The Case of the Deadly Ha-Ha Game

by John R. Erickson

  No, it was too complicated to explain through tail wags and facial expressions and our other forms of communication media. Sometimes life goes beyond our ability to explain it, don’t you see, and when that happens . . .

  But the good news was that Pete and Drover were there to, uh, share the blame, so to speak, and all at once I saw the light at the end of the turnip. Here’s what I did. You’ll be impressed.

  I released my grip on the steak, and in a very mature manner, walked away from the scene of greed and shameless behavior. I marched straight over to Alfred, sat down at his feet, and went into a program that we call “I Didn’t Do It, Honest.”

  This is a difficult program. It requires Slow Sweeps on the tail section and eyes that ex­press . . . well, great sadness and disappointment that my companions had done this terrible thing. Throwing all communication gear into the effort, I beamed Alfred looks that said:

  “Alfred, I know this looks bad, but let me explain. You see, I happened to be passing the yard when I noticed that Drover and Pete had conspired to steal one of your daddy’s, uh, steaks. Naturally, I was shocked and outraged, and without thinking . . . I mean, I was driven by a higher sense of duty . . . without thinking, I rushed to the scene of the crime, and when you walked out the door, I was in the process of, uh, trying to return the steak to its rightful owner. No kidding.”

  I ran the entire program and then studied the boy’s face to see if he was buying it. He looked at me. He glanced over at Pete and Drover, who were still tugging at the steak. Then he looked at me again, just as I poured Extra Sincerity into my presentation of wags and looks.

  I had a feeling this was going to work. Yes, because all at once he stormed over to the villains. He booted Pete away and snatched the steak out of Drover’s jaws. “No no! You can’t have this steak, you naughty dog. This is our supper.”

  Drover wilted on hearing those terrible words, “naughty dog.” He cringed, cowered, and groveled his way to the fence, hopped out of the yard, and ran away, weeping—a dog who had been exposed and shamed for all the world to see.

  I bounded over and took my place at Alfred’s side. While he picked grass and dirt specks off the steak, I turned a look of righteous anger at the cat. “Pete, I can’t believe you would stoop so low—stealing food from your own family! I’m shocked. How much lower can you sink?”

  His ears lay flat on his head and he threw a hump into his back. Oh, and he hissed at me. “Very funny, Hankie, but you’ll never get away with this.”

  “Ha! I already did, Kitty. You were nabbed with the goods, caught in the act, and now the whole world knows what a little sneak you are. And just to show you how outraged I am about this business . . .”

  Heh heh. I put my nose down to his face and gave him a bark we call Full Air Horns. Heh heh. It just blew him away, the little hickocrip, rolled him up in to a ball and blew him away. Okay, may­be he managed to land one lucky punch before he was blown away . . . several lucky punches . . . he did a pretty good job of shredding my nose, shall we say, but I chased him around the north side of the house and ran him up a hackberry tree.

  Gazing up at him with watering eyes, I delivered one last burst of righteous barking. “There, you little creep, and let that be a lesson to you! Next time you feel an urge to steal from your friends, don’t forget that cheaters never weep and chinners never win!”

  Then, holding my head at a proud angle, I whirled around and marched away. Behind me, I heard Pete say, “My goodness, there’s a rainbow!”

  I stopped. Rainbow? Was that some kind of insult? Or was it a code word? I turned and marched back to the tree. “What did you just say? Something about a rainbow?”

  He grinned down at me. “Oh no, Hankie. I never would have said that, because then you would try to beat me to the treasure. Oops.” He slapped a paw over his mouth.

  Hmmm. Did you notice that clue? He slapped his paw over his mouth. Obviously, this cat was trying to hide something from me. “What are you talking about?”

  “Me? Oh, nothing, Hankie, nothing at all. You probably think there’s a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, but there’s not. Really.”

  It was then that my keen eyes caught sight of a . . . well, a rainbow off to the northwest. By this time my mind was racing. Wasn’t there some old superstition about rainbows? What was it?

