The Case of the Falling Sky Read online

  The Case of the Falling Sky

  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 Viking Children’s Books and Puffin Books, members of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2005.

  Currently published by Maverick Books, Inc., 2012

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © John R. Erickson, 2005

  All rights reserved

  Maverick Books, Inc. Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59188-145-2

  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

  To Claire Louise

  Contents

  Chapter One Creepy Sounds in the Night

  Chapter Two The Chicken Riddle of Life

  Chapter Three The Pork Chop Virus

  Chapter Four Drover’s Shocking Revelation

  Chapter Five The Cat Tries to Spy On Us

  Chapter Six The Dreaded Circle of Clues

  Chapter Seven I Perform the Secret Procedure

  Chapter Eight The Anti-Hiccup Cure

  Chapter Nine This Is a Great Song, No Kidding

  Chapter Ten I Give Slim a Shunning

  Chapter Eleven Danger! High Voltage!

  Chapter Twelve This Ending Is Pretty Scary, So Beware

  Chapter One: Creepy Sounds in the Night

  It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. Sometimes you get a feeling, an eerie feeling, that something’s not right. Maybe you awaken from a dream or maybe it begins with a tiny sound out in the darkness, and then you notice this creepy crawling sensation on the back of your neck.

  You raise your head and lift your ears. You hold your breath and listen. Maybe you hear something and maybe you don’t, but you KNOW that something’s wrong, that something or someone is out there in the darkness.

  That’s the way it started, on a windy night in March. I was in my office on the twelfth floor of the Security Division’s Vast Office Complex. It had been another of those days that start out normal and then stretch into an eighteen-hour dog-killer. Around here, the work never ends. The work, the worry, the crushing responsibility of running the ranch . . . they just keep piling up.

  I was sitting at my desk, reading over a huge stack of . . .

  Wait. To be perfectly honest, I was under the gas tanks, sleeping on my gunnysack bed, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. All dogs need sleep every once in a while, even the Head of Ranch Security. There’s no shame or disgrace in grabbing a few winks of sleep, is there?

  Of course not. We cowdogs have very high standards and demand more of ourselves than your ordinary run of mutts, but still, eventually we must close our eyes, release our grip on the world, and catch a few winks of healing sleep.

  That’s what I was doing, healing my worn-out body and restoring my precious bodily fluids. I hadn’t slept more than a few minutes . . . okay, a few hours, but the point is that in the dark of the night, I awoke from a deep sleep, leaped out of bed, and noticed that creepy feeling in the back of my neck.

  I blinked my eyes and studied the . . . well, the darkness. It was very dark and I couldn’t see much of anything, but I KNEW that something wasn’t right.

  I reached for the microphone of my mind. “Jaybird, this is Codfish. Do you copy?”

  I held my breath and waited for a reply. It came. “Copy. Poppy. Hoppy.”

  “Drover? Are you there?”

  “Murk snork copy codfish pogostick. Zzzzzzt.”

  “Drover, answer me. We don’t have time for nonsense. I have a feeling that something strange is going on around here, over.”

  Over the crackle of the radio, I heard him say, “Ten thousand teddybears brush their teeth with okra pickles. Snork murk figgy pudding.”

  You see what I have to put up with around here? My Assistant Head of Ranch Security was sleeping his life away. He didn’t know or care that our ranch might be in danger, and I didn’t have time to mess with him.

  I sent one last message. “Drover, your behavior is shocking and disgraceful, and it will have to go into my report.”

  “Fuzzy bubble.”

  “Don’t argue with me. You’ve brought this on yourself and you’ll have to live with the consequences. I’m sorry it’s come to this.”

  “Beetle bomb codfish ladyfingers snork murff.”

  “I’m going out on a dangerous mission. If I’m not back in two hours, send fresh troops. Over and out.”

  “Scuffy railroad bloomers.”

  I stood there for a moment, wondering how I was expected to protect the ranch with such . . . oh well. I would deal with Drover later. Right now, I had a job to do.

  I left the office, took the elevator down to the ground floor, and strode out of the Security Divi­sion’s Vast Office Complex . . . out into the dark spookiness of the dark spooky night, let us say. I would have to answer this call without backup, and I’ll admit that it caused me some uneasiness. I mean, Drover wasn’t much help, even when he was awake, but at least he provided some companionship.

  Sometimes, when we pull duty in the middle of the night, it helps to have a warm body around, even one as worthless as Drover’s. But tonight I would have to face the darkness and the terrible loneliness of the job all by myself.

  I put my nose to the ground, switched all circuits over to Snifforadar, and began working the area. Back and forth, back and forth. This wasn’t as easy as you might suppose, since I had no clues or leads in the case. All I had was . . . well, just a feeling that something bad was going on.

  That wasn’t much, but sometimes in the Security Business, that’s all we get.

