The Dungeon of Doom

  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

  First published in the United States of America by Viking Children’s Books and Puffin Books, members of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2004.

  Currently published by Maverick Books, Inc., 2012

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © John R. Erickson, 2004

  All rights reserved

  Maverick Books, Inc. Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59188-144-5

  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

  For Gary and Kim

  Contents

  Chapter One Drover Tries to Scramble My Brains

  Chapter Two I Get Fired

  Chapter Three Drover Gives Me an Idea

  Chapter Four A Small Error in Judgment

  Chapter Five Laying Low

  Chapter Six The Dead Squirrel Mystery

  Chapter Seven I Begin Plotting My Escape

  Chapter Eight Drover’s Secret Sanctuary

  Chapter Nine Under Arrest!

  Chapter Ten Slim Inflicts a Song on Me

  Chapter Eleven A Date with Miss Viola

  Chapter Twelve Not a Perfect Ending, but Close Enough

  Chapter One: Drover Tries to Scramble My Brains

  It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. Why would anyone send the Head of Ranch Security to Obedience School? It beats me, and let me go on the record as saying that it was one of the dumbest decisions ever made on this ranch.

  On any ranch. In the whole world.

  Just think about it. After a dog has climbed the ladder of success and achieved the position of Head of Ranch Security, does he need to go back to Doggie Kindergarten? No sir. He needs to be turned loose and left alone so that he can hunt down the various monsters, spies, enemy agents, and crinimal villains who lurk in the darkness and plot evil schemes against the ranch.

  Oh, and he needs to be working day and night to humble the local cat. That’s a huge point right there. If the Head of Ranch Security isn’t around to humble the cats, who’s going to do it? Nobody. And then you know what happens? The cats try to take over the ranch and run the whole show, and before you know it, the place has gone straight to pot.

  You know who needs to go to Obedience School? CATS. They never take orders, and if you don’t believe me, just hunt up the nearest cat and tell him to sit down. Ha. He’ll give you one of those arrogant smirks and walk away with his tail stuck straight up in the air.

  That’s a cat for you, arrogant and selfish to the bitter end, but does anyone ever talk about sending cats to Obedience School?

  Sorry for the outburst, but this thing really has me worked up. Actually, you’re not supposed to know about the Obedience School yet. It comes later in the story. See, every story is composed of two parts: the First Part and the Second Part. If you knew what was coming in the Second Part, you might not read the First Part, and that wouldn’t be good. First Parts should always come first and Second Parts should always . . .

  Maybe this is obvious, so let’s move on.

  It began, as I recall, on a normal average day on the ranch. Wait. It wasn’t exactly a normal day. It was a roundup-and-branding day in the spring of the year, which means that it wasn’t normal at all. It was one of the biggest workdays of the year.

  Yes, it’s all coming back to me now. I knew something was cooking when, at first light, I heard the sounds of unauthorized vehicles approaching ranch headquarters. After a long night of patrol work, Drover and I had just returned to the Security Division’s Vast Office Complex beneath the gas tanks, and were in the process of fluffing up our stinking gunnysack beds.

  You know why our gunnysacks smelled bad? Because the cowboys on this outfit were too cheap to buy us new ones. You can buy those gunnysacks at the feed store for fifteen cents apiece, and would it break the ranch’s bank if they gave us fresh bed linens every six months or so? Heck no, but they don’t. Those guys are so cheap, they’d skin a flea for the hide and tallow, but we can’t get started on all the injustices in life.

  The point is that we were fluffing up our beds, and yes, they smelled pretty rank. Just as I had completed the Three Turns Around the Bed Maneuver and was about to collapse into the loving embrace of my gunnysack, my Left Earatory Scanner leaped up and began pulling in mysterious signals from the vaposphere.

  Your ordinary mutts call them “ears.” We call them Earatory Scanners because . . . well, they’re quite a bit more sofissicated . . . suffiticated . . . saffistocated . . . phooey . . . quite a bit more impressive than ears. They’re very sensitive scanning devices that can snag the tiniest of sounds out of the air—or the “vaposphere,” to use our technical word for the air around us.

  Anyway, my Left Earatory Scanner had so-forthed and was so-forthing the whatever, and suddenly a red light began flashing on the control panel of my mind. I turned to my assistant.

  “Drover, I don’t want to alarm you, but I just received an alarm from Data Control.”

  “No thanks, I’m stuffed.”

  “Come back on that?”

  “Murgle skiffer alarm blossom snicklefritz.”

  I narrowed my eyes and studied the runt. He was stretched out on his bed and appeared to be half-asleep. “Drover, I’m sounding General Quarters. Report to the bridge at once.”

  He sat up and pried open his eyes, revealing . . . well, not much, two empty holes. Those holes stared at me for a long moment before he spoke. “Oh hi. Was someone talking to me?”

  “Affirmative. We have a problem.”

  “Oh drat, I hate problems.” He struggled to his feet, swayed back and forth, and yawned. “You know, I just had the weirdest dream.”

