The Case of the Midnight Rustler
John R. Erickson
Illustrations by Gerald L. Holmes
Maverick Books, Inc.
Publication Information
MAVERICK BOOKS
Published by Maverick Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 549, Perryton, TX 79070
Phone: 806.435.7611
www.hankthecowdog.com
First published in the United States of America by Gulf Publishing Company, 1992.
Subsequently published simultaneously by Viking Children’s Books and Puffin Books, members of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 1999.
Currently published by Maverick Books, Inc., 2013.
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright © John R. Erickson, 1992
All rights reserved
Maverick Books, Inc. Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59188-119-3
Hank the Cowdog® is a registered trademark of John R. Erickson.
Printed in the United States of America
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to James and Shirley Dobson, in appreciation for their efforts to save the American family. God bless them.
Contents
Chapter One A New and Exciting Mystery Unfolds
Chapter Two Okay, Maybe I’ll Tell, If You Promise Not to Laugh
Chapter Three Chosen for a Dangerous Assignment
Chapter Four Sally May Punches My Face
Chapter Five Maybe I Stunk but Slim Got Bucked Off
Chapter Six The Case of the Poisoned Weenies
Chapter Seven Slim Gets Soaked Because of a Faulty Tent Rope
Chapter Eight The Mysterious Visitor in the Night
Chapter Nine YIKES!
Chapter Ten The Last Crusade
Chapter Eleven Okay, Maybe I Exaggerated, but Not Much
Chapter Twelve Another Triumph Over the Crinimal Forces
Chapter One: A New and Exciting Mystery Unfolds
It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. This mystery just might win the prize for chills and thrills, for you see, it gets me involved with a genuine cattle rustler who stole cattle and slipped around in the deep dark of the night and did things that came very close to scaring the liver right out of me.
So get yourself prepared. Do some push-ups. Drink some vinegar and water. Suck on a lemon. Walk around in a circle and say to yourself, “I am NOT going to let this story scare the liver out of me, because living without a liver is worse than no liver at all.”
Say that five hundred times and maybe you’ll be ready.
Okay, here we go. It all started one morning in the late spring—May, I think it was. Yes, it was around the first of May, or maybe it was the middle of May. Or the end of May.
Let me think here. We’d had our spring roundup and branding, as I recall, and the cowboys were trying to get the first cutting of alfalfa out of the field, and we can pretty well date it from that: the first week in June, just as I suspected.
It all started one morning in June, over in the alfalfa field. Slim and Loper had mowed, raked, and baled half of the alfalfa, and we were trying to get the bales hauled out of the field.
Sally May and Baby Molly drove the old truck, while Slim pitched the bales and Loper stacked. Drover, Little Alfred, and I were in charge of checking beneath each bale for lizards, snakes, crickets, and mice, but especially mice.
It was a happy time on the ranch. Everything was going well. The boys had cut the hay just right, while it was tender and in the bloom. The windrows hadn’t been rained on. The machinery was working. The mice were under control. And it was a beautiful morning.
The boys were dripping sweat but happy and working hard, and while they worked they sang an old church hymn they had converted into their Official Hay Haulers’ Song. It was called “See the Morning Sun Ascending.”
See the morning sun ascending,
Radiant in the eastern sky.
Hear the angel’s voices blending
In their praise to God on high.
Alleluia, alleluia.
Alleluia, alleluia.
I won’t say it was a great job of singing. Slim and Loper had their little talents but nobody had ever accused them of being great singers. Still, the song fit the mood and rhythm of the work, and somehow it made us all forget about the sweat and blisters and sore muscles that just seem to be a part of alfalfa hay.
Once we got the bales hauled, it was time to mow down the other half of the alfalfa. Slim climbed on the tractor, made half a round, and broke down.
The mower had thrashed a bearing, several sickle blades, and other items too numerous to mention. And at that very moment, the entire ranch was plunged into darkest gloom and despair.
You ever spend any time around a cowboy who’s forced against his will to repair farm machinery? It’s no fun, let me tell you. No more singing, fellers. All at once everyone on the ranch is wearing a long face and kicking things and going around MAD.
Broken machinery seems to have a bad effect on a cowboy’s disposition. That’s especially true on our outfit because all of the machinery is junk.
Now, if I was running the ranch, I’d go out and buy some haying equipment that stayed in one piece and actually WORKED—you know, tractors that didn’t leak water and oil and grease and diesel fuel, and didn’t have to be pulled every time you wanted to start ’em.
And a mower that didn’t eat bearings for breakfast every day. And a baler that could tie ten bales in a row without being overhauled. And a hay truck with brakes.
Little things like that.
But did the cowboys ask my opinion? Oh no! I was just a dumb dog, and what did I know about running a ranch? So they kept their junky old farming equipment, and every year at haying season we witnessed the same wreck, the same mad scramble to patch up the machinery, and the same long faces.
