The Case of the Bone-Stalking Monster

by John R. Erickson

  The Case of the Night-Stalking Bone Monster

  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, 1996.

  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, 1996

  All rights reserved

  Maverick Books, Inc. Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59188-127-8

  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

  For Dean Willis, a young friend and Hank fan, who was badly injured in a car accident and is fighting for his life in an Amarillo hospital. Blessings, Dean.

  Contents

  Chapter One The Incredible Reindeer Snouts

  Chapter Two The Cat Tries to Steal My T-Bones

  Chapter Three My Bones Vanish

  Chapter Four Here’s a Fresh Chapter

  Chapter Five Drover’s Shocking Story

  Chapter Six I Break the Tragic News to Drover

  Chapter Seven Dogpound Ralph Appears on the Scenery

  Chapter Eight Miss Scamper Falls Madly in Love with Me

  Chapter Nine Doctor Buzzard Arrives

  Chapter Ten The Chuckie Chipmunk Episode

  Chapter Eleven The Bone Monster Turns Out to Be Real

  Chapter Twelve I Unmask the Bone Monster

  Chapter One: The Incredible Reindeer Snouts

  It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. Do you believe in Bone Monsters? Neither did I, until one struck our ranch and made off with my fortune in buried bones, and then I had no choice but to believe in them.

  Bone Monsters, that is. I had always believed in bones. Who wouldn’t believe in bones? They’re one of the things that give meaning to a dog’s life. I love bones, always have. They’re wonderful.

  Bone Monsters, on the other hand, aren’t wonderful and I don’t love ’em. They’re very scary, as you will see if you should happen to work up the courage to read this story.

  And let me warn you right here: Don’t tackle this story unless you’ve completed a course in Monster Safety, because . . . well, I don’t know what might happen. Something bad.

  Bed-wetting. A runny nose. Heat rash. Pul­mo­n­ary Brouhaha.

  You’ve been warned. Proceed with caution.

  It all began, as I recall, around the middle of March. No, the middle of April, and I can pin it down to the very exact day. It was the fourteenth of April.

  I happened to be sitting near the front gate, facing east. I had barked up the sun at precisely seven o’clock. After performing that very important duty, I lingered near the front gate to do a Turkey Patrol. Whilst I was barking up the sun, don’t you see, my ears began picking up unusual signals from a chinaberry grove near the creek.

  I stopped—froze, actually—I stopped and froze, twisted my head from side to side, and initiated the Sound Detection Procedure. I went to Full Lift-Up on both Earatory Scanners and began monitoring the entire electromagical spectrum.

  I was listening for turkey sounds, see. At that hour of the morning, they often make sounds. They gobble. And they make another sound, too, which I can’t reproduce because I’m not a turkey. It’s kind of a squawk or a cluck.

  I picked up the sounds, just as clear as a bell. Those turkeys were down there in the chinaberry grove, squawking and gobbling, and little did they know that I was spying on them and picking up every word of their conversation.

  Would you like to peek at a transcript of this monitoring session? Ordinarily we don’t release this information to the general public because . . . well, because we don’t. It’s classified information, see, and we usually withhold these transcripts for twenty-five years because . . .

  Well, because we do, and that’s reason enough. We do it because we do it. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t.

  But if you want to peek at one of the Turkey Transcripts, I can’t see that it would hurt anything.

  Ready? Here we go.

  OFFICIAL SECRET TRANSCRIPT

  Turkey Monitoring Operations:

  Codename “Starfish Sandwich”

  East Yard Gate Station

  April 14

  Turkey 1: “Gobble, gobble, gobble.”

  Turkey 2: “Cluck, cluck.”

  Turkey 3: “Squawk, screek.”

  Turkey 1: “Gobble?”

  Turkey 3: “Cluck, squawk.”

  Turkey 2: “Cluck, cluck, screek.”

  Turkey 1: “Gobble, gobble, gobble.”

  Turkey 2: “Cluck.”

  END OF SECRET TRANSCRIPT

  So there you are. Pretty impressive, huh? Those birds might as well have been in the movies, the way we had ’em covered. We knew all their secrets, their plans, everything. We knew what they were thinking before they even thought it.

  Of course, the problem with turkeys is that they don’t do much thinking about anything, which makes their conversations a little on the dull side.

  Pretty boring, actually.

  I wouldn’t want to spend too much of my time monitoring turkeys.

  Anyways, I was at the Turkey Wire, doing my job, when all at once I heard a vehicle approaching from the north. Unidentified Vehicles get an automatic override in our defense system, which means that at the first sound of a UV, all Turkey Traffic is blacked out so that we can sound the alarm.

  I left my post at the gate . . . not the gatepost but my position near the gatepost . . . I left my post at the gatepost . . .

  Phooey. I left the gate and never mind the post and went ripping out to intercept the . . .