  “I’m not interested in your dreams.”

  “Thanks. Yeah, there was this important general who’d built a bridge across troubled waters. And he was standing on the bridge . . . with an alarm clock.”

  “Was his name General Quarters?”

  “That’s the one. What was he doing with that clock?”

  “Drover, listen carefully. I issued an alarm, not an alarm clock. I sounded General Quarters and ordered you to report to the bridge at once.”

  He glanced around. “I’ll be derned. Where’s the bridge?”

  “The bridge is here, where the captain stays.”

  “No, I think he was a general.”

  “Drover, I am the captain of this ship and I have issued an order.”

  “You mean . . . we’re on a ship? I hate water. It’s always so wet. And I get seasick. Help! I want to go home!”

  I caught him just before he dived under his gunnysack. “Drover, forget the bridge and skip the ship.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t swim. Help! We’re sinking!” He blinked his eyes and looked around. “Wait a second. We’re not on a ship.”

  “Of course we’re not, you goofball, and I never said we were. You know the trouble with you?”

  “I hate water?”

  “No.”

  “I can’t swim?”

  “No. Hush and I’ll tell you. The trouble with you is that you take a perfectly good idea and run it into the ground.”

  “I did that?”

  “Yes, you did. I tried to add a little color to the boring routine of waking you up, and . . . never mind.”

  “You mean . . . you mean we really are on a ship?”

  Suddenly I felt that I was being crushed by the forces of chaos. I stumbled toward my bed and collapsed. “Just drop it. I can’t stand any more of this. I’ve forgotten the point of this conversation and I no longer care. Go away and leave me alone.”

  “Well, okay. Nighty night.”

  “Nighty shut up.”

  There was a moment of silence, then . . .“Hank, you know what? A pickup just pulled into headquarters. It’s pulling a stock trailer and there’s a horse in the back. Reckon we ought to bark the alarm?”

  Huh?

  I came ripping out of a deep . . . out of a shallow sleep, let us say. I mean, listening to Drover yap was enough to put anyone to sleep and, okay, maybe I had drifted off. But I came flying out of bed and took control of the situation.

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you, bug brain! Bark the alarm and prepare to launch all dogs! We’ve got trespassers on the ranch!”

  And with that, we left sleep and comfort behind us, and went swooping up to the house to reconoodle a situation that was already looking pretty serious.

  Chapter Two: I Get Fired

  You see what I have to go through with Drover? I had received the alarm f
rom Data Control and was trying to call him into action, using some new and interesting terminology from naval life, and he . . . I don’t know what he did or how he did it, but this happens all the time. He gets me so twisted around, I find myself . . . well, blabbing nonsense.

  You heard the whole thing, so you know what I’m talking about. Sometimes I think the little moron is trying to make a mockery of my life.

  Oh well.

  The important thing is that I managed to sneeze control of the situation and get things moving in the right direction. We launched ourselves into the morning breeze and went streaking northeastward on a compass heading of 3400. Once airborne, I gave the order to start sending out some Stage One Barkings, just to let the enemy know that we were . . .

  Yipes. The pickup came barreling down the hill, heading straight toward us on a collision course, so I sent out an urgent message to begin Evasive Action. In a flash, we throttled down and leaped out of the roadway, just in time to . . . cough . . . eat dirt kicked up by the tires of the smarty-pants pickup.

  Hey, who and where did that guy think he was? For his information . . . holy smokes, no sooner had the first pickup rumbled past than another appeared right behind it, and then another. And another. What was going on around here? It was just barely daylight, so what were all these people doing on my . . .

  Okay, relax. You thought it was some kind of invasion of the ranch? Ha ha. Not at all. No, it turned out to be . . . have I ever mentioned that it’s hard for a dog to do a proper job of running his ranch when nobody tells him what’s going on? Well, it’s not only hard, it’s impossible.

  Here’s the deal. Slim and Loper, the cowboys on this outfit, had set up a branding day. They’d called all the ranchers and cowboys in the neighborhood to come and help with the work. So far, so good. I have no problem letting those guys play a small role in planning things around here. Give ’em a few little jobs to keep ’em busy and they’ll stay out of my hair. But this!

  See, they’d planned the whole day’s work, they’d called everybody on the creek, BUT NOBODY HAD BOTHERED TO CLEAR IT WITH ME. So all at once we had all these unauthorized pickups pulling into ranch headquarters at daylight, and there I was . . . well, running around and barking like an idiot. How do you suppose that made me feel?

  It made me feel pretty silly, is how it made me feel. Obviously we’d had a major breakdown in communications somewhere along the chain of command. Obviously someone on our ranch didn’t think it was important to let the Head of Ranch Security know what was going on.

  As the pickups rolled into headquarters one after another, I marched over to where Drover was standing. “This is outrageous. They expect us to protect the ranch and keep records on everyone who comes and goes, but then they cut us out of the loop.”

