The Case of the Buried Deer

  John R. Erickson

  Illustrations by Gerald L. Holmes

  Maverick Books, Inc.

  Publication Information

  MAVERICK BOOKS

  Published by Maverick Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 549, Perryton, TX 79070

  Phone: 806.435.7611

  www.hankthecowdog.com

  Published in the United States of America by Maverick Books, Inc., 2019

  Copyright © John R. Erickson, 2019

  All rights reserved

  Maverick Books, Inc. Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59188-173-5

  Hank the Cowdog® is a registered trademark of John R. Erickson.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Dedication

  To Keith and Nikki Earley. God bless their home.

  Contents

  Chapter One - A Secret Mission For NASA

  Chapter Two - Drover Robs a Train

  Chapter Three - Bachelor Breakfast

  Chapter Four - Bad News on the Radio

  Chapter Five - Buzzards Arrive

  Chapter Six - Food Freedom

  Chapter Seven - A Gizzarly Problem

  Chapter Eight - A Roadside Incident

  Chapter Nine - Something Lurking in the Machine Shed

  Chapter Ten - You’ll Never Guess What It Was

  Chapter Eleven - Kitty Makes a Confession

  Chapter Twelve - An Amazing Twist in the Case, Wow!

  Chapter One: A Secret Mission For NASA

  It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. Where should we start? Well, let’s start at the beginning and see where that leads. I already know where it’s going, but must be careful not to make scary statements about CENSORED or CENSORED.

  See, I’m not allowed to mention the buried deer, not yet. We didn’t find it until later, after I had almost been destroyed by something that was hiding in Slim’s ice box, but I’m not allowed to talk about that one either. Classified.

  For now, don’t worry about it. There’s no sense in watching the pot boil if you can’t spill the milk.

  The point is, the entire Security Division was covered up with work. Sleep? Forget it. Naps in the afternoon? Ha. We’re talking about double-shifts, no weekend passes, working days, nights, and holidays. We were being pushed to the limit.

  It was late spring, as I recall, yes, the middle of May, and it had been a bad spring on my ranch. We had missed our early grass-growing rains and were in the second or third year of an awful drought.

  Instead of getting April showers and May flowers, we’d gotten nonstop wind: hot wind, cold wind, north wind, south wind, west wind, wind from every direction except the one we wanted: east.

  What’s the big deal about an east wind? It brings moisture from somewhere, and it makes clouds that make rain. We weren’t sure exactly how that process worked, but we knew one thing for certain: boy, we needed a rain!

  In times of drought, our people get as cranky as badgers and can’t talk about anything else. When they go to the feed store, they talk about bare pastures and dying trees. When they go to church, they complain about our dusty roads. When they go to a wedding, they say such things as, “Congratulations, and I hope it brings a rain.”

  The drought had put everybody in a bad mood, but there wasn’t one thing we dogs could do about it. I mean, Drover and I had spent entire days barking at clouds, trying to shame them into forming up into decent thunderheads, but nothing had worked. We had tried every technique in the Cowdog Manual: Stern Barks, Coaxing Barks, Pleading Barks, and even Cloud-Rattling Barks. All our efforts amounted to zilch.

  So it came as a huge shock when, at 0600 in the morning of the morning of which we speak of which, I was awakened by a voice that boomed the message, “Holy cow, it’s raining!”

  I was bent over a desk piled high with papers and reports, time cards and spreadsheets, when the voice jolted me back to the Ordinary World. I leaped to my feet and opened my…that is, tried to focus my bleary eyes. They were very bleary from all the paperwork, don’t you see.

  I noticed right away that it was dark, yet the darkness wasn’t totally dark. It seemed to be mixed with twinkles of distant light. What was going on around here? I hit the button that activated Data Control’s Emergency Intercom System.

  “Houston? This is Faded Bloomers. We’re picking up twinkles of light and might have had a near-miss with a starfish. Send Drover to the office at once to pick up his report card, over!”

  The radio crackled as I waited for a reply. At last it came. “Hairy okra in the tamale pudding…whippersnapper fiddle faddle and bonking bananas.”

  “Houston? Come back on that. What are we supposed to do with all the bananas? Over.”

  “Sniggle bop lollipop.”

  “Roger that. Re-compute the landing data and pass the biscuits, over.”

  In the eerie darkness, I heard…I thought I heard…someone yawn. Was that possible? I mean, we were on space mission, so how…but then someone said, “Boy, I wish I had a biscuit.”

  I leaned into the mike. “Houston? We’ve got a Code Red up here, repeat, CODE RED! We’ve encountered a squadron of Biscuit Eaters. They’re armed with forks and spoons. Request permission to request permission, and hurry! Over.”

  The silence of deep space throbbed, then…the voice again. “Who are you talking to?”

  “Houston, they seem to be fluent in Bow-Wow and want to talk. How do we deal with this? Over.”

  “Oh, I get it. You’re talking in your sleep. You know, I think it’s started to rain.”

  “Houston, they’ve started a train. They’re trying to hijack a train!”

