The Return of the Charlie Monsters Read online

  The Return of the Charlie Monsters

  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

  Published in the United States of America by Maverick Books, Inc., 2014

  Copyright © John R. Erickson, 2014

  All rights reserved

  Maverick Books, Inc. Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59188-163-6

  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

  To Scot and Tina, May God bless their marriage.

  Contents

  Chapter One Case Number RA-VS 2335

  Chapter Two A Turkey Alert

  Chapter Three The Invisible Trick

  Chapter Four I Fool the Cat, Hee Hee

  Chapter Five Oops

  Chapter Six Drover’s Court Martial

  Chapter Seven Poisoned

  Chapter Eight Anything For the Kids

  Chapter Nine Big Trouble

  Chapter Ten The Charlie Conspiracy

  Chapter Eleven The Plot Plottens

  Chapter Twelve Incredible Finish, Just Incredible

  Chapter One: Case Number RA-VS 2335

  It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. When the sun came up that morning, I had no idea what lay ahead—that we would face a full-scale, two-pronged invasion by the Charlie Monsters, that they would try to bump me off with a poisoned egg, or that my relationship with Sally May would hit an all-time low.

  What we’re looking at here is one of the scariest stories of my whole career, but before we go any farther, let’s take care of some ranch business. See, once we get into the scary parts, I might forget to tell you that this is Case Number RA-VS 2335.

  It’s important that you know the case number and maybe you’re wondering why it’s so important. The answer might surprise you. It’s so important, I can’t tell you why it’s so important. It’s Classified Information, and we’re talking about a Heavy Duty Keep-Your-Trap-Shut kind of secret.

  All you need to know is that the Security Division has a numbering system and we keep records on all our cases. We’re allowed to reveal the case number and that’s about it. If you’re okay with that, we’ll move along. Ready?

  Okay, in our filing system, “RA-VS” is shorthand for “Red Alert, Very Serious” and the number “2335” tells us that it happened after Case #2334 and before Case #2336. Do you get it? Case 2335 occurred in between Case 2334 and Case 2336.

  The “dash” between RA and VS doesn’t mean anything dark or mysterious. We put it there because…I’m not sure why we put it there. Maybe it breaks the monotony of having four letters in a row: “RAVS.” Also, it makes it sound more official when we say, “This is Case Number RA-dash-VS 2335.”

  You have to admit that it’s a pretty slick system. I mean, a lot of your ordinary mutts just slop through life and never keep a good set of records. On my outfit, we keep track of every little detail. For example, at this very moment, even as we speak, a flea is creeping around in the region of my left armpit. In fact…

  Hee hee! It tickles. Okay, this information will go into our data files, including my response. Pay close attention. I will now sit on the ground, hike up my left hind leg, and use the claws of my left rear paw to hack the flea into salad and smithereens. Death to all fleas!

  Hack, hack, hack!

  Pay special attention to the angle of my head during this procedure, with the neck fully extended. Also note the shape of my mouth, expressing grim determination but also pleasure. See, I get a kick out of vaporizing fleas.

  A little humor there. Did you get it? I get a kick out of kicking fleas. Ha ha. Pretty clever, huh?

  Anyway, that flea thinks he’s safe, slipping through the hairs in my armpit, but we’ll get him.

  Hack, hack, hack!

  There! By George, that’s one flea we won’t see again. When they mess with the Head of Ranch Security, they pay a terrible price.

  Now, where were we? I have no idea.

  Does anyone remember what we were talking about?

  It really burns me up when this happens. Okay, never mind. We’ll start all over. It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. It was early morning, it was summer, it was dry, and it was worse than dry. We were in the second year of a drought, terrible drought. The country looked awful, but oddly enough, the mornings were beautiful—desert mornings with clear, still air and the early sunlight painting our valley with vivid colors of red, orange, and purple.

  We had very little grass that summer but a huge population of grasshoppers, and we’re talking about those big fat jumbos. Figure that one out. If you have very little grass, how can you have billions of grasshoppers? What do they eat? If grasshoppers don’t have grass, how can they hop?

  I don’t know, but we had billions of them. They not only hopped, but any time I was trotting across the pasture, I could count on getting smacked in the face by four or five of the hateful things. And it hurt.

  Nobody on this ranch had anything good to say about grasshoppers, but the wild turkeys were having the time of their lives. They eat grasshoppers, don’t you know. Chasing grasshoppers is what they do for a living, so their business was booming.

  We’ll have more to say about turkeys later on.

  During this drought, Sally May was trying her best to keep the shrubs and flowers alive in the yard, and she was running the sprinkler in the garden every day to keep the squash, okra, tomatoes, and melons from turning up their toes and dying.

