The Case of the Black-Hooded Hangmans Read online

  “Can’t.”

  “What do you mean, can’t? Did you lose it in the mist of the vapors?”

  “No. It’s outside the cage.”

  I got a good laugh out of that. “Outside the cage? I don’t think so. No way. Sorry.”

  “Bet me?”

  “Bet you? Well, I . . . hey Eddy, I believe my eyes and common sense, and both of them tell me . . .”

  “Bet me?”

  “. . . both of them tell me that . . . well, betting on duty is a violation of the, uh, Cowdog Code of Conduct, don’t you see. In other words, yes, I would love to take you up on your bet, but no, I’m afraid the, uh, regulations don’t permit it.”

  “Too bad.”

  “But that doesn’t mean you can’t finish the trick.”

  He shrugged. “Open the door, I’ll finish the trick.”

  “No problem there.”

  I pawed at the latches—there were two of them, not just one—until I had them undone. Eddy took it from there, opened the door, and stepped outside.

  He took a deep breath of air, looked up at the stars, and said, “Oh, yes!”

  “Wait a minute, pal, whoa, hold it, halt. You’d better come up with a kernel of dog food pretty fast or I’m liable to get suspicious.”

  “Suspicious? Of me?”

  “Right. I’m going to suspect that you pulled another cheap con game on me, and if I really thought that was true, Eddy, our friendship would be in trouble. Finish the trick.”

  “Oh gosh.”

  “Or bad things will start to happen.”

  “Oh darn.”

  I stuck my nose in his face and gave him a growl. “Why you little fraud, I should have known what you were doing. It was just another con job, wasn’t it? Huh? Another sneaking, slimy little trick to get you out of the cage, right?”

  “What’s this?”

  “Huh? What’s what?”

  He reached behind my left ear and held up a . . . you’ll never guess what he held between two of his fingers. I mean, even I was surprised, although I had suspected all along that he could . . . that he might . . .

  He held up the missing dog food kernel, you might say.

  “Bingo. Good thing you didn’t bet.”

  “I, uh, yes, I see what you mean, but how did you do that?”

  “Magic. Want it?”

  Before I could answer, he flipped the kernel up into the air, and more or less on instinct, I snapped and caught it. I chewed it up and swallowed it down, and by that time Eddy was gone.

  I saw him monkey-walking through the snow, in the general direction of the chicken house. I had to run to catch up with him.

  “Hey, wait a minute. Where do you think you’re going? You’re supposed to be back inside your cage.”

  “No time for that. Got another deal for you.”

  WHAT? Another . . .

  That’s just what I needed, another one of Eddy the Rac’s deals.

  Chapter Five: The Perfect Crime

  I had no idea what sort of “deal” he had in mind, but I was already starting to worry about it. I mean, the last couple of “deals” he’d pulled had gotten me into trouble and had even made me look silly, if you can believe that. Any time you’ve got a loose coon on the place, bad things start to happen.

  Yes, I was concerned, but what can you do about a loose coon? A loose coon is like a genie with light brown hair that has escaped from its bottle. Once the genie is out, it’s hard to put it back inside the toothpaste tube.

  The point is that I didn’t have much control over Eddy, once he had gotten out of his cage. I could have barked and sounded a General Alarm, but I didn’t see any need for such drastic measures. Not yet, anyway.

  It appeared that my best course of action was to wait and watch and see what kind of mischief Eddy got into—and then remove myself from the scenery of the crime, far, far away, so that I couldn’t possibly be blamed for it.

  That was a good plan. Or it should have been. How was I supposed to know that he would go in­side the chicken house? I never would have dreamed it. I mean, what a crazy thing to do!

  On our outfit, if a guy wanted to stir up some real serious heavy-duty trouble, all he had to do was mess around with Sally May’s chickens.

  We’re talking about a Shooting Offense, fellers. When it came to chickens and eggs, Sally May had no mercy and zero sense of humor.

