The Case of the Bone-Stalking Monster Read online

  “Pete, for your own safety, I must advise you not to come any closer.”

  “Hmmmm. Well, hello, Hankie.”

  “Hello yourself, Kitty, and also good-bye. You’re walking into a potentially deadly situation here and you’d best leave.”

  “Oh really?” He slithered through the yard gate, rubbed on the gate post, and then began rubbing on my front legs. “I could have sworn that Little Alfred was calling me to scraps, Hankie.”

  “Wrong, Kitty. He was using Backwards Code, which means that he used your name as a code word to call me.”

  “Hmmmmm, how interesting. I’ve never heard of Backwards Code before.”

  “Of course not. You’re only a cat and cats know nothing about Security Work and the many codes we use.”

  “It sounds very complicated, Hankie.”

  “It’s complicated beyond your wildest imagination, Kitty, but the bottom line is pretty simple.”

  “Oh really?” He grinned up at me and continued rubbing on my legs, which drives me nuts. “What is the bottom line, Hankie? I can’t wait to hear.”

  “The bottom line is that these are my scraps. You got that? MY SCRAPS. Good-bye.”

  “But Hankie, if Alfred was using Backwards Code, then surely that means that the scraps are mine.” He fluttered his eyelids. “Backwards Code makes everything backwards, right?”

  I cut my eyes from side to side. This was a new sneaky trick and just for a moment it caught me unprepared. At last Data Control provided me with an answer.

  “Pete, that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. And stop rubbing on my legs.”

  “No, it’s not stupid, Hankie. Backwards Code makes everything backwards, so if Alfred said, ‘Pete, come for scraps,’ what he really meant was, ‘Hankie, come for NO scraps.’”

  Obviously this was no ordinary dumb cat. He was a clever ordinary dumb cat, and I had to be careful. He was trying to lure me into a trap.

  Of course, there was no chance that he would succeed. I had vast experience in beating cats at their shabby little games. It was just a matter of framing up a tightly reasoned, highly logical answer to his ridiculous argument.

  But before I could get that done, Little Alfred pushed the bone—MY fresh juicy T-bone—in front of the cat’s nose. Pete’s eyes widened, and the rest was just what you would expect from a greedy cat.

  He dug his claws and sank his teeth into my bone, cut loose with a warning yowl, pinned back his ears, and began glaring ice picks at me.

  Well, you know me. Do unto others but don’t take trash off the cats. My patients were wearing thin.

  My patients were wearing thin clothes.

  My patients were growing thin.

  Whatever. I was getting angry.

  “Excuse me, Kitty, but you seem to have lost your mind, and you’re fixing to lose parts of your body if you don’t unhand my bone. Drop it, Pete. Reach for the sky.”

  His yowling increased in volume, and then he HISSED at me. He shouldn’t have done that. Nothing inflames a dog quite as much as hissing. It’s like throwing gasoline on a fire ant.

  My ears shot up. My lips rose in a deadly snarl. A growl began to rumble in my throat. And then . . .

  Chapter Three: My Bones Vanish

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Little Alfred. He was wearing a huge grin and his eyes were sparkling like . . . I don’t know what. Diamonds, I suppose.

  But the point is that he looked very happy about something, and all at once the pieces of the puzzle began falling into place.

  The little snipe was bored and had drawn me and Kitty down into a show . . . into a showdown, I should say. In other words, he wanted us to fight over the bone. In other words, Pete and I were being used.

  This threw an entirely different light on the whole situation. I turned back to the cat.

  “Pete, I’ve just figgered this deal out. Alfred is trying to promote a fight between us. That was his purpose in using Backwards Code, to foment jealousy and envy and greed between us. Just look at yourself, Pete. He’s succeeded.”

  He stopped yowling and listened.

  I continued. “He’s appealing to our lowest in­stincts, Pete, and has brought us to the brink of open warfare. I don’t know about you, but I kind of resent being used by a bratty little kid.

