The Case of the Most Ancient Bone Read online

  The Case of the Most Ancient Bone

  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, 2007.

  Currently published by Maverick Books, Inc., 2012

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  Copyright © John R. Erickson, 2007

  All rights reserved

  Maverick Books, Inc. Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59188-150-6

  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

  #50 has to be dedicated to the gal who brung me to the dance, Kris Erickson, my wife of 39 years. With love and gratitude.

  Contents

  Chapter One Unbearable Heat!

  Chapter Two Windmill Problems

  Chapter Three Sally May’s Oasis

  Chapter Four A Conversation with the Cat

  Chapter Five Alfred and I Go into the Lemonade Business

  Chapter Six Our Very First Customer

  Chapter Seven I Charm a Lady Dog from Boston

  Chapter Eight A New Assignment

  Chapter Nine My New Career Gets Put On Hold

  Chapter Ten I Do Business with the Cat

  Chapter Eleven A Thermonuclear Moment

  Chapter Twelve The Cremated Roast Beef

  Chapter Thirteen I Get Demoted

  Chapter Fourteen The Runt Gets His Big Chance

  Chapter Fifteen Warning! This Chapter Contains Cannibal Material!

  Chapter Sixteen I Start My New Job

  Chapter Seventeen Sardina’s Weird Sister

  Chapter Eighteen Never Mess with a Dog Named Choo Choo

  Chapter Nineteen Stricken with Tongue Hungalosis

  Chapter Twenty I Break Out of Prison

  Chapter Twenty-One The Cannibals Try to Steal My Bone

  Chapter Twenty-Two The Cannibals Eat Me

  Chapter Twenty-Three The Amazing Conclusion

  Chapter One: Unbearable Heat!

  It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. The drama began around the end of July, a very hot and ugly part of the year. It wasn’t a great time for me to fall madly in love with Sardina Bandana or to launch myself into a new career, but things always have a way of happening when they happen.

  We’d had week after week of awful heat and no rain. All the ponds on the ranch dried up, and the creek turned into a ribbon of sand. Why, it was so dry that wild animals were coming up to headquarters to drink water from the stock tanks in the corrals, and we’re talking about roadrunners, deer, skunks, raccoons, and even coyotes.

  Yes sir, coyotes. In normal times, a coyote won’t go anywhere near a place where people stay, but the combination of heat and thirst had made them even bolder and more dangerous than normal. As you will see, that will cause serious problems later in the story, but that’s later in the story and we’re not there yet, so forget I mentioned it.

  We were discussing heat. There are certain times when a dog has energy and ambition, and there are times when he just . . . melts, tries to hide from the hateful glare of the sun, and wishes that the summer would come to an end already.

  That’s the way it was that day in July. Ugly weather. It was the middle of the morning and already the air was hot and still. Heat waves shimmered on the horizon. The pastures were parched and brown, the grass so brittle that it crackled under your feet. The trees were wilted. Even the weeds were wilted. The roads were so dry they had turned to powder. When a vehicle approached, you could see it coming for miles, throwing up a long plume of dust.

  Drover and I had done our routine patrols in the cool of morning. Then, at nine o’clock, we shifted into our Dog Maintenance Program. Are you familiar with the DMP? Maybe not, so let’s go over it. Pay attention. I don’t want to have to repeat myself. It’s too hot.

  The Dog Maintenance Program is our way of conserving our precious reserves of energy and coping with terrible heat. The first thing we do is find a nice piece of shade. Next, we scratch up the ground and remove the top layer of soil. Why? Simple. In the middle of summer, the ground is hot. To find a cooler layer of dirt, we have to do some digging, which is too bad, because digging just makes us even hotter.

  But once we remove the top two inches of soil, we have ourselves a little hole into which we can pour our molten bodies. We flop down into our holes and proceed to the Second Phase of the DMP, in which we . . . well, we don’t do much of anything, to be honest, and that’s the whole point of the DMP. We pant for air and let drops of water drip off our respective tongues. When the need arises, we flick our ears to ward off pesky flies and hateful wasps.

  But mostly what we do in the DMP is . . . stare. We stare out at the heat waves shimmering on the horizon. We stare at the dust clouds created by vehicles on the county road. We stare at the wild turkeys huddled under the shade of nearby trees. We pant and stare at the turkeys, and they pant and stare back at us.

  Does that sound pretty boring? It is, but that’s what we do in the heat of summer. We pant and stare and . . . I don’t know, wait for winter to come, I suppose.

  That’s what we were doing on that particular morning. Drover and I had initiated the Dog Maintenance Program and were waiting for a blizzard to rescue us from the heat, when all at once I noticed . . .

  “Drover, why are you staring at me?”

  He blinked his eyes and grinned. “Oh, hi. Did you say something?”

  “I did, yes. I asked why you’re staring at me.”

  “Oh. Was I staring at you?”

  “Yes. That’s why I asked the question. What’s the answer?”