  “Hank, wake up.”

  Somehow they had gotten my name and were trying to hijack a whole trainload of bananas! Unless Houston sent us procedures on this…

  Huh?

  Wait, hold everything. I blinked my eyes and glanced around. Sniffatory Sensors kicked in and we began receiving a burst of familiar smells, suggesting…suggesting that we were not in a NASA spacecraft fifty miles above the earth, but rather…

  Okay, in Slim Chance’s living room. Ha ha. In fact, Slim seemed to be coming down the hallway. He walked to the front door, opened it, and stepped out on the porch. Then I heard his voice. “By grabs, it is raining!”

  I glanced around the gloom. “Drover, are you there?”

  “Where?”

  “Wherever you are.”

  “Yep, I’m wherever I am. Hi.”

  “Hi. Do you know anything about a train?”

  “Well, they say, ‘Choo-choo.’”

  “I’m aware of that, but did you see one?”

  “No, I said it’s starting to rain. Slim said so too.”

  “Why is everyone talking about rain?”

  “’Cause it’s raining, I guess.”

  “Outside?”

  “It always rains outside.”

  “Don’t get smart with me, soldier. I’m just trying to…”

  Okay, let’s slow down and see if we can sort this out. A neutral observer, such as yourself, might have thought that you were listening in on a conversation between Mission Control and an orbiting spacecraft. And you might have thought that the space agency had finally come to its senses and recruited a top-of-the-line, blue-ribbon cowdog for its space program.

  I’m sorry to disappoint you. What you heard was actually Drover and me, carrying on a fairly incoherent conversation in Slim’s living room.

  To be perfectly honest, I must have fallen asleep. On guard duty. On my ranch. And so did my assistant.

  Remember our discussion about how the Security Division had been working brutal hours, day and night? Well, it had finally caught up with me and I had slipped into a doze, dragged down by all the cares and worries of protecting my people, my ranch, my yard, my porch, and all the little children.

  After a while, it adds up and we crash. A dog is only a dog.

  It happens to dogs every day all over the world. It happens very seldom around here, but by George, once in a while, it happens. A dog is only…I’ve already said that. It’s nothing to be proud of, is the point, and I guess you’ve noticed that I’m embarrassed about this.

  It really hurts, and I won’t try to hide behind a bunch of lame excuses. Drover and I had slacked our duties and had slept through the most dangerous part of the night. It was disgraceful, against Ranch Regulations, and I was so ashamed, I made a mental note to give Drover ten Chicken Marks.

  I hate being hard on the men, but this business of sleeping on the job had to stop.

  Anyway, we can call off the Code Red. Sometimes the mind plays tricks.

  There, I’ve said it, and now you know a dark secret that I wasn’t anxious to share. I hope you will keep your trap shut and not spread it around. Thanks.

  Where were we? Oh yes, the bananas. We’d just gotten a report that someone had hijacked a whol
e trainload of…wait, that was a bogus report, skip it. We knew nothing about trains or bananas.

  Let’s get on with this. I pried my assistant out of bed and we rushed to the porch to get a closer look at this rare event. See, that year in the Texas Panhandle, rain was a very big deal.

  Now we’re cooking.

  Chapter Two: Drover Robs a Train

  Sorry for all the confusion. It won’t happen again, not on my watch.

  Show me a dog that sleeps his life away and I’ll show you a mutt that never solves a case.

  Okay, Drover and I rushed to the screen door, assuming that Slim would be holding it open for us. Hey, dogs want to see rain just as much as people do, right? But the door was closed, so I gave it a shove with my…BONK…with my nose, but that didn’t work out so well. Ouch.

  Behind me, Drover said, “It’s closed.”

  “No kidding? I hardly noticed—as I bashed my nose into it. Why don’t you try to be helpful and nose it open yourself?”

  “With my nose?”

  I melted him with a glare. “Do you think you can nose it open with your ear?”

  “I never thought about that.”

  “Well, think about it. It’s impossible to nose open a door with anything but a nose.”

  “How come?”

  “Because…because that’s just the way things work in the Real World. Have you ever thought of joining the Real World?”

  “Oh, I’m kind of busy right now.”

  “Yes, I saw how busy you were—sleeping on the job and slurping your duty.”

  “You mean shirking?”

  “What?”

  “You said I was slurping my duty, but I think you meant shirking.”

  I could feel my temper rising. “I said you were slurping on the job and sleeping your duty! I can’t make it any plainer than that. Ten Chicken Marks for slurping your duty.”

  “Oh drat.”

  “Now open the nose with your door.”

  “Yeah, but by doze is stobbed ubb.”

  “Does anyone care if your doze is stobbed ub?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Nobody cares, so scratch on the screen with your foot.”

  “Well, this old leg’s been giving me fits.”

  “Never mind, get out of the way.”

  I shoved him aside, faced the door, and began warming up the muscles in my enormous shoulders. This obstinate door was blocking our path to the porch and our Nose-Opening Procedures had failed. Slim needed to be informed that we were trapped inside the house, and I had no choice but to do Paw Scrapes on the screen.