  “I mean, we’re adult dogs and cats, yet we’re being tooled around by this ornery little stinkpot. I’ve got no grudge against you, Pete, and I think it would be a crying shame for us to go into combat over something as silly as a bone. What’s a bone, Pete? The world’s full of bones. This is just one of thousands, millions.

  “And I ask you, Pete, sincerely and from my deepest heart: Is one measly bone worth all this? Just look what it’s done to you. You’ve turned into a greedy, selfish, miserly little brute.”

  He still had his teeth sunk into my . . . into the, uh, bone. I continued.

  “I don’t know about you, Pete, but I’m ashamed of myself, and I’m ashamed of yourself too. I mean, we have every reason to be friends. We share the same ranch, the same world, the same stars at night. Yet here we are, at each other’s throats over a . . . over a paltry, insignificant little bone.

  “Talk to me, Pete, tell me what you think. Am I right or wrong about this? I sincerely and honestly want to know your thoughts on this.”

  He dropped the bone. “Well, Hankie, since you put it that way . . .”

  Heh, heh. In one rapid motion, I snatched up my bone and buried Kitty beneath an avalanche of paws and claws. He never saw it coming and he never had a chance.

  Okay, maybe he didn’t stay buried under the avalanche for very long, and maybe he cut loose with a burst of fully-automatic catclaw fire that almost ruined my face, but I hasten to point out that he took cheap and unfair advantage of the situation.

  See, my mouth was full of T-bone, the very same bone he had just tried to steal only moments before, and with my mouth full of T-bone, I wasn’t able to defend my honor in the manner . . .

  Man alive, I had almost forgotten how much damage a sniveling little cat could do in a very short period of time. He buzzsawed my whole face, fellers, and we’re talking about lips, eyebrows, cheeks, gums, nose, the whole shebang.

  At that point I abandoned the path of reason, dropped the bone, and went to Total Warfare. If Kitty-Kitty had been just half a step slower, he would have paid dearly for his crimes. Instead, I had to settle for a moral victory: I ran him all the way to the water well and chased him up a tree.

  “There!” I yelled at him in a voice filled with righteous anger. “And let that be a lesson to you.”

  He grinned down at me from the tree. “Yes, I’ve learned a valuable lesson, Hankie. Chewing on a dog’s face is a lot more fun than chewing on a bone. Let’s try it again some time.”

  I tried to think of a stinging reply, but my face and nose were stinging so badly by then . . . I mean, he had really trashed my face, the sneaking little weasel . . . I failed to come up with a stinging reply, so I whirled around and marched away, confident that I had won another huge moral victory over the cat.

  At least I had a bone to show for my efforts. Pete had nothing but a tree.

  Holding my trashed face at a proud angle, I marched proudly down to the . . . my goodness, there was Sally May at the yard gate. Acting on instinct, I altered my flight plan and pointed myself toward the gas tanks.

  I mean, there is something about Sally May that arouses certain feelings of, well, guilt in a dog. Even when we haven’t done anything naughty, her very presence makes us think we have. And in this case, I had more or less been involved in chasing her precious kitty . . .

  “Hank, come here.”

  Uh-oh. There it was. She had seen everything. She knew everything. She always saw and knew everything. Didn’t she ever sleep?

  I altered course again and hea
ded for the yard gate, but this time I switched everything over to Looks of Remorse and Mournful Wags. I began re­hearsing my story.

  “Sally May, I know what you’re thinking. You probably think that I was beating up on your stupid . . . that is, you probably think I was fighting with your cat, and I realize that the, uh, evidence looks pretty damaging, but I think I can explain everything. Honest. No kidding.”

  That’s as far as I got with my story. I couldn’t seem to get past the “I can explain everything” part. I would just have to wing it and hope for the best.

  I approached her with a big cowdog smile. She did not return the smile. Instead, her eyes were filled with ice and snow and cold north winds. Yikes, it appeared that I was in deep trouble.

  But you’ll never guess what she said. I was shocked. Here’s what she said, word for word.