  When I saw Eddy stick his head inside the door of the chicken house . . . the little door that the chickens used, not the big one . . . when I saw the so-forth and realized what he had in mind, I tried to stop him.

  “Say, Eddy, I don’t think I’d . . . Eddy, you’d better stay . . . hey pal, you’re fixing to get yourself into more trouble than you ever dreamed of!”

  It was too late. He didn’t hear me or didn’t listen or didn’t something, and in a flash he was gone—inside the Forbidden Place.

  Well, he’d really done it this time. All I could say was, “Bye bye, Eddy. It was nice knowing you,” because I wasn’t about to set foot inside that place.

  No way. See, I’d been there before and I’d gone to school, so to speak, on the subject of chickens, and I sure hated to think of poor little Eddy getting hauled in front of the firing squad. But in the Real World, we sometimes pay a terrible price for our mistakes.

  And that was too bad because . . . well, Eddy was new to the place and didn’t know all the rules. And he wasn’t a bad guy, really, just a little on the ornery side and too curious for his own good, and it didn’t seem fair that . . .

  He might not have even known that it was a chicken house. Had you thought about that? He might have blundered in there thinking that it was a storage shed or something and, oh well, maybe I could save the little stupe before he got in over his head.

  And so it was that, against my better judgment, I slipped up the little ramp runway and stuck my head inside the door. Don’t worry. I had no intention of going inside. A warning, that’s all he would get from me, and that was risky enough.

  It was dark inside. I cocked my right ear and listened. Not much there, so I switched over to Smelloradar and . . . whoa, just about blew out the control panel! I had forgotten about the powerful odors that gather inside a chicken house.

  Smelloradar is calibrated to pick up the tiniest of odors, don’t you see, and there are no tiny odors in a chicken house. Just a lot of big ones, and if you’re not careful, they can fry all the circuits in your Smelloradar.

  Anyways, so far so good. I knew Eddy was in there somewhere, but at least he hadn’t started a riot. As long as that condition held, we had some hope of getting him out and saving his life.

  I realized that talking would be risky, but it was a risk I had to take. I whispered . . .

  “Eddy?” No answer. “Eddy?” Still no . . .

  Holy smokes, all at once there was this horrible masked face right in front of me, and I mean only inches away from the end of my . . .

  Okay, it was Eddy. You probably thought it was a Night Monster or a ghost or something. Ha, ha. Even I was fooled there for a second, but just for a second.

  Not for long.

  Just a brief moment of time, and then the voice of reason prevailed and said, “It’s only Eddy.” Of course. Who else could it be? It was no big deal, no runaway.

  “You called?”

  “Right. Eddy, I’ve come to save you. You don’t know where you are.”

  “Chicken house.”

  “Well . . . yes, but I’m sure you don’t realize what it means to be inside this parchickular ticken house.”

  “What?”

  “Chicken house, this particular chicken house.”

  “Yeah? Come in. We’ll talk.”

  “Ha, ha. I don’t think so, Eddy. See, the whole point of my being here,” I squeezed through the little door,
“is to get YOU OUT, not to get ME IN. You see what I mean?”

  “Sure. Listen. Got a deal. You like eggs?”

  I stared at his masked face and wondered if he had actually said what I thought he’d said.

  “Are you out of your mind? Listen, bud, you’re standing in the most dangerous place in Ochiltree County. I mean, a missile range is like a garden compared to this, because a missile is like a flower compared to Sally May when she’s on the rampage.”

  I got the feeling that he wasn’t listening, so I poked him in the chest and whispered louder in his ear.

  “Do you hear what I’m saying? You haven’t seen Sally May in one of her thermonuclear moments, so you’ll have to take my word for it. When she’s mad . . . well, listen to this.”

  It happened that I knew a little song about this very subject, so I did it for him. Here’s how it went.

  When She’s Angry

  When she’s angry, when she’s wrathful,

  The trees run for cover.