  “Well, let me think here. What was the question again?”

  “Why are you staring at me?”

  “Oh. You noticed?”

  “Of course I noticed. Answer the question and hurry up.”

  “Well, I guess I was staring at you because . . . I didn’t have the energy to stare at anything else. It’s hot out here.”

  “I realize that it’s hot, Drover, but how much energy would it take for you to move your eyeballs one inch to the left or right? That’s all it would take, you see. Just move your eyeballs one inch.”

  “Which way?”

  “I don’t care. Just move them.” He moved his gaze one inch to the left. “Thanks. I know that was asking a lot, but I appreciate it.”

  There was a moment of silence. “How come I can’t stare at you?”

  “Because I don’t enjoy being stared at.”

  “Well . . .” A quiver came into his voice. “It kind of hurts my feelings.”

  “Oh brother. Look, what if I sat around all day, staring at you? How would you like that?”

  “I wouldn’t care. That’s what friends are for.”

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sp; “Okay, buddy, we’ll put that to the test. I will now direct my gaze at you and stare, and we’ll just see how you like it.”

  I went to the huge effort of shifting my eyeballs two full inches to the left and began the Staring Procedure. Oh, and I even narrowed my eyes, just to put a little edge on my gaze. Minutes passed and soon I began to feel the strain.

  “What do you say now? How does it feel to be stared at, huh?”

  “It doesn’t bother me.”

  “Of course it bothers you. Nobody enjoys being stared at. Why don’t you just come out and admit it?”

  “ ’Cause I don’t care. I’m too hot to care.”

  “Okay, fine. I’ll keep it up. I’ll stare at you for the rest of the day.”

  I continued to direct my gaze toward Drover’s face and let my eyes blur into his murfing mork ponking honkeypoof . . . let my eyes bore into his . . . snerk muff mork . . .

  The heat, the terrible heat was burning me up and all at once I was having trouble . . . snorff . . . keeping my pielids . . . keeping my eyelids open, shall we say, and I felt my inner-self being pulled into the dark tunnel of . . . zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  Suddenly I heard a voice from outside the tunnel. It said, and this is a direct quote, it said, “How come you quit staring at me?”

  My eyelids quivered, and I heard myself say, “It wasn’t me, you can’t prove a thing.” Then . . . hmmm . . . my vision returned to the present moment and I found myself looking into the eyes of . . . Drover. “Oh, it’s you again. What were we discussing? I seem to have lost the thread of my train . . . the train of my track . . . my train of thought.”

  He grinned. “Well, you said you were going to stare at me all day, but I think you fell asleep.”

  “Yes, of course, it’s all coming back to me now.” I pushed myself up on all-fours and shook the vapors out of my head. “Drover, this heat is destroying our lives. It’s forcing us into irrational forms of behavior, such as staring at each other. It’s even leading us into loony conversations. If we don’t do something to fight against the forces of chaos, we’ll sink into the mire and become a couple of worthless dogs.”

  He yawned. “Gosh, what should we do?”

  I began pacing, as I often do when my mind has shifted into a higher level. “We’ll fight back, Drover. We’ll get up off our duffs and call upon our reserves of Iron Discipline. We’re cowdogs, don’t ever forget that.”

  “Not me. I’m just a mutt.”

  “Okay, you’re just a mutt, but I’m a cowdog, and cowdogs have always been just a little bit special. Here’s the plan. On the count of three, we will . . .” Suddenly my legs wilted and I collapsed to the ground. “On the count of three, we will do nothing.”

  “I think I can handle that.”

  “Because this heat is killing us.”

  “Yeah, it’s hot.”

  “And the terrible heat has melted our reserves of Iron Discipline and turned us into chicken soup.”

  “Boy, I love soup.”

  “But that doesn’t mean that you can stare at me, Drover. It’s an invasion of my privacy and I will not tolerate it, do you understand?”

  He yawned again. “What?”

  “I said, this private invasion of my tolerance must stop!”

  “I thought it was chicken soup.”

  “Of course it was chicken soup, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be intolerant once in a while.”

  He gave me a blank stare. “I think I missed something.”

  I gave him a blank stare. “Yes, I’m getting that same feeling myself. It’s the heat, Drover. It’s causing us to babble and behave like lunatics.”

  “Oh no. What should we do?”

  I cut my eyes from side to side. It was a moment of decision. “Let’s . . . let’s just lie here and do nothing. We’ll wait for the first snowstorm of the season.”

  “Yeah, and maybe we should stare at each other.”

  “Great idea. Okay, now we have a plan. On the count of three, we’ll put our plan into action.”

  “Someone’s coming.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Drover pointed a paw toward a cloud of dust to the north. “Someone’s coming. I think it’s a pickup.”

  “You know what? I don’t care.”

  “Yeah, me neither.” After a few moments, he said, “I bet that pickup’s coming to the machine shed, right where we are.”

  “I still don’t care.”

