He seemed to be . . . there was a strange light in his eyes, see, and . . . gulp.
“Hey, wait a minute. You said that deep inside your inner bean, you’re actually a . . . uh . . . little scottish terrier. That’s exactly what you said. Honest. I heard it.”
“Heh, heh. One of the things that makes me so rotten, pal, is that I lie all the time. I love telling lies to saps like you who believe anything. And you know what else I love?”
“Uh . . . your fellow dogs?”
“Naaa. I love getting revenge.”
I began backing away. “Revenge? But you’re chained up. Don’t forget that.”
“Ha, ha. Watch this.” He took one step backward and lunged against the chain. It snapped.
I stared at the two ends of the chain. I swallowed hard. All at once my mouth seemed . . . uh . . . very dry. Gack! Bruiser was loose and I was standing in the back of his pickup!
“Bruiser, let me speak frankly. I feel that I’ve been tricked and used.”
A jagged laugh erupted from his throat. “Oh yeah? Well, you ain’t been used like you’re fixing to be used, ’cause I’m fixing to use you for a mop.”
“A mop? Now wait . . .” I began creeping backward. He crept toward me. “I thought you wanted a friend.”
“Yeah, I lied. What would a guy like me do with a friend? Huh? I’d just beat him up. That’s me, pal. Rotten to the core.”
“But I thought . . . wait, stop. I have one more thing to say. It’s very important.”
He gave me a smirk. “Yeah? What?”
I turned my gaze to the sky and heaved a heavy sigh. “Bruiser . . . good-bye!”
ZOOM!
He had given me just enough time to get the heck out of there. I hit Full Turbos, went flying off the bed of the pickup, and set a speed course for the inside of Jim’s Tire Shop.
“Here he comes, Drover, get him!”
Drover did nothing, of course. As I roared past Slim’s pickup, I saw the little mutt quivering underneath, with his paws over his eyes. It was a short glimpse, because I was hauling the mail for safer ground.
See, I had realized that this was no normal dog. He had a loose screw somewhere in his head, and he seemed pretty determined to . . . well, tear me to shreds.
I, on the other hand, was just as determined not to be torn to shreds, and I had some hope that the guys inside might come to my rescue. I mean, Slim was a great pal of mine, and Miguel . . . emember Miguel? We were the best of buds, had shared many laughs and good times, and don’t forget that I had burped for him only minutes before.
I went flying into the shop, with Bruiser right on my tail, snarling and slashing the air with his bear-trap jaws. The men heard us coming. They stopped their work and turned their eyes to the riot in progress.
Joe McCall saw what was happening. He was sitting in a chair and leaped to his feet. Miguel grabbed a tire tool. Slim just stood there, too surprised to move.
Joe made a dive for Bruiser. “Here, Bruiser, easy boy, nice doggie.” He managed to grab a hind leg, but that dog was so big and strong, he broke away.
Then Bruiser turned his eyes back to me and charged! I ran to the far end of the shop, hoping . . . the back door was shut! My eyes darted around the shop. There was only one way out, and Bruiser stood between me and the outside world.
I stood there, frozen, petrified. Bruiser grinned and started toward me again. “Now, where were we?”
“We were . . . listen, Bruiser, if you’re torqued about all those things I said about you, I think I can explain everything. Honest.”
“Yeah? Give it a try.”
“Great. Okay, I said you were ugly, right? Not true, not true at all. You’re actually a very handsome guy.”
He laughed and advanced another step toward me. “I’m ugly.”
I edged backward and bumped against the wall. “Okay, you’re ugly. We’re straight on that one. I said you walk like a fat duck, remember? Ha, ha. What a wild exaggeration! I don’t know what came over me to make such a . . .”
“What about chasing fawns?”
“Chasing fawns?”
“Yeah. Is that right or wrong? See, yesterday you hurt my feelings. You made me feel bad for chasing a baby deer.”
“Yes, I suppose I did.”
“So take it back. Tell me it’s okay if I want to chase a baby deer the next time I visit your ranch. Say it and I’ll let you walk out of here alive.”
I took a big gulp of air. All at once I wasn’t scared anymore. “Bruiser, you’ve just reminded me how much I disliked you the first time we met. I mean, when I saw you jump on that poor little deer, I felt nothing but disgust, and it’s all coming back to me now. You’re not only big and ugly and stupid, but you’re disgusting. And you know what, Bruiser? I’m fixing to give you the whipping you’ve needed for a long time.”
A nasty laugh poured out of his throat. “You’re crazy, cowdog.” He took a step backward. “I’m twice as big as you are.”
I raised the hair on my back and advanced. “Yep, and that gives me twice the target and twice as much fun. Stand your ground, son. Here come the marines.”
His eyes flicked from side to side. He took another step backward. “I’ll hurt you, I’ll hurt you bad.”
“That’s okay. The vet clinic’s just down the road. Let’s get it over with.”
He took another step backward. Was he retreating or setting me up for something? I couldn’t tell and it didn’t matter. I coiled my legs like steel springs and jumped into the middle of him, and then . . . a great rolling darkness moved over me, and that was the last thing I remembered.
You’re probably wondering what happened. Did I manage to survive or did that monster of a dog tear off my legs and ears and leave me for dead?
Well, let’s mush on and see.
I awoke on the floor. I had no feeling in my legs or tail, and all the early indicators suggested that . . . you’d better hold on to something . . . it appeared that my neck had been broken and that I would be paralyzed for life.
Bruiser had threatened to “wring” my neck, remember? Well, the early reports from Data Control suggested that if he hadn’t actually wrung my neck, he had come pretty close.
I saw a circle of faces above me. I recognized Slim’s right away. He looked pale and very concerned. And there was Joe. I remembered Joe, a nice guy who kept a bad dog. Oh, and there was Miguel, my old burping partner. It was good to see him again, only he sure looked worried about something.
