The Case of the Tricky Trap Read online

  The Case of the Tricky Trap

  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: 978-1-59188-146-9

  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

  Dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, Mable Sherman Curry

  Contents

  Chapter One Salad Is Good for Dogs

  Chapter Two A Terrible Crime

  Chapter Three Dogs Should Never Eat Salad

  Chapter Four We Catch Something in Our Trap

  Chapter Five Voices in the Night

  Chapter Six We Catch Something Else in Our Trap

  Chapter Seven Wallace Sings a Dumb Little Song

  Chapter Eight Ruined!

  Chapter Nine Buzzard Voodoo

  Chapter Ten Drover Disappears in the Night

  Chapter Eleven Eddy’s Phony Helicopter

  Chapter Twelve Eddy Walks into My Trap

  Chapter One: Salad Is Good for Dogs

  It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. The mystery began on a cold gloomy day in February, as I recall. March. No, it was February, because February begins with an f and ends in a y, and has twenty-three letters in between.

  So, yes, it was a warm day in March. Drover and I had brought the ranch through another dark and dangerous night, had caught a few winks of sleep on our gunnysack beds, and had ventured out to do a routine patrol of ranch headquarters.

  We were down by the corrals when I noticed several sprigs of winter grass that had popped out beneath the bottom board of the corral fence. Maybe you think that a few sprigs of greenery should be no big deal, but it was. On our ranch, the first appearance of green grass is always a welcome sign, an omen that the dull brown grip of winter will soon fade into the soft days of spring.

  I paused and sniffed the grass. Drover noticed, and seemed surprised. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m stopping to smell the roses.”

  “Yeah, but it’s just grass.”

  “Drover, today we have grass and tomorrow we’ll have roses. This is the first green grass of the year and spring is on its way.” He gave me a blank stare. “What’s wrong with you? For three long months our world has been drab and brown, and here is a little splash of color. I’d think you’d be excited.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not.”

  I turned away from him and sniffed the greenery. “Who cares? I love the smell of this stuff. I mean, all winter we’ve lived with the smell of dust and dead leaves, but now . . .” I filled my lungs with the fragrance. “This is delicious! Wonderful! It smells almost good enough to eat.”

  I sniffed the grass again and all at once . . . well, the notion of eating some grass sounded pretty appealing, and you know what? Right then and there I nipped off the tender shoots of grass and swallowed them down.

  Drover’s eyes grew wide. “You ate grass?”

  “Of course I did. For your information, it’s not uncommon for dogs to eat grass, and do you know why?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t imagine.”

  “Then let me explain.” I began pacing back and forth in front of him, as I often do when I’m forced to expand his tiny mind. “Number one, green grass cleans our teeth and freshens our breath. Number two, it’s good for the digestion. Number three, after eating Co-op dog food all winter, we need some salad in our diet.”

  He stared at me. “Salad! I hate salad. It’s for rabbits.”

  “Drover, what’s good for rabbits is sometimes good for dogs. For your information, green grass contains many of the fillomens and mackerels that build healthy bones, hair, and muscle.”

  “You mean vitamins and minerals?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, I think you said something about mackerels.”

  I stopped pacing. “Drover, I said nothing about mackerels. Mackerels are fish. Fish live in water and they don’t eat grass.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “I’m trying to give you a lesson on diet and nutrition. I’d appreciate it if you’d pay attention and stop talking about fish.” I resumed my pacing. “Now, where was I?”

  “Fillomens and mackerels.”

  “Yes, of course. It’s common knowledge that Co-op dog food is made of sawdust and grease. Our people buy it because it’s cheap, but it contains just the bare minimum of fillomens and mackerels to keep a dog alive. That’s why we need salad in our diet from time to time.”

  “Yeah, but . . . eating grass?”

  “Drover, there’s more to this life than steak bones and meat. Doesn’t your body ever cry out for something green and nourishing?”

  He gave me a silly grin. “Nope. My body cries out for ice cream.”

  “Ice cream! No wonder you’ve turned out to be such a runt. Well, go ahead and be a stub-tailed, malnourished, half-starved little husk of a dog. I don’t care. I’m going to eat my vegetables and then we’ll see who’s sorry.”

  “Fine with me.”

  Why do I bother trying to help Drover? I don’t know. Experience has proven that it’s a waste of time, but for some reason . . . oh well.

  I had wasted my lecture on him, but that wasn’t going to keep me from attending to my own dietary needs. The still, small voice inside my body had informed me that, after a long drab winter, I needed greenery in my diet. So I left Drover to dream of ice cream and proceeded to harvest every tender sprig of green grass I could find.

  If he couldn’t learn anything from my lectures, then maybe he could learn from the force of my example. That’s the best way of teaching anyway, through example. The proof of the pudding is in the ice cream.

