The Case of the Fiddle Playing Fox Read online

  The Case of the Fiddle-Playing Fox

  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 Texas Monthly Press, 1989, then Gulf Publishing Company, 1990.

  Subsequently published simultaneously by Viking Children’s Books and Puffin Books, members of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 1999.

  Currently published by Maverick Books, Inc., 2012.

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © John R. Erickson, 1989

  All rights reserved

  Maverick Books, Inc. Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59188-112-4

  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.

  Contents

  Chapter One Why the Sun Rises, in Case You Didn’t Know

  Chapter Two Little Alfred’s School of Cat Roping

  Chapter Three The Case of the Missing Eggs

  Chapter Four The Case of the Phoney Fiddle Music in the Night

  Chapter Five The Deadly Shower of Sparks

  Chapter Six Loneliness on the Front Lines

  Chapter Seven Fiddle Hypnosis, and How I Managed to Resist It

  Chapter Eight Frankie the Fox

  Chapter Nine The Famous Frankie and Hankie Chicken House Band

  Chapter Ten A Clever Plan to Sweep Miss Beulah Off Her Feet

  Chapter Eleven The Trap of Love Backfires

  Chapter Twelve Heartbroken and Sprayed, but a Hero to the End

  Chapter One: Why the Sun Rises, in Case You Didn’t Know

  It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. You’re probably wondering what I was doing in bed at 8 o’clock on the morning of whatever day it is about which I’m fixing to speak.

  It was in September, seems to me. Hot, still days, nights with just a hint of autumn chill. Kind of a lonesome time of year in these parts.

  Yes, it was in September that I first heard about the Mysterious Fiddle Music in the night. Little did I know that very soon our henhouse would be attacked by a devious, sneaking, outlaw rogue, or that I myself would become a suspect in the case, or that I would soon cross paths with the One Love of My Life, the incomparable, incredible Miss Beulah the collie.

  But I’ll get to that in a minute. I had mentioned something about sleeping late.

  Ordinarily I take great pride in being the first one up on the ranch, don’t you know. For one thing, I like to get a head start on everybody else. For another, I’ve never had complete confidence that the sun would come up without me there to supervise.

  You want to know why I don’t trust the sun? Simple logic.

  The sun is round, right? A ball. If you’ve ever observed a sunrise, you’ve noticed that the sun is moving from the bottom of the sky to the top of the sky. In other words, this ball which we call the sun is rolling uphill.

  It ain’t natural for a ball, any ball, to roll uphill. In fact, it’s impossible. Balls do not roll uphill unless, of course, they’re urged along by an extraordinary outside force.

  Now, I wouldn’t want to come right out and say that I happen to be that extraordinary outside force which barks the sun up into the sky every day of the world and prevents total blackness from enveloping the globe.

  On the other hand, I can’t name anybody else on this outfit who does it, and if cold hard logic singles me out as the Bringer of Light and the Creator of Days . . .

  A guy hates to toot his own horn, so to speak, but if you want to say that I’m the one who causes the sun to rise every day, I guess that’s okay with me.

  Where was I? Oh yes. After saying what I just said about me never EVER sleeping late, I’m going to give you a little shock by revealing that on a certain morning in September . . .

  It was very warm, see, and sometimes on warm lazy mornings even I am tempted by the weaknesses of the flesh. When flesh gets warm, it develops a certain craving for things that are soft and even warmer, such as warm gunnysack beds.

  And I can’t always control my own flesh.

  Oh, I know all the smart remarks you can make about late sleepers. “Studies show that more dogs die in bed than on streets and highways.” Ho, ho. And, “What are you doing, trying to homestead that gunnysack?” Ha, ha. And, “Have you put down any roots in that bed?” Hee, hee.

  Very funny. I slept late that morning and I don’t care what anybody says about it and I don’t feel guilty about it either. So there you are. You’ve got to be tough in this business.

  Well, when I realized what I had . . . what my flesh had done, that is, I jumped up from my gunnysack, threw an arch in my back, took a big stretch, opened my mouth to its fully extended position, threw a curl into my tongue, and yawned.

  I don’t know that I had ever experienced a better yawn in my whole career. Wonderful. I love to yawn.

  I looked down at my assistant. To no one’s surprise, he was still asleep. “Get up, Half-Stepper, the day’s half over. Are you trying to homestead that gunnysack?”

  He had been twitching and grunting in his sleep. Now his eyes fell open, revealing for the first time the huge nothingness behind them.

  “Irk mirk snicklefritz.”

  “That’s no excuse. Wake up and let’s get this day started.”

  “Irk snickle I am amirk. I never did go to snork last night.”

  “What?”

  “I said,” his eyes began to focus, “I am awake, I never did go to sleep last . . . or did I?”

  “You did, take my word for it, and you might have even put down some roots in that gunnysack. Now GET UP!”

