The Case of the Tender Cheeping Chickies Page 2

  “You’ve got a mud ball on your nose.”

  “That’s your opinion, Drover, and I’m not interested in your opinions. The impointant pork . . . the imporkant point . . . the important point is that we will surround the pond and unleash a withering barrage of Ultrasonic Barking that will blow the stupid frog right out of the water. Ready? Bark!”

  Boy, you should have seen us in action. It was very impressive. Maybe that frog thought he was safe out there in the middle of the pond, but he’d never seen the elite troops of the Security Division in action. The foolish frog.

  Drover set up his firing position on the north shore of the pond, while I set up on the south shore. Facing each other across the expanse of green water, we loaded up and began launching round after round of deafening, ear-shattering Ultrasonic Barks.

  Minutes passed. Leaves and birds fell from the trees nearby, and one big cottonwood even split in half, no kidding. And out in the middle of the pond, that poor frog . . . well, just floated around and didn’t actually . . .

  “All right, Drover!” I yelled over the roar of the battle. “We’ve given him Stage Two, and now we’re ready to move into Stage Three. Circle the pond and fire off a bark every ten steps. Ready? Let ’im have it!”

  The Stage Three Procedure was even more awesome than Stage Two. I mean, it was thunder and lightning, bombs going off, earthquakes and tornadoes! And would you believe that our barking even produced a huge tidal wave? Well, maybe not. But it was some awesome barking. And after a mere two hours . . .

  We, uh, regrouped on the south shore. Our eyes were wooden, our limp tongues hung out of exhausted mouths, our legs were shaking from the effort of absorbing all the recoil of our barking.

  Drover was the first to speak. “He’s still out there.”

  To which I managed to say, “He’s still out there, Drover, but we’ve made our point.”

  “What was the point? I’ve already forgotten.”

  I grabbed several deep breaths, filling my exhausted lungs with a fresh supply of carbon diego. “The point is that we don’t allow frogs in our pond. What we couldn’t have known was that this frog is too dumb to understand. I think we can notch this one up as a huge moral victory and go on to more important business.”

  And with that, we stuck out our tongues at the moron frog, gave him monkey ears, and marched away in a triumph, leaving the frog shattered, beaten, and totally humiditated. Humiditied.

  Humiliated. There we go. Humiliated.

  At this point, you’re probably wondering if I’ve forgotten about the Long-Snouted Road Monster. Not at all. It was a hectic morning, see, and we had a lot of business to take care of. I mean, we’re very busy dogs.

  And I should probably point out that a lot of your ordinary ranch mutts wouldn’t have bothered to do Frogs and Ponds. They would have considered it a waste of their time. Not me, fellers. When it comes to the business of Ranch Security, I figure that no job is too small to be insignificant.

  No job is too big to be small.

  No job is too small to be . . . phooey.

  Where were we? Oh yes. We had just spent the early-morning hours putting down the Frog Rebellion. We had smashed a plot by the United Frog Front to steal Emerald Pond and haul it away to the island of Cowabonga, where they planned to . . . do something with our precious pond.

  But we got that stopped just in the nip of the tuck, and as you might expect, the hours and hours of combat had left us exhausted. Yes, we were exhausted but proud, very proud of our team’s performance in the heat of battle. Con-gratulating ourselves on a job well done, we marched away from the smoke and ruins of the battlefield and made our way back to our office on the twelfth floor of the Security Division’s Vast Office Complex.

  There, we rolled into our gunnysack beds and prepared to indulge ourselves in a few hours of much-needed sleep—sleep that would heal our wounds and prepare us for another dangerous night on Life’s front lines. Little did we know or suspect that our period of R&R (Rest and Revitaminization) would be court shot . . . cut short, let us say, or that we would soon be jolted out of our beds by the approach of . . .

  Are you sure you’re ready for the scary part? I mean, once it starts, there won’t be any getting out. No kidding.

  Use your own judgment.