  She had succeeded in keeping most of the garden plants alive, and had waged a constant war against the grasshoppers, squash bugs, and tomato worms. Then the deer and rabbits started poaching the green plants. We had a good hog wire fence around the garden, but that didn’t stop the rabbits from crawling under it, nor did it keep the deer from jumping over it. In a bad drought, it’s hard to keep the poachers out of your garden.

  The Security Division had set up a special Task Force to deal with this issue, and let me tell you, we were putting in some hours—day and night, morning and evening, eighteen hours every day, chasing rabbits and deer away from the garden. On this ranch, the work never ends, and in a drought, it neverest enders.

  And that’s what we were doing on the morning we opened Case #RA-Dash-VS 2335. Loper and Slim had left the ranch before daylight to attend a farm auction. Apparently they thought our ranch didn’t have enough junk, so they went shopping for more junk. Sally May was scurrying around the house, trying to get ready for a trip to town. As I recall, she was helping out at Vacation Bible School. Yes, she had volunteered to teach at VBS and this was to be her first day.

  Drover and I had slept late. Let me rephrase that. Drover had slept late. I had been up most of the night, doing Poacher Patrol, but the impointant pork is that around seven o’clock in the morning, we were pulling guard duty in Observation Post 9 in front of the machine shed.


  All at once, I got a call on the radio. “Hank, you’d better wake up. Something’s going on out there.”

  I leaped to my feet and took command of the ship. “Dive, dive! All ahead two-thirds. Level off at fifty feet and rig for depth charges!” One of the men was standing in front of me. I blinked my eyes and took a closer look. “Who are you?”

  “Pretty good. How ‘bout yourself?”

  “Doing fine, thanks. Are we at fifty feet?”

  “Well, I’ve got four feet and you’ve got four, and that makes nine.”

  “Good. Level off at nine feet and let’s take a look. Up scope! Who are you and do you have clearance to be here?”

  He gazed up at the sky. “Well, I’m Drover. Clarence isn’t here.”

  “Hmmm, that’s odd. Do you suppose he went to the engine room?”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Down below, where we keep the engines.”

  “Down below is where we keep the dirt.” He pointed his paw in a downward direction. “That’s dirt.”

  My gaze followed the path indicated by his paw. “Good grief, it IS dirt. We’ve run aground! Why wasn’t I informed? How can I command this ship when nobody tells me…did you say your name is Drover?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. Hi.”

  “Hi. Are you the same Drover who was here yesterday?”

  “Yep, that’s me, Drover with a D.”

  “Roger that. Okay, bring me up to speed. What’s going on around here?”

  “Well, I saw some turkeys.”

  “Rubbish. They must have been seagulls.”

  “No, they were turkeys.”

  I melted him with a glare. “Turkeys don’t live on the ocean. Get your facts straight.”

  “We don’t have any oceans.”

  “That’s absurd. How can this be a submarine if we don’t have any oceans?”

  He moved closer and whispered, “It’s not a submarine. It’s a ranch in Texas and I think you were dreaming.”

  I was about to place him under arrest for making slanderous remarks about his commanding officer, but instead, I cut my eyes from side to slide and noticed…hmmm. Everything in my field of vision bore a strong resemblance to…well, a ranch in Texas.

  I marched a few steps away and filled my lungs with three big gulps of air. Slowly my head began to clear and I was ready to deal with this latest crisis.

  Keep reading. You’ll want to hear what happened to the ship.

  Chapter Two: A Turkey Alert

  I marched over to Drover and gave him a stern glare. “All right, let’s go over the details of your report. You said something about seagulls, but if this ranch doesn’t have an ocean, they couldn’t be seagulls.”

  “Yeah, they were turkeys.”

  “Maybe they were turkeys.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Make up your mind and stick with the facts. Why are you rolling your eyes?”

  “I don’t know. I need some exercise.”

  “Then why don’t you walk or run, jog, jump, or chase a ball? You never DO anything, Drover, except sit on your duff and snap at flies.”

  “I take naps.”

  “Yes, and look what it’s done to you. Is this why your mother scrimped and saved and sacrificed? So you could become a stub-tailed little hypocardiac who rolls his eyes all the time?”

  He grinned. “Good old Mom. I wonder what she’s doing today.”

  “Never mind. Finish your story about the seagulls and quit rolling your eyes. I’m a very busy dog.” I began pacing, as I often do when I’m trying to extract information from a rewitless luctant.

  A reluctant witness, let us say. I began pacing, while Drover knotted his face into an expression of deep concentration. “Well, let’s see. Once upon a time there was a seagull and his name was Sparky, but everyone called him Barky ‘cause he had a bad cough, and he lived near the ocean and one day he saw a submarine…”

  “Wait. Stop.” I paced back over to him. “If you saw turkeys, why are you talking about seagulls?”

  “I thought you wanted to hear a story about seagulls.”

  “I did NOT want to hear a story about seagulls. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on around here, and do you know what I think?”

  “No, what?”

