The Case of the Tricky Trap Read online

  “Gosh, you mean . . . ”

  I marched over to him. “Yes. This court finds you innocent of all charges.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “You’re out of jail and free to go.”

  “Oh boy!” He removed his nose from the corner and grinned. Then his grin faded. “Yeah, but I don’t know where to go.”

  “Well, go to your room.”

  “I’m already in my room.”

  I whopped him on the back with my paw. “You see? Everything has worked out for the best. Let’s hit the sacks.” We went straight to our respective gunnysacks and flopped down. After a moment of silence, I said, “Drover, I’m sorry I got mad at you.”

  “Oh, that’s okay.”

  “I thought you were just being a chicken liver and a weenie.”

  “Yeah, I’m starved.”

  “It never occurred to me that you were under the spell of Buzzard Voodoo.”

  “I love chicken liver.”

  “In a moment of weakness and despair, I blamed you, Drover, and I’m deeply sorry. Can you ever forgive me?”

  “Boy, that was a funny song. Hee hee.”

  I stared at the outline of his face. “What?”

  “I said . . . it’s not funny when you’re wrong.”

  “Oh. Good point.” I took a deep breath of air. “Well, Drover, I’m glad we were able to work through this crisis. Lights out. Let’s grab some sleep. This whole nasty episode is behind us forever.”

  I thought it was over forever, but at that very moment I heard a sound that sent the case plunging into a new and dangerous direction. You’ll never guess what it was.

  Chapter Ten: Drover Disappears in the Night

  Okay, let me reset the skinerio. If you recall, Drover and I had just finished a heart-to-heart talk, a very moving discussion about our personal problems. Drover had admitted . . . I had admitted . . . it was kind of complicated, so we’ll skip the details.

  The point is that Drover had won his release from prison and we had saved our friendship from the wicked plot of Wallace the buzzard.

  In other words, the cause of Justice had been served on a plate of finest china, and we were feasting on . . . something. We were sharing a moment of peace and tranquittery. But then . . .

  I heard a sound, a kind of snapping sound. Drover heard it too. We lifted our heads and found ourselves staring into each other’s eyes. I was the first to speak.

  “What was that?” Drover rolled his eyes around.

  “I don’t know. I think it came from . . . the feed shed.”

  “The feed shed? Hmm, I wonder . . . the feed shed!”

  “Oh my gosh, do you reckon it could be . . . the trap?”

  I sprang to my feet and tried to clear the fog out of my bog . . . the fog out of my head. “Feed shed . . . trap. I feel there’s a connection here, Drover. There’s a coon trap in the feed shed, remember?”

  “Yeah, that’s what we were just talking about.”

  My eyes probed the darkness as the clues began knitting themselves into a pattern. “You’re right. We’ve caught something! But you’ve ignored a very important detail. This time it’s not ME in the trap.”

  “I’ll be derned.”

  “Which is the best news of the year. Do you see the meaning of this?”

  “Well, let me think.”

  “We’ve caught the thief, Drover, the same thieving buzzard who caused us so much grief.”

  “Oh boy!”

  “And I’ve got even better news, son. We’re going to send a scouting party down to the shed.”

  “That’ll be fun.”

  “And I’m appointing you to the job.”

  He stared at me for a moment, then rose to his feet and began limping around in a circle. “You know, I’d love to go, but all at once this old leg . . . ”

  “I don’t want to hear about your ‘old leg.’ I promised Slim that I would never go near that trap again, and I won’t.”

  “Yeah, but . . . oh, my leg!”

  “Soldier, you’ve gotten your orders, and you will carry them out.”

  “You mean . . . ”

  “Yes.” I stuck my nose in his face and showed him some fangs. “If you try to slip off to the machine shed, like you’ve done so many times before, I will personally see that you’re barbecued over an open fire.”

  “Yeah, but . . . ”

  “Go! I’ll be waiting right here for your report.” He moaned and whimpered, but I showed him mo nursery. No mercy. “And don’t let Wallace sing you any songs. Don’t forget, he pulls sneaky tricks.”