  Chapter Three: The Invasion of the Road Monster

  Okay, there we were, sprawled out on our respective gunnysack beds. I had just closed my weary eyes and had begun to . . . driff oup om the dorking snork of the beetlebomb . . . hot fudgely whickerbill and feathering whiffer piffle . . .

  “Hank, do you hear that?”

  Had someone just called my name? No. The piffer had merely whiffled in the hot fudgely silence of the—

  “Hank? I hear something. Maybe you’d better wake up.”

  Fighting against the terrible gravitational pull of the hot fudgely silence, I somehow managed to raise my head, and even managed to crank open the outer door of my left eye. And suddenly I saw before me . . .

  A dog? Or was he a frog in a dog suit? Or a hog in a frog suit, pretending to be a dog? It was very confusing.

  “Who are you, and what am I doing here?”

  “Well, I’m Drover. Remember me?”

  “No. I’ve never seen me before, so don’t try to pretend . . .” I cranked open the lid to Eye Number Two, and suddenly a folks came into fakus. It was the folks of a dog . . . the face of a dog, let us say, and it came into focus. “Wait a minute, hold everything, pal. I’ve seen you before.”

  “Yeah, about five minutes ago. I guess you fell asleep.”

  “Ha! Not likely.” I struggled to my feet and tried to walk a few steps, but it appeared that someone had stolen my legs and had replaced them with four phony legs made of fubb rubber . . . fubb roamer . . .

  I turned a steely gaze on the stranger. “Where are my legs?”

  “Well . . . I think you’re wearing them.”

  “No, I mean the real ones. These are phony substitutes made of fubb rubber.”

  “You mean foam rubber?”

  “Ah! So you know about this? Okay, pal, who did it and where are my legs?” I narrowed my eyes and studied the outline of the stranger’s face. “Wait a minute, hold everything. Drover? Is that you?”

  “Yeah. Hi.”

  “Thank goodness I’ve found you. They’ve stolen my legs! If we don’t get them back . . .” All at once, in a rush of insight, I began to realize that . . . uh . . . the things I was saying didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I mean, I had just heard myself accusing someone of . . . well, stealing my legs, so to speak, and yet I could see four legs on my . . . uh . . . body.

  I took a deep breath of air and blinked my eyes. There in front of me sat Drover, my Assistant Head of Ranch Security. “Drover, how long has this been going on? Don’t hold anything back. I must know the truth.”

  “Well, you were asleep for five minutes. I guess.”

  “It seemed longer. Weeks. Months. We weren’t hiking across the Hot Fudge Mountains?”

  “Not me. I don’t think so.”

  “Hmmm. And what about the stolen legs? Did you file a report about . . . why are you staring at me that way? You look like a goofball. If you must stare and look goofy, please go somewhere else.” I marched several steps away. “All right, Drover, the pieces of this puzzle are falling into place.”

  “Oh good, ’cause I’d begun to wonder—”

  “Listen carefully. Number one, no one stole my legs. That was a bogus report. Number two, the Hot Fudge Mountains don’t exist. And number three, you must swear an oath never to discuss this conversation with anyone outside the Security Division. Do you know why?”

  “Well, let me think here.”

  “Because, Drover”—I dropped my voice to a whisper—“they might get the wrong idea. If they took our words out of context, they might thi
nk . . .”

  “. . . that we’re just a couple of dumb dogs?”

  “Yes. Right. Exactly. And we must guard against that, Drover, because nothing could be further from the . . .” Suddenly my ears began picking up a sound in the distance. I switched all circuits over to Ear Lift, Right Roll. “Drover, I don’t want to alarm you, but I’m picking up an odd sound, coming from somewhere north of us.”

  “Yeah, I heard the same sound, and that’s why I woke you up. It’s kind of a roar, isn’t it?”

  I fine-tuned the Digital Scanneration System and monitored the sound. “Yes, it’s a roar, a very unusual kind of roar.”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of a roaring roar.”

  “Exactly. Yes.” I heaved a sigh. “Well, soldier, it appears that we’re back on duty. Are you ready for this?”

