The Case of the Tricky Trap Read online

  “Self-discipline?”

  “Exactly. You have no self-discipline. You’re a slave to your . . . ”

  “Impulses?”

  “Right, but if you don’t mind, I’ll do the talking.”

  “Sure. No problem.”

  “The sad fact, Eddy, is that you’re just a little crook. Sometimes you’re a nice little crook, but in my business a crook is still a crook.”

  “Ever ride in a helicopter?”

  I stopped in my tracks. “What?”

  “Helicopter. Ever ride in one?”

  “No.”

  “Ever want to?”

  “Sure, who hasn’t? Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious.”

  I resumed my pacing. “Well, you’ve never been short of curiosity, pal, and that’s part of your problem. See, curiosity is good up to a point, but then it starts getting nosy little raccoons into . . . ”

  Just then, I noticed that he was doing something unusual inside the cage. He was sitting near the front of the cage and . . . I looked closer. Was he speaking into the empty corn can? Yes, almost as though he were . . . well, talking into a microphone.

  “Tower? Eddy One. Over.”

  I moved closer to the cage. “What are you doing now?”

  He held up a finger to his lips. “Shhh. Talking to the tower.”

  I glanced around the shed. “The tower? What tower?”

  Again, he spoke into the can. “Tower? Eddy One. Permission to start engine. Over.” Then he held the can up to his left ear and listened. He nodded and moved the can back to his mouth. “Roger that. Thanks.” He turned to me. “Better stand back.”

  This was making no sense to me and I had no intention of standing back, but then I heard this odd sound: THOCK, THOCK, THOCK. And all at once, I felt it might be a good idea to . . . well, step back.

  I moved away from the cage and listened as the “thock-thock-thock” changed into a steady roar. Inside the cage, Eddy’s hands moved around in front of him, almost as though he were . . . well, flipping switches or something.

  What was the deal? Coons didn’t make sounds like that, did they? I mean, I knew they could click, chirp, growl, croon, and make other kinds of noises, but what I’d heard sounded a whole lot like . . . well, some kind of motor or machine.

  A helicopter.

  “Hey Eddy, I can see you’re busy doing something, but I was wondering . . . ”

  He held up a paw for silence and spoke into the . . . whatever it was, the can or the microphone. “Tower? Eddy One. Ignition. Good to go.” He turned back to me. “What?”

  “What’s all the noise about, and who’s this so-called tower you’re talking to?”

  He heaved a sigh and shook his head. “Control tower. Helicopter. Test flight.”

  I stared into his beady little eyes and burst out laughing. “Helicopter! Control tower! Are you crazy?”

  “Just a little spin.” He held his clenched hands out in front of him, as though he were gripping steering levers or something, and . . . gee, the roar of the engine grew louder.

  Over the roar, I yelled, “Hey Eddy, there must be some mistake. That’s a cage, not a helicopter.”

  He gave me an impatient scowl. “Things change. Constant flux. Thermodoodle dynamics. Energy shift. Quantum combobulations. You didn’t know?”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t know. It just sounds crazy, that’s all.”

  He shrugged. “You want to go for a spin?”

  “Ha ha ha. Me, go for a spin in a cage that you say is a helicopter? Ha ha.”

  “Might as well. Short ride. Great experience.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  He shrugged. “Fine. Stay here.” Again, he spoke into the microphone . . . the empty corn can. I refused to believe he was talking into a microphone. “Tower? Eddy One. Permission to lift off. Over.” He looked at me. “Better stand back. I’m cleared.”

  I blinked my eyes in wonder. “Hey, hold on a second, don’t leave yet.” I went to the door of the shed and peered outside, just to be sure Drover wasn’t spying on me. He was nowhere in sight, so I went back to Eddy and his . . . whatever it was. His phony helicopter.

  Eddy and I were fixing to have a serious talk about this business.

  Chapter Twelve: Eddy Walks into My Trap

  I marched up to the cage and gave Eddy a stern glare, the kind of stern glare an officer of the law gives to raccoons who think they’re flying helicopters. “Eddy, I’ve got several problems with this. Turn off the engine.”

  He flicked a switch and . . . well, the motor died. Again, he seemed impatient. “Okay, shoot. Hurry.”

  “Don’t tell me to hurry, and don’t forget who’s in charge around here. Number one, it’s hard for me to forget that you have a history of being a sneak. I don’t mean to sound rude, but Eddy, you’ve pulled tricks on me before. This could be another of your famous tricks.”

  He shrugged. “I was young, foolish. I’m a pilot now. Can’t mess around.”

  I searched his face, looking for the tiny clues that might indicate that he was telling me a gigantic whopperous lie. After you’ve been in the Security Business a few years and had dealings with the crinimal element, you develop certain skills for smoking out the ones who don’t tell the truth. I’m sorry, but we don’t have time to go into any details on Whopper Detection.

  Or do we? I guess it wouldn’t hurt.

  Okay, let’s start with Shifty Eyes. Your crooks and your crinimal types almost always have shifty eyes. When they tell a whopper, their eyes tend to drift around and they won’t make eye contact. If you’re trained in Whopper Detection Techniques, you can pick up the signals right away.

