Lost in the Dark Unchanted Forest
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 Maverick Books, Inc. 1988,
Texas Monthly Press, 1988, and Gulf Publishing Company, 1990.
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., 2012.
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright © John R. Erickson, 1988
All rights reserved
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Erickson, John R.
Lost in the dark unchanted forest / John R. Erickson ; illustrations by Gerald L. Holmes.
p. cm.
Originally published in series: Hank the Cowdog ; 11.
Summary: Fearless Hank the Cowdog, Head of Ranch Security, enters the “dark unchanted forest” to rescue his master’s son from Sinister the bobcat.
ISBN 0-14-130387-5 (pbk.)
[1. Dogs—Fiction. 2. West (U.S.)—Fiction. 3. Humorous stories. 4. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Holmes, Gerald L., ill. II. Title. III. Series: Erickson, John R. Hank the Cowdog ; 11.
PZ7.E72556Lo 1999 [Fic]—dc21 98-41815 CIP AC
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.
Contents
Chapter One Mauled by a Gigantic Sniveling Cat
Chapter Two The Giant Baldheaded Lizard
Chapter Three Swimming Lessons for Pete
Chapter Four Another Triumph over the Cat
Chapter Five Running Away from Home
Chapter Six A Witch in the Forest
Chapter Seven Disorientation
Chapter Eight Working Some Hoodoo on Rip and Snort
Chapter Nine Eaten Alive by Crocodiles
Chapter Ten Rip and Snort Defend Their World Championship Title
Chapter Eleven Notch Up Another One for Hank
Chapter Twelve A Hero Again, What More Can I Say?
Chapter One: Mauled by a Gigantic Sniveling Cat
It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. It was your typical spring day, nothing out of the ordinary: calm, bright, a little on the warmish side, the air full of cotton from the cottonwood trees.
We were up around the machine shed, as I recall, basking in the sun, whiling away the afternoon, and waiting for darkness to fall, at which time we would begin our night patrol. Since Loper and Sally May had left the ranch the day before on a mysterious trip to a place called “Hospital,” I had made the decision to double up on night patrol.
Drover was over by the water well, engaged in a meaningless conversation with J. T. Cluck, the head rooster. Suddenly he called.
“Hank, come here and look at this thing and tell us what you think it is.”
I responded to the call and studied the object before him. “That’s a rooster.”
“No, I mean this down here.” He pointed his nose to the ground.
“Oh.” I looked down, sniffed it out, and studied the clues. “That’s dirt, Drover, just common ordinary dirt.”
“Yeah, I know, but is that some kind of print or track in the dirt?”
“Oh.” I ran a more thorough search this time, and that’s when I found the mysterious track. I raised up my head—slowly, so as not to alarm anyone—and glanced over both shoulders to see if we were being watched. “Where did you find this track?”
“Well, it was right there in the dirt.”
“That checks out. Who knows about it?”
“Just me and J.T., I guess.”
“Question: Has anyone or anything passed by here in the last hour?”
“Well, just me and J.T. and a fly . . . a big, noisy fly.”
“And therefore you think the fly left this track, is that what you’re saying? Nice try, Drover. I saw the alleged fly and I know he was big, but not big enough to leave tracks like this. I don’t want to alarm anyone, but I should point out that this is one of the biggest tracks I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s just what J.T. said when he found it. He thought maybe it was a bobcat track.”
I gave the runt a withering glare. “Number One, J.T. didn’t find this track. I did.”
“Now just a darn minute!” said J.T.
I snapped at him, relieved him of a few feathers, and sent him on his way. The last thing I needed was a noisy chicken around to disrupt my investigation—especially one that would try to hog some of the credit for my careful work.
I turned back to Drover. “Number Two, you should disregard anything J.T. might have said about this track, because chickens don’t know beans about tracks. Number Three, we haven’t seen a bobcat on this ranch in years. Number Four, this track was made by an exceptionally large boar coon.
“Number Five, I’m betting he’s still hiding on the ranch; and Number Six, our primary mission on tonight’s patrol will be to search him out and throw him off the place before he gets into some serious mischief.”
“You mean . . .”
“Exactly. Prepare for combat, Drover. Catch all the sleep you can between now and dark. I have a feeling we’ll need it.”
He sniffed at the track. “It sure doesn’t look like a coon track to me.”
“Stick with what you do best, son. Sleep. I’ll get you up at 2100 hours.”
At precisely 2100 hours I awakened Drover and we began what turned out to be one of the most dangerous patrols of my career. It began in a fairly routine manner, with us checking out the saddle shed, the medicine shed, the sick pen, the front lot, and the side lot.
Nothing. And yet . . .