  In the blink of an eye, I did a search of Data Control’s huge library of files and came up with a very interesting piece of information. Very interesting. Here, check this out.

  At the end of every rainbow, there’s a pot of . . . something. Treasure.

  I could hardly conceal my delight. What a dumb cat! In a moment of weakness, he had blurted out a priceless bit of information—and he didn’t even know it! He thought he’d fooled me, see, thought I hadn’t noticed, hadn’t caught his slip of the tongue. The foolish cat. Very little escapes my notice. Pete should have known, after all the years we’d spent matching wits, but if he didn’t know it, that was fine with me.

  I decided to play along with him. “Never mind, Kitty. I didn’t hear you say anything about rainbows or treasures, and even if I had, I wouldn’t believe it. See you around, Pete. Oh, and have a great evening up there in the tree.”

  And with that, I whirled and marched away, leaving Kitty Moocher sitting in the ramble of his own rubble. He didn’t see the cunning smile that had formed upon my mouth, nor did he suspect that I had every intention of beating him to the potted treasure.

  Basking in the glory of my huge victory over the cat, I marched back to Little Alfred. He was still picking grass and other bits of rubbish off the steak. He gazed at my nose and laughed. “Boy, Pete sure scwatched your nose.”

  Yes, and it grieved me to see him laughing about it. I had taken a few blows, but that had been a small price to pay, and I would wear my scars with . . .

  At that point I, uh, turned my eyes toward the . . . well, toward the steak in his hands. I mean, now that we had solved the case and brought justice to the yard, maybe he could . . . I mean, the villains had dragged the steak through the grass and surely he wasn’t thinking about . . .

  I moved my front paws up and down and ran my tongue over my lips. Hey, the steak was ruined, right? No longer fit for human consumation? And if he wanted to present me with a little, well, reward for heroism in the line of duty . . .

  He glanced around toward the house and whispered, “Shhh. I’ll put it back on the pwate and my dad’ll never know. Then nobody’ll get in twouble.”

  Twouble? Well, yes, that was something to consider, all right, and even though it broke my heart to see my reward going back to the plate . . . oh well. Easy come, easy go.

  But all was not lost. At that very moment, I caught sight of Pete’s cat food bowl sitting beside the porch, and proceeded to sample the, uh, merchandise.

  Huh? Greasy phony steak flavor? It was awful stuff and I couldn’t imagine how Pete could eat such garbage. Yuck! But it was Pete’s food and so I proceeded to wolf down every bite of it—even mopped the bowl with my tongue. Tee hee. At least the cat wouldn’t get it.

  Don’t ever eat cat food. It’s so bad, cats de­serve it.

  At that very moment, I heard Loper coming out the back door, and I dived over the fence. When Loper reached the barbecue cooker, Alfred was rocking up and down on his toes, looking up at the clouds, and whistling, while I sat on the dog-side of the fence and beamed Looks of Perfect Innocence in all directions.

  Loper was suspicious at first, and studied both of us with narrowed eyes. “What’s going on around here?”

  Alfred smiled and said, “Oh nuffin.’ Just waiting for supper.”

  Loper grunted and went on with his business. He spread out the mesquite coals and placed the grill over them. Then he forked a steak and . . . uh oh . . . held it up for a closer inspection.

  “How in the world did this steak get grass on it?” He lo
oked at Alfred, who shrugged his shoulders and increased the volume of his whistling. “Huh. Wind must have done it.” He slapped the steak on the grill, and then threw the others on.

  Whew! Alfred and I exchanged winks and grins. We had dodged a major bullet . . . although I must say that dodging Loper’s bullets wasn’t all that difficult. Now, if Sally May had been in charge of the steaks, we would have had a problem. A BIG problem. She saw everything, heard everything. She was suspicious of all dogs and little boys, and we even had reason to believe that she had Radar for Naughty Thoughts.