  Okay, relax. It was Slim’s pickup, which no doubt contained Slim. Slim was the driver, see, and once I had established this fact, I switched all circuits from Emergency Red to Routine Blue, and provided Slim with an escort all the way to . . .

  That was odd. Instead of driving down to the corrals, where he usually went at this hour of the morning, he stopped in front of the house.

  The moment he stepped out of the pickup, I was there to greet him. I gave him Broad Wags and Joyful Leaps, just to let him know that, by George, it was sure good to see him again.

  That should have been enough to start his day off right, but yikes, he looked at me with a pair of stony eyes and said, “What are you so happy about, pooch? Don’t you know what day this is?”

  Well, I . . . no, I didn’t. Up until that very moment, I had thought it was a fairly normal day. Obviously, I had missed something.

  He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and trudged up to the front door. He carried a bundle of something under his arm, a mess of papers, it
appeared. His back was bent and his head was low, as though he were packing several sacks of feed, only he wasn’t.

  He tapped on the door. Loper appeared. He was not smiling too. “Come in,” was all he said. The door closed behind them.

  My goodness, this was a dark day. Something bad was happening on my ranch, and I didn’t even know what it was.

  (You probably think it had something to do with the Night-Stalking Bone Monster, but I’ll give you a hint: It didn’t, not yet. That came later.)

  I had planned to move along and do a routine sweep of the entire headquarters area, but it was clear by then that we had a serious problem on the ranch, and I needed to remain on call until we cleared it up.

  After marking two of Slim’s tires—I saw no real need to mark all four of them; I mean, we knew the vehicle and a Short Mark was good enough—after the so-forth, I curled up beside the front gate and . . . snork, mirk . . . perhaps I dozed off for a moment or two.

  The next thing I knew, they were coming down the sidewalk. Slim and Loper, that is. “Get out of the gate, Hank!” I leaped to my feet, staggered three steps to the north, and did a quick scan of their faces. They were still dark, depressed, angry.

  The sun had climbed fairly high above the horizon. Perhaps I had dozed for an hour or two instead of a moment or two.

  They came through the gate. Instead of doing Joyous Leaps and Broad Wags, I switched all circuits over to Graveyard Mode. If they were de­pressed, I was depressed. If they were sad, so was I. That’s just part of being a loyal dog.

  Fellers, we were sad and depressed. Perhaps we were going to climb into Slim’s pickup and drive to a funeral. Yes, this was a very sad . . . only they didn’t climb into the pickup. They started walking north, toward the county road.

  Now, that was strange. These two cowboys weren’t fond of walking, yet here they were . . . walking. It was hard to believe, but I fell in step beside them. We walked in silence. Oh, and did I mention that each of them carried a white envelope? Yes, they did.

  At last, Slim spoke. “Well, here goes another year down the drain. You reckon we’ll ever find happiness again?”

  “Oh sure. Fools always forget. Give us six months and we’ll be able to smile again. By Christ­mas, we’ll be laughing.”

  “I ain’t so sure. I think my giggle box is permanently broke, and so am I.”

  “Well, look at it this way, Slim. If you had that money, you’d spend it on something foolish.”

  “I’d sure try.”

  “Yeah, me too. But I guess Sally May didn’t need that new dress.”

  “Nope. And I didn’t need to get these boots half-soled.”

  “Heck no. Wear a thicker sock.”

  “I sure hope this check don’t bounce.”

  “They’ll be in touch, don’t worry.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  None of this made any sense to me. As near as I could figure it, Slim had worn out all his socks and was sending off an order for more. He hoped they would arrive by Christmas, and if they did, he would . . . laugh, I guess.

  Sounded crazy to me.

  By that time we had reached the mailbox, which appeared to be our destination. Ah ha, yes. The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. Loper opened the little door and pitched his letter inside.

  “Well, back to work.”

  Slim held his letter up and gave it a pat. “Here we are, little feller. Go find the IRS and tell ’em that they’ve ruined my life—again.” He pitched his letter inside and slammed the door.

  We trudged back down to the house. There, we split up and went our separate ways: Loper into the house; Slim to the corrals; and me to the gas tanks.

  And you know what? I never did figure out what we were all being so sad about. What the heck was an IRS?

  International Reserve of Socks?

  Interplanetary Rhubarb Society?

  Incredible Reindeer Snouts?

  I decided to stop worrying about it. If you can’t figure out why you’re miserable, maybe you’re not.

  I had more important things to worry about, such as . . . well, you’ll soon find out.

  Chapter Two: The Cat Tries to Steal My T-Bones

  I couldn’t help feeling just a little angry that I had wasted the best part of the morning trying to be a good dog and showing sympathy for my cowboy pals.

  I mean, we try to help them out and share their little sorrows, but there’s a limit to how sad a dog can feel about holey socks and reindeer snouts. Down deep, where it really counts, I just don’t care about either subject.

  I’m sorry.

