The Case of the Mysterious Voice Read online

  But then . . . this will really shock you . . . then I heard Loper’s voice. “Hank, come eat this chocolate cake!”

  Gee, they must have been feeling pretty bad about the way they’d treated me, and they should have felt bad. But I faced two difficult questions here. First, would one chocolate sheet cake heal all my wounds? And second, would I be mature enough to accept their apologies?

  I rose to my feet and . . . you have no idea what happened then.

  You probably think I dropped everything, raced down to the picnic ground, collected my chocolate sheet cake, and wolfed it down.

  No, that’s not what happened. What happened was that I didn’t do any of those things, and do you know why? Because I didn’t trust Loper either. Had you forgotten about that nasty scene in the night? “Hank, get up here and bark at the moon!” And then SPLAT, a pitcher of cold water on top of my head.

  No, as much as I would have loved to stick my face into Mrs. Splawn’s chocolate cake, I just couldn’t risk it. I sank back into the cover of the sagebrush and . . .

  Wait. Suddenly, I heard a third voice calling my name, and this time . . . Slim? “Hank, get down here and eat this cake before we give it to the county clerk!”

  Chapter Twelve: The Villain Is Exposed

  County clerk? I didn’t understand that part, but I was fluent in “cake.” In fact, the very slurpen of it . . . the very mention of cake opened up the waterworks of my mouth. But here’s the very most important detail, and you probably missed it. I still trusted Slim.

  Do you see how important that was? I mean, for those of us in Security Work, trust is everything. Without it, we’re like . . . something. A yard without a dog, a house without a home, a sandwich without bread, a picnic without flies, a germ without a child . . . in other words, incomplete.

  But on the other hand, I’d been sandbagged so many times in the past twelve hours, I wasn’t sure who or whom I could trust anymore. I didn’t even trust my own judgment. I needed the wise counsel of a friend. Where was Drover when I really needed him? Down at the picnic or hiding in the machine shed, so that left me with . . .

  You know, when a dog scrapes the bottom of the friendship barrel, he sometimes dredges up a cat. See, nobody likes cats, so if you give ’em a scrap of attention, they’ll do almost anything. In other words, emotionally speaking, they work cheap.

  So I found myself drifting back to the yard fence. I could see Pete’s face framed by the green stalks of the iris plants. He was just sitting there, staring out at the world with his weird kitty eyes.

  I cleared my throat and stared at the ground, searching for the proper words. “Uh . . . Pete, you know that deal in the yard, when I stepped on your tail?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. I probably shouldn’t have done it, and laughing about it was . . . what can I say, Pete? It was pretty tacky, I can see that now.”

  “Uh huh. Is this an apology, Hankie?”

  I flinched at the word. “It’s similar to an apology, yes. Pretty close. Real close. Anyway, I was just thinking . . . hey Pete, did you happen to hear Sally May calling me a while ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it really her voice?”

  “No. It was the parrot.”

  “Pete, I still find that hard to believe.”

  He shrugged. “That’s your problem, Hankie.”

  “Hmmm. Okay, a moment later, did you hear Loper’s voice, calling my name?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it actually Loper’s voice?”

  “No. It was the parrot.”

  I beamed him a glare. “How can a parrot sound like two different people?”

  “It’s what parrots do, Hankie. He’s very good at it.”

  I began pacing up and down the fence line. My mind was racing. “Okay, pal, that brings us to the crust of the crux. Tell this court, in your own words, did you then hear Slim calling my name?”

  “Yes.”

  I stopped pacing and whirled around. “And tell this court . . . don’t forget, you’re under oath . . . tell this court, was it actually the voice of Slim?”

  There was a moment of haunting silence. Pete smiled and said, “Yes.”

  “It really was Slim? It wasn’t the bird?”

  “That is correct.”

  “What if I think you’re a scheming, lying, cheating little crook of a cat? What if I don’t believe anything you say?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t care. And you don’t get any cake.”