  “Well, I’m kind of tired”—he stood up and began limping around in a circle—“and, boy, this old leg is really giving me fits.”

  “Never mind the leg, Drover. On this outfit, all roars must be checked out. Stand by to Launch All Dogs!”

  Drover whimpered and moaned, but it didn’t do him any good. Duty had called, and within seconds, we had launched ourselves into the morning breeze. Once airborne, we set a course that took us around the southeast corner of the yard, then due north toward the county road. Trees, houses, and other objects flew past in blur.

  We streaked past the front gate, past the cedar trees in the shelter belt, and then northward toward the mailbox and the county road. It was then that my instruments began picking up . . .

  Uh-oh. We’ve come to the scary part, for you see, what we saw was perhaps the scariest thing I’d ever seen. Do I dare describe it? I’ll try.

  Okay, hang on. There was this . . . this thing, this horrible ugly creature coming down the road in front of us. The first thing I noticed was the sheer size of it: HUGE. I mean, bigger than a pickup, almost as big as a house. It was yellow, and it appeared to be . . .

  I know this will sound very strange, but you’ll have to trust me here. I mean, I was there and saw it with my own eyes.

  It appeared to be some kind of . . . well, huge yellow face traveling down the road on six tires. It had two big glassy eyes and a nose . . . a snout . . . a long snout that stuck out in front, and the end of the snout was mounted on . . . tires!

  Sound crazy? I understand. It looked crazy. I’d never seen anything . . . I mean, that snout was so long, it had to be held up with front tires! And just below the long snout, I saw a wide grinning mouth that appeared to be made of . . . gleaming steel. No kidding.

  Oh, and the thing was spewing black smoke from some kind of snorkel or exhaust pipe. And it was roaring. Loud.

  Fellers, that was my first glimpse at the Long-Snouted Road Monster, and it was a sight I will never forget. The thing was coming straight toward us, and unless we took some evasive action . . .

  “Hit the ditch, Drover!”

  All our flight plans, course corrections, calculations, formations . . . everything went out the window, so to speak, as we scrambled off the road and went rolling into the ditch. And just in the nickering of time. The horrible thing roared past us, leaving us . . . might as well admit it . . . leaving us terrified, gasping for air, and choking on clouds of dust. And diesel fumes.

  That was an important clue. Diesel fumes. This hideous monster ran on diesel fuel! Do you see the meaning of this? It meant that this monster, this horrible monster was some kind of . . . well, some kind of robot machine, perhaps from outer space! It had been sent to the ranch to . . . we didn’t know what dark purpose had brought it to our ranch.

  I found myself lying upside down in a patch of tall weeds. A quick scan of the instruments showed that our systems had come through the crash without major damage, which was a big relief and also a big surprise. I mean, we had come very close to being eaten and devoured by . . .

  “Drover, where are you? Turn on your emergency beacon.”

  “No thanks, I’m too scared to eat.”

  I struggled to my feet, followed the sound of his voice, and found him lying in a clump of ragweed. “Ah, there you are. Thank goodness. How badly are you hurt?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Good. There for a second, I was afraid we’d lost you.”

  “No, I was with me all the time.”

  “Nice work, son. That was a close call.” I looked down the road and saw that the monster was approaching headquarters. “How about it, soldier, can you travel?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Great. Let’s move out. We must warn the house that a Long-Snouted Road Monster is on the loose.”

  “Gosh, I thought it was a road grader.”

  “Road grader? Ha. We should be so lucky. No, Graver, what we just witnessed was no rade groder.”

  “Drover. My name’s Drover.”

  I glared at the runt. “Why are you telling me your name? I know your name.”

  “Yeah, but you called me . . . I think you called me Radegroder.”

  “I did not call you Radegroder. I said . . . never mind, Groder, we’ve got work to do. Let’s move out!”

  “My name’s Drover.”

  Battered and wounded though we were, we made our way down the road to check this thing out.

  Chapter Four: A Terrible Bloody Battle

  I noticed that Drover was limping pretty badly. “How’s the leg, son?”