  After the eyes, we check out the Body Lingo. These are tiny details that would escape the notice of an unobserved trainer . . . an untrained observer, shall we say: sagging shoulders, rapid breathing, a line of perspiration on the upper lip, sweaty palms, sagging shoulders, rapid breathing, and sweaty palms.

  That’s a long list, isn’t it? Dogs with no training would miss all the tiny details or wouldn’t bother to look for them. In our department, we take the time and we notice. As a result, we have one of the highest rates of Whopper Detection in the entire state of Texas.

  I don’t mean to brag, but facts are facts. Who else is going to tell you these things? Anyway, that gives you a little glimpse at the secret techniques we use in our work.

  Eddy had no idea that he was being watched, observed, measured, and analyzed by a highly trained professional. I mean, what does a raccoon know about anything? They know a lot about making mischief and wrecking things, but they lack the kind of deeper intelligence that might allow them to understand Whopper Detection.

  It’s been said that coons are smart. Ha. Ask an expert about coons. Ask me, for example, and I’ll tell you that they’re smart enough to get into trouble but not smart enough to get out of it. I mean, look who was in the trap.

  Okay, maybe I’d been in that same trap a few times myself, but that had been under very different circumstances. I’m sure you’ll agree that it doesn’t apply to this situation, so let’s mush on with the investigation.

  There was Eddy inside the trap, and there I was outside the trap, probing and studying and analyzing his every move and gesture. His gaze wandered around, then landed on me. “Want to see a trick?”

  “No. I’m busy.”

  “Boring.” He started juggling the empty corn can, pitching it from one hand to the other. Then, all at once and before my very eyes, the can just . . . well, disappeared. I narrowed my eyes and took a closer look.

  “Hey, where’d the can go?”

  He giggled. “Gone. Poof. Thin air. Hee hee.”

  My probing gaze swept the cage. No can. “Eddy, you’re still my prisoner and I said no tricks. Where’s the can?”

  Eddy�
�s eyes darted around. He looked under one armpit and then the other. He grinned and shrugged his shoulders. “Disappeared.”

  “Eddy, cans don’t disappear and I don’t believe in magic. Where’s the can?”

  He gave me a look of perfect innocence (that made me nervous) and stood up. Huh? I’ll be derned. He’d been sitting on the corn can.

  He grinned and started rolling his fingers. “No problem. Now you see it, now you don’t. Hee hee. Want another trick?”

  “No, I don’t want another trick. Sit down and behave yourself. For your information, I’m conducting a Whopper Detection Test and you’re making it very difficult.”

  “Yeah? Whoppers? Maybe I can help.”

  I laughed in his face. “Ha ha ha. Oh, that’s rich, Eddy. I’m out here running diagnostics to determine if you’re telling me outrageous lies, and you’re offering to help? Ha ha! You’re the champ, pal, I’ll give you that.” The laughter died in my throat. I glanced over both shoulders and moved closer to him. “What do you mean, help?”

  He threw out his open hands, palms up. “See? Dry palms.”

  I narrowed my eyes at his alleged palms. They seemed to be . . . uh . . . dry. “Okay, dry palms and so what?”

  He pointed to his upper lip. “You see any sweat?”

  “No, I don’t see any sweat. What’s your point?”

  He stared directly into my eyes. “Eye contact. What do you think?”

  Our gazes locked for a long moment. “I’ll tell you what I think, you little swindler. You got into our Document Vault and read our secret manuals on Whopper Detection, that’s what I think. I don’t know how you did it, but you’re giving me the creeps. I’m leaving. Good-bye.”

  I marched toward the shed door. Behind me, he said, “How come you don’t believe in helicopters?”

  I stopped in my tracks and looked back at him. “Eddy, I believe in helicopters. I just don’t believe . . . I refuse to believe that you’re sitting in one, or that you could fly it if it really were a helicopter, which it isn’t.”

  “How’d I do on the Whopper Test?”

  In the long silence, I searched for an answer. “You passed. And you know what?” I paced back to the cage. “That really shakes me to the boots of my foundations. I know you, Eddy. I know all your patterns and tendencies, and telling the truth isn’t even on your chart.”

  He studied the ceiling for a moment. “You’ll never know. Unless you go for a ride.”

  I put my nose against the wire. “Eddy, I will not go for a ride. I will never go for a helicopter ride in a coon trap. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Short spin. Five minutes.”

  “No.”

  “Four minutes.”

  “No!”

  “Okay, two. Two minutes. Then you’ll know.”

  My mind tumbled. I was absolutely sure that this was just another of his con games, but on the other hand . . . I trotted back to the shed door and peered outside. Nobody was spying, so I made my way back to the trap.

  “Okay, pal, two minutes, but that’s it.”

  He clapped his hands together and gave me an admiring look. “You’re brave. Real courage.”

  “Shut up, Eddy. The more you talk, the more I worry. How do I get into your so-called helicopter? Can two of us fit into the cockpit?”