  And I was way behind in my work and beginning to feel the awesome weight of responsibility that came with my job. Running a ranch is no cup of worms, let me tell you, and I still had eighteen hours of work to do before I slept.

  I hurried past the front gate, headed down the caliche hill, past that cottonwood tree that was just beginning to put out a few spring leaves, past the . . .

  Suddenly I heard a sound. A voice. A child’s voice. Little Alfred’s voice, to be exact, and here’s what he said: “Hee-oo, kitty kitty. Hee-oo, Petie. Come for scwaps.”

  I went to Full Air Brakes and skidded to a stop. Scwaps? My ears shot up to Full and Undivided Attention, for you see, I had just broken the code of a very important transmission. You probably weren’t aware of this, but “scwaps” in Kid Lan­guage means “scraps” to the rest of us.

  My goodness, I had just stumbled into a conspiracy of major portions. It appeared that Little Alfred, who or whom I had always considered my special pal, was about to offer delicious scraps to my least favorite character on the ranch: Pete the Cheat, Pete the Sneaking Little Barncat.

  I was stunned, shocked beyond recognition. Wounded. Devustated . . . devvusstated . . . davastated . . . deeply hurt, shall we say.

  Gee whiz, Alfred and I had been through SO MUCH together, yet now he had turned against his very best friend in the whole world and was about to offer MY scraps to the cat!

  Oh, pain! Oh, treachery! Oh, broken heart!

  A lot of your ordinary dogs would have quit right there—admitted defeat and gone into mourning for several days. Not me. “Ordinary” has never been a word that applied to me.

  Hey, my special friendship with Alfred was worth fighting for, and . . . okay, maybe the scraps were too, especially since the villain in this case was Kitty-Kitty.

  Would I lie down and roll over and let the cat corrupt my long and meaningful friendship with Little Alfred? No sir. I would fight for my rights. I would fight for Truth and Justice and Friend­ship and Scrap Rights.

  Kitty was in big trouble.

  I squared my enormous shoulders and rumbled off toward the yard gate. I could see him standing there—the boy, not the cat—I could see him standing there. He held a plate in his left hand. He was grinning.

  He would be shocked, of course, that I had intercepted his secret call to Mister Kitty Moocher. No doubt he had called the cat in a soft voice, hoping that we dogs would miss it. Ha! Little did he know the range and scope of our listening devicers. The same instruments that spy on turkeys can pick up the tiniest of whispers about scraps.

  And so it was that I stormed over to the yard gate and broke up this shabby little conspiracy before it ever got started.

  Our eyes met. Through tail wags and other modes of expression, I said to him: “Alfred, I’m shocked that you would try to hold a secret Scrap Time without consulting me. And furthermore . . .”

  He cut off my furthermore with a laugh. “Hi, Hankie. I knew that if I called for the kitty, you’d come. I fooled ya, didn’t I, Hankie?”

  HUH?

  I, uh, hardly knew how to respond. My mind was racing. My data banks whirred as I tried to make sense of his . . .

  I mean, who’d ever think that an innocent child might put out false
information and phony calls? If you can’t trust the kids, who or whom can you trust? And what’s the world coming to?

  I, uh, went to Slow Wags and squeezed up a grin which said, “Hey, pal, we were on to your tricks from the very beginning. We suspected that you were operating in Backwards Code, and we just played along with it to, uh . . . what’s on the plate?”

  I lifted my nose and gave the air a sniffing. My goodness, when the readout came in from Data Control, we found ourselves, well, shaking with excitement, you might say, because our sensory devices had picked up fragrant waves.

  Holy smokes, the kid was holding a plate of STEAK BONES!

  He widened his eyes and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Hankie, guess what I’ve got on the pwate. Steak bones. Juicy, yummy steak bones.”

  Yes, we, uh, our intelligence sources had already . . . could we hurry this up a bit?

  “You want a bone?”

  Well, I . . . yes, a bone would be nice. Or two or three. Or, to make things simple, maybe all of them.

  He lifted a bone off the plate and waved it in front of my nose. Holy tamales, that was a fresh T-bone, saved from supper the night before! And have we discussed T-bones? I love ’em, absolutely love ’em, and oftentimes I dream about ’em at night, is how much I love ’em.

  He continued to wave the bone around in front of my nose. The fragrant waves of steakness filled my nostrils. My mouth began to water. I licked my chops and hopped up on my back legs, but the little scamp pulled the bone out of my reach. And laughed.

  Why was he doing this? I mean, he had a bone and I wanted a bone, so why couldn’t we cut a deal and be done with it? Before I could answer that question, I suddenly realized that we had been joined by a third party.

  Pete.

  Pete had raised his worthless carcass out of his bed in Sally May’s iris patch and had come slinking into our mists—grinning, purring, and holding his tail straight up in the air.

  The mere sight of him caused my lips to rise into a snarl, for you see, I don’t like cats.