The Case of the Raging Rottweiler Read online

  The Case of the Raging Rottweiler

  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, 2000.

  Currently published by Maverick Books, Inc., 2013

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © John R. Erickson, 2000

  All rights reserved

  Maverick Books, Inc. Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59188-136-0

  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 the memory of Lane Anderson

  Contents

  Chapter One The Mystery Begins

  Chapter Two Bruiser, the Raging Rottweiler

  Chapter Three Slim Clips His Toenails

  Chapter Four The Big Mouse Safari

  Chapter Five A Mysterious Phone Call in the Night

  Chapter Six A Phantom in the Darkness

  Chapter Seven Bruiser Returns

  Chapter Eight Much Too Scary for Most Readers

  Chapter Nine Slim and I Check Cattle

  Chapter Ten I Impress All the Lady Dogs in Town

  Chapter Eleven You’ll Never Guess Who Showed Up

  Chapter Twelve My Triumph over the Raging Rottweiler

  Chapter One: The Mystery Begins

  It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. The mystery began one evening toward the end of May, as I recall. Yes, it was May. I’m sure it was, because “May” is a three-letter word that if spelled backward comes out “yam.” A yam is a sweet potato, don’t you see, and is similar to a regular Irish potato.

  What does all this have to do with the Case of the Raging Rottweiler? Be patient, I’m getting there.

  See, in the Security Business, we often employ little memory tricks to help us recall the many facts and clues we encounter in our work. Example: “May” spelled backward comes out “yam.” A yam is a form of potato, right? You will be shocked to know that the night this adventure began, Slim cooked himself a baked potato for supper.

  You see the connection now? It all fits together—May, yam, Irish potato, and baked potato—and that’s how I remember that this case began in May. Pretty clever, huh? You bet. In the Security Busi­ness, we often employ . . . I’ve already said that.

  Where were we? We were at the beginning, and that happens to be the point at which most of these mysteries begin. It all began, as I recall, around the middle of June. We were in the grip of a heat wave, day after day of temperatures over a hundred degrees. Terrible heat, and also very dry.

  No rain. Our spring grass had turned brown. The buffalo grass had stopped growing. Stock ponds were drying up and turning into mudholes. Slim was keeping a close watch on our windmills, checking them every other day instead of the usual twice a week.

  Have we discussed the importance of windmills on a cattle ranch? Maybe not, but I guess we should. On a ranching operation such as this one, most of our water for the livestock is pumped out of the ground by windmills. Nothing is more important in the summertime than a supply of fresh water. If cattle run out of water, fellers, we have big problems. We either have to haul water to the cattle in a water trailer or move the cattle to another pasture.

  What makes the water situation especially scary is that if the wind quits blowing, the windmills quit turning—all of them. And then we have water problems everywhere at once. Our situation wasn’t quite that serious. It was hot and dry, but the wind was still blowing and turning those wind­mills, and for that we were grateful.

  It’s kind of impressive that a dog would know so much about ranch management, isn’t it? Most of your ordinary mutts (Drover comes to mind here) pay no attention to such matters. They eat, lie around in the shade, scratch a few fleas, and maybe bark at a cat every once in a while, but they pay no attention to the Larger Issues.

  Me? I have to stay on top of things. Have I mentioned that I’m Head of Ranch Security? I am, which means I’m not only in charge of Surveillance and Investigations, but I have to keep a close eye on these other matters, too.

  Anyways, it was July and hot. Drover and I had spent the day checking cattle and windmills with Slim Chance, the cowboy. It was around eight o’clock in the evening, just before sundown, when we returned to Slim’s shack, some two miles east of ranch headquarters. Slim got out of the pickup and stretched a kink out of his back. Whilst he was involved in that, Drover and I left our spots on the pickup seat and jumped out.

  I noticed that a scowl moved across Slim’s face and that his eyes seemed to have locked on . . . something, something inside the pickup. The seat perhaps? It was hard to tell, but Slim was giving it a close inspection.

  “Is there some reason why you mutts have to shed hair all over my pickup seat?”

  Well, I . . . I didn’t know how to respond to that. Had we shed a few hairs?

  He pointed toward the evidence. “Look at that. I let you bozos ride up front with the executives, and that’s the thanks I get.”

  I looked closer. You know, he was right. Even at a distance, I could see that certain unnamed suspects had deposited ugly dog hairs on the back of his pickup seat.

  I whirled around and stabbed Drover with a glare of steel. “You see what you’ve done?”

  He blinked his eyes and grinned. “Oh, hi. Are we home already? Gosh, I must have dozed off.”

  “Of course you dozed off. You always doze off, but that’s not the problem.”

  “Oh good. I sure love sleep. What’s the problem?”

  I pointed my nose toward the inside of the pickup. “Check that out, Drover. Study the evidence.”

  He studied the evidence. “Well, let’s see here. I don’t see anything.”

  “Dog hairs. Hundreds of ’em, thousands of ’em. They’re all over Slim’s pickup seat. Can you guess where they came from?”

