The Case of the Bone-Stalking Monster Page 4

  “It’s not morning, son. The day’s half over.”

  “No, it’s still morning. See where the sun is?”

  I beamed him a glare. “Do you want to argue the time of day or hear some terrible news?”

  “I think I’d rather argue. I hate terrible news. It always seems so terrible.”

  “Exactly, and there’s a reason for that. Terrible news seems terrible because it is. Now sit down and be quiet and brace yourself. I have to tell you something.”

  He sat down and braced himself. “How terrible is it?”

  “Be quiet and you might find out.”

  “Okay.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “What if I can’t stand it?”

  “That’s why I told you to sit down. When you can’t stand something, you should sit.”

  “Oh. That makes sense. I guess I’m ready.”

  “Very well, here we go. Drover, it’s my unpleasant duty to inform you . . .”

  “That’s enough, I can’t take anymore!”

  “I haven’t told you anything yet, you little weenie.”

  “Yeah, but it’s already so bad that my leg’s starting to hurt. Maybe you could start with the good news first.”

  “All right, we’ll try it your way. The good news, Drover, is that your bones have disappeared.”

  His eyes popped open. His jaw fell several inches. “That’s not good news, that’s terrible news!”

  “I’m sorry, son. I had to trick you.”

  “Yeah, but you tricked me.”

  “That’s what I just said, Drover, but I tricked you for your own good. Somebody had to trick you into facing reality as it really is.”

  “I want to go back to bed. I want my bones. Oh, my leg!”

  I gave him a pat on the shoulder. “I know this is hard on you, Drover, but there’s more.” I looked into his eyes and lowered my voice to a whisper. “For you see, Drover, your bones were stolen by . . . the Bone Monster.”

  His eyes grew as wide as saucers. “You mean . . . he was here?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “The Bone Monster was HERE?”

  “Exactly.”

  “While I was asleep?”

  “I’ve run out of ways of saying yes, Drover, but yes, all those things you have said are true and correct.”

  “Oh my gosh!” He sat down and began scratching his left ear with his left hind leg. (I notice all these tiny details.) “Tell me what happened.”

  “All right, let’s see here. I was giving you an important lecture on . . . something. I don’t recall the subject matter at the moment.”

  “Yeah, it was pretty boring and I fell asleep.”

  I beamed him a hot glare. “Do you want to tell this story or shall I?”

  “No, you better do it, ’cause I don’t know what happened.”

  “Fine. I’ll tell the story and you concentrate on being quiet. You fell asleep. I left to do a quick sweep of the corrals and feed barn. On my return, I was astonished to see this . . . this creature standing in your bedroom.”

  “Oh my gosh, what did he look like?”

  “Just as you described him, Drover: a huge, hairy, shaggy, gorilla-type creature.”

  “With red eyes that blinked on and off?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And long fangs?”

  “Same guy.”

  His teeth had begun to chatter. “Oh my gosh, Hank, it must have been the Bone Monster!”

  Pretty scary, huh? You probably think there wasn’t a Bone Monster, that I was just making it up. That’s what I thought too, but you’ll soon find out . . .

  You’ll see.

  Chapter Seven: Dogpound Ralph Appears on the Scenery

  I had Drover’s full attention. “What did he do?”

  “Well, let me think. Oh yes, he looked down at you and licked his chops, almost as though . . . almost as though he were thinking of . . . eating you, Drover.”

  “Oh my gosh, it’s a good thing I didn’t wake up. I’d have died, Hank, just died! What did he do then?”

  “Well, he didn’t eat you.”

  “Oh good!”

  “Instead, he saw the three bones between your paws. He glanced over both shoulders, snatched them up with a big hairy hand, and lumbered off to the northwest.”

  By this time, Drover had crawled underneath his gunnysack bed. Nothing showed but his stub tail. “Where do you reckon he went, and do you think he’ll come back?”

  “I’m guessing that he went to Spook Canyon, Drover. That’s about the spookiest place on the ranch. And as to whether he’ll be back . . . we just don’t know the answer to that one.”