  And when she speaks of her displeasure,

  The mountains hide their faces.

  It is not that she’s unreasonable.

  It is not that she’s unkind.

  She can be as warm as sunlight,

  Soft as flowers on a vine.

  But if you summon up her displeasure,

  Prepare yourself for winds and tempests.

  For her anger is like a blizzard,

  A hurricane, volcano, and tornado.

  She despises all injustices,

  Inequalities and lies.

  And she knows when there is wickedness

  Just by looking in your eyes.

  When she’s angry, when she’s wrathful,

  The trees run for cover.

  And when she speaks of her displeasure,

  The mountains hide their faces.

  Eddy listened to the song but I wasn’t sure that he’d gotten the point. He shrugged his shoulders. “She’ll never know.”

  I stared at the outline of his masked face. It was the face of a bandit or a robber. “What do you mean, she’ll never know? She knows everything. Knowing is her business.”

  “Got a plan. Can’t miss. Fresh eggs for both of us.”

  I must admit that the mention of “fresh eggs” caused me to, well, lick my chops, so to speak.

  “Eddy, your plan won’t work. In the first place, the hens are sitting on their eggs. Did you notice that?”

  “Right. They’re asleep.”

  “They’re asleep now, but when you reach your cold little hand into a nest, they’ll go off like thirty-two burglar alarms.”

  He shook his head. “Got that covered. No prob­lem.”

  “In the second place, used eggs leave shells behind. When Sally May comes to gather her morning eggs, she’ll find shells. Do you suppose she’ll think they’re clam shells? Shotgun shells? No. She will know exactly what they are and why they happen to be shells instead of eggs.”

  “Got that covered too. No problem.”

  “And then do you know what will happen? She’ll pull out her list of Prime Suspects, which will contain two names: mine and mine. No thanks. Let’s get out of here.”

  I started toward the door but Eddy caught me by the collar and pulled me back. “You hungry?”

  “No. I’m stuffed, couldn’t hold another . . .” At that moment, my stomach growled and my mouth began to water. “. . . bite. In other words, no. Or not very. I’ve seen hungrier nights.” I licked my chops. “Okay, maybe I’m hungry but I’m not crazy.”

  “This’ll work. Magic.”

  I cut my eyes from side to side. “Explain that.”

  “Magic. Now you see it, now you don’t. Now it’s broken, now it’s fixed. Now it’s shells, now it’s an egg. Bingo.”

  “Wait a minute. Are you trying to tell me . . . magic, huh? I’ll be derned. That’s one I’ve never tried. And you can make the shells go back to­gether, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Right. Easy. No problem.”

  I licked my chops. “Well, by George, you did okay with the dog food trick. Maybe . . .”

  Eddy thrust a finger into the air. “Watch.”

  With that, he crept to the nearest nest, upon which a big fat hen was sitting—fast asleep. The hen was asleep, not the nest. He rubbed his little raccoon hands together, perhaps to warm them up, and slipped them beneath the sleeping hen. He lifted her out of the nest and set her down in an empty nest nearby.

  And I’ll be derned, she never even cracked an eye. Those coons could do amazing feats with their hands.

  A little humor there. Get it? Feats with their hands? But no kidding aside, they really could do a lot with their hands.

  Well, at that point I found my eyes drawn to the six or seven fresh eggs sitting in the . . . mercy, it took a lot of chop-licking to control the flow of . . . and my stomach was growling like crazy by this time, I mean it had been days and days since I’d had a decent meal, and by George . . .

  You’ll never guess what happened then. Even I was surprised.

  Chapter Six: Me? Sit on the Nest?

  SMACK, SLURP!

  Three eggs apiece, is how the, uh, treasure divided itself up, and you can’t believe how good they were. Best eggs I’d ever eaten, and what made ’em even better was the fact that nobody would ever know.

  I mean, here was the Perfect Crime, made possible by Eddy the Rac’s incredible magic skills. What a guy. What a deal.

