Hm, I hadn’t thought of that. Drover had been known to hide in the calf shed. “Okay, I’ll be right back.”

  I slipped back outside and began trotting down to…I did a one-eighty turn and marched back into the machine shed. “Drover, enough of this nonsense! Report to the front at once, or you will be fed to the buzzards!”

  I heard a small voice. “Oh rats.”

  Moments later, he appeared out of the gloomy darkness of his sanctuary. As he came padding up, I pulled myself up to my full height and pointed to a spot on the cement floor. “Sit.” He sat and hung his head. “Did you actually think I was dumb enough to fall for that trick?”

  “No. I was shocked that it worked.”

  “It worked because I trusted you. I had faith that my assistant would never pull such a cheap trick on me.”

  “Well, you pull cheap tricks on me all the time.”

  “Drover, this is a ridiculous conversation. Let’s forget about our history of cheap tricks and start all over from scratch.” All at once, he hiked up his hind leg and began scratching his ear. “Why are you doing that in the middle of my lecture?”

  “I don’t know. You said ‘scratch’ and I felt a powerful urge to scratch.”

  “All right, let me rephrase it. Let’s start all over from un-scratch.”

  He stopped scratching and blinked his eyes. “You know, I think that worked.”

  “Good. No more shabby tricks, no more guilt, no more scratching during business hours. It’s a brand new day.”

  He glanced around. “Yeah, but it’s almost evening.”

  “Exactly my point, and I’m glad you mentioned it. We have to set up a Coon Patrol at the cake house tonight and we’re looking for a volunteer for the first shift.” His gaze wandered. “It could lead to a nice promotion.”

  “Oh goodie.”

  I gave him a pat on the shoulder. “I like your attitude, soldier.”

  He stood up and began limping. “But you know…ouch, boy, this old leg has been giving me fits.” He went two steps and dropped like a chunk of cement. “Oh, drat the luck, there it went! Oh, my leg!”

  “Drover, watch out for that black widow spider!”

  Heh. He sprang to his feet and headed for the door, but slowed to a walk, then stopped. “You know, the leg’s feeling a little better now, but I’m scared of coons.”

  “Not a problem, son. If a coon shows up, come fetch me. We’ll give him a thrashing and send him on his way.”

  He gave me a sulking glare. “There wasn’t a spider. You tricked me again.”

  “Drover, I tricked you for your own good. This time tomorrow, you’ll be glad it worked out this way.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “What?”

  “I said…oh goodie.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  Pretty touching scene, huh? You bet. Any time I can provide encouragement to the men, I’m glad to do it. Teamwork. It’s one of the things that make this old life worth living.

  Well, the sun went down at its usual time for that time of year, around seven o’clock, and darkness began spreading across the ranch. At 0730, I escorted Drover up the hill north of the corrals and hand-delivered him to a spot right in front of the cake house door.

  “All right, trooper, you will establish a Security Zone right here. Don’t leave your post and don’t fall asleep.”

  “Oh darn.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said, you bet, no problem.”

  “If anyone tries to enter the building, come wake me up.”

  “You’ll be asleep?”

  “Absolutely not. I’ll be up most of the night, catching up on paperwork.”

  “You said to wake you up.”

  I gave him a steely glare. “I was misquoted. Beware of anything you hear, Drover. Our enemies are very clever and they never rest.”

  I left him there, whimpering and complaining, and returned to the office to face the mountain of reports stacked up on my…someone was sitting in my office! I stopped in my tracks and studied the shadowy form.

  Had I forgotten an appointment with someone? Or was this some kind of intruder who had slipped into the building undetected?

  At that point, I didn’t know. And neither do you.

  Chapter Nine: Eddy Walks Into My Trap

  Are you still with me? Good, because I might need some help with this one.

  Okay, it appeared that I had just stumbled into a break-in by the Charlie Monsters, and some kind of carbon-based life form was sitting in my office. In the half-darkness, I could see only one of them, but that didn’t mean there weren’t two or five or twenty.

  Don’t forget, the Charlies are masters of disguise, and over my long career, I had seen many examples of their tradecraft: dressing up in chicken suits, masquerading as postal employees and wild turkeys, you name it. We’d even heard reports that they sometimes sprayed themselves with invisible ink.

  That’s the frightening thing about the Charlies. If you see one, there might be ten others that are blending into the surroundings. That’s scary.

  It appeared that they had staked out the building, see, and once everyone had left, they swooped in, hot-wired the elevator, and broke down the office door.

  Who knows what they were after this time—top secret files, reports, spreadsheets, maps that showed the location of every buried bone on the ranch, our geopolitical strategy for dealing with cats. The possibilities were chilling.

  A lot of your ordinary mutts would have sold out right there and left the building. Not me. Hey, I don’t look for opportunities to go up against the Charlies, but when the needle of Life’s Compass points to me, I go in with guns blazing.

  That’s what I did