  I licked my chops and pondered his words. “Pete, you and I have been through a lot together. I’ll admit that sometimes I don’t like you.”

  “My mother felt the same way.”

  “But you’ve really helped me at a time when I really needed help. I won’t forget it, pal. One of these days, maybe we can find a little job for you in the Security Division.”

  “Oh my.”

  “Now, don’t get your hopes too high. We’re not talking about an executive job, but you know . . . hauling trash, cleaning the office, something like that.”

  “Oh goodie.”

  “And as a bonus,” I said with a wink, “what would you think if I left you a few crumbs of cake, huh? It’s chocolate.”

  “Oh my, be still my heart!”

  “Okay, well, I’m headed for the picnic ground. Give me about ten minutes, then come pick up your crumbs. And thanks again for your help.”

  “Any time, Hankie. It’s always a business doing pleasure with you.”

  “Right, same here.”

  I left him in the iris patch and highballed it down to the picnic ground. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud. What a dunce! For a few crumbs of chocolate cake, he’d given me some incredibly valuable information. Hey, if he’d driven a harder bargain, I would have given him more than crumbs, maybe even half the cake.

  And you know what? It would have been worth it. There’s no upper limit on the value of good intelligence information. Whatever you have to pay—money, cake, gold, silver—it’s worth it in the long run, because good information can be the difference between a huge success and a disaster.

  If you can buy it for crumbs, heh heh, that makes the deal even sweeter, and the sweetest deal of all is to buy your information from a cat . . . on credit! Are you getting the picture? See, I’d paid nothing up front and had promised the little pest a few crumbs of cake. But what if I ate the crumbs myself and didn’t pay off?

  Hee hee! Well, why not? He was a little crook, and any time you can out-crook a crook, you’ve had a good day. Hee hee. Oh, I love sticking it to a cat!

  Anyway, I headed down to the picnic ground and started looking for Slim, my trustworthy friend who had summoned me for the cake reward. I saw him at a distance. He was standing amidst a group of people who were singing. I paused and listened to the song:

  Because thy loving kindness is better than life.

  My lips shall praise thee, my lips shall praise thee.

  Thus will I bless thee while I live

  Thus will I bless thee while I live.

  I will lift up my hands in thy name.

  Not a bad song, pretty good, in fact, but what else would you expect? These people were members of the church choir. But I had other things on my mind, better things than music. Cake. Chocolate sheet cake.

  I made my way over to a line of tables, the tops of which were covered with pans, dishes, and trays that might have contained food. Sniff sniff. Yes, they did, and right away I began picking up the scents of fried chicken, roast beef, brisket, ribs . . . my goodness, this was quite a feast and I was kind of surprised that they had left it . . . well, unguarded, so to speak.

  Not that they had anything to worry about while I was on the job. No sir. Okay, maybe I thought about poaching a few ribs and a slab of brisket, but when a g
uy gets into the higher ranks of Security Work, he has already learned to deal with temptation.

  See, I’d been called out on a very specific mission and had been given a chocolate sheet cake, not brisket or ribs or fried chicken, so I walked past all those yummy smells until I came to the dessert table.

  It was easy to find. Even Drover could have located a table that was groaning under the weight of cakes, pies, cobblers, and freezers of homemade ice cream.

  I glanced around, looking for my pan of cake. It would have been better if Slim had taken it off the table and set it on the ground, where I could take care of my business without . . . well, stepping in the other desserts. I mean, a dog can get into trouble, walking on pies and cobblers.

  But I didn’t find my cake on the ground. Would I wait for Slim to come and help? I gave that some thought and decided . . . nah, he was busy with the guests and having a good time. I could find it myself. I would just have to be careful where I stepped.

  Most of your ordinary run of ranch mutts would never have attempted this kind of maneuver, leaping up on a dessert table, but I was pretty sure that I had just the right combination of balance, athletic ability, and . . . okay, I didn’t notice the big pan of blackberry cobbler and, well, it had probably looked nicer without my paw prints on the crust, but a guy can’t anticipate every little obstacle.