  I could see the gunnysack shaking. “I’ll never be able to sleep again, not with him running around.”

  “I guess the next question is, do you want to send a scout patrol into Spook Canyon and try to recover your bones?”

  He poked his nose out the west side of the gunnysack. I could just barely see one of his eyes. “Who’d be in the scout patrol?”

  “The entire massed forces of the Security Divi­sion, Drover. Or to put it another way . . . you.”

  His nose and eye vanished. “You know, Hank, the way this old leg’s been acting up, I probably better stay close to the gas tanks.”

  “Mmmm yes, that’s what I thought.”

  “And Bone Monsters have to eat too, just like the rest of us, and maybe if he has steak bones to eat, he won’t want to be trying to eat us.”

  I caught myself smiling. “Good point, Drover, I hadn’t thought of that. So what you’re saying is that you’re willing to drop the whole thing and not file charges in the case?”

  “Oh yeah, you bet. I was never so happy to lose three bones.”

  Bingo! Heh, heh. My net worth had just zoomed into the statusphere. I was now the sole owner of three of the best bones in Texas. And Drover was happy about it. What a deal.

  “Well, whatever you think, Drover. It’s your life and they were your bones. And by the way, you can come out now. The Bone Monster left thirty minutes ago.”

  His nose appeared. “Oh, I think I’ll stay in here for a while longer, just in case. My leg needs a rest anyway.”

  “Fine, but I’ll expect you to be ready for Night Patrol. We’ll move out at 1800 hours sharp.”

  “Night Patrol! What about the Bone Monster?”

  “Sure, invite him to come along. The more the merrier.”

  “Oh my leg!”

  I left him quivering under his gunnysack and went on about my business. I felt great. It was a beautiful spring morning and I had three wonderful bones in the bank. What more could a dog ask of this old life?

  I headed up the hill, past the yard gate, past the machine shed, through the shelter belt, and onward and northward to the county road. It had occurred to me, don’t you see, that I hadn’t worked Traffic in several days, and that was too long.

  I hate to let Traffic slide, but sometimes it can’t be helped. I get so busy with investigations and monster reports and so forth that I can’t do a thorough job with Traffic. And I always regret it.

  I mean, when you skip a few days of barking cars on the county road, those guys get to thinking it’s THEIR road and they’ll start driving like mechanics . . . maniacs, I guess it is . . . they start driving like maniacs, hogging the road, expending the seed limit, and disregarding all our rules and regulations.

  Well, you know where I stand on those issues. I don’t allow ’em, and the sooner those guys figure it out, the happier we’ll all be.

  Imagine my surprise when I topped that little hill north of the house and saw two unidentified pickups parked on the side of the road . . . MY road, that is. They appeared to be just sitting there, using my road as a parking lot, and I guess you know that we don’t allow such things, especially when the guil
ty parties don’t have permission.

  The farther I went, the madder I got. Those guys would pay dearly for this. Even though I had just made a killing in the bone market and was now a fabulously wealthy dog, I was in no mood to be generous. By George, if they wanted a free parking space, they could go somewhere else.

  As I drew closer, I began sifting clues and memorizing tiny details. It was two pickups, all right, one red and one white. The red one was parked behind the white one, and the driver of the red one had gotten out and was standing beside the white one.

  They appeared to be talking—the drivers, not the pickups. The drivers appeared to be talking. I could hear the low murmur of their voices. That was a pretty important clue right there. They were murmuring.

  Why would two drivers of two pickups be murmuring to each other on the side of a county road on a pretty spring day? It struck me as pretty fishy, and I had every intention of getting to the bottom of the barrel.

  Fifty yards out, I fired off a warning bark. Sometimes that will send them fleeing in terror. I mean, once they realize that they’ve been caught in the act by the Head of Ranch Security, a lot of these loafers and deadbeats will quit the country, never to be seen again.

  That’s not what they did. Instead, they . . . well, I couldn’t see they did much of anything, actually, which provided me with another important clue: Those guys had no idea who or whom they were fixing to go up against. And maybe they weren’t real smart on top of that.

