The Case of the Prowling Bear Read online

  The Case of the Prowling Bear

  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., 2013.

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © John R. Erickson, 2013

  All rights reserved

  Maverick Books, Inc. Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59188-161-2

  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

  For Baxter and Cindy Lou

  Contents

  Chapter One The Secret Donkey Report

  Chapter Two An Evening of Fun and Entertainment

  Chapter Three The Poisoned Toilet Bowl

  Chapter Four Bears Inside the House!

  Chapter Five We Survive a Dangerous Night

  Chapter Six I Trick the Cat, Hee Hee

  Chapter Seven Slim Gets Stopped by the Police

  Chapter Eight I Encounter a Couple of Buzzards

  Chapter Nine Buzzard Music

  Chapter Ten A Sound in the Dark

  Chapter Eleven Sure ‘Nuff, We Found a…HUH?

  Chapter Twelve You’re Supposed to be in Bed, Asleep

  Chapter One: The Secret Donkey Report

  It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. Let’s get right to this business of the bear. I can tell you exactly when and how the rumors got started.

  It was the first week in January, as I recall. Yes, it was the second week in January—long nights, cold gloomy days. Or was it February? On this ranch, there isn’t much difference between January and February, so it doesn’t matter.

  The mystery began when it began, in the cold of winter, only on that particular day, it wasn’t cold. In fact, it was warm and spring-like, almost sixty degrees. Slim shed his coat around nine o’clock that morning and shucked off his wool vest about an hour later.

  Slim, Drover, and I were out feeding cattle. In the dead of winter, it’s something we do every day. We drive to the same pastures and pour out feed to the same cattle, who always give the impression that they’ve never eaten a bite of store-bought feed in their whole lives, which makes us wonder why we bother.

  Let’s face it. Cows are greedy, dumb, and have no sense of gertrude. Gratitude. They have no gertrude of gratitude. It doesn’t matter how hard you work or how much feed you pour out for them, they’re never happy and they always want more. Hence, don’t stake your career on pleasing a cow. It won’t happen.

  We poured out feed in the first two pastures and were chugging along the county road, on our way to the next pasture. Drover stared off into the vapors of space. Slim hummed a tune and concentrated on his driving.

  If this had been the middle of summer, he would have been swerving from one side of the road to the other, trying to smash those jumbo grasshoppers that get almost as big as a lizard. But this was wintertime (no grasshoppers for entertainment), so he had nothing to do but drive.

  Me? I was in my usual position on the Shotgun Side of the pickup, and perhaps I had dozed off. Yes, I’m sure I had, because…well, active minds tend to doze when there isn’t much to keep them occupied. But that changed all at once, when I heard the screech of brakes and went flying into the dashboard. Next thing I knew, I was sprawled on the floor with something lying on top of me.

  It took me a moment to respond. “Battle stations! Code Three! We’ve been rammed! Flood tubes one and three! There’s a dead body on my face!”

  I pushed, shoved, and scrambled, and finally pried myself out from under the pile of corpses that had…huh? Okay, relax, false alarm. Ha ha. The pile of corpses turned out to be Drover, and he was still alive. Ha ha. Boy, sometimes the mind plays tricks.

  I blinked my eyes and tried to put on a professional face. “What’s the meaning of this, and why were you smashing my face?”

  “Well, he slammed on the brakes and we ended up on the floor.”

  “Who slammed on the brakes?” I studied the face in front of me. When we had begun this conversation, I had seen two faces, but now they had merged into one. “Okay, you’re Drover and Slim’s the driver, but why did he slam the brakes and sling us to the floor?”

  Drover shrugged and we both turned our gazes toward Slim Chance, the hired hand on this outfit. He was sitting behind the wheel, and looking a little…well, dazed, I guess you would say. After a moment, he said, “Dogs, you ain’t going to believe this. Would you like to guess what just ran across the road?”

  Oh brother. A rabbit? A coyote? Coon, fox, badger, reindeer, moose…what did we care?

  He shook his head and let out a breath of air. “I think I’m wide awake and not any crazier than I was yesterday, but unless my eyes were playing tricks, I saw a bear run across the road.”

  He saw a BEAR run across the road? We didn’t have bears in the Texas Panhandle. Bears lived in the mountains. We didn’t have mountains. No mountains, no bears. I had no idea what he’d seen, but it hadn’t been a bear.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  Of course we didn’t believe him! I mean, the guy was famous for telling windy tales and pulling pranks on his dogs, right?

  “Hank, I saw a bear, honest.”

  Okay, you saw a bear. I saw an elephant. Could we get on with the business of feeding cattle?

  He put the pickup in gear and we drove on to the next pasture. Drover had been silent up to this point, and now he said, “Berries don’t grow in the wintertime.”

  “That’s true. Your strawberries and your blackberries make fruit in the summer. If you live on berries, that’s important information, but we don’t eat them, so what’s your point?”

  “Well, he saw he said a berry in the road.”

  “Wait. He saw he said? That doesn’t make sense. Perhaps you meant to say, ‘He said he saw.’”