  He sat down and squinted one eye. “Well, let me think. Uh . . . a dog?”

  “Very good. Cat hair comes from cats. Hog hair comes from hogs. Dog hair comes from dogs.”

  “I’ll be derned. I didn’t know hogs had hair.”

  “They do. All fur-boring animals have hair. Hogs are boring animals. Therefore, they have hair.”

  “I thought they had bristles.”

  “No. You’re thinking of brushes. Brushes have bristles. Hogs have hair.”

  “I’ll be derned. What makes ’em so boring?”

  “They’re boring, Drover, because they grunt all the time. If they had anything to say, maybe they wouldn’t be so boring, but their answer to everything is a grunt.”

  “Yeah, and who cares what a hog thinks anyway?”

  “Exactly my point. And let that be a lesson to you.”

  Just then, Slim pointed down to the creek. “Lookie yond
er. There’s our doe and fawn again.” He gave us the evil eye. “Don’t you dogs even think about chasing those deer.”

  Who, me? Hey, he didn’t need to . . .

  Sure enough, on the other side of the creek was a whitetail doe and her fawn. They’d been coming in for water the past several days, and Slim sure didn’t need to worry about me barking them away. No sir. The thought had never . . .

  Okay, maybe I’d thought about it once or twice. I mean, barking at wild animals was second nature to a dog, but Slim had made his position clear on the matter and I had taken a solemn pledge not to bother his deer. Heck, I had even promised to protect them.

  At that very moment, my ears picked up the sound of an approaching vehicle. That was odd, very odd. Who would be coming to Slim’s place at this hour of the day? I didn’t know, and it didn’t really matter. The vehicle had no business on our ranch, and it was time for us dogs to bark the alarm.

  “Drover, we’ve got an unidentified vehicle coming in from the south. This could turn into a Code Three Situation. Let’s move out.”

  We went streaking past Slim’s pitiful little yard. It was pitiful because it contained no grass, only weeds, and most of those weeds were withered and brown from the heat. We roared past the yard, past the house, and went ripping up the hill to the cattle guard.

  There, sure enough, we met the Unauthorized Vehicle. Description: old Ford, faded blue, conventional box bed, a dent in the right fender. A driver appeared to be sitting . . . well, in the driver’s seat. I guess that wasn’t such a big clue, but I took note of it anyway.

  When you’re Head of Ranch Security, you have to notice every tiny detail. I mean, if there had been no driver, that would have been . . . never mind.

  But there was a driver. A man, age . . . I couldn’t tell his age. Maybe forty. He was wearing a straw cowboy hat and a T-shirt, an odd combination. See, cowboys—your real working cowboys—wear long-sleeved shirts, never T-shirts. There are reasons for that, but we’re in the middle of a Code Three and I don’t have time to go into them now.

  Oh, maybe we can pause for just a minute. Cowboys wear long-sleeved shirts to protect them­selves from sun and biting insects. Men who wear T-shirts usually aren’t ranch cowboys.

  Okay, back to the Unidentified Vehicle. We swooped in on it, Drover and I did, and within seconds we had it surrounded. I gave the order to initiate Warning Barks. When the pickup didn’t screech to a halt, we shifted into the next stage, which we call “You’d Better Stop That Thing Right Now.”

  It’s a more serious kind of barking, don’t you see, and a lot of times the driver of the vehicle will slam on his brakes and step out of the cab with his hands in the air. No kidding.

  But that’s not what this guy did. He kept driv­ing, I mean, just ignored us, kept going and left us in a cloud of dust. Caliche dust, very fine and powdery because of the dryness of the weather, and I didn’t appreciate having to breathe it.

  Already I wasn’t liking this guy, and then I noticed a couple of clues that made me like him even less. First off, he had two fishing poles hanging out the window on the passenger side, an indication that he might be a poached fisherman.

  A fishing poacherman.

  A poaching fisherman.

  A poacher. A trespasser. The kind of guy who slips onto a ranch and fishes without the permission of the owners. I don’t like ’em. They have no respect for private property. They come in without permission, catch fish, and leave their garbage behind—candy wrappers, beer cans, soda pop bottles—and we have to clean up the mess.

  So, right away, I had three or four good reasons for disliking this guy, and after choking on his dust for a few seconds, I sprang back into action and chased him all the way to Slim’s little shack of a barn. Drover fell in behind me and added a few yips.

  It must have worked. The trespasser pulled up beside Slim’s pickup and stopped. I quit barking and waited to see what would happen.

  Slim slouched against the pickup and stuck out his hand. “Well I’ll be derned. Joe McCall. I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  They shook hands. “It was at a team roping in Higgins, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s right. Me and Loper were lookin’ at the prize money right up to the last go-round. Then you caught your steer in seven seconds flat. We went home broke, and I’ve been broke ever since. I always figured it was mostly your fault.”

  Joe laughed. “We got lucky, is all. You guys were hot that night. You still rope?”