  “Yeah, but we’re right in the way. What if he runs over us?”

  I ran that report through Data Control. “Maybe we should move.”

  I hated to go to so much trouble, but it’s a good thing we did. Moments later, an unidentified pickup rolled up in front of the machine shed doors. If we hadn’t moved, we might have gotten smashed flat as two pancakes.

  Chapter Two: Windmill Problems

  Perhaps you’re asking yourself, “If it was an unidentified pickup, why didn’t the dogs bark at it?” Great question. As you know, barking at strangers is an important part of our job on this outfit, and very seldom do we miss an opportunity to do it.

  This time, we did. Why? Too hot. But it would have been a waste of time anyway, because it turned out that it wasn’t an unidentified pickup after all. The pickup belonged to our ranch. Slim and Loper had come back to the machine shed for some supplies or equipment.

  When they stepped out of the pickup, my keen eyes picked up an important clue: Loper was having a bad day. He looked mad and disgusted.

  The moment his boots touched the ground, he growled, “The stinking windmill pumped all winter and never missed a stroke. When we didn’t need the water, it gave us water, water, and more water. Now it’s hot and what does it do? It quits pumping and we’ve got fifty cows, standing on their heads at the tank, trying to get a drink!”

  Slim nodded and shifted his toothpick to the left side of his mouth. “It don’t seem fair, does it?”

  “No! It makes me so mad . . .”

  Slim waited to hear the rest of the sentence. When it didn’t come, he said, “But you know what? I think a hurricane might be worse.”

  Loper turned halfway around and stared at him for a long moment. “What?”

  “If we ranched down on the Gulf coast, we’d have hurricanes and then we’d have to worry about floods. Your cows might be swimming around and hung up in the tops of trees. You wouldn’t like that either.”

  Loper turned his gaze to the ground and shook his head. “Slim, that is the dumbest thing you’ve said in two weeks.”

  “No, it ain’t. All I’m saying is that a man shouldn’t complain about his problems, ’cause there might be worse problems in this old world.”

  “Slim, this is my ranch and if I want to complain about a busted windmill in the middle of a heatwave, I’ll complain about it.”

  “I know you will, ’cause that’s all you’ve been doing for the past thirty minutes.”

  “The Constitution of the United States of America gives me the right to complain about ignorant windmills.”­

  “Loper, every now and then, a man ought to stop whining and count his blessings.”

  Loper gave him a ferocious glare. “Whining, huh? All right, buddy, I’ll count my blessings: one, two, three. There, are you happy?”

  “No, you didn’t say what they are.”

  Loper began slashing a finger through the air. “Blessing Number One is that you’re not twins. Blessing Number Two is that at the end of a long hot day, I don’t have to eat your bachelor cooking. Blessing Number Three is that I’ve got a radio in that pickup, so when you start yapping about blessings, I can turn up the volume. There!”

  “Loper, you’re worse than a mule. You didn’t say a word about being grateful that we don’t have floods and earthquakes and bluebonnet plague.”

  “Yeah? Well,
I’m not. I’m mad at the windmill and I plan to stay mad until we get it fixed . . . speaking of which, do you suppose you could start gathering up our windmill tools?”

  Slim shifted his toothpick over to the other side of his mouth. “Well, I probably could, but I still say . . .”

  “Good!” Loper whirled around and headed for the machine shed. “We’ll need the block and tackle, a box of windmill leathers, a chain, wrenches, a socket set . . .” He vanished inside the barn, and his voice became a faint rumble.

  Slim heaved a sigh and looked down at me. “His momma enrolled him in charm school, but he flunked out. Pooch, you want to go in my place and help Uncle Scrooge fix the windmill?”

  Uh . . . no thanks. I had attended a couple of windmill-fixing episodes and that was plenty.

  With great effort, Slim pointed his bony frame toward the barn and began walking. At the entrance, he glanced back at me and winked. “Watch this.” He turned toward the barn door and yelled out, “Loper, I just have a feeling this is going to be a wonderful day.” He flinched, waiting for the thunder and lightning.

  It came. Inside the barn, Loper’s voice boomed, “Slim, when you get fired from this job, which could happen any day now, you can go into preaching full-time. Until then, please dry up and try to make yourself useful!”

  Slim chuckled and shuffled into the barn, and for the next ten minutes, the air was filled with the sounds of clanging and banging as the men gathered up their tools. They made three trips from the barn to the pickup, lugging ropes and cables and heavy boxes of windmill parts.

  Slim was still trying to make conversation. “Loper, do you know how many cowboys it takes to screw in a lightbulb?”

  “No.”

  “You’ll love this. It takes four—one to hold the lightbulb and three to turn the house. Heh.”

  Loper dumped his load onto the pickup’s flatbed, jerked a red bandana out of his hip pocket, and . . . this was pretty amazing . . . stuffed the two ends of the rag into his ears. He gave Slim a fanged smile and went back into the barn for another load.