  By this time, I had abandoned all hope of settling this in an easy or peaceful manner. Obviously, I would have to kick tails and take names and maybe even tear a few doors off of a few pickups.

  I hated to be so drastic about it, but some guys just don’t take hints.

  I rumbled up to the first pickup, which happened to be the red one in the rear. The rear of the pickup was red but so was the front. It was red all over, in other words, but it . . . phooey.

  I rumbled up to the second pickup in line. I chose it at random, for no particular reason. As far as I was concerned, one was just as guilty as the other.

  Without wasting a single second of my time, I marched straight to the right rear wheel and proceeded to mark it with Secret Encoding Fluid. Once we have SEFed a tire, we feed the secret coding information into Data Control. For days and weeks thereafter, we can call up a SEF Report and trace the location of every tire of every vehicle we have SEFed.

  Pretty snazzy, huh? Maybe you thought this was a sharecropper outfit, staffed by a couple of dim­­wit dogs. Ha! Far from it. Over the years, we have upgraded our equipment and brought in the very latest up-to-date high-tech instruments that help us in our never-ending battle against . . .

  Who or whomever it is that we’re against. The villains of this world. The slackers and the trespassers, cattle rustlers and roadhogs, and the list goes on and on.

  On most of your ordinary ranches, your ordinary ranch dogs merely mark the tires. Not us, fellers. We encode them with Secret Encoding Fluid and . . .

  Suddenly and all at once, I had a feeling—a strange creepy feeling—that I was being watched.

  I rolled my eyes upward. Sure enough, there was the face of a dog, staring down at me. While continuing to SEF the tire, I began memorizing every detail of the alleged face.

  How many dogs can do both those jobs at once? Very few. It requires tremendous powers of concentration, because if you happen to get the two tasks mixed up . . . well, it could lead to water on the brain.

  I lifted my eyes and here’s what I saw: two big sad eyes, one mouth, one nose, two long floppy ears. If I had been forced to give a quick analysis of the face, I would have guessed that it belonged to some kind of hound dog, either a basset or a beagle.

  I finished up the SEF procedure, scratched up some gravel with my front paws (that gravel scratch­ing seems to help “set” or “fix” the Encod­ing Fluid), and turned my full attention to the tres­passer in the pickup.

  I broke the long icy silence. “You seem to be staring at me, fella. Is there some reason for that?”

  “Well, I was just a-wondering what you were doing down there, I guess, is why I was staring. Are you wettin’ down the tires?”

  “It may appear that’s what I’m doing, but in fact of actuality, it’s quite a bit more complicated than that.”

  “Oh. Well, I probably wouldn’t understand it then. I’m kind of slow.”

  “Hmmm, yes.” I had already picked up that clue, that he was “slow,” to use his word, and suddenly I had the feeling that . . . “Say, pal, haven’t we met before?”

  “Yup, sure have. Name’s Ralph. They call me Dogpound Ralph ’cause I stay at the dog pound. You visited me twice at the pound.”

  I began pacing. “Yes, of course. It’s all coming back to me now. Don’t you see what this means? You’re Dogpound Ralph!”

  “Well . . . that’s what I thought.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. I knew I’d seen you before: your face, the mournful eyes, the drooping jowls. They all add up to YOU, Ralph, and they will never add up to anyone else.”

  “Good. I reckon.”

  “You might recall, Ralph, that I’m the guy who broke you out of prison and saved you from a miserable existence as a jailbird.”

  “Yup, either that or I broke you out, ’cause you had just eat a bar of soap.”

  “No, you’re wrong, Ralph. I had been poisoned by my enemies. They had plotted to poison me with a deadly hydrophobia virus.”

  “It was soap, ya dope. Your sister fed you soap ’cause you wouldn’t take a hint and go home.”

  Would I just stand there and take this kind of insult from a jailbird dog who was trespassing on my ranch?

  You’ll soon find out.