  I worked the area just west of the gas tanks and found nothing out of the ordinary. At that point I began to wonder if I had dreamed it all. That happens sometimes, you know, when a guy has worked himself down to a frazzle. He begins to imagine . . .

  Wait! Did you hear that? Maybe not, because you weren’t there, but I heard it. It was very plain in the stillness of the night: a clucking sound, perhaps the clucking of a chicken, and it had come from the direction of . . . the chicken house!

  Do you see the connection? Our chickens sleep at night in the chicken house and . . . maybe this is obvious, so let’s mush on.

  Since I had picked up a sound, not a smell, I switched off Snifforadar and punched in the commands to activate Earatory Scanners. I adjusted the tuning knob that brought our two huge micro­wave receivers into focus and . . . yes, there it was again. The clucking of a chicken.

  See? My instincts had been right. Something strange was going on, and now I had my first lead in the case.

  My heart began to race and I moved on silent paws toward the sound—past Sally May’s garden, past Emerald Pond, and up the hill. When I reached the top of the hill, I paused to catch my breath and reconnoodle the situation.

  In the deep
dark silence of night, I heard . . . more clucking.

  Well, that settled it. I had no idea what manner of fiend or monster I would find in the chicken house, or if I would live to tell the story. But you know what? It really didn’t matter. When you’re Head of Ranch Security, you do your job and hope for the best.

  I began my Approach Procedure, creeping closer and closer until I was standing right outside the chicken-house door. There, I stopped and listened. Hmmm. I could hear whickens chippering . . . chickens whispering, let us say, which struck me as very odd. Chickens don’t whisper at night . . . do they? I don’t think so. They sleep.

  Okay, the moment of truth had arrived. I had to storm the chicken house and there was no sense in putting it off. One way or another, it would all be over in five minutes. I took a deep breath of air, gave myself the order to Lock and Load, and stormed the house.

  I burst through the door. “Bonzai! Ranch Security! Freeze, turkeys, you’re under arrest! Hands up, reach for the sky, on the floor, everyone down! This is a raid!”

  It was a pretty impressive raid, one of the best in my whole career. There I stood in the middle of the chicken house, with twenty-eight pairs of chicken eyes staring at me. They had their wings raised over their heads and I had their full attention. I must admit that . . . well, I kind of enjoyed this, you know, being on center stage, so to speak, and having the full undivided attention of an audience.

  I know, they were only a bunch of dumb chickens, but still . . . it was kind of fun.

  I swaggered across the room, glaring into every pair of eyes. “Okay, what’s been going on in here?” Silence. “We know you birds have been up to something. We’ve been watching this place for weeks. We have the names of everyone who’s come and gone. You might as well come clean and make it easy on yourselves. Who wants to go first?”

  The chickens glanced around but no one spoke.

  I moved around the circle of nests until I came to a familiar face. “You there, stand up and spread your wings. I’ll have to frisk you. Move!”

  It was a rooster, and he didn’t move. He said, “Lay a paw on me, pooch, and I’ll show you what these spurs are for, is what I’ll do.”

  Were you aware that roosters have sharp little horns on their feet? They do and they’re called “spurs.” Every once in a while we run into a blow-hard rooster who thinks that he can scare us by threatening to use his spurs on our nose, eyebrows, lips, ears, and other sensitive parts.

  Ha! What a joke. One good snap from a dog’s enormous jaws will fix those spurs, and two good snaps will fix the rooster who’s wearing them.

  On the other hand, I, uh, saw no good reason for pushing this crisis into a deadly combat situation. After all, I had come to rescue the dumb birds from . . . something.

  See, one of us had to be wise enough and mature enough to defuse the bomb of anger and violence, and it appeared that it would have to be me. Hencely, I decided, on my own free will, to ignore the rooster’s provocatory remark.

  “Okay, J.T., have it your way. This time we’ll let it slide, but only because I’m mature enough to spare you from your own big mouth.”

  “I ain’t got a mouth. I’ve got a beak.”

  “Fine, you’ve got a big beak.”

  “And the reason you’re letting it slide, pooch, is that you remember what I done to you last time we squared off.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you do. I came within an inch of spurring your ears off.”

  “You must have me confused with some other dog.”

  “And I’ll tell you something else, mister.” He leaned forward and stuck his beak into my face. “You’ve got your nerve, busting in here in the middle of the night and calling us turkeys. We ain’t turkeys, we’re chickens, and proud of it too.”

  “I never said you were turkeys.”

  “Sure you did, I heard it myself. You came a-busting in here and a-yelling at the top of your lungs, ‘Freeze, turkeys!’ That’s exactly what you said, and if you don’t believe me, ask Elsa. She heard you too.”

  I pushed his beak out of my face. “For your information, featherbed, we always say that when we make a forced entry. The ‘Freeze, Turkey’ command is part of the procedure we follow.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, if you’re gonna bust into a chicken house, you ought to say ‘Freeze, chickens!’ It don’t make sense to be a-yelling and a-carrying on about turkeys in a chicken house.”