  You know, ice cream did sound pretty good, but I was on a Nourishment Crusade and had to put all thoughts of ice cream out of my mind. Thirty minutes of careful grazing left me in great shape, spiritually and nutritionally, and by the time I had harvested about three hundred tender blades of grass, I was more convinced than ever that . . .

  Well, that eating grass wasn’t as exciting as you might think. I mean, a little grass goes a long way for a dog. Sure, I’d had a craving for the stuff, but you can’t let those cravings get out of control. Moderation, that’s the secret—moderation in all things.

  Anyway, I took one last bite of grass, rolled it around in my mouth, and began to wonder how rabbits could stand to eat such garbage. I checked to make sure that Drover wasn’t looking and spit it out. Yuck.

  At that very moment, I heard the sound
of an approaching vehicle. I looked up and saw Slim Chance, the ranch’s hired hand, pulling up in front of the feed shed. And I knew it was exactly eight o’clock in the morning.

  You’re probably amazed that a dog would have such an uncanny sense of time. I mean, we don’t carry watches or clocks, so how could I have known that it was exactly eight o’clock?

  I’m sorry, but I can’t reveal that information. See, the world is full of spies and enemy agents, and we have to be very careful about who knows the inner workings of the Security Division. Those guys never sleep, they never rest. Day and night, they’re plotting mischief and looking for ways of hacking into our secret files. Why, if they knew all the formulas we use for keeping time . . .

  Oh, what the heck, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to give you a little peek. Okay, here we go. First off, we take precise measurements of the positions of the sun, the moon, and the planet Neeptide just before sunrise. Since the sun doesn’t exist before sunrise, we drop it from the equation and mush on. We add the numbers together, divide by the number of legs on a spider (7.35), and multiply by three.

  Why three? Well, it’s a nice little number and we’ve always liked it. Furthermore, if you were taking a walk down Numbers Lane, three is the number you would meet between two and four.

  If you do the math right, this complex equation will yield the exact time of day. But just in case we make some mistakes in our clackulations, we have ways of checking our work. For example, we have learned through careful observation that at eight o’clock in the wintertime, Slim Chance arrives at the feed shed. He has a coffee mug hooked onto the index finger of his right hand, his eyes are puffy, and he communicates in a language called Gruntlish.

  In Gruntlish, “Uh” means “Good morning, dogs” and “Uh grunt grunt uh” means “Get out of the way.” That’s about the extent of his morning conversation. Anyway, our system of keeping time works to perfection and now you’ve had a little peek at our secret methods. When Slim parked the pickup in front of the feed shed, we knew it was exactly eight o’clock in the morning. What did we do with that information? Not much, actually, but we knew it wasn’t raining or Tuesday.

  Slim dragged himself out of the pickup, looked down at me with a pair of red-rimmed eyeballs, and said, “Uh grunt grunt uh.” (Look one paragraph above for the translation.) He took a sip of coffee and threw open the shed door. For a moment, he stared inside, and then he muttered, “Uh uh grunt uh grunt grunt grunt!”

  Drover turned a puzzled gaze on me. “What did he say?”

  “I’m not sure. He’s not usually so talkative in the morning. We’ve never had to translate such a long speech.”

  “Well, he looks kind of mad. Maybe he saw a mouse or something.”

  I studied Slim’s face. Sure enough, he looked mad. “But why would he be mad about a mouse?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a mouse ate his cheese.”

  I beamed him a glare. “Drover, Slim puts his cheese in the refrigerator, not in the feed shed. Feed in the feed shed, cheese in the refrigerator. Do you see a pattern here?”

  “Yeah, but what about the pickles?”

  “Pickles? Drover, pickles have nothing to do with anything.”

  “Well, they have to do with hamburgers, and I love hamburgers.”

  I shoved him aside. “Out of the way, and don’t talk to me about pickles.”

  “Well, if you were a pickle, how would you feel if nobody ever talked about you?”

  I ignored him. Did I have time to discuss pickles? No. Slim had seen something unusual in the feed shed, and had gone to the effort of muttering, “Uh uh grunt uh grunt grunt grunt!” We had some kind of problem on the ranch and I had to find out what it was. I marched up beside my cowboy friend and turned my gaze into the shed.

  I was stunned, shocked. You see, Slim and I had just stumbled upon evidence of a terrible crime.

  Chapter Two: A Terrible Crime

  A fifty-pound paper sack of turkey corn had been ripped open and the contents strewn across the floor of the shed.

  What is “turkey corn”? Great question. See, Slim kept a sack of whole corn in the shed and every morning he threw some out on the ground for the wild turkeys. They’re shameless moochers, you know, those turkeys. Throw out a little corn and they’ll come running on their long gawky legs. After a few days of free corn, they won’t even wait for you to throw it out. They’ll run toward the sound of the pickup, and in fact that’s what they were doing at that very moment.

  I could hear them. Twenty-five head of turkey moochers were streaming toward the pickup, and had already started pushing and shoving, gobbling and squawking.

