The Case of the Raging Rottweiler Page 8

  He seemed to be . . . there was a strange light in his eyes, see, and . . . gulp.

  “Hey, wait a minute. You said that deep inside your inner bean, you’re actually a . . . uh . . . little scottish terrier. That’s exactly what you said. Honest. I heard it.”

  “Heh, heh. One of the things that makes me so rotten, pal, is that I lie all the time. I love telling lies to saps like you who believe anything. And you know what else I love?”

  “Uh . . . your fellow dogs?”

  “Naaa. I love getting revenge.”

  I began backing away. “Revenge? But you’re chained up. Don’t forget that.”

  “Ha, ha. Watch this.” He took one step backward and lunged against the chain. It snapped.

  I stared at the two ends of the chain. I swallowed hard. All at once my mouth seemed . . . uh . . . very dry. Gack! Bruiser was loose and I was standing in the back of his pickup!

  “Bruiser, let me speak frankly. I feel that I’ve been tricked and used.”

  A jagged laugh erupted from his throat. “Oh yeah? Well, you ain’t been used like you’re fixing to be used, ’cause I’m fixing to use you for a mop.”

  “A mop? Now wait . . .” I began creeping backward. He crept toward me. “I thought you wanted a friend.”

  “Yeah, I lied. What would a guy like me do with a friend? Huh? I’d just beat him up. That’s me, pal. Rotten to the core.”

  “But I thought . . . wait, stop. I have one more thing to say. It’s very important.”

  He gave me a smirk. “Yeah? What?”

  I turned my gaze to the sky and heaved a heavy sigh. “Bruiser . . . good-bye!”

  ZOOM!

  He had given me just enough time to get the heck out of there. I hit Full Turbos, went flying off the bed of the pickup, and set a speed course for the inside of Jim’s Tire Shop.

  “Here he comes, Drover, get him!”

  Drover did nothing, of course. As I roared past Slim’s pickup, I saw the little mutt quivering under­neath, with his paws over his eyes. It was a short glimpse, because I was hauling the mail for safer ground.

  See, I had realized that this was no normal dog. He had a loose screw somewhere in his head, and he seemed pretty determined to . . . well, tear me to shreds.

  I, on the other hand, was just as determined not to be torn to shreds, and I had some hope that the guys inside might come to my rescue. I mean, Slim was a great pal of mine, and Miguel . . . emember Miguel? We were the best of buds, had shared many laughs and good times, and don’t forget that I had burped for him only minutes before.

  I went flying into the shop, with Bruiser right on my tail, snarling and slashing the air with his bear-trap jaws. The men heard us coming. They stopped their work and turned their eyes to the riot in progress.

  Joe McCall saw what was happening. He was sitting in a chair and leaped to his feet. Miguel grabbed a tire tool. Slim just stood there, too surprised to move.

  Joe made a dive for Bruiser. “Here, Bruiser, easy boy, nice doggie.” He managed to grab a hind leg, but that dog was so big and strong, he broke away.

  Then Bruiser turned his eyes back to me and charged! I ran to the far end of the shop, hoping . . . the back door was shut! My eyes darted around the shop. There was only one way out, and Bruiser stood between me and the outside world.

  I stood there, frozen, petrified. Bruiser grinned and started toward me again. “Now, where were we?”

  “We were . . . listen, Bruiser, if you’re torqued about all those things I said about you, I think I can explain everything. Honest.”

  “Yeah? Give it a try.”

  “Great. Okay, I said you were ugly, right? Not true, not true at all. You’re actually a very handsome guy.”

  He laughed and advanced another step toward me. “I’m ugly.”

  I edged backward and bumped against the wall. “Okay, you’re ugly. We’re straight on that one. I said you walk like a fat duck, remember? Ha, ha. What a wild exaggeration! I don’t know what came over me to make such a . . .”

  “What about chasing fawns?”

  “Chasing fawns?”

  “Yeah. Is that right or wrong? See, yesterday you hurt my feelings. You made me feel bad for chasing a baby deer.”

  “Yes, I suppose I did.”

  “So take it back. Tell me it’s okay if I want to chase a baby deer the next time I visit your ranch. Say it and I’ll let you walk out of here alive.”

  I took a big gulp of air. All at once I wasn’t scared anymore. “Bruiser, you’ve just reminded me how much I disliked you the first time we met. I mean, when I saw you jump on that poor little deer, I felt nothing but disgust, and it’s all coming back to me now. You’re not only big and ugly and stupid, but you’re disgusting. And you know what, Bruiser? I’m fixing to give you the whipping you’ve needed for a long time.”