  “It doesn’t make sense, J.T., because you don’t have any sense to begin with. Now shut your trap and let’s get on with my interrogation.”

  In case you haven’t figured it out, the guy I was about to interrogate was J.T. Cluck, the head rooster. I’d never had much use for the guy, and now I was fixing to give him a merciless grilling.

  Chapter Two: The Chicken Riddle of Life

  I began pacing back and forth, as I often do when I’m about to launch myself into a heartless interrogation. Every eye of every chicken was glued to me as I paced.

  “Okay, J.T., let’s cut the nonsense and get down to business. I have to ask you some questions.”

  “Fine with me. Ask me anything, anything at all. Ask me about heartburn.”

  “I’m not interested in heartburn.”

  “Well, you would be if you had a gizzard. You dogs have no idea what it’s like, going through life without teeth and having to grind up all your food with a gizzard full of rocks.”

  “I’m not interested in your problems, J.T.”

  “I know you ain’t, and that’s shameful. How would you like it if you had to eat rocks every day of your life, huh? Buddy, you talk about heartburn! You try eating rocks and crickets and grasshoppers and I’ll show you some heartburn.”

  “Are you finished?”

  “No, I ain’t finished. The worst heartburn of my life came from eating a squash bug.”

  “Drop it, J.T., and answer my questions.”

  He twisted his head and stared at me with his red rooster eyes. “You ain’t asked any questions, so how am I supposed to answer ’em?”

  I paced over to him and glared into his face. “J.T., something funny was going on in here tonight, and I want to know what it was.”

  J.T. cut his eyes to the side and lowered his voice. “It wasn’t funny, I can tell you that right now.”

  “Keep going. What wasn’t funny about it?”

  “It wasn’t funny because . . . well, just because it wasn’t funny. You didn’t hear anybody laughing in here, did you? That’s a clue right there.”

  I heaved a sigh. “Tell me what was going on, and hurry up. I’m a very busy dog.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen how busy you are, sleeping all day and all night on that gunnysack bed.”

  “J.T. . . . ”

  “A rooster would get fired for laying around all the time. We’ve always got things to do—bugs to chase, gravel to peck, and don’t forget who crows up the sun around here. Me.”

  I gave him a snarl. “Quit yapping and tell me what was going on in here tonight!”

  “Well, all right, fine, if you’re going to get all hateful about it! What was a-going on in here tonight?”

  “Yes, that’s the question.”

  “Well . . .” He glanced around the room. “You’ve got to promise you won’t go blabbing this all over the ranch.”

  “Hurry up.”

  “Well . . . you see, we was . . . talking . . . having a discussion.”

  “Go on. What were you discussing?”

  “Well, it was a pretty deep discussion. It might be over your head.”

  “Try me.”

  J.T. narrowed his eyes and whispered, “You know, pooch, chickens have been on this earth for a long time.”

  “Right. What’s the point?”

  “Huh? The point? Well sir, the point is tha
t our ancestors have walked this earth and pecked gravel for thousands of years.”

  “This isn’t another heartburn story, is it?”

  “No, it sure ain’t, and if you’ll hush up, maybe I can tell you what it is.”

  “Hurry up.”

  “I’m a-hurrying. You see, pooch, for thousands and thousands of years, and for centuries and centuries, and for decades and decades, our ancestors have walked this earth. They’ve helped rid the world of grasshoppers and crickets, beetles and pillbugs, and other pests that don’t even have a name. But through all their suffering and hardship, there remained one great question that no chicken was able to answer.”

  I waited. “Yes? Keep going.”

  “Well, that’s what we were discussing this very night, and we didn’t find the answer, even though we stayed up half the night and lost a bunch of sleep.”

  “What was the question?”

  He gave me a wary look. “I don’t know that I should tell you, ’cause you ain’t a chicken.”

  “I’m Head of Ranch Security. I know every secret on this ranch.”

  “You don’t know this one, pooch. It’s the Chicken Riddle of Life, and no chicken has figured it out in ten thousand years.”

  “Try me.”

  “Well . . . all right. Here goes.” He leaned forward and whispered, “Pooch, for ten thousand years chickens have been crossing roads . . . but none of us has ever figured out . . . WHY.”

  The air hissed out of my lungs. I paced a few steps away, then whirled around to face the audience of staring chickens. “All right, I want you to pay close attention to this. I’ve wasted half my night on you dumbbells and I want you to listen, so that we’ll never have to go through this again.”

  Dead silence and total attention. The chickens held their respective breaths and waited for my announcement. You could have heard a needle in a haystack. I continued.

  “I’m here to address the burning question: Why does a chicken cross the road? For centuries, your ancestors searched for the answer but never found it. I will now reveal it to you.”