We dogs might be dumb, but no dog in history has ever tried to farm 30 acres of alfalfa hay with equipment that ought to be in a museum or a junkyard.
I’ll say no more about it, except that if they had listened to the Head of Ranch Security, things would have gone a whole lot smoother.
So there we were, in the midst of our annual Farm Equipment Wreck. Slim and Loper hauled the mower over to the machine shed and tore into it.
What we had was two cowboys, stomping around the machine shed in greasy clothes, baseball caps, and lace-up boots. And mad? They hardly spoke to each other, but they did quite a bit of speaking to the machinery, which was spread out in a thousand parts on the cement floor.
Here’s what I mean:
Slim: “Stupid sickle blades! The way they break off, you’d think we’d been mowin’ redwood trees instead of alfalfa.”
Loper: “The guy who engineered this mess must have been drunk for two months.”
Slim: “Too bad there ain’t a Tooth Fairy for busted sickle blades. We’d be rich.”
Loper: “The way this piece of junk eats bearings, we ought to buy stock in Timken.”
Slim: “I’m sure proud I signed on with a COWBOY outfit.”
Yes sir, the atmosphere was pretty tense. I was lying down just outside the door,
watching Slim as he kicked and talked to various parts of the mower, and wondering if Loper knew that he had a big smudge of grease on the end of his nose, when all at once the cat arrived on the scene.
I glared at him and noticed that the folds of skin that covered my teeth had begun to twitch. I can’t explain why that happens, but every time Pete enters the picture, my mouth and lips move into Snarling Mode.
Have I mentioned that I don’t like cats? I don’t like cats, have no use for ’em at all. They’re about as useless as a hog in a hospital. All they do is eat and purr and rub and make a nuisance of themselves.
Well, old Slim was bent down over the sickle bar, whamming on it with a ball-peen hammer. A fly was buzzing in his ear and big drops of sweat dripped off the end of his nose. Pete came gliding across the floor, purring like a refrigerator and holding his tail straight up in the air, and he started rubbing up against Slim’s leg.
“Get away, cat.”
As you may know, cats don’t take hints. They seem to think that everybody loves them and is just waiting around for a chance to become a rubbing post. Pete rubbed and purred and meowed.
“GET AWAY, CAT.”
Slim picked him up and pitched him over in Loper’s direction. Loper was squatted down on the floor, staring at his project of the moment, which looked like what you’d have if you stuck two sticks of dynamite in a bearing housing and lit the fuse. His lips were forming words but no sounds came out.
Any dog with a brain in his head would have read the warning signs and kept his distance, but do you suppose Pete saw any of that? Oh no. What he saw was something else to rub on, and that’s just what he did.
I sure liked what Loper did. Instead of yelling at the cat or erupting in a childish outburst of temper, he reached for the air wrench nearby, hit the button with his finger, and tried to unscrew Pete’s tail with a 3⁄4-inch socket.
Hee hee, ha ha, ho ho! I loved it. I’d never realized that Pete could move so fast, but he sure did. The last we saw of the cat, he was heading south at a high rate of speed.
Slim looked up from the mess he was making with the sickle blades and said, “Loper, you ain’t much for fixing hay equipment, but I believe you own the patent on fixin’ cats.”
I barked and thumped my tail on the floor. Loper’s eyes came up and speared me. “Hush, Hank, you might be next.”
I, uh, decided to keep my opinions to myself.
It was then that my ears picked up the sounds of an approaching vehicle. By the time I could scramble, bark, and move into the Hair Lift-Up procedure, the trespasser’s pickup had already pulled up in front of the machine shed.
I hate being surprised and caught off guard, so to make up for lost time, I threw all my reserves of extra energy into the barking maneuver.
In that kind of situation, the very future and survival of the ranch often depends on the courage of its Head of Ranch Security. It’s no place for a shrunken violet, I can tell you that, and it’s no place for a chicken-hearted little nincompoop like Drover, even though he had beat me to the punch and was out there yipping at the intruder.
But mere yipping is no substitute for the kind of deep ferocious barking that is something of a specialty with me, and when the intruder dared to step out of his pickup and walk toward my machine shed, well, hey, I bristled the hair on my back and bared my fangs and . . .
I’m not going to tell you what happened next, because it wasn’t funny AT ALL.
You’ll just have to wonder about it, forever and ever.
Chapter Two: Okay, Maybe I’ll Tell, If You Promise Not to Laugh
What a cheap trick. If Loper had wanted me to stop barking, couldn’t he have just said so? I would have been glad to . . . but no, he being a comedian and a humorist and a childish prankster, he had to sneak up behind me and BUZZ ME ON THE BOHUNKUS WITH THAT STUPID AIR WRENCH!!
I thought I’d been shot with a death ray, and no, it wasn’t funny when I tried to escape and ran into the side of the machine shed.
It wasn’t funny at all, and if I catch you laughing at my misfortune, I’ll . . . I don’t know what I’ll do.