  Chapter Eight: Miss Scamper Falls Madly in Love with Me

  We glared at each other for several seconds. Then I broke the icing and walked a few steps away.

  “Okay, Ralph, have it your way. So what brings you down here?”

  He began scratching his left ear with his left hind leg. I waited. He was a slow scratcher.

  “Me and Jimmy Joe Dogcatcher are going to camp out at the lake and fish all night.”

  My eyes fell on two fishing rods in the cab. “Hmm, yes, that fits.”

  He stopped scratching and looked at me. “Did you ask was I having fits?”

  “No, I did not. I said, ‘that fits.’”

  “Oh. I thought . . . can’t hear so good when I’m scratchin’.” He went back to scratching. “Did I mention that there’s a lady dog in that white pickup?”

  My eyes popped open. Suddenly I was wide awake. “What? A lady dog? You mean I’ve been listening to you all this time and there’s a lady dog only fifty feet away?”

  “Uh-huh. I wanted to talk to her, only I’m too bashful. I’m always afraid they’ll laugh at my long ears.”

  I studied his long ears. “They are pretty long, tee hee, aren’t they? I mean, I have nothing against long ears, Ralph, but those may be the, ha, ha, longest ears I ever saw.”

  He heaved a deep mournful sigh. “See? That’s why I can’t talk to the girls. We’d just end up talking about my big ears.”

  “Those are definitely some amazing ears, Ralph. Do you ever step on them when you walk?”

  “Uh-huh, all the time. It’s pretty embarrassing.”

  “I’ll bet. Well!” I leaped to my feet. “I’ll march over to that pickup and give you a few lessons on how to impress the womenfolk.”

  “Oh good. Can I watch?”

  “Sure. Watch and take notes. You might as well learn from one of the best in the business.”

  I left him there with his big ears and made my way around to the second pickup. Before I got there, I slowed my pace to a manly swagger and let my eyes drift up to the . . .

  Mercy! She was a beagle, surely one of the most gorgeous beagles
ever to draw a breath. She was looking into the rear glass of the pickup and primping on her face. When I came into view, she saw me in the glass.

  “Well, well!” she gushed in a sultry voice. “Mir­ror mirror on the wall, look who’s coming, big and tall! Hello there, big boy.”

  I sat down and beamed her a rakish smile. And then, in my deepest, most malodorous voice, I said, “Howdy, ma’am. Unless these eyes deceive me, you are the lovely Miss Scamper.”

  She fluffed up her ears, then turned and came floating over to the tailgate, wearing a foxy little smile. She fluttered her . . . mercy me, she fluttered those long eyelashes and I almost forgot to breathe.

  “You’re pretty cute yourself, Wolfie. Do we have a name for you?”

  “Oh yes ma’am. Hank the Cowbell . . . er, Hank the Cowdog, Head of Ranch Security, at your service, ma’am.”

  “Oooo. Are we a pretty important dog, is that what we’re saying?”

  “Well, I’m not one to broast or bag . . . boast or brag, that is, but it’s been said that, yes, I’m a fairly important dog.”

  She studied the claws on her right front paw. “Are we merely important or are we also rich?”

  “Ha, ha. Funny that you should ask. As a matter of fact, I recently made a huge fortune in the bone market.”

  One eyebrow twitched. “Oooo. Little fortunes don’t thrill me, but I can be impressed by huge ones.”

  “Well, I’ve got one. I also write poetry, speak many languages, and do tricks.”

  “You’re a busy little fellow, aren’t you? So what’s causing all the dust?”

  “Huh? Dust?” It was then that I noticed the small cloud of dust that had risen around us. “Oh, the dust. My best guess, Miss Scamper, is that you’ve caused my tail to wag extra hard, and it’s kicking up a, uh, small cloud of dust . . . so, to speak.”

  She coughed. “That’s a pretty smart tail, but maybe we could slow it down, now that we’re friends.”

  “Sure, you bet.” I punched in the commands for Relaxed Tail. It didn’t work. I shot a glance at Miss Scamper.