  “That’s what I said. I said, ‘He said he saw.’”

  “No, you said, ‘He saw he said.’”

  “Yeah, but he couldn’t saw what he said until he said what he saw, and you can’t saw words anyway.”

  I took a deep breath and searched for patience. “Drover, we seem to be having a little trouble communicating this morning. Let’s go back to the beginning and try again.”

  “Yeah, but I forgot what we were talking about.”

  “Berries. You were talking about strawberries.”

  He gave me a loony stare. “Why would I talk about strawberries?”

  “I have no idea. Wait, I remember. You said he said he saw a strawberry growing in the road.”

  A little flicker of light came on in his eyes. “Oh yeah. He said he saw a berry run across the road.”

  The air hissed out of my lungs. “Okay, let me address this in two parts. First, berries don’t grow in the winter. Second, berries don’t run across roads. And third, he didn’t say ‘berry,’ he sa
id ‘bear.’”

  “Hee hee hee. It must be a joke. We don’t have bears.”

  “Of course we don’t have bears, but that’s what he said, and I don’t think he was kidding.”

  This threw us into a moment of troubled thought. Then Drover brightened. “Wait, here’s an idea. Maybe he said ‘burro’ instead of ‘bear.’ They sound kind of the same: burro and bear.”

  “Hmmm. Actually, that makes a certain amount of sense. Yes, of course. He saw a donkey crossing the road.”

  “Yeah, and maybe his name was Donkey Hoety and somebody was trying to pin a tail on him.”

  “It all fits together, doesn’t it? By George, I think we’ve finally figured it out. Slim saw a donkey crossing the road.”

  “Yeah, but I wonder why he crossed the road.”

  “That’s easy. We just apply Higher Logic. Why does a chicken cross the road?”

  He wadded up his face in a pose of deep concentration. “Well, let me think. To get to the other side?”

  “Exactly, very good. Now let’s move to the next step. If a chicken crosses the road to get to the other side, why does a donkey cross the road?”

  He struggled with this one. “Well, let’s see. ‘Cause he’s chasing the chicken?”

  “No, absolutely wrong. Donkeys don’t chase chickens.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t ask me such hard questions.”

  “Drover, it’s so obvious you can’t see it, but I’ll give you a hint. Chicken, road, donkey, road.”

  A big smile bloomed on his mouth. “Oh, I get it now. The chicken rode the donkey. Hee hee, boy, that was easy.”

  What can you say? Nothing. There are some events in our lives that can’t be explained, and some dogs that can’t be helped. “Nice work, son, you really nailed it.”

  “Thanks, but I couldn’t have done it without your help.”

  “Right. It was a good hint, wasn’t it? I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

  “Yeah, I love getting the right answers. It makes me tingle all over.”

  While he tingled all over, I stared out the window and wondered how this nincompoop had ended up on my staff. Just bad luck, I guess.

  Where were we?

  Oh yes, burros. We had unauthorized donkeys on the ranch, so I opened a new file, The Case of the Wandering Donkey, and our Special Crimes Division put out an APB for a four-legged, long-eared animal named “Donkey Hoety.”

  Oh, by the way, APB is our shorthand for All Points Bulletin. Is that impressive or what? You bet. You know, if the people on this outfit paid more attention to their dogs, things would run a lot smoother. But let’s don’t get started on that.

  The point is that for the rest of the day, while Slim drove from pasture to pasture, Drover and I kept the whole ranch under surveillance. I mean, we left no stern untoned. We checked out every animal on the ranch, and compared them to our profiles of donkeys and burros.

  You’re probably wondering, “What’s the difference between a donkey and a burro?” Great question. The answer is, they both have big ears. But the impoitant poink is that our surveillance of animals on the ranch turned up no unidentified donkeys or burros. At the end of our daily feed run, Donkey Hoety was still unaccounted for.

  To be honest, it caused me to wonder if Slim actually had seen a donkey or if he’d been daydreaming. On this outfit, we’re never sure.

  Chapter Two: An Evening of Fun and Entertainment

  Well, there you have a rare glimpse of what goes on behind closed doors at the Security Division. A lot of people think that ranch dogs just sit around all day, scratching fleas and barking at birds. Ha. Far from it.

  The truth is, we collect a vast amount of information every day. Some of it is reliable, some is just garbage. We have to sort through every bit of it, give it shape, and provide the kind of heavy duty analysis that brings it into hocus pocus.

  Wait. Into focus, sharp focus. We rarely get involved in hocus pocus.

  Come to think of it, what is hocus pocus? I’m not sure, so let’s skip it.

  Data analysis is one of the most difficult parts of this job, because we’re surrounded by people who are dedicated to pulling pranks and goofing off. We dogs never know what to believe and are often left bewildered, faced with the challenge of trying to figure out if it’s raining or Tuesday. Sometimes it’s both, sometimes it’s neither, and it’s our job to sort it all out.

  But the point is that the Security Division sifted through a mountain of data and started a file for The Case of the Wandering Donkey. In the space of a few short minutes, we had come up with a name for the suspect (Donkey Hoety) and a motive (he was looking for his tail).