  “Terrible. The pain’s about to kill me, and it hurt my feelings that you called me . . . Groder.”

  “I did not call you . . . okay, maybe I did. But it was a simple mistake, made in a moment of great stress and tension. After all, we had just been attacked by that huge monster.”

  “Yeah, but I still say it’s a road grader.”

  “Drover, please. It’s not a road grader. Do you know why?” He opened his mouth to answer, but I plunged on with my lecture, knowing that he had nothing important to say. “Number one, county employees grade county roads. Number two, this little piece of a road going down to headquarters is a private road, not a county road.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Number three, every road grader has a driver, Drover, whereas your Long-Snouted Monsters have no driver. Did you see a driver in that thing?”

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact—”

  “See? No driver, no grader. And number four, if that had actually been a road grader, don’t you suppose the Head of Ranch Security would have noticed it right away?”

  “Well—”

  “Drover, you’re arguing a hopeless case. I’ve given you four excellent reasons why you’re wrong about this, and you’ve offered no evidence, not one shred of evidence, to the contrary.”

  “Yeah, ’cause you keep butting in.”

  I stopped in the middle of the road and stared at him with . . . well, hurt and amazement in my eyes. “Butting in? Is that the thanks I get for trying to improve your mind? For trying to keep you from making a spectacle of yourself? Drover, I can’t tell you how deeply this wounds me.”

  “Yeah, but I know it was a road grader, ’cause I saw the driver inside the cab, and it had ‘John Deere’ written on the side.”

  “Please stop yelling at me.”

  “Well, you never listen.”

  I heaved a weary sigh and shook my head. This was a very sad moment for the Security Division. We had important work to do, but it would have to wait until I had given Drover his Lesson for the Day.

  I marched back and forth in front of him. “Drover, we’ve discussed spies and monsters, right? They’re clever beyond our wildest dreams, and when they invade our ranch, do you suppose they waltz in, dressed as spies and monsters? No. They always come disguised as something else.”

  “You mean . . .”

  “Yes, Drover. It’s the old Road Grader Disguise—a layer of yellow paint and a phony Joh
n Deere sign. These monsters aren’t stupid. Do you think they’d come in here looking like monsters? Ha. You don’t know these guys the way I know them.”

  He plopped down and started scratching his ear. “You mean . . .”

  “At this point, we don’t know who he is, Drover, or who sent him onto our ranch, but it looks very suspicious, doesn’t it? And I wish you wouldn’t scratch in public. If someone saw us here, he might think we were just goofing off.”

  “Boy, that would be wrong. What’ll we do now?”

  I narrowed my eyes and studied the layout of ranch headquarters. “We’re going in, son. Lock and load. This could get us into some serious combat.”

  “Oh, my leg!”

  And with that, we arranged ourselves into Attack Formation and began creeping down the road toward headquarters. Our objective on this mission was to . . . well, we had two objectives, actually.

  The first was to warn our friends at the house that a dangerous, possibly deadly Robot Space Monster had perpetrated our prepatory . . . had penetrated our territory, shall we say. And our second objective—if we were lucky enough to survive the first—was to engage the enemy in face-to-face, hand-to-hand combat. In other words, it was our job to clear the ranch of all monsters.

  Yes, it was a bold plan, a dangerous plan. I knew that our odds of surviving the mission weren’t so great, but . . . well, when I signed on as Head of Ranch Security, I knew the job would be no bed of nails.

  No bed of rose petals.

  I knew it would be no flower bed.

  I knew the bed would be full of . . .

  Wait! Hold everything! “Eternal bedsprings.” Remember that? Was this some kind of clue that might blow the case wide open?

  No. It meant nothing. Forget it.

  This promised to be a very dangerous mission, is the point, and it would have nothing to do with beds or rosebushes. I knew there was a high risk that we would never . . . well, never come back alive, might as well blurt it out.

  But that’s what cowdogs do. We live our lives as long as we can, and then we go down fighting for the ranch.