Yes I do. I’ll hold my breath until I’m dead, graveyard dead, and then you’ll be sorry. Nobody ever misses a good loyal dog until he’s gone, and then they cry and wish they could take back all the mean and hateful things they did to him, but they can’t because it’s too late.
It was a cheap, shabby trick, and I left a print of my nose in the side of the machine shed, and yes, it did hurt.
How much sympathy did I get from the smallminded people who had witnessed the tragedy? You can guess. Very little. None. I thought Slim and Loper would pass out from lack of oxygen, they laughed so hard.
Had I laughed at their problems? Made fun out of their pathetic attempts to fix up the mower? No, but that didn’t stop them from . . . oh well.
This job pays the same, whether they’re patting you on the head or making you the butt of their laughingstock.
In typical childish cowboy fashion, they found great pleasure in my misfortune. Fine. I didn’t care. Through watering eyes, I glared daggers at them. Someday they would be sorry, and until then . . .
Drover arrived at that very moment. “Hi Hank. Did you just hear a loud crash?”
I gave him a withering glare. “I WAS the loud crash, you moron, and you’re just lucky I wasn’t killed.”
“Boy, that was lucky. What happened?”
“The owner of this dismal place set off an air wrench under my tail, and I came within inches of destroying the entire south side of the barn.”
“I’ll be derned. That’s quite a tale.”
“Thanks. It’s the best one I’ve ever had.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You’ve had some pretty good ones.”
“No, this is the original equipment, Drover. It’s been through some hard times, and there’s a tale behind every misfortune it’s seen.”
“Yep, there’s a tail behind every dog.”
“Exactly. But dead dogs have no tales.”
“Yeah. I wonder what they do with all of ’em.”
“Oh, they’re passed down from generation to generation and become part of our collective folklore. One of these days, Drover, our children will be telling of our adventures.”
“I don’t have any.”
“That’s because you’re too chicken. Chickens miss out on all the adventures.”
“I mean children.”
“Chickens have children, Drover, but no adventures. Chicken children are called ‘chicks.’ They’re hatched from eggs.”
“Boy, I love eggs.”
“And mother chickens love their children.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have any. And even if I did, they wouldn’t want my tail. It’s too short.”
“Actually, Drover, the shortest tales are often the best. There’s an art to telling a story in just a few words.”
“Gosh, Hank, that’s the first nice thing you’ve ever said about my tail. Always before, you made fun of it. Thanks.”
“You’re certainly welcome.” I stared at him for a moment. “Are we involved in the same conversation?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Drover, sometimes when I talk to you, I begin to wonder if I’m going insane.”
“Yeah, I’ve wondered about that myself.”
“Let’s just drop it. Who is this trespasser who just pulled up in the strange pickup?”
“I don’t know, but I sure barked at him.”
“You barked at him, Drover, but he came on the ranch anyway. You need to work on your barking. You couldn’t scare a flea on a grandpa’s knee.” All at once he sat down and began scratching his left ear. “Don’t scratch while I’m talking to you.”
“I’ve got a flea.”
“Of course you do. If you’d work on your barking
, you wouldn’t have so many . . .”
By George, all at once I had a flea problem myself. I could feel the little wretch crawling around on my . . . hee hee, ha ha . . . on my belly, and it tickled. I jumped into the air, bent myself double, and spun around in a circle, trying to catch up with my . . .
You know what? As long as a dog runs in circles, he can never catch up with his own anatomy. It keeps moving, see. You have to shut everything down, sit on the floor, and attack the stupid flea with teeth and lips. That requires deep concentration and large amounts of self-deception.
Self-discipline, I should say.
I got ’er done, but it was no easy deal. I bit the flea and the flea bit the dust, and at that point I was ready to pursue the investigation.
Who was this guy who had dared to drive his pickup onto MY ranch in broad daylight? I began by observing that he was an older man, maybe 65 or 70. He walked slowly, wore a battered felt hat and khaki pants and shirt.
His name was Uncle Johnny. I knew that because Loper said, “Well, by gollies, Uncle Johnny! What brings you over here to the poor side of the county? And how are you at fixing hay mowers?”
Uncle Johnny studied the mess on the floor. “Was anybody killed in this wreck?”
“Not yet,” said Slim, “but if Loper’s disposition don’t improve, he’s liable to become the first casualty. He gets kind of snarly during hay season, and he wasn’t real sweet to start with.”
Uncle Johnny chuckled to himself. “Yes sir, I used to get that-a-way myself. Old age don’t have too many blessings, but one of ’em is that you can leave the hay work to them that’s young and dumb enough to take it.”
“Well, we ain’t so young,” said Slim, “but we’ve doubled up on the dumb.”
Whilst they were making small talk, I decided to slip outside and attend to the routine business of applying our ranch’s trademark on Uncle Johnny’s tires. A guy never knows when that trademark will come in handy. It’s something we try to do every time a strange vehicle comes onto the place.
The Case of the Midnight Rustler Page 1