  Oh, one more item. About those counterfeit steaks, the ones made out of cat food? Nothing to it. We must have gotten some faulty readings on our instruments and, well, it was just one of those mistakes that happen in the line of, uh, duty.

  A little humor there. Get it? Mistakes. Missed steaks. Ha, ha.

  Anyway, Loper wasn’t feeding cat food to his family after all. That was a relief. I thought you’d want to know.

  Ten minutes later, Loper removed the steaks from the grill and looked off to the northwest at a puffy thunderhead cloud. “It looks a little stormy over there. I’ll bet they’re getting a rain up around Guymon. We could use some moisture, but I wish it would wait one more day, until I get the rest of that alfalfa baled up.”

  Loper and Alfred went into the house to enjoy their steak supper. I may have been rooked out of a steak, but I had something even better. I knew about the potted treasure.

  Chapter Five: We Go After the Fabled Treasure

  When Loper and Little Alfred went inside the house, I made my way down the hill and to the Security Division’s vast office complex. I punched in the entry code on the door and took the elevator up to the . . . okay, we didn’t have an elevator, and our “office complex” consisted of a couple of ragged gunnysacks beneath the gas tanks.

  Might as well admit the truth.

  It was a shabby place to house the entire Security Division, but that was the kind of cheap-john outfit I worked for. You’d think the cowboys would have . . . skip it. We don’t want to get started on that subject.

  Anyway, I took the elevator up to the twelfth floor and entered the office, glanced at a stack of reports on my desk and checked for messages. An odd sound reached my ears, and it was then that I noticed Drover. He had crawled beneath his gunny­sack and appeared to be . . . moaning.

  I flopped down in my chair. “Okay, Drover, out with it. What’s the problem?”

  One corner of his gunnysack rose and I saw one big round eye peeking out. “What makes you think I’ve got a problem?”

  “Because you’re hiding under your bed.”

  “Oh, you noticed.”

  “Of course I noticed. And furthermore, I happen to know that when you hide under your bed, you’re usually fleeing from Reality as It Really Is. So, out with it, let’s get it over with.”

  He poked his nose out. “Well, okay. I have a broken heart.”

  “Broken heart. Go on. What seems to be the problem?”

  “Well, I got caught with the steak and Little Alfred thought I stole it, and he . . . he called me a naughty dog!” With that, he broke into tears and boo-hoos. “It just breaks my heart!”

  I gave the runt a moment to get control of himself. “Well, what can I say? You had the steak in your mouth and you got caught. You’re old enough to start accepting the consequences of your own actions.”

  “Yeah, but it was your action. You stole the steak and I was just . . .”

  “Hold it, stop right there, halt. I’ve already spotted a hole in your ointment. You said I stole the steak.”

  “Yeah, ’cause you did. I saw it myself.”

  “Drover, I didn’t steal the steak. I had merely gathered evidence for an investigation, and that evidence just happened to be a steak.”

  “Yeah, but you were going to eat it. And when I saw that you were about to eat it, I wanted to eat it too, and I just couldn’t control myself, and . . .” He broke down crying again. “And I got caught and now I’m a naughty dog!”

  This was very sad, but I tried to hide my emotions. “I guess there’s an important lesson here, son. When we fail to control our lower impulses, we get ourselves into trouble. Haven’t I warned you about that? We must learn to say no to the voice of temptation.”

  “Yeah, but you stole the steak off the plate and I got blamed! It’s not fair! All my life, I’ve wanted to be a good dog.”

  “I know you have, but Drover, you must face the fact that life is often unfair. The important thing here is that life was unfair to you, thus sparing me a lot of shame and embarrassment. Isn’t that worth something? I mean, think about my position on this ranch. How would it look if the Head of Ranch Security got nailed for stealing a steak?”

  He wiped a tear out of his eye. “Well, it would look like the truth.”

  “Exactly, and the truth is very important, but there are different shades of truth. The very best kind of truth is the kind that doesn’t cast dark shadows on the reputations of our leaders. It was very brave of you to defend the right kind of truth.”