Maybe I have a sick sense, a sixth sense, that is, about these things, a still small voice that warns me when something isn’t right. It was trying to warn me when I headed for the feed barn.
We stopped in front of the door and I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Drover, my hunch tells me that our friend the coon is in the feed barn. Chances are that he has busted into a sack of horse feed and he’s eating the corn and molasses out of it. I’ll go in first.”
“I hear that.”
“We’ll hold you in reserve just outside the door. If things get bad, I may have to call you in. Come on, let’s move out.”
I slipped up to the door. This is the one that’s warped at the bottom, you might recall, which allowed me to wiggle the top half of my body inside without committing the bottom half. Once in that position, I did a scan and . . .
I wiggled outside again, leaned my back against the side of the shed, and laughed. I couldn’t help it. It was just too good to be true.
Drover watched me with a puzzled expression. “What’s so funny?”
“You won’t bel
ieve this. We have just been handed the best ornery prank of the year. You know who that is in there? Not a coon, Drover, but Pete the Barncat!”
“Pete? Are you sure?”
“He must be looking for mice, see. He’s got his front-end on the ground and his hind-end up in the air and his head between two bales of hay. He thinks he’s all alone in the world, and when I go crashing in there and jump right in the middle of him, he’ll think he’s been attacked by a big boar coon!”
“Sounds pretty good . . . if it is Pete.”
“Of course it’s Pete. Don’t you think I know the scent of a cat?”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“The place reeks of cat. Why, he couldn’t smell any cattier if he’d been living in the wild for the last six months.”
“Hank?”
“Hush. The time has come. Stand by for a barrel of laughs, because I’m fixing to let the cat out of the bag.”
“Yeah, but which cat?”
I slipped through the door again, all the way this time. A few arrows of moonlight were coming through the cracks in the roof, just enough so that I could make a visual confirmation of my original nosatory data. Everything checked out. We had us a cat cornered, fellers, and the fun was about to begin.
I took a big gulp of air, leaped through the air, and yelled, “Watch out for the boar coon, Pete!”
I had reached the apex of my dive and had begun my downward arc when I noticed . . . hmmm, Pete’s tail had been shortened. And come to think of it, his coat had changed colors—white with dark spots—and . . . by George, he looked bigger than I . . . real big, almost the size of a . . . HUH?
Holy smokes, do you realize how big and tough bobcats are? They’re terrible! I wouldn’t jump on a bobcat for all the bones in Texas, and yet . . .
I tried to make some mid-course corrections, began moving my front feet in a dog paddle mode, but it was too late. I straddled him, fellers, landed right in the middle of his back.
You think a bobcat can’t buck? Think again. He throwed an arch in his back and blew me right out of my rigging. I went straight up in the air, hit my head on a ceiling joist, and started back down. But before I hit the ground, this giant maniac of a cat slapped me across the mouth with a paw that was about the size of a T-bone steak.
That sent me flying in a different direction, south this time, until I came to the south wall, and at that point I came to a sudden stop and dropped in a heap on the floor.
I was seeing stars and checkers and little pink elephants with umbrellas, but that didn’t keep me from getting a real good look at the monster cat: big, mean, ugly, ferocious. Your ordinary bobcat is about two or three times the size of your ordinary barncat. This guy was two or three times the size of your ordinary bobcat.
I’d seen him before, at a distance. His name was Sinister the Bobcat. He was a cold-blooded professional killer with a rap sheet as long as your leg, and I had definitely made a big mistake.
“Drover, I don’t want to alarm you, but at this moment I am trapped in the feed barn with a gigantic bobcat.”
“Oh my gosh! Then J.T. was right about the tracks!”
“I wouldn’t put it exactly that way, but the point is that our main column is surrounded. It’s time to bring up the reserves.” I heard the swish of something moving through the air at a high rate of speed, then silence. “Drover? Drover!”
The runt had abandoned me. Sinister took a step in my direction, his long white teeth glowing in the darkness.
“Hi there, you’re Sinister the Bobcat, I believe. We haven’t met, but I . . . you probably won’t believe this, but I came in here looking for a cousin of yours, Pete the . . . yes sir, old Pete and I have been friends for . . . obviously you’re not Pete and I probably ought to be . . .”
He took another step towards me, and I could tell at a glance that he didn’t want to talk about his kinfolks.
“Now Sinister, I’ve always figgered that there’s a middle ground between surrender and annihilation, and if you’d care to discuss . . . ”
Sinister wasn’t a talker. I knew that the instant he knocked me back up into the rafters. Coming down, I tried to latch onto one of the ceiling joists but couldn’t quite hang on. I headed for the floor again, but never reached it because Sinister caught me under the chin with a roundhouse right that sent me flying south again, only this one knocked me through the window, thank goodness.