  He sprang to his feet. “I’m up, I’m up! And don’t yell at me in the morning, you know what it does to me.”

  “I know that your shameful behavior has just won you a big fat goose egg.”

  “Oh boy, I love eggs.”

  “Goose egg means zero. It means you’ve flunked your examination and have failed to come up with a good excuse for sleeping late.”

  “Oh drat.”

  “This will have to go into your record, of course. Did you realize, Drover, that studies show that more dogs died in bed last year than on all the streets and highways in Ochiltree County?”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “A bed is one of the most dangerous devices ever invented. It’s been linked to thousands upon thousands of deaths.”

  “I’ll be derned. What did they do with all the dead dogs?”

  “We don’t have an answer to that question yet, Drover, but the important point here is that there is an irreguffable relationship between bed and dead.”

  “Yeah, they rhyme.”

  “Exactly, so let that be a lesson to you. The next time you want to sleep until noon, you’d be better off and safer to sleep on a rattlesnake than on a bed.”

  “What time did you get up?”

>   “Eh, me? Well, uh, 5:30, as always. Or was it 4:30? Yes, it was 4:30. Very early. Before the chickens. As always.”

  At that very moment, whom do you suppose came pecking along our dog trail between the gas tanks and the corrals? Pecking is the clue here, and it rules out Pete the Barncat and other suspects who don’t peck.

  It was J. T. Cluck, the Head Rooster. He appeared to be pecking for seeds and gravel and the other garbage that chickens eat. He walked up to me and Drover, stared at the end of my tail, and then pecked it.

  I don’t appreciate anyone pecking my tail. It’s not that I can’t stand pain or that chickens are capable of inflicting much pain with their teakless booths—their toothless beaks, I should say. It’s more a matter of principle. I just don’t allow anyone to mess with my tail, that’s all.

  And so it should come as no surprise that after changing the location of my tail so the chicken couldn’t peck it again, I snarled at him. That got his attention!

  His head shot up so fast that it caused his comb, or whatever you call that red thing on his head, to jiggle. He squawked, flapped his wings, and jumped into the air.

  “Bawk-ka-bawk-bawk! Elsa, Elsa, come quick!” He stared at me and blinked his eyes. “Well I’ll be a son of a gun, was that your tail? I’m proud to see you dogs finally got out of bed.”

  Drover piped up. “Hank was up at 4:30 this morning. He told me so himself.”

  “Hush, Drover.”

  J.T. leaned forward and brought his beak about an inch from the end of mister Big Mouth’s nose. “Well, he told you a big fat lie! When I made first call this morning, your friend Hank was growing roots in that gunnysack right there.”

  “I . . . I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “Course you know what I’m talking about. I made first call before daylight and I seen you down here, sleeping your life away, beats anything I ever saw.”

  “You must have been mistaken.”

  “And when I made second call, you was still homesteading that gunnysack bed. Did you know that more dogs died in bed last year than on all the streets and highways in Ochiltree County?”

  I gave him a withering glare. “Where did you hear that? Have you been listening to our conversations?”

  “Naw. I ain’t ever been that hard up for something to do.”

  “In that case, I think you’d better scram. If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s a smart-aleck rooster first thing in the morning.”

  “If you ask me, sleeping late is more dangerous than . . .”

  “BEAT IT!” I barked in his face. He squawked, flapped his wings, and went scurrying up the hill.

  “Okay for you, mister,” J.T. yelled over his wing, “and just for that, I ain’t going to tell you about the Mysterious Fiddle Music in the Night!”

  “That’s fine with me, Featherbed, because . . .”

  HUH? Fiddle . . . in the . . . ?

  And so the mystery began, with a careless statement by J. T. Cluck, the Head Rooster. At the time, I had no idea that it would lead me into new adventures and dangerous encounters with one of the slickest, smoothest, fiendishest crinimal characters I had ever encountered.

  If I had known it, I don’t know what I would have done, but chances are that I would have done something, because even doing nothing is something.

  Not much, but still something.

  Chapter Two: Little Alfred’s School of Cat Roping

  I looked at Drover. “What did he just say?”

  The question caught him in the middle of a yawn. “What? Who?”

  “That rooster. He just said something over his shoulder.”

  “I didn’t know chickens had shoulders.”

  “Over his wing!”

  “Oh. Yeah, I think he did say something—about a gigantic fiddleback spider in the night.”

  “Hmmm. That’s funny.” Suddenly Drover began laughing. I stared at him. “What’s so funny?”

  “I don’t know, but you said it was funny and all at once I thought it was funny, too, and I guess . . . well, I couldn’t help laughing.”

  I narrowed my eyes and studied the wasteland of his face. “Are you trying to make a mockery of my investigation?”

  “No, I just . . . couldn’t help . . . laughing . . . is all.”

  “Well, this is no laughing matter, so wipe that stupid grin off your face.” He wiped it off.