  He squeaked a laugh. “Sure. Easy.” He scampered over to the cage door and reached a hand through the wire, so that he was touching one of the two latches. “I’ll push this one. You push that one with . . . ”

  “Don’t tell me what to do. I’m still in charge here.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  I swaggered over to the trapdoor and studied the latching mechanism. “Okay, you push down on that latch over there and I’ll press on this one.”

  “Great idea. Never thought of that.”

  “When both latches are free, you raise the door and hold it open. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “While the door is open, I’ll scoot into the copilot seat. Got that?”

  “Roger, Captain!”

  Captain. You know, I liked the sounds of that. It showed some respect. I mean, Eddy was a hardhead, but I guess he’d finally figured out who was boss around here. Heh heh. Me. The Captain.

  The door-opening maneuver went off without a hitch, I mean, just as though we’d been practicing it for weeks. This served as further proof that when Eddy put his mind to it, he could be a pretty good member of the team.

  See, at some point in the last five minutes, Eddy and I had ceased being old rivals. We had put our minds and talents together and had forged ourselves into a team of pilots who were fixing to take this aircraft out on its first solo flight. It would be dangerous mission. I knew it, Eddy knew it, but we were willing to risk our very lives to further the cause of Knowledge and Science.

  And we would do it as a Team.

  To tell you the truth, it was a pretty emotional moment for both of us. After weeks and months of training . . . reading manuals, learning the instrumentation, logging hours in the flight stimulator, going over every inch of the ship . . . after all the training and so forth, we were finally ready to knock a hole in the sky and soar like birds.

  You know, I’d always dreamed of flying a helicopter.

  I waited until I heard the hatch close, then I gave Eddy a little surprise. “Oh, there’s been a change in plans. I’m going to fly the ship myself. You’re copilot.”

  He stared at me through the wire. “Really?”

  “Eddy, you’re pretty good with your hands, but for this mission, we need nerves of steel and, well, the kind of broad experience I bring to the team.”

  He heaved a sigh. “Darn.”

  “I’m sorry, but I have to pull rank. Are we ready?”

  “You go without me.”

  I laughed. “No, you don’t understand. See, it’ll take both of us to fly this thing because . . . ”

  HUH?

  I stared at the wire. It appeared that . . . uh . . . I was inside the wire enclosure and Eddy was . . . I cut my eyes from side to side.

  “Eddy, disregard what I just said. It was a joke. You take the controls.” He monkey-walked over to a sack of feed and ripped a hole in it. “Eddy, this is no time for you to be thinking of food.”

  He raked some feed cubes out of the sack, picked through them with his busy little hands, and held one up. He crunched the end off it. “Want a bite?”

  I glared at him through the wire. “No, I do not want a bite! Get in here and fly the ship! That is a direct order!” He went on eating. I was beginning to feel uneasy about this. “Eddy, I must ask you an urgent question, and I want the truth.” I took a gulp of air. “Eddy, is this thing really a helicopter?”

  He took his sweet time in answering, gobbled down the rest of the feed cube, and nibbled the crumbs off his fingers. Then he looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Nope. Coon trap. Hee hee. I’m a rat. They ought to lock me up.”

  And then he proceeded to rip open three more sacks and scattered feed cubes from one end of the shed to the other.

  “Okay, pal, that’s it. You’re under arrest! Eddy?”

  Oh brother!

  Well, I guess you can imagine the rest of the story. At eight o’clock the next morning, Slim arrived. He stepped into the shed and . . . we don’t need to go into all the details. It wasn’t pleasant or funny.

  But before you burst into tears, let me tell you a little secret. It didn’t turn out as badly as you might think. See, after a coon wrecks a place and eats his weight in thirty-eight percent protein range cubes, what do you suppose he does? He finds a comfortable spot, curls up in a ball, and goes to sleep. And that’s exactly what the little mutter-mumble did.

  I’ll be the first to admit that it looked pretty bad, him sleeping on top of a trap that held the Head of Ranc
h Security, but the important thing is . . .

  See, I had known all along that if I played along with Eddy’s scam and stalled for time, he would . . . he would eventually fall asleep. No kidding. It’s typical coon behavior. And, hey, he walked right into my . . . uh . . . trap, so to speak. Honest.

  When Slim walked in, Eddy was zonked, out cold, sleeping as only a coon can sleep after a long night of Moonlight Madness. All Slim had to do was pick him up by the scruff of his neck, haul him two miles to another part of the ranch, and leave him sleeping in the fork of a cottonwood tree.

  Hencely, through stealth and cunning, I had managed to break the case wide open and rid the ranch of a crafty little feed burglar. Pretty amazing, huh? You bet.

  Now tell the truth, did you think I was the one who got scammed? Did you think that I actually fell for that . . . for that ridiculous story about the helicopter? Ha ha. Not me, fellers, I was on top of the case from start to finish. No kidding.

  Of course Slim never figured it out. He groaned and fumed and called me hateful names, and then he and Loper laughed about it for a solid week—“old Birdbrain” getting caught in the coon trap three nights in a row.

  It was shameful. I mean, what more did they want? I’d caught the crook and solved the case. Oh well. As long as you and I know the truth, that’s all that matters.

  The Case of the Tricky Trap is closed.

  Honest, I never believed that story about the helicopter. Who would believe such baloney? Not me.

  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