  I placed my right front paw on the screen, hit the Activate Claws button, and pulled my foot downward in a downward direction.

  Skritch!

  That got his attention. “Hey, meathead, quit scratching my screen door!”

  Well, open it!

  “We ain’t living in a boxcar.”

  I never said we were living in a boxcar.

  “If you shred up my screen, guess who has to replace it. Me.”

  Boy, he sure gets bent out of shape over nothing.

  “It wouldn’t hurt if you learned a few manners.”

  Sigh.

  “I guess you want out.”

  Of course I wanted out! Why else would a dog scratch the screen?

  At last, he appeared. Through the screen and in the gloom of morning, he looked…well, awful, what else can you say? Naked except for a pair of boxer shorts, bony, as pale as mayonnaise, and a buzzard’s nest of hair on top of his head.

  Just for a moment, he reminded me of…well, Frankincense, the famous monster. Deep in my heart, I knew that he couldn’t possibly…on the other hand…yipes, he sure looked like Frankincense, and I mean down to the last grizzly detail!

  You know, one of the things we learn in Security Work is that the world can be a very strange place, and we have to force ourselves to exercise caution. I mean, weird things happen all the time, and just because I thought this guy was Slim Chance didn’t mean…

  Just to be on the safe side, I took a step backward and fired off a bark. It drew a rapid response.

  “Dry up, will you?”

  Okay, it was Slim. Whew.

  He jerked open the door. “House-wrecker.”

  I squirted through the gap and wasn’t surprised when he kicked me with his bare foot. It didn’t hurt, but…well, it seemed undignified. What kind of world are we living in when the Head of Ranch Security gets a kick in the pants for wanting to share Porch Time with his master? It seemed a sad state of affairs.

  Oh, and by the way, Drover managed to slither outside without getting kicked. I don’t know how he always…oh well.

  I sat down on the edge of the porch, as far away from Mister Grump as I could get. I turned my back on him too. He didn’t deserve the companionship of a dog, and I wasn’t sure we would ever be friends again.

  The rain made a steady sizzle on the tin roof, and my goodness, the air smelled wonderful—fresh, damp, heavy with the aroma of sagebrush and old leaves and new grass that was trying to green up. During a drought, we forget how good the world can smell when it gets a drink.

  We sat on the porch for a while, listening to the soft rain and breathing in the delicious air and watching daylight creep over the eastern sky. Drover was sitting nearby, and I noticed that he wore a silly grin on his mouth.

  “What are you grinning about?”

  “Me? Oh, nothing much.”

  “I’m sure that’s true, but when someone grins on this ranch, I need to know what’s going on.”

  “Well, I had a crazy dream.”

  “Oh? Then we needn’t waste any more time. I’m not interested in your dreams.”

  “Thanks. I dreamed I was a famous astronaut, flying through space in a saddle-up.”

  “In a saddle-up?”

  “Yeah, one of those things they launch into space.”

  I heaved a sigh. “Drover, get it right. If you were flying through space, it was in a satellite, which has nothing to do with a saddle.”

  “They sound the same.”

  “They’re not the same.”

  “Well, mine had a saddle.”

  “Okay, your satellite had a saddle, and I have no interest in hearing the rest of your dream.”

  He gave me a sly grin. “I haven’t gotten to the good part. I robbed a train.”

  “You robbed a train? In outer space?”

  “Yeah, it was a whole train-load of bananas!”

  I stared into the vast emptiness of his gaze. “I can’t believe we’re talking about this. In the first place, it’s ridiculous. If someone were listening to this conversation, he’d think we’re just a couple of goofballs. In the second place, that wasn’t your dream, it was MINE!”

  “Gosh, you mean…”

  “Stop butting into my dreams! Find your own.”

  “Hee hee hee.”

  “And don’t giggle in the miggle of my lecture!”

  “If that was your dream, you were asleep! Hee hee. I caught you!”

  Huh?

  I paced to the edge of the porch and gazed off into the distance. Many thoughts tramped across the parade ground of my mind. “Drover, in your own sneaking, slithering way, you’ve exposed a shameful truth about the Security Division. We both slept when we should have been guarding the house. Let’s try to put it behind us. Agreed?”

  “Okay, but what about my Chicken Marks?”

  I marched back to him and laid a paw upon his shoulder. “I’ll handle that. Nobody will ever know. Now, let’s shape up and try to do better.”

  Pretty touching, huh? You bet. Our human friends have no idea how hard we strive to be good dogs. Sometimes we fail, but we’re never content with failure. We just have to pick ourselves up and march onward, knowing that…well, if we mess up again, we won’t tell anyone.

  The somber mood of this occasion was suddenly shattered by Slim’s voice. “The dadgum rain quit!”

  I had been so distracted by departmental business, I hadn’t noticed this crucial detail. I lifted Earatory Scanners and sure enough, our instruments confirmed that the rain had stopped.