  I moved my mouth closer to his ear. “I think someone in this department is losing his marbles. Now tell me about the turkeys.”

  He pointed his left paw toward a flat patch of grass south of the house. “There’s seven of ‘em.”

  “Yes, I see the turkeys. Big deal.”

  Have we discussed wild turkeys? Sally May enjoyed watching them. She put out feed for them and encouraged them to come up close to the house, where she could observe them through her kitchen window. In other words, those turkeys brought joy and pleasure into the life of our Beloved Ranch Wife.

  What was so special about watching turkeys? Frankly, I don’t get it. My take on turkeys is that they’re unusually large birds that spend an unusually large amount of time looking ridiculous. If you ask me, they live hollow, boring little turkey lives, and watching them would be a waste of time.

  But that’s just a dog’s perspectum. Sally May doesn’t feel that way. She thinks they’re beautiful. That strikes me as a little weird, but I would be the last dog in the world to say a critical word about the Lady of the House. By George, if she enjoys watching the turkeys, our Security Division will do everything in its power to chase them.

  Let me rephrase that. The Security Division will do everything in its power to protect them. We protect them from coyotes and cannibals, from raccoons and monsters of the night, and we do it for Sally May.

  Back to my conversation with the runt. “Drover, I’m finally seeing a pattern here. They must be turkeys, not seagulls.”

  “Yeah, and the cat’s chasing them.”

  “What!”

  “Look.”

  I did a quick sweep with field glasses and saw…holy smokes, seven turkeys, and they were being stalked by a cat—a scheming, sulking, spoiled little ranch cat named Pete.

  Boy, you talk about righteous anger! I was almost overwhooped by righteous anger, and whirled back to my assistant. “Those birds are being harassed by the local cat. Why wasn’t I informed?”

  “I tried to tell you.”

  “Stand by. We’re fixing to launch all dogs.”

  His eyes grew wide and a wicked little grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Gosh, you mean…”

  “Exactly. We have a free pass to mug the cat. Lock and load, we’re going in.”

  Suddenly the stillness of morning was shattered by the roar and scream of our P-37 rocket engines, and away we went—down the hill, through that grove of elm trees, past Emerald Pond, and skimming right over the top of the Security Division’s Vast Office Complex. Oh, you should have been there to see us!

  “Oat Bran, this is Corn Flakes. We are approaching the target. Repeat: we are targeting the approach. Pick an open spot and spot an opening. Let’s set these buggies on the ground.”

  Is this exciting or what? Your ordinary ranch mutts know nothing about this side of life—the danger, the excitement, the roar of the engines, the smell of rocket fumes in the air. Wow, what an adventure.

  We landed the aircraft on a level stretch of grass just south of headquarters, leaped out of the pitcocks, and changed into our assault gear. At the same time, I was keeping an eye on Target One, the cat. Pete. Mister Never Sweat. Mister Kitty Moocher. And suddenly I picked up on an interesting detail.

  I had launched this mission with the intention of doing some damage to the cat, but what I saw unfolding before my eyes made me have second thoughts. What I saw was a comedy, a display of silliness on a massive scale.

  Here’s the deal. It appeared that Pete had ventured away from the yard w
ith the idea of playing Leo the Lion, King of the Jungle, and there he was, creeping along on his belly, twitching the last inch of his tail, and stalking the turkeys. After stalking and creeping, he sprang at the birds. That was the funny part. The turkeys just clucked and hopped out of the way.

  I mean, they didn’t run or fly. They were no more afraid of that cat than they were afraid of a bug, and I could see anger and frustration all over Kitty’s face and body. His ears lay flat on his head and the last three inches of his tail were slashing the air, and even at a distance I could hear that unhappy yowl of his, the one that sounds like a police siren.

  It’s music to a dog’s ears. Show me an unhappy cat, and I’ll show you a happy dog.

  Hee hee. Well, this wasn’t what I had expected to find on this mission. It was ten times better. I turned to Drover. “All right, men, stand down.”

  “Sit down?”

  “Stand down.”

  “Stand up?”

  “STAND DOWN!”

  He wilted like…I don’t know what. Like a weed that had been sprayed with poison, I suppose, and beamed me a Look of Tragedy. “You don’t need to yell at me. I hate being yelled at in the morning.”

  “Well, come back after lunch and we’ll try it again.”

  “It makes me feel like such a failure.”

  I heaved a sigh and searched for patience. “Drover, what is so difficult about following a simple order?”

  “I don’t know how to stand down. You never explain anything. All you ever do is yell and screech.”

  “I didn’t screech.”

  “Did too. You screeched right in my left ear.”

  “Which ear?”

  “The right one, and now it’s ringing.”

  “I don’t hear any ringing.”

  “What?”

  “I said, I don’t hear anything.”

  He shook his head and stared at the ground. “I can’t hear anything. I think you blew out my eardrum.”