  I watched until he disappeared into the darkness. Oh, and I noticed a very interesting detail. He limped and dragged himself along for the first fifty feet, then his limp vanished. Does that sound suspicious? I thought so.

  See, for years I’d been gathering information on Drover’s so-called limp, and the file had grown as thick as a Dallas phone book. We still didn’t have enough evidence to bring formal charges against the runt, but it was beginning to appear that he was faking that limp.

  Are you shocked? I know, it’s hard to believe that a member of the Elite Guards would stoop to such shabby behavior, but there you are. I would add this latest information to his file.

  Well, it appeared that everything was working out, and my spirits were soaring. If Drover returned with a good report, the ranch would be rid of a nuisance. Come morning, Slim would find a buzzard in the trap, instead of me, and he would be very proud that I had honored my solemn oath to stay away from the trap. Life on the ranch would return to normal, and we would liverly happy afterly.

  We would live happily ever liverwurst.

  We would live . . . phooey.

  Anyway, I was in a great mood. I set the stopwatch of my mind and began counting time. I calculated that Drover should be returning in . . . oh, five minutes. Six minutes. Ten minutes. With Drover, we have to add a little time for him to dawdle along, stare at the moon, and chase crickets.

  An hour later, I began to worry. After two hours, I had paced a road through the middle of the office. Where was he! Maybe something bad had happened: he’d been voodooed by a buzzard, mugged on his way home, kidnapped by coyotes, lost his way, wandered off into the pasture . . .

  With Drover, the list of possible disasters was endless.

  All my natural instincts told me to go looking for the little mutt, but what if I did, and ended up going into the feed shed? That was something I had pledged not to do, and, well, a pledge is a pledge. But if anything happened to the little guy, I would never forgive myself.

  This had become one of the heaviest moral decisions of my whole career, and it seemed a perfect time to . . . well, sing a song about the kind of heavy moral decisions that dogs have to face at the top of Life’s Mountain. Here, listen to this.

  The Heavy Moral Decision Song

  My solemnest oath I offered to Slim,

  My cowboy companion and loyalest friend.

  My honor demands that I’m loyal to him.

  I’d never go back on my oath on a whim.

  Temptation can act as a type of a wedge

  That’s driven by somebody swinging a sledge,

  Dividing the mind and pushing the edge.

  But fellers, a pledge is a pledge is a pledge!

  But here’s the dilemma: I’m fearing the worst.

  Poor Drover is lost and this isn’t the first

  Occasion when he’s been so deeply immersed

  In trouble, he needed the use of a hearse.

  I’m deeply divided here, pulled half in two.

  This moral decision has left me to stew.

  My friendship to both of them’s always been true.

  So what in the heck is a dog s’posed to do?

  But wait, there’s a voice
inside of my head

  That’s urging alternative action instead.

  I heard it real plain and here’s what it said:

  “Hankie, forget it and go back to bed.”

  What did you think of the song? Okay, maybe it wasn’t all that great, but I came up with it on short notice. And it beat anything a buzzard could have written. Anyway, it gives you some idea of the kind of wrenching decisions the Head of Ranch Security faces every day of the year.

  And it also gave you my solution. Heh heh. Go back to bed. Forget about the whole mess.

  Why not? I mean, just because we face heavy decisions doesn’t mean we have to come up with answers. Who’s running this ranch, me or the heavy decisions? I’m running the ranch and if I want to take a vacation and become an irresponsible toad, that’s exactly what I’ll do.

  And that’s what I did. I turned off the lights, crawled underneath my gunnysack bed, pulled the covers over my eyes and ears, and ceased thinking about anything that involved Slim or Drover.

  By George, they had their lives and I had mine.

  It worked. Okay, it worked for about three minutes and then . . . sigh . . . I couldn’t stand it any longer. I know what you’re thinking. I’d gotten too deeply involved in this case, I deserved a night off . . . yeah, yeah, yeah. I had the same thoughts, but they didn’t do any good. Duty was calling and Drover needed help.