  “That’s better. Now, let’s start all over again. What did J. T. Cluck say? It was something about a fiddle.”

  Drover rolled his eyes and chewed his lip. “Fiddle. Fiddle? Fiddle. I’ll be derned, I just drew a blank.”

  “You drew a blank the day you were born, Drover, and it settled between your ears. Concen­trate and try to remember. Fiddle.”

  “Fiddle. Oh yeah. He said he woke up in the night and saw a gigantic fiddleback spider crawling into the chicken house. I think that’s what he said.”

  “That’s NOT what he said.”

  “I didn’t think it was.”

  “He said he heard Mysterious Fiddle Music in the Night.”

  “Oh yeah, and the spider was playing the fiddle behind his back.”

  “He said nothing about a spider.”

  “I didn’t think he did.”

  “So we can forget about the spiders.”

  “Oh good.”

  “But we can’t forget about the Mysterious Music.”

  “No, it kind of gets in your head.”

  “Which means that we have an unconfounded report from an unreliable source about Mysterious Fiddle Music in the Night. Hence, the next question is, do we dismiss it as hearsay and gossip, or do we follow it up with a thorough investigation?”

  “That’s a tough one.”

  “And the answer to that question, Drover, is very simple.”

  “That’s what I meant.”

  “We follow it up with a complete and thorough investigation, because to do otherwise would be a dare election of duty.”

  “I’ll vote for that.”

  I began pacing. As I might have noted before in another context, my mind seems to work better when I pace.

  “Question, Drover. Do you know anything about this so-called Mysterious Fiddle Music in the Night?”

  He flopped down and started scratching his left ear. “Well, let’s see here. Fiddle music. I always kind of liked fiddle music, myself.”

  “Yes? Go on.”

  “Especially when they play fast. It gets me all stirred up.”

  “Get to the point.”

  “The point. Okay, let’s see here.” All at once his eyes got big and his mouth dropped open. “Say, you know what? I dreamed about fiddle music last night!”

  I whirled around and paced over to a point directly in front of him. “All right, very good, we’re getting to the core of the heart. You say that you dreamed about fiddle music last night?”

  “Yeah, I sure . . . unless . . . gosh, maybe I didn’t dream it. Maybe . . . there was this fox, came out of nowhere and stood over me while I was asleep. And Hank, he was playing a fiddle!”

  I let the air hiss out of my lungs and my eyelids sank. “Okay, never mind, I’m sorry I asked, I should have known better.”

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  I refilled my lungs and raised my lids. “I thought we were on the trail of something, Drover, but it’s turned out to be another of your wild, improbable fantasies. Number one, there are no foxes on this ranch.”

  “Oh dern.”

  “Number two, even if there were a fox on this ranch, which there isn’t, he wouldn’t be playing a fiddle because foxes don’t play fiddles.”

  “Huh. Maybe it was a harmonica.”

  “Number three, you’re wasting my valuable time. I don’t want to hear anymore about fox
es or fiddles or spiders.”

  “But Hank . . .”

  “Period. End of discussion. Now, what were we doing before that rooster intruded into our lives and got us stirred up about nothing?”

  “Sleeping, I think.”

  “Wrong again, Drover. YOU were sleeping. I had been up since before daylight, checking things out and getting the day started. Speaking of which, the day has started and we have two weeks of work to do before dark.”

  Just then I heard the screen door slam up at the house. Hmm. Oftentimes the slamming of the screen door at that hour of the morning indicates that Sally May has come outside to distribute juicy morsels of food left over from breakfast.

  “Come on, Drover. Never mind the work, it’s scrap time! To the yard gate, on the double.”

  We went streaking up the hill, just in time to see Pete the Barncat scampering towards the yard gate. No doubt he too had heard the screen door slam, and he, being your typical ne’er-do-well, freeloading, never-sweat variety of cat, had been lurking in the flowerbeds, waiting for someone to come out and give him a free meal.

  That’s one trait in cats that has always burned me up. You’d think that a ranch cat, a barn cat, would feel some obligation to get out and hustle and earn his keep.

  Not this one. He spent his entire life lurking around doors, and the instant he heard someone coming out, ZOOM! There he was, rubbing up against someone’s leg and purring like a little motorboat and waiting for a handout.

  It’s disgusting, is what it is, and the worst part about it is that his handouts cut into our Food Rewards for Meritorious Service.

  Don’t let anyone kid you. There’s a huge difference between mere handouts and Food Rewards, but never mind the difference because the sleen-scramming—screen-slamming, that is, turned out to be a false alarm anyway. For you see, the person or persons who had emerged from the house turned out to be Little Alfred, not Sally May as you might have suspected, which meant no scraps.

  We skidded to a stop in front of the yard gate and waited for our pal, age four or thereabouts, to come out of the yard. He was wearing a pair of brown shorts, a T-shirt, and his little Tony Lama boots, with the spurs attached.