  Course, I’ll have to admit that I was a little surprised when he explained MY part in the deal.

  I was feeling very good, see. My tummy was warm and full. We had just pulled off the Perfect Crime of the Century. I didn’t have a care in the world.

  Then Eddy read the fine print, so to speak, and told me how his magic would put those six eggs back together. I was surprised, to say the least, and I believe my response was, “HUH?”

  “Wait a minute, hold it right there. You mean for the magic to work, I have to sit on the nest for two hours? Why can’t you sit on it? It’s your magic, after all.”

  He waved one hand through the air. “Right. That’s the problem. See, egg magic needs a neutral diode.”

  “What’s a neutral diode?”

  “Draws electrical smithereens from the ostensible ether. Won’t work with me. Too much magic current. Shells won’t knit together.”

  “Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  I hadn’t thought of it because it was way yonder over my head. I mean, I didn’t understand any of that stuff he’d said. The guy must have been a genius.

  I thought it over for a moment. “So I just hop into the nest and sit there for a couple of hours, huh? That’s all there is to it?”

  “Yeah. Then scat. She’ll never suspect a thing.”

  “Well . . . I guess you know what you’re doing—speaking of which, what will you be doing while I’m dioding the electrical smithereens?”

  “Close by. Keeping watch. Checking things.”

  “I see. And if I should happen to fall asleep—which I won’t but just in case I do—you’ll be around to wake me up after two hours, right?”

  “Right. No problem.”

  “Hmm. It sounds a little crazy, Eddy, but it just might be crazy enough to work. I’ll give it a shot, but if those eggshells haven’t gone back together after two hours, I’m going to vanish for a few days.”

  “Fine.”

  “I sure wouldn’t want to be anywhere close by when Sally May discovered the crime, don’t you see, ’cause when she’s mad, the trees . . .”

  “. . . run for cover, I know. Fine.”

  “It’s nothing personal. I mean, I like you, Eddy, sort of, and I realize that you’re probably a scienti­fic genius, but I’m a pretty shrewd negotiator and I don’t make deals unless th
ey’re airtight.”

  “Yeah. You’re tough.”

  I put a paw on his shoulder and looked him right in the eyes. “A guy has to be, Eddy. As you get older and gain a little more experience, you’ll realize that life is what we live, and if it weren’t for life, this would be a pretty lifeless place.” He yawned. “Am I boring you?”

  “Oh no. It’s late.”

  “Yes it is, but as I was saying . . . hmmm, I seem to have lost my train of thought. I wanted you to remember something about life.”

  “I’ll remember.”

  “Do that, Eddy, because it was pretty important. I like to help you younger guys every chance I get.”

  “Right. Thanks.”

  “I wish I could remember . . . oh well, better get to work on the eggshells.” I hopped up into the nest and settled down upon the . . . yikes, I could hear them crunching beneath the weight of my enor­mous body. “Eddy, are you certain this will work? Something seems to be crunching down there.”

  “They do that. At first. The diodic polarity has to reverse.”

  “Oh, sure. I didn’t think of that. Okay, pal, I’ve got things under control here. Check me in two hours.” He waved and ducked out the door and . . . “Hey, Eddy.” He stuck his head back inside. “I thought I heard someone laughing.”

  “Oh no. Me, coughing. Bad cough. Chill in the air.”

  “Well, you’d better take care of yourself. We just might want to go into the egg business,” I gave him a secret wink, “if you know what I mean.”

  “Got it.”

  He ducked out again and I settled into the business of knitting the eggshells back together. I figured that if I concentrated extra hard on polarating the diatribes, it might speed up the process.

  I sure wanted the process to speed up, if at all possible. I mean, two hours can be a long time.

  Two minutes crawled by and I thought I would go nuts! It’s very hard for your active minds to adjust to the rhythms of a brainless chicken.

  How could they sit there on a nest for hours and days? What did they think about? Probably not much.

  Oh boy, this was going to be