  A nasty laugh poured out of his throat. “You’re crazy, cowdog.” He took a step backward. “I’m twice as big as you are.”

  I raised the hair on my back and advanced. “Yep, and that gives me twice the target and twice as much fun. Stand your ground, son. Here come the marines.”

  His eyes flicked from side to side. He took another step backward. “I’ll hurt you, I’ll hurt you bad.”

  “That’s okay. The vet clinic’s just down the road. Let’s get it over with.”

  He took another step backward. Was he retreating or setting me up for something? I couldn’t tell and it didn’t matter. I coiled my legs like steel springs and jumped into the middle of him, and then . . . a great rolling darkness moved over me, and that was the last thing I remembered.

  You’re probably wondering what happened. Did I manage to survive or did that monster of a dog tear off my legs and ears and leave me for dead?

  Well, let’s mush on and see.

  I awoke on the floor. I had no feeling in my legs or tail, and all the early indicators suggested that . . . you’d better hold on to something . . . it appeared that my neck had been broken and that I would be paralyzed for life.

  Bruiser had threatened to “wring” my neck, remember? Well, the early reports from Data Control suggested that if he hadn’t actually wrung my neck, he had come pretty close.

  I saw a circle of faces above me. I recognized Slim’s right away. He looked pale and very concerned. And there was Joe. I remembered Joe, a nice guy who kept a bad dog. Oh, and there was Miguel, my old burping partner. It was good to see him again, only he sure looked worried about something.

  ME, no doubt. Yes, I was in bad shape, very serious condition. Nobody needed to tell me I was critically wounded. I could see it in their faces. I hated being such a burden to them, and to show the depth of my concern, I whapped my . . .

  I whapped my tail on the cement floor, and that was odd. I mean, if a guy’s paralyzed . . .

  Slim spoke. “Boys, I don’t see a single mark on him. You don’t reckon he just . . . fainted, do you?”

  Fainted! Ha! What kind of crazy talk was that? It was perfectly clear what had happened. I had gone into combat against one of the biggest, meanest, heartlessest rottweiler dogs in the whole Texas Panhandle, and though I had fought a brave fight, Bruiser had inflicted enormous, inclackulable damage upon my body.

  No, I had not fainted. I just happened to have a broken neck, and maybe we should start thinking about rushing me to the vet clinic, huh? Would that be too much trouble?

  At that moment, Drover came padding up. He looked down at me and grinned.

  Since I couldn’t move my head, not with all the shattered and splintered neck bones, I rolled my eyes around so that I could see him. “What are you grinning about?”

  “Oh, that was quite a fight. Never saw anything like it.”

  “Pretty bad, I guess. Did I land any punches?”

  “Nope, not a one.”

  “I was
afraid of that. Well, I did my best, Drover, and now you’ll have to carry on without me.”

  “No, just when the fight was about to start, this big blue-eyed tomcat came out of nowhere and jumped on top of Bruiser’s head. Boy, what a show! Old Bruiser ran like a striped ape and jumped up in the back of Joe’s pickup. Remember? He’s scared of cats.”

  HUH?

  I rose to my feet and stuck my nose in the runt’s face. “Hey, don’t tell me there wasn’t a fight. I was there, pal, I was in the middle of it. It was one of the most ferocious combat experiences of my entire . . .”

  I blinked my eyes and looked around. The men were all smiling, and all at once they . . . well, were clapping their hands . . . applauding . . . and I suddenly realized . . .

  What we had here was a sudden reversal, you might say, and although I had been badly wounded in combat, the bones in my neck had miraculously . . . okay, maybe I’d fainted, but who wouldn’t have fainted?

  What matters is that I won. And Miguel’s cat had nothing to do with it.

  So it all worked out pretty well. The last I saw of Bruiser, he was sitting in the back of Joe’s pickup, sniffling about his unhappy childhood and promising to be a good dog for the rest of his life.

  Pretty neat, huh? Against incredible odds, I had wrapped up the Case of the Raging Rottweiler and had even helped Bruiser find his true creampuff self. Things had turned out so well, I even removed the six Chicken Marks from Drover’s record.

  Just another day in the life of a cowdog.

  Case closed.

  Okay, maybe the cat helped a little bit, but not much, so don’t be spreading lies about how I was . . .

  Skip it.

  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

  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

  61 The Case of the Prowling Bear

  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.