  “Now, you look at his face, Alfred Leroy. You see what you caused? Poor old Hank was just minding his own business until you drew him into a fight.”

  The boy stuck out his lip. “I was only pwaying, Mom.”

  “I know you were playing, Alfred, but the point is that someone else paid the price for your fun.”

  “Nuh-uh, ’cause Hank and Pete had fun too.”

  “Maybe they did, but they paid for it. Hank got scratched up and Pete got chased up a tree. And what about you—you who started the whole thing?”

  “Well . . . I got scwatched. See?” He pointed to a tiny scratch on his arm. “And it hoorts weal bad, Mom, no foolin’.”

  She shook her head. “I think you need to come inside and stand in the corner for thirty minutes.”

  “Aw Mom!”

  “And think about being kinder to animals. God didn’t put them here for you to torment.”

  “Aw Mom!”

  “In the house. March!”

  The boy twisted his face into an angry pout and beamed a hot glare at me, of all things. “Hank, you got me in twouble and you’re a dummy.”

  Me? What . . . ?

  I stared at him in disbelief as Sally May escorted him into the house. He was calling ME a dummy and accusing ME of getting him into trouble? What a wild imagination he had!

  But that didn’t matter now, because Sally May had sniffed out the real culprit in the case and was hauling him off to jail. It served him right, the little snipe.

  Justice had been . . . although I had to admit, in the deep dark wickedness of my heart, that giving the cat his daily thrashing had been worth all the scratches. If given the opportunity to do it all over again, I would have done it all over again . . . especially if Little Alfred got blamed for it.

  Heh heh.

  Not a bad deal, in other words, especially when you considered that I had also won the Grand Prize of three juicy, delicious T-bone steak bones, speaking of which . . .

  Where were my bones?

  I sniffed the ground and located the spots where they had been—three distinking locations that still held the warm and wonderful fragrance of steak juice.

  The smell was there. The bones were not.

  They were gone.

  SOMEONE HAD STOLEN MY STEAK BONES!

  I went streaking down to the gas tanks. I had supposed that I would find Drover asleep on his gunnysack bed, but I was shocked to find him awake. But that was only the first of several shocks that awaited me, as you will see.

  I came roaring up to the gas tanks, throttled down, hit Full Air Brakes, and came sliding to a stop.

  “Drover! I’m glad you’re awake.”

  He gave me his usual silly grin. “Thanks, Hank. I’m glad too, ’cause the awaker you are, the dayer it seems.”

  “What?”

  “I said . . . well, let me think here. I said, the awaker the day, the shorter the night. I think that’s what I said.”

  “Hmmm. Well, that’s an interesting way of put­ting it, but what was your point?”

  “The point. Well, let’s see here.” He rolled his eyes around. I tried to remain patient.

  Are you getting impatient? Let’s change chapters. Maybe that will help.

  Chapter Four: Here’s a Fresh Chapter

  There, we’ve changed chapters. Drover was pondering my question, if you recall. At last he gave his answer.

  “The point is that if you sleep all the time, there’s not much difference between day and night. I guess.”

  “I see. There’s a certain amount of truth in what you say, Drover, but allow me to point out one small flaw in your ointment.”

  “Pigs say ‘oint.’”

  I stared at the runt. “No, as a matter of fact, they don’t say ‘oint.’ They say ‘oink,’ oink with a K. It’s a well-known fact that pigs and hogs are unable to pronounce Ts.”

  “Aw, you’re just teasin’.”

  “Not at all, Drover. It’s scientific truth that pigs and hogs . . .”

  “What’s the difference between a pig and a hog? I’ve always wondered.”

  “Then it’s good that you asked, Drover. That’s how we learn and expand our minds, by inquiring about things we don’t understand.”

  “Yeah, and I don’t understand why water is always so wet. And how come chickens move their heads when they walk. We dogs don’t walk that way.”

  “That’s correct, Drover, and you’ve made an interesting observation there.”