  I rose to my feet and took a big gulp of air. I really didn’t want to do this. I’m not inclined to be superstitious, but I must admit that I had bad feelings about going back toward the feed shed and putting myself anywhere close to that trap. A trap’s just a trap, you might argue, something made of steel and wire, but I had a history of lousy luck with that particular trap. Why, if something went wrong and I got myself sucked into that thing a third time . . .

  A cold shiver passed through my entire body. I didn’t even want to think about it. Slim was a good man, but if I ended up inside that trap a third night in a row . . . ooo boy, we didn’t need to walk through that graveyard. I would have to make sure it didn’t happen.

  I left the office and took the elevator down to the first floor. There, I picked up Drover’s scent and followed it in a westerly direction. I kept hoping that I would pick up a second trail, indicating that the little goof had checked the trap, left the shed, and wandered off into the pasture.

  No such luck. The trail led straight to the feed shed, and there was no indication that he had come back outside.

  At that point, a new idea began to glow in the back of my mind. Gee, what if the sound we’d heard hadn’t been the trapdoor. What if Drover had bungled into the trap and set off the trigger . . . and trapped himself! It could have happened while I was doing my song, right? The door could have slammed shut and I never would have heard it.

  This would be a great tragedy, of course. Hee hee. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh. It would be a tragedy and another blow to the reputation of the Security Division, but on the other hand . . . hee hee . . . Drover had thought it was pretty funny that I’d gotten trapped, so by George, if he was inside the trap, I saw nothing wrong with laughing my head off.

  Maybe you think it wasn’t nice of me to have such wicked thoughts, but don’t forget that sharing is very important, and that includes sharing blame and shame. I wanted to share the experience with Drover, that’s all.

  I crept up to the feed-shed door and listened. I could hear . . . something, a swishing sound and then a voice. I couldn’t make out any words, but it was Drover’s voice.

  Hmmm. Obviously he wasn’t in any danger and that came as a relief, and I was now more convinced than ever that . . . hee hee . . . he’d got caught in the trap. All the clues pointed in that direction. See, if we’d caught a buzzard, Drover wouldn’t have hung around in the shed. I mean, he was scared of Buzzard Voodoo and he would have streaked back to the office to give me the news.

  That made perfect sense. No, he was inside the trap, talking to himself. I could hardly conceal my delight. My concern, that is. Smiling to myself, I dropped down on my belly and wiggled myself through the crack in the door. “Well, Drover, how does it feel to . . . ”

  HUH?

  Chapter Eleven: Eddy’s Phony Helicopter

  Stand by for some shocking news. Remember all those clues that proved without a doubt that Drover had gotten trapped? Forget the clues. Sometimes clues take us in the right direction and sometimes they don’t. This time, the clues had given us some very misleading information.

  When I wiggled myself inside the shed, I was shocked and astounded to see that Drover was not inside the trap, muttering to himself. You know who was inside the trap? Not Wallace, as you might have thought, but . . . Eddy the Rac!

  Yes, my old buddy was still following a life of crime, and this time he’d gotten himself caught. Oh, sweet Justice!

  So far, so good. But the weird part was that Drover had remained in the shed. Why hadn’t he brought me the news? It didn’t make sense.

  My sudden appearance startled them, and Drover gave me a guilty smile. “Oh hi. We caught Eddy and I was just coming to tell you.”

  I lumbered over to him and gave him a scorching glare. “You were coming to tell me? Drover, you’ve been in here for two hours. I was worried sick. I couldn’t imagine what had become of you, and I still can’t.”

  “Well, I was just . . . Eddy was showing me some magic tricks.”

  “Magic tricks?”

  My steely gaze moved from Drover to Eddy. There he sat in the middle of the cage, the same little crook I’d known before, only older and a little bigger. A little bigger? That doesn’t sound right, does it? I mean, he was either bigger or littler, but he couldn’t have been both, so let’s change that to, “He looked somewhat bigger.”