  It was enough to throw Drover into a panic. He came running up beside me. “Hank, oh my gosh, there’s a bunch of turkeys and I think . . .”

  “Shhh. Hush. Drover, we’ve had a break-in.”

  He stared into the shed and let out a gasp. “Oh my gosh, look what the mice did!”

  “Not mice, son. It’s more serious than that. Unless I’m badly mistaken, we’ve got a professional burglar on the loose.”

  I pointed to some tracks near the door. Tracks tell it all, you know, and these resembled the little hand prints of a child. Drover’s eyes bugged out. “Oh my gosh, Baby Molly’s been stealing corn!”

  I let out a groan. “Drover, please. Those are raccoon tracks, and unless I’m badly mistaken, they were left by a coon.”

  At that very moment, Slim began speaking in English. “Dadgum coons! Look at that mess. If we don’t get ’em stopped, they’ll tear open every sack in the shed.” He heaved a sigh and scowled at the old wooden door. If you recall, it was warped at the bottom, so that a coon or even a dog could slither inside. “One of these days, somebody needs to fix that door.”

  Yes? I waited for him to volunteer for the job—a job, by the way, that had needed doing for years.

  “But not today, I ain’t got time.” He hitched up his jeans and grinned. “But by grabs, I’ve got time to set a trap for the little feller. Heh. I’ll fix him.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. I don’t want to seem critical of my people, but this struck me as a bit nutty. The door was broken, so he was going to fix the coon? Did that make sense? No, but it was typical of Slim’s method of approaching any kind of construction work or repairs.

  Ignore the door and fix the coon. Oh, brother.

  Moments later, Slim had abandoned his plans for loading up sacks of feed and was driving up to the machine shed. (He didn’t invite us dogs to ride, so we had to escort the pickup.) He parked near the west side of the shed and waded out into some dead weeds that came up past his knees. This was the place where Slim and Loper stored various odds and ends that were left over from their work projects. There was a pile of old lumber, a pile of welding scraps, a pile of rotten cedar posts, and a pile of junk parts from the tractor and hay baler. It was meant to be a “temporary” junkyard, only the stuff had been there for years and had ceased being “temporary” a long time ago.

  I’ll say no more about them being careless and sloppy. They never listen to their dogs anyway.

  Slim prowled through the piles of junk and stomped down weeds until at last he pointed toward something that appeared to be a wire cage. “There she is.” He grinned. “That’s my live-trap, dogs. I haven’t used it in quite a spell.”

  Yes, I could believe that he hadn’t used it in “quite a spell.” You could hardly even see it for all the weeds that had grown up around it. After considerable lifting, pushing, heaving, and grunting, he got the thing out of the weeds, and Drover and I were able to take a closer look at this so-called live-trap.

  For the most part, it was just a cage made of welded rods and covered with mesh wire, maybe four feet long, two feet wide, and three feet high. The thing that made it different from a cage was that on one end, it had a trapdoor that would slam shut if someone or something crawled inside a
nd stepped on the trigger mechanism.

  That sounds complicated, doesn’t it? It wasn’t. If it had been complicated, Slim couldn’t have built it. I’m sorry to put it that way, but it’s the truth.

  Slim dragged it to the rear of the pickup and managed to heave it up into the bed. He was in a better mood by this time, and he even invited us dogs to ride in the cab down to the feed shed.

  I took my usual Shotgun Position on the right side of the pickup. As you may know, we dogs love to hang our heads out an open window. It gives us a clear view of the road ahead and, well, there’s just something invigorating about fresh air. We love that stream of fresh air that blows across our tongues and causes our ears to stand out behind us.

  Unfortunately, the window was rolled up (the morning was a little frosty), and right away I began to notice . . . well, stale air. Slim’s pickup had a distinctive smell, don’t you see, and it was never what you would call pleasant. But now it seemed even worse than usual. Old pipe tobacco. Stale coffee. Dirty socks. Cowboy sweat.

  And Drover. He was sitting on the seat beside me. “Drover, when was the last time you took a bath?”

  “Well, let me think. I can’t remember. You know I hate water.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that. Look, I don’t mean to sound critical, but something really stinks in this pickup. It’s making me ill.”

  “Maybe it was all that grass you ate.”

  I roasted him with a glare. “Don’t be ridiculous, and don’t try to change the subject. Take a bath sometime or you might end up with no friends.” I turned my gaze back to the . . . boy, I sure wished the window was open. I needed some fresh air. And it didn’t help that Slim seemed to be hitting every bump in the road. How many bumps could you find in a short stretch of road between the machine shed and the feed shed? Ten thousand, and he hit every one of them dead-center.

  As we bounced down the hill in front of the house, I noticed that my head was beginning to sink and my eyes seemed to have . . . well, glazed over, shall we say. And the air had become so oppressive that I could hardly breathe. The cab smelled awful, like the dark smoke coming off a pile of burning tires.