  “Yeah, but what’s the answer?”

  “The answer is very simple, as most answers tend to be. Your ordinary chicken moves his head when he walks because his head is connected to his legs. Do you know about clocks and pendulums?”

  “No, I’ve never had a clock.”

  “Drover, I’m aware that you’ve never had a clock. Even if you had a clock, you couldn’t tell time.”

  “Yeah, if I could tell time, I’d tell it to speed up, ’cause I sure get bored sometimes.”

  “Yes, well, the source of your boredom is yourself, Drover. It’s a well-known fact that boring personalities suffer from boredom.”

  “I’ll be derned. I knew it was something.”

  I began pacing back and forth in front of him, as I often do when I am plunged into deep thoughts.

  “Yes, if you would concentrate on being less boring, you would be less bored. It all fits together.”

  “Yeah, and you know what? I chewed on a board one time and got splinters in my mouth.”

  “There, you see? That’s exactly my point. Chew­ing on boards is a way of relieving boredom, but it provides only temporary relief because it doesn’t go to the root of the heart.”

  “I’ll be derned. You mean hearts have roots?”

  I couldn’t help chuckling at his nativity. “Drover, of course they do. Trees have roots. Teeth have roots. All things that are rooted in reality have roots.”

  “What about root beer?”

  “Inside every glass of root beer, Drover, there lurks a root.”

  “How come it lurks?”

  “It lurks because . . . because you ask so many stupid questions, and I’m afraid we’re out of time.”

  “Oh darn. I wanted to ask about the chicken who swallowed the clock.”

  All at once my lips rose into a snarl, and I found myself glaring at him. “The chicken didn’t swallow a clock, you meathead, and stop talking. I came down here on a very important mission and you’ve got me so scrambled, I can’t remember what it was.”

  “I love scrambled eggs.”

  “Hush! Not one more word.”

  “Okay.”

  My snarl turned into a growl. “You just said one more word.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes, you did. I told you not to say one more word, and you said okay. For your information, okay is one word.”

  “I thought it was two letters.”

  “No, it’s one word, and I forbid you to say one more w
ord.”

  “O.K.”

  “That’s better.” I began pacing again. My brains had turned into a junkyard. “Now, where was I—and don’t answer, Drover. I’m asking myself, not you.”

  “Okay.”

  “It was something very important, a problem that absolutely couldn’t wait and had to be ad­dressed immediately.”

  “Well, if ‘O.K.’ is two letters instead of one word, maybe the two letters have to be addressed.”

  I stared into the vacuum of his eyes for a long moment. I remembered the two letters that Slim and Loper had addressed and put into the mailbox.

  Did Drover know something about that puzzling event, something that he wasn’t telling? Was this a clue that promised to lead my investigation off into an entirely different direction?

  “Drover, let me ask you one question. Do the letters I-R-S mean anything to you?”

  “Well, let’s see here. I-R-S. I are confused. ‘Confused’ starts with an S, so maybe that’s what it means.”

  “‘Confused’ starts with a C, Drover.”

  “Gosh, I guess I’m confuseder than I thought.”

  The breath hissed out of my chest. Suddenly I felt that I was being crushed by the weight of my job, the weight of the investigation, and above all, the weight of Drover’s dingbat questions.

  And his answers too. His dingbat answers were just as weird as his dingbat questions.

  I marched several steps away, blinked my eyes, took several deep breaths, and tried to clear the sawdust out of my head. Then, in a flash, it hit me.

  I whirled around. “I’ve got it, Drover. I just remembered why I came streaking down here.”

  “Oh good, ’cause I’d almost forgotten.”

  “Yes, I had come pretty close to forgetting myself.”

  “Yeah, and if you forgot yourself, you’d really be lost.”

  I forked him with a gaze of purest steel. “What?”

  “I said . . . well, let’s see here.” He scratched his right ear. “If you went someplace and forgot to take yourself, you’d be out there all alone. I guess.”