  But he was the same guy who’d once been Slim’s pet. I could have picked him out of any police lineup.

  A stranger seeing Eddy might have said, “Oh, what a cute little raccoon! Isn’t he darling?” See, coons have certain qualities that cause humans and even a few dogs to notice their “cuteness.” They have that black mask over their eyes, they walk like a bear, and they have five-fingered hands that look very much like human hands.

  If you’ve never had dealings with raccoons, you might call them “cute” and laugh at the funny things they do. But I’d had plenty of dealings with coons and I knew they weren’t so cute. Those little hands, for example, were always moving around, and they had a way of finding mischief. With those hands, they could pull garbage out of a barrel, steal eggs out of a chicken nest, rip open feed sacks, wreck barns, open doors, and escape from almost any kind of enclosure.

  At the moment, Eddy’s hands weren’t involved in mischief, but they were busy nonetheless. He was rolling an empty corn can around in his hands and pitching it up into the air.

  He saw me glaring at him and in his squeaky little voice, he said, “Oh, hi. How’s it going?”

  I pushed my way past Drover and moved closer to the trap. “Hello, Eddy. Remember me?”

  “Sure. You bet. Guard dog, right? Bark, stuff like that?”

  “That’s partly correct. I’m Head of Ranch Security and sometimes I bark, but I have other jobs that are even more important. I conduct investigations, solve crimes, and arrest foolish raccoons who walk into my traps.”

  “Right. Want to see a trick?”

  Before I could answer, Drover said, “You’ve got to see this, Hank, it’s really neat.”

  “Drover, it’s time for you to buzz off. I have to wring a confession out the prisoner and it won’t be pretty.”

  “Yeah, but he can make that can disappear.”

  I stuck my nose in his face. “What part of ‘buzz off’ don’t you understand? I have to interrogate the prisoner and I can’t concentrate with you jabbering about magic tricks. Go back to the office and wait for further orders. Good-bye.”

&nbs
p; Drover hung his head and started toward the door. “Well, gosh, you don’t need to talk so mean. We were just having a little fun.”

  “Yes, I noticed. For two solid hours, you were goofing off and having fun with a notorious crinimal. That’s against regulations and it will show up in my report. Now scram!”

  He wiggled out the door and I turned back to the prisoner. “Okay, Eddy, let’s get this over with.”

  “Nice little guy.”

  “What?”

  “Rover. Nice little guy.”

  “His name’s Drover, with a d, and he’s a nice little moron. Sometimes I wonder why I keep him on the payroll.”

  “He liked my tricks.”

  “Yeah, well, morons are easily entertained. The bad news is that I don’t have the slightest interest in your tricks.”

  “They’re cool.”

  “I don’t care.” I found myself looking at him through the wire. “Eddy, how did you get yourself into this mess? I mean, you had the whole Texas Panhandle as your playground, but you came back to my ranch and got yourself trapped.”

  He rolled his eyes around. “Wanted some corn. Hungry.”

  “Eddy, the creek is full of fish and frogs and other things that coons are supposed to eat. You didn’t need to start stealing corn and wrecking sheds.”

  His eyes roamed the cage. “Bored. Moonlight Madness. Moon comes up, I’ve got to boogie.”

  Yes, I knew all about Moonlight Madness—Eddy’s excuse for getting into mischief. “Right, and look what it got you.”

  “Got to get out! Hole, got to find a hole.” He moved a full circle around the cage, testing the wire with his hands. “Here? No. Here? No. Where’s the hole?” He seized the wire with both hands and gave me a pleading look. “You can help. The door.”

  “Eddy, Eddy! You know I can’t do that. We’re on opposite sides of the law.”

  “Just for old times? Please?”

  I shook my head and began pacing in front of the cage. “I hate this, Eddy. It gives me no pleasure to see you behind bars, but you broke the law. You have no . . . ”