
  Yak frowned. ‘We will look into it,’ he said. ‘But we’ve got real problems here, team. According to a top-secret report, the F.B.I. has been sending ter-moo-nators into the past, to the Old Wild West of America . . .’
  Despite the warmth of the teapot, Pat felt a shiver go through him at the thought of ter-moo-nators. They were the F.B.I.’s nastiest agents – half robot, half bull and completely without mercy.
  ‘Their time trail seems to lead to 1875,’ Madame Milkbelly added.
  ‘Fantastic!’ boomed McMoo. ‘That was the time of cowboy legends like Wyatt Earp and Jesse James, Calamity Jane and Buffalo Bill!’
  ‘Cowboys, huh?’ Bo squirted some milk into the bucket of tea Pat was preparing. ‘Can we hang out with them, Professor?’
  ‘I hope so!’ McMoo beamed. ‘Real cowboys, imagine that!’
  Pat noticed Yak’s face darkening. McMoo loved history – that was why he had built the time shed in the first place, out of bits he found in a scientist’s bins. And so sometimes he acted more like a time tourist than a C.I.A. agent!
  Pat passed McMoo the bucket of tea. ‘Er, maybe Yak doesn’t want us to hang out with cowboys . . . ?’
  ‘Too right,’ said Yak. ‘We don’t know what the F.B.I. is up to in the Old West, but our spies say it’s a real monster of a plan . . .’
  ‘What is more,’ said Madame Milkbelly, ‘my great-great-great-great-great-great-plus-one-hundred-and-fifty-more-greats-great-grandmother lived in the Wild West in 1875 . . .’
  McMoo almost choked on his tea in alarm. ‘But if ter-moo-nators go back and squish her . . . that means you would never be born!’
  Madame Milkbelly nodded gravely. ‘Which means I would never have started the C.I.A.’
  ‘And if you never started the C.I.A., none of us would be here right now!’ Pat’s brain boggled. ‘Holy haystacks, talk about changing the future!’
  ‘I’m fed up with talk,’ Bo complained. ‘I want action!’
  ‘And you’re going to get it,’ said McMoo. Draining the tea from his mug, he starting flicking switches and yanking levers. ‘We must get back to the Wild West at once and stop the F.B.I. before history is messed up for ever. There’s not a second to lose!’

The Wild West moo-nster © Steve Cole, 2008. Published by Red Fox.