  Anyway, once I was up on the table, finding Mrs. Splawn’s cake was as easy as pie. (A little humor there: finding the cake was as easy as pie. Get it? Ha ha.) But the point is that if a dog has any kind of nose at all, finding a chocolate sheet cake is no big deal. And neither is stripping off the outer layer of tin foil. I got ’er ripped off and . . .

  Wow! WOW! This was like nothing I’d ever seen before—half an acre of chocolate cake! I mean, we’re talking about the fillfullment of a dog’s wildest dream.

  Could I eat it all? Could any dog alive possibly devour three acres of chocolate cake? I didn’t know, but by George, we were fixing to find out.

  Some dogs think that you should approach a cake with dainty manners. Not me. I approached this one with all the finesse of a track hoe. A bulldozer. A snowplow. We’re talking about eating a trench right through the middle of that rascal, and not looking back. No prisoners, no tomorrow, just chocolate cake forever.

  Best cake I’d ever tasted. Outstanding. Mrs. Splawn’s grandmother must have been a wonderful lady, because this cake was . . .

  “Hank! What on earth!”

  Huh?

  I looked up and glanced around. Two women stood in front of me. Sally May and Mrs. Splawn. Their faces showed . . . well, I guess you’d have to say that they looked pretty surprised, finding a dog . . . uh . . . standing on the dessert table . . . smeared with chocolate icing from one ear to the other . . . with one foot in the blackberry cobbler and the other . . .

  This didn’t look good.

  Sally May’s eyes grew wide. Her nostrils flared out. The skin on her face seemed to be turning, well, a dangerous shade of red. And remember those lines that appeared in her forehead when she was uncommonly mad? There they were.

  Gulp.

  A crowd had gathered: Slim, Loper, children, Little Alfred, people I didn’t know. Loper’s eyes rolled up inside his skull. Slim shook his head and looked up at the sky. Steam and lava were coiling out of Sally May’s nose and ears.

  Obviously, we had a misunderstanding. I switched on Looks of Remorse and tried to wag a message with my tail. “Hey, I know this looks bad, but Slim told me to eat the cake. Honest. No kidding.”

  I saw nothing but icy glares and faces of stone—except for Little Alfred, and he was grinning like a little monkey. But his grinning wasn’t going to help me out of this deal. Fellers, I was in BIG TROUBLE.

  But then . . . pay attention, this is really amazing . . . just then a voice in the distance broke the awful silence. It came from somewhere up near the house, and it said, “Hank, come down here and eat this cake!”

  It was the voice of Sally May . . . only she was standing right there beside me, and she hadn’t said a word.

  She was astonished. She stared at Loper and he stared at her. And then she gasped, “It’s the parrot! He told Hank to eat the cake!”

  Suddenly the people erupted in cries of laughter, and the story about Loper’s parrot buzzed its way through the crowd. It was the high point of the whole evening, and the biggest laugh of all came when Loper yelled, “And Bobby Kile’s going to get his bird back . . . first thing tomorrow!”

  Well, I was thrilled that nobody had stabbed me through the heart with a plastic spoon or wrung my neck, and while they were enjoying laughter and fellowship, I saw no reason to waste the rest of the cake. I stuck my face into the pan and . . .

  A lady leaned over in my direction. Hmm, Mrs. Splawn, and . . . well, she didn’t look as pleasant as before. In fact, she growled, “Get out of my cake, you big oaf!”

  Sure, no problem there. I had planned to thank her for the cake, but . . . maybe some other time.

  I flew off the dessert table, grabbed a gear, and went into Deep Hiding. I mean, my people needed some time to sort through all the damage the stupid parrot had caused, and I was in no mood to push my luck.