There was an explosion of glass and I woke up, draped over one of the lower branches of an elm tree. I climbed out of the tree and tested my wobbly legs. I still had all four of ’em.
I glanced through the busted window and saw Sinister inside the feed barn, turning over bales of hay and looking for mice. He didn’t even look tired, which kind of annoyed me.
“Sinister, you got lucky this time, but next time . . .”
He made a move in my direction and I sold out, didn’t slow down until I limped up to the gas tanks. I found Drover hiding beneath his gunnysack bed.
“Drover, you’ll be interested in knowing that, even without your help, I just suffered an incredible beating.”
He stuck his nose out the west side. “Well, I didn’t think it would help for both of us to get beat up.”
“That’s very noble of you, son, and I promise I won’t forget this.”
“Thanks, Hank.”
“And the next time you need someone to come to your rescue, call a cat.”
I flopped down on my gunnysack. Everything hurt, especially my pride. For a dog, there is nothing to compare with the humilification of being pounded by a sniveling cat—even a big sniveling cat.
I cancelled night patrol and went to sleep.
Chapter Two: The Giant Baldheaded Lizard
I awoke the next morning at the crack of noon. What woke me was the sound of a car coming down the road towards the house.
I leaped to my feet and . . . oh mercy! . . . was suddenly reminded that only hours before I had been mauled by a bobcat. I limped and hobbled out to challenge the trespassers and . . . oh, it was Loper and Sally May, back from their trip to Hospital, wherever that was.
When I realized that we had a friendly car coming onto the ranch, I shifted out of Serious Barking Mode and limped out to greet them.
Loper got out and rubbed me on the head. “You’ve got ticks,” he said, and went around to the other side of the car.
He opened the door and helped Sally May out. She was carrying something in her arms, something wrapped up in a pink blanket.
Drover had joined me by then and he saw it too. “What’s that?”
“Groceries, what do you think?”
“I thought groceries came in a brown sack.”
“Most of the time they do, Drover, but now and then they wrap them up in pink blankets.”
“Oh.”
Sally May was smiling, beaming. I’d never seen her in such a good humor. Those must have been pretty good groceries. I figgered this might be a good time to mend a few fences, so to speak, with the lady of the house, so I went around to the other side of the car.
“Oh look, Molly, there’s old Hank, and there’s little Drover.”
That was odd. She seemed to be speaking to the groceries. But that was okay because she was still smiling. As long as Sally May’s smiling and not throwing rocks, I don’t care what she talks to.
“Dogs,” she said, “I’ve brought home a special surprise for you.”
I glanced at Drover. “You see? She went to the grocery store and got us some nice juicy bones.”
“Oh good! Boy, do I like bones!”
“But I get first dibs, son. Don’t forget who’s in charge here.”
Sally May uncovered the top part of the bundle and bent down so that we could . . .
When I saw what was inside that blanket, fellers, the hair shot up on my back and my throa
t began making a sound that was something between a growl and a gurgle.
Holy smokes! Sally May had brought home a giant lizard from the grocery store!
Well, you know me. When confronted with something new and ugly and terrible, I don’t just stand there looking foolish. I bark.
Yes indeed, I barked. I had no idea why Sally May had brought that thing home or what she planned to do with it, but I staked out my territory and barked up a storm. And just in case the lizard attacked, I also retreated a few steps.
You know what Sally May and Loper did? They started laughing. Beat anything I ever saw. I mean, they had just brought a strange and possibly dangerous animal onto the ranch, and then . . .
Sally May gave me another look at the thing’s head, which was unnecessary because I’d already seen all I needed to see. “Hank, don’t be silly. It’s just a baby.”
“It’s just a baby,” Drover said.
I glared at the runt. “I seem to be hearing an echo.”
“No, that was me. I said . . .”
“I heard what you said and I heard what she said, and you don’t need to repeat everything you hear. I’m not deaf and that’s no baby. It’s the first full-grown Giant Baldheaded Lizard I’ve ever seen on this ranch.”
“But Hank, it’s not a lizard. It’s Sally May’s new baby.”
HUH?
I studied the creature again: two eyes, two ears, one mouth, one nose, red skin, and wrinkles, and inside the blanket, two arms, two legs, and a nightgown.
Hmmmmm. The pieces of the puzzle were beginning . . . okay, maybe it wasn’t a . . . let’s put it this way: that was a very strange looking baby, and any dog who was in charge of Ranch Security would have . . .
“All right, Drover, I think I’ve got this thing puzzled out. Sally May went to the town of Hospital and bought herself a baby at the grocery store. Instead of putting it in a brown paper sack, as they usually do, they wrapped it up in a pink blanket, and what we have here before us now is NOT a lizard.”
“Yeah, I know.”
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