  “It was? You really think so?”

  “Oh yes, no question about it. Very brave. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this brought you a little promotion.”

  His face burst into a smile and he crawled out from under his bed. “No fooling? A promotion for me?”

  “Yes sir, a nice little promotion for bravery in the face of truth.”

  “Oh goodie! I wonder what it might be.”

  I studied the claws on my right front foot. “All these years you’ve held the title of First Assistant Deputy Assistant, right?”

  “Gosh, I didn’t even know I had a title.”

  “You did, but now with this act of heroism in your file, we just might bump you up to the next level. How would you like to be . . . First and Second Assistant Deputy Assistant?”

  “Really? No fooling? Gosh, I’m so proud!”

  “Congratulations, soldier, you earned it.”

  He was hopping for joy, the little . . . He was hopping around and being joyful. “Oh, I’m so happy! Maybe life’s not as unfair as I thought.”

  “Yes, Drover, and behind every silver lining, there’s a golden pot.”

  “Yeah, and every pot has a chicken in it.”

  “Right. And every chicken must cross the road.”

  His smile faded. “I wonder why.”

  “What?”

  “Why does a chicken cross the road?”

  I chuckled. “That’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  “Not to me.”

  I began pacing. “Well, a chicken crosses the road . . . When a chicken takes it upon himself to cross a road or trail . . . Drover, I’m afraid we’re out of time.”

  “Oh drat.”

  “And please try to control your naughty language. Don’t forget your new position.”

  “Oh smurkle.”

  “That’s better.” I paused and glanced up at the dark clouds. “What was the point of this conversation?”

  “Alfred called me a naughty dog and it broke my heart.”

  “Right, and we cleared that up. You’re happy now and you’re going to stop drawing me into these ridiculous conversations. I’m a very busy dog and I don’t have time to speculate on why chickens cross roads.”

  “Well, you don’t need to get mad.”

  “I’m not mad. But Drover, I came down here with something important in mind. Now I don’t remember what it was. Furthermore, it has suddenly occurred to me that this entire conversation has been . . . loony. Meaningless. This has happened before, Drover, and it troubles me that we continue to carry on loony conversations. Does that bother you?”

  He grinned. “No, I kind of enjoy it.”

  “You enjoy being a loon?”

  “Oh, you’re never alone when you’re with so
me­body else. It’s almost like having company.”

  “What?”

  “I said . . . let me think here. I said, being alone’s almost like owning a company, but you have to pay interest on a loan.”

  Seconds passed as I stared into his eyes. “Oh. Yes, of course.” I paced away and tried to shake the vapors out of my head. I still couldn’t remember . . .

  At that very moment, Drover leaped to his feet and pointed off to the northwest. “Oh look, there’s a pretty rainbow. Let’s go look for the pot of chicken.”

  That was it! The rainbow. I had gotten so involved in Drover’s personal tragedy that I had forgotten all about Pete’s slip of the tongue. “Wait a minute, that was my idea. During my interrogation of the cat, he . . . Wait a minute. What was that you just said about the pot of chicken?”

  “Well, let’s see here.” He rolled his eyes and chewed his lip. “At the end of every rainbow, there’s a pot. A pot of chicken.”

  “Hmmm. I’d always heard that it was a pot of . . . something. Gold.”

  “No, I think it’s chicken. Who’d want to eat gold?”

  “Good point. I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe it’s a golden pot that contains a boiled chicken. That would explain the business about the gold, wouldn’t it? Yes, of course. The pieces of the puzzle are falling into place.” I glanced over both shoulders and lowered my voice. “Soldier, let’s go get that treasure, but don’t forget, it was my idea.”

  With that, we launched ourselves into the evening breeze and went streaking out to claim our rightful share of the Potted Chicken. All at once, Drover’s loony conversation became a distant memory, and once again I found myself unmurshed in meaningful work—solving the Case of the Fabled Potted Chicken. Immersed, let us say.