  When I emerged from exile two days later, most of the dark clouds had blown over. The morning after the picnic, Loper returned the parrot to the sheriff’s department. Whether or not Dink ended up in a chicken pot pie, we don’t know, but he had become Deputy Kile’s problem, not ours.

  Loper and Sally May had finally figured out that a talking bird had turned our ranch upside-down and turned friend against friend. He’d been the cause of my barking at the moon, digging up the flowers, and eating the cake. Sally May hugged my neck and apologized and told me she regretted all the hateful things she’d said about me. Wow, what an emotional scene!

  The part they didn’t figure out was that Sally May’s precious kitty had been involved in the scheme up to his ears, but that was okay. The little sneak hadn’t fooled me, not even for a minute, and don’t forget that Pete got no cake. Zero, not even a crumb.

  Hee hee. There’s the happy ending to our story. Once again, I had scored a huge moral victory over the cat, and had beaten him at his own shabby game.

  Around here, it doesn’t get any better than that.

  This case is closed.

  Further Reading

  Have you read all of Hank’s adventures?

  1 The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog

  2 The Further Adventures of Hank the Cowdog

  3 It’s a Dog’s Life

  4 Murder in the Middle Pasture

  5 Faded Love

  6 Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

  7 The Curse of the Incredible Priceless Corncob

  8 The Case of the One-Eyed Killer Stud Horse

  9 The Case of the Halloween Ghost

  10 Every Dog Has His Day

  11 Lost in the Dark Unchanted Forest

  12 The Case of the Fiddle-Playing Fox

  13 The Wounded Buzzard on Christmas Eve

  14 Hank the Cowdog and Monkey Business

  15 The Case of the Missing Cat

  16 Lost in the Blinded Blizzard

  17 The Case of the Car-Barkaholic Dog

  18 The Case of the Hooking Bull

  19 The Case of the Midnight Rustler

  20 The Phantom in the Mirror

  21 The Case of the Vampire Cat

  22 The Case of the Double Bumblebee Sting

  23 Moonlight Madness

  24 The Case of the Black-Hooded Hangmans

  25 The Case of the Swirling Killer Tornado

  26 The Case of the Kidnapped Collie

  27 The Case of the Night-Stalking Bone Monster

  28 The Mopwater Files

  29 The Case of the Vampire Vacuum Sweeper

&nbs
p; 30 The Case of the Haystack Kitties

  31 The Case of the Vanishing Fishhook

  32 The Garbage Monster from Outer Space

  33 The Case of the Measled Cowboy

  34 Slim’s Good-bye

  35 The Case of the Saddle House Robbery

  36 The Case of the Raging Rottweiler

  37 The Case of the Deadly Ha-Ha Game

  38 The Fling

  39 The Secret Laundry Monster Files

  40 The Case of the Missing Bird Dog

  41 The Case of the Shipwrecked Tree

  42 The Case of the Burrowing Robot

  43 The Case of the Twisted Kitty

  44 The Dungeon of Doom

  45 The Case of the Falling Sky

  46 The Case of the Tricky Trap

  47 The Case of the Tender Cheeping Chickies

  48 The Case of the Monkey Burglar

  49 The Case of the Booby-Trapped Pickup

  50 The Case of the Most Ancient Bone

  51 The Case of the Blazing Sky

  52 The Quest for the Great White Quail

  53 Drover’s Secret Life

  54 The Case of the Dinosaur Birds

  55 The Case of the Secret Weapon

  56 The Case of the Coyote Invasion

  57 The Disappearance of Drover

  58 The Case of the Mysterious Voice

  59 The Case of the Perfect Dog

  60 The Big Question

  About the Author and Illustrator

  John R. Erickson, a former cowboy, has written numerous books for both children and adults and is best known for his acclaimed Hank the Cowdog series. He lives and works on his ranch in Perryton, Texas, with his family.

  Gerald L. Holmes has illustrated numerous cartoons and textbooks in addition to the Hank the Cowdog series. He lives in Perryton, Texas.