ME, no doubt. Yes, I was in bad shape, very serious condition. Nobody needed to tell me I was critically wounded. I could see it in their faces. I hated being such a burden to them, and to show the depth of my concern, I whapped my . . .
I whapped my tail on the cement floor, and that was odd. I mean, if a guy’s paralyzed . . .
Slim spoke. “Boys, I don’t see a single mark on him. You don’t reckon he just . . . fainted, do you?”
Fainted! Ha! What kind of crazy talk was that? It was perfectly clear what had happened. I had gone into combat against one of the biggest, meanest, heartlessest rottweiler dogs in the whole Texas Panhandle, and though I had fought a brave fight, Bruiser had inflicted enormous, inclackulable damage upon my body.
No, I had not fainted. I just happened to have a broken neck, and maybe we should start thinking about rushing me to the vet clinic, huh? Would that be too much trouble?
At that moment, Drover came padding up. He looked down at me and grinned.
Since I couldn’t move my head, not with all the shattered and splintered neck bones, I rolled my eyes around so that I could see him. “What are you grinning about?”
“Oh, that was quite a fight. Never saw anything like it.”
“Pretty bad, I guess. Did I land any punches?”
“Nope, not a one.”
“I was
afraid of that. Well, I did my best, Drover, and now you’ll have to carry on without me.”
“No, just when the fight was about to start, this big blue-eyed tomcat came out of nowhere and jumped on top of Bruiser’s head. Boy, what a show! Old Bruiser ran like a striped ape and jumped up in the back of Joe’s pickup. Remember? He’s scared of cats.”
HUH?
I rose to my feet and stuck my nose in the runt’s face. “Hey, don’t tell me there wasn’t a fight. I was there, pal, I was in the middle of it. It was one of the most ferocious combat experiences of my entire . . .”
I blinked my eyes and looked around. The men were all smiling, and all at once they . . . well, were clapping their hands . . . applauding . . . and I suddenly realized . . .
What we had here was a sudden reversal, you might say, and although I had been badly wounded in combat, the bones in my neck had miraculously . . . okay, maybe I’d fainted, but who wouldn’t have fainted?
What matters is that I won. And Miguel’s cat had nothing to do with it.
So it all worked out pretty well. The last I saw of Bruiser, he was sitting in the back of Joe’s pickup, sniffling about his unhappy childhood and promising to be a good dog for the rest of his life.
Pretty neat, huh? Against incredible odds, I had wrapped up the Case of the Raging Rottweiler and had even helped Bruiser find his true creampuff self. Things had turned out so well, I even removed the six Chicken Marks from Drover’s record.
Just another day in the life of a cowdog.
Case closed.
Okay, maybe the cat helped a little bit, but not much, so don’t be spreading lies about how I was . . .
Skip it.
Further Reading
Have you read all of Hank’s adventures?
1 The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog
2 The Further Adventures of Hank the Cowdog
3 It’s a Dog’s Life
4 Murder in the Middle Pasture
5 Faded Love
6 Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
7 The Curse of the Incredible Priceless Corncob
8 The Case of the One-Eyed Killer Stud Horse
9 The Case of the Halloween Ghost
10 Every Dog Has His Day
11 Lost in the Dark Unchanted Forest
12 The Case of the Fiddle-Playing Fox
13 The Wounded Buzzard on Christmas Eve
14 Hank the Cowdog and Monkey Business
15 The Case of the Missing Cat
16 Lost in the Blinded Blizzard
17 The Case of the Car-Barkaholic Dog
18 The Case of the Hooking Bull
19 The Case of the Midnight Rustler
20 The Phantom in the Mirror
21 The Case of the Vampire Cat
22 The Case of the Double Bumblebee Sting
23 Moonlight Madness
24 The Case of the Black-Hooded Hangmans
25 The Case of the Swirling Killer Tornado
26 The Case of the Kidnapped Collie
27 The Case of the Night-Stalking Bone Monster
28 The Mopwater Files
29 The Case of the Vampire Vacuum Sweeper
30 The Case of the Haystack Kitties
31 The Case of the Vanishing Fishhook
32 The Garbage Monster from Outer Space
33 The Case of the Measled Cowboy
34 Slim’s Good-bye
35 The Case of the Saddle House Robbery
36 The Case of the Raging Rottweiler
37 The Case of the Deadly Ha-Ha Game
38 The Fling
39 The Secret Laundry Monster Files
40 The Case of the Missing Bird Dog
41 The Case of the Shipwrecked Tree
42 The Case of the Burrowing Robot
43 The Case of the Twisted Kitty
44 The Dungeon of Doom
45 The Case of the Falling Sky
46 The Case of the Tricky Trap
47 The Case of the Tender Cheeping Chickies
48 The Case of the Monkey Burglar
49 The Case of the Booby-Trapped Pickup
50 The Case of the Most Ancient Bone
51 The Case of the Blazing Sky
52 The Quest for the Great White Quail
53 Drover’s Secret Life
54 The Case of the Dinosaur Birds
55 The Case of the Secret Weapon
56 The Case of the Coyote Invasion
57 The Disappearance of Drover
58 The Case of the Mysterious Voice
59 The Case of the Perfect Dog
60 The Big Question
61 The Case of the Prowling Bear
About the Author and Illustrator
John R. Erickson, a former cowboy, has written numerous books for both children and adults and is best known for his acclaimed Hank the Cowdog series. He lives and works on his ranch in Perryton, Texas, with his family.
Gerald L. Holmes has illustrated numerous cartoons and textbooks in addition to the Hank the Cowdog series. He lives in Perryton, Texas.
The Case of the Raging Rottweiler Page 8