  It’s pretty amazing what two dogs can do when they put their minds together, isn’t it? You bet.

  Late that afternoon, we made our way back to Slim’s shack. Drover and I had recently moved the Security Division’s command post from its normal location at ranch headquarters, down to Slim Chance’s bachelor shack on the banks of Wolf Creek. We do this every year when the weather turns cold. We’ve found that our communications gear functions better at Slim’s place, and you know how important it is to have all that high-tech equipment working in top shape.

  Also, Slim let’s his dogs stay in the house on cold winter nights, heh heh, and, well, that’s a huge factor in keeping up the morale of the unit. Studies have shown that dogs who sleep inside houses with warm stoves perform 83% better than those who sleep on frozen gunny sack beds beneath gas tanks.

  I mean, this isn’t just the opinion of one dog who’s got some skin in the game. This stuff has been studied and documented. If you want your Security Division to be sharp and alert, bring ‘em inside and let ‘em stretch out beside the friendly glow of a wood-burning stove.

  Slim had his faults, but on the matter of Dogs In The House, he was on the cutting edge of ranch management. The man had learned that a happy, well-rested Security Division is the best investment a ranch can make.

  Anyway, we made it back to Slim’s place around sundown. In February, darkness comes early, around six o’clock, and it can be very dark. Maybe that seems obvious, that darkness is dark, but it’s also true. Around here, our darkness is dark.

  The fire in Slim’s wood stove had died down to embers, so he brought in a load of chinaberry and mesquite wood, and chunked up the stove. Before long, the house was warm and cozy, and Slim set about making himself some supper.

  He’s a bachelor, you know, and doesn’t spend a lot of time in the kitchen. His suppers usually come straight out of a can: hash, Vienna sausage, sardines, or mackerel, the stinkingest fish you can buy. It smells almost as bad as cat food. Don’t eat his mackerel sandwiches.

  But on this particular evening, he must have been feeling inspired, because he actually cooked something. Yes sir, he made a big pot of boiled chicken gizzards, added two bullion cubes to give them some flavor, and even dumped some rice into the pot.

  Why chicken gizzards? Very few people will eat gizzards, so they’re cheap, and that makes them perfect food for bachelor cowboys. Most folks grocery-shop for nutrition and taste. Bachelors shop for cheap.

  Hey, and get this. After supper, he even spent some time cleaning up the kitchen. He swept all the crumbs off the dinner table and onto the floor, which is a smart thing to do. It keeps the mice from crawling around on your eating surface. Then he placed his dirty dishes into the freezer compartment of the refrigerator.

  Smart move. Several rounds of food poisoning had taught him a valuable lesson about sanitation: if you don’t freeze those dirty dishes, they’ll come back to bite you.

  Then we all moved into the living room and began an evening of fun and excitement. That’s a joke. Long winter evenings at Slim’s place weren’t exactly electric experiences. We didn’t do much. Drover stretched out on the floor, while I found a more comfortable spot on…

  “Get out
of my chair.”

  …on the floor beside Drover. Gee, what a grouch. Slim took the only comfortable chair in the house and settled into reading the latest issue of Western Horseman magazine. That lasted for about thirty minutes, then he got restless, went back into the kitchen, and made a batch of popcorn.

  Somehow he managed to scorch the first batch, and we’re talking about a cloud of smoke that filled the entire house. He had to open all the doors and windows to let the place air out, and by the time the smoke had cleared, the temperature in the house was about right for hanging a side of beef. Cold.

  But he made another batch and ended up with a bowl of fluffy popcorn. He returned to his chair and crunched away on his evening treat, while Drover and I...well, we had some interest in this, you might say, and we took up positions at Slim’s feet. There, we watched him eat. We moved our front paws up and down, licked our chops, thumped our tails on the floor (I did; Drover’s tail was too short), and uttered Groans of Desire.

  I don’t often resort to Groans of Desire because, well, they sound a lot like begging, and I’m no beggar. But sometimes our people don’t take hints and we have to dig into our bag of tricks.

  We set up shop at his feet and launched ourselves into Groans of Desire. At first, they had no effect. He kept stuffing his face. Oh, he knew we wanted to share his popcorn, but he just grinned and kept eating.

  We cranked up the Groans and at last he said, “Would y’all like to have some popcorn?”

  You see what we have to put up with? OF COURSE WE WANTED SOME POPCORN! Any rock, tree, or fence post on the ranch would have known that we wanted some popcorn.

  He grinned. “Okay, I’ll make a deal. If you can catch it out of the air, I’ll let you have some.”

  I turned to Drover. “What do you think, can we handle this?”

  “Oh yeah, let’s do it.”

  And that’s what we did. For the next hour, we played Slow Pitch Popcorn. Slim did the pitching and we dogs did the catching, and you know what? We were pretty good at it. We muffed a few shots at the beginning (sometimes that popcorn will bounce off your nose, don’t you see), but we got better with practice. By the end of the game, Slim was giving us long fly balls that went looping all the way up to the ceiling, and we snagged every one of them. Most of them.