  “In the pasture, is all. My banker sent a little note with my fifth overdraft and said I might want to explore other career opportunities. I guess he’d done figured out that I wasn’t going to make it to the National Finals.”

  Joe nodded and smiled. “I hear you. Me too. Having to grow up is terrible, ain’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m still fightin’ it. Well, heck, get out and stretch your legs. What brings you out here to the wilderness?”

  Joe got out and stretched. “Well, I had a day off and did a little fishing at the lake. I was on my way home and thought I’d stop by and say howdy.”

  Slim’s gaze went to the bed of the pickup. “What’s that you’re hauling back there?”

  Joe’s smile faded. “Oh, that’s Bruiser, my brother’s dog. He’s a rottweiler. I’m baby-sitting this week.”

  I shot a glance at Drover. “Did you hear that? There’s an unauthorized dog in the back of that pickup. Come on, son, we need to check this out.”

  We went streaking over to the pickup, and so the mystery began.

  Chapter Two: Bruiser, the Raging Rottweiler

  Joe let down the tailgate of the pickup, just as Drover and I arrived to begin our investigation of this new dog.

  Have we discussed the ranch’s position on visiting dogs? Maybe not. We always check ’em out pretty carefully, and for very good reason. Some of those town dogs will try to chase cattle, and that’s a major No-No. A huge No-No. In ranch country, dogs who chase cattle are very unpopular, and they don’t last long.

  Yes, we would have to speak with this mutt and get a few things . . .

  HUH?

  I saw him. There he was.

  That wasn’t a dog. It was a BEAR, a huge, enormous grizzly bear!

  I, uh, did a sudden about-face and found my steps leading to the underside of Joe’s, uh, pickup, so to speak. There, to my surprise, I found Drover cowering in the dust.

  “What are you doing under here? You’re supposed to be interrogating that dog.”

  “Not me. I saw him, and he looks like a gorilla. I never interrogate gorillas.”

  “Oh, rubbish. He’s just a dog. He puts on his pants the same way we do.”

  “His pants would make a tent for me. You go. I’ll wait here.”

  Well, I couldn’t allow Drover to know . . . to think, let us say, that I was . . . well . . . nervous or uneasy about this new dog on the ranch. I mean, that would have ruined him—Drover, that is. Part of my job on this outfit is setting a good example for all the employees of the Security Division. For Drover, actually. Someone from the Security Divi­sion had to check it out, and it appeared that it would be me.

  I gave the runt a withering glare. “All right, I’ll go, but I must warn you, Drover. This will have to go into my report.”

  “Fine with me.”

  “What?”

  “I said . . . oh darn. Drat.”

  “I’m sorry, but the regulations are very clear on this. You will get three Chicken Marks.”

  With that, I whirled away from Drover and marched . . . okay, maybe I didn’t march out from under the pickup. I scooted and crawled, but the important thing was that I put in an appearance. I was there to show the flag for the Security Divi­sion, and to let this mutt know . . .

  He saw me and started growling.

  . . . to let this fella know how happy
we were to, uh, have visitors on the ranch. We don’t get many visitors, don’t you know, and it was always nice . . .

  I worked up a friendly smile and waved a paw in greeting. “Hi there.”

  He glared and growled. Gad, what an ugly dog! What had they called him? A “rottenwiler”? He looked rotten, all right, rotten and enormous. I mean, the guy must have weighed a hundred pounds.

  A rottweiler, that’s what they called him.

  Anyways, we were sure proud to have him visiting the ranch. I sat very still and listened.

  Joe sat on the tailgate and called the dog to him. “Come here, Bruiser. Be still. Those dogs won’t hurt you.”

  Slim took a toothpick out of his hatband and ran it through his teeth. “That’s a mighty big dog. I’d say there ain’t much chance that Hank and Drover would hurt him. I’ve heard stories about them rottweilers. Some of ’em have a bad attitude.”

  Joe nodded. “He is a big dog, and he ought to be able to whip his weight in wildcats. But you know, he’s as silly as a goose. Most of the time he goes around acting like King Kong, but he’s scared to death of my wife’s cat.”

  “Aw heck. Scared of a cat?”

  “Yes sir. And the other day, he saw himself in a mirror and spent three hours hiding in the closet. To tell you the truth, I think he’s a little bit . . .” Joe’s finger drew circles in the air beside his head. “I’ll be glad when my brother gets back home.”

  Just then, Bruiser’s head shot up. He’d seen our doe and fawn down by the creek. A growl sprang from his throat. He started barking and made a lunge. Joe grabbed one of his legs and tried to hang on, but Bruiser tore away from him, dived out of the pickup, and headed straight for the deer.

  “Bruiser, come back here! Bruiser!”

  Well, I was just sitting there, observing and minding my own business. Next thing I knew, Slim was standing over me. “Hank, go get ’im. Stop that dog before he kills the fawn.”

  I stared into his face. What? Stop the dog? Was he crazy? That dog, for his information, gave every appearance of being a hundred-and-fifty-pound wrecking machine, and if Slim thought . . .