  He glanced around. “What loop?”

  “The loop, Drover. Everyone knows what the loop is.”

  “You mean the loop in a cowboy’s rope?”

  “No, that’s not what I mean at all. I’m talking about the Loop of Communication.”

  “You mean . . . ropes can talk?”

  For a moment, I didn’t know what to say. “Let’s drope it, Dropper.”

  “My name’s Drover.”

  “I’m very much aware of your name. It comes up every time there’s a disaster on the ranch.”

  “Yeah, but you called me ‘Dropper.’ It kind of hurts my feelings.” He hung his head and sniffled.

  “All right, I’m sorry I called you Dropper.”

  “Are you really?”

  “No. And to be perfectly honest, I think Dropper would be a better name for you than Drover.”

  “I think it sounds dumb.”

  “That’s the point.”

  “You mean . . .”

  “Never mind. Do you realize what’s going on here?”

  He glanced around. “Where?”

  “Here. There. All around you, right in front of your nose.”

  He crossed his eyes and . . . I couldn’t believe this . . . he looked at the end of his nose. “Well, a big fly just landed on my nose, and he’s green. But I still don’t see the loop.”

  I swallowed my urge to go into a screaming fit. “The pickups, Drover, the pickups and stock trailers and horses. Do you understand why they’re here?”

  “You called me Drover. Thanks. It really means a lot when you call me by my real name.”

  “I’m fixing to call you . . . just answer the question.”

  “Well, let me think.” He rolled his eyes around and scrunched up his lips. “They’re here because . . .they’re not somewhere else?”

  “Okay, that’s a start. If the pickups and so forth weren’t here, they’d be somewhere else.”

  “Yeah, and if they were somewhere else, they wouldn’t be here.”

  “Exactly my point. But let’s look deeper. Why are they here instead of somewhere else?” I stood there for thirty seconds, waiting for the little ninny to come up with the answer. “I’m sorry, we’re out of time. You’ve flunked your test.”

  “Wait, I’ve got it. They’re here because . . .”

  “Yes, yes?”

  “They’re here because . . . because . . .”

  “Hurry up, Drover!”

  “They’re here because . . . out of all the places in the whole world, this is where they all came. And there’s a whole bunch of places where they didn’t go.”

  The air hissed out of my lungs and I found myself staring at the dirt. “I try to help you. I try to bring you into my conversations, and you give me meathead answers like that. You flunk, pal, and you can spend the rest of the day in your room—with your nose in the corner.”

  He stared at me with tragic eyes. “No, anything but that. I hate standing in the corner.”

  “Drover, I gave you five chances to come up with the right answer and you still couldn’t do it. When you flunk a test, you have to take the punishment.”

  “One more chance. I’ll get it this time. Can you give me a little hint?”

  I thought it over. “Okay, one more chance and that’s it. Here’s the hint: they came to help Slim and Loper with the spring branding.”

  I know, it was more than a “little hint,” but I wanted to get this mess over with. And, to be honest, I’d begun to have second thoughts about sending him to his room. Maybe that was too harsh a punishment.

  Drover went into a pose of deep concentration while I tapped my toe and gazed up at the clouds. Then his eyes popped open and a smile washed over his mouth. “I’ve got it this time.”

  “Great. What’s the answer?”

  He puffed himself up and said, “Loper’s pickup has a busted spring and they’re going to help him put on a brand-new one.”

  A heavy silence rolled over us. I stared into the huge emptiness of his eyes. He was grinning, so happy with himself for coming up with the answer. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was three times dumber than a box of rocks. I pushed him aside and marched away as fast as I could go. I couldn’t stand any more.

  Behind me, he called out, “Did I pass? Are you proud of me?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t care. Don’t ever speak to me again.”

  Whew! I got away just in time. I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again: that’s a weird little mutt.

  By this time the cowboys had unloaded their horses and tightened their cinches, and they were standing in a circle around Loper and Slim. Loper was giving out the orders for the roundup, telling which riders to go to which parts of the pasture. I stood outside the circle for a few moments, then wiggled my way between a pair of legs and emerged inside the ring of cowboys.

  There, I sat down and, well, gave them a grin that said, “Sorry I’m late. What’s the plan?”

  When I appeared on the scene, Loper stopped in the middle of his sentence. His eyes came at me like . . . I don’t know, like a two-pronged fork, I guess you would say. They didn’t seem real friendly.

  “Hank, we won’t be needing your help. Stay out of the way and don’t make a sound until we get the cattle penned.”

  What? Stay out of the . . . hey, what was the deal? First they’d planned a roundup without consulting me, and now they didn’t want my help? I was astamished, shocked, and deeply wounded. I looked around the circle of faces (why were they all grinning?) and went to a tail-setting we call “I Can’t Believe You’re Serious.” In this setting, the top 90 percent of the tail assumes a lifeless position, while the last few inches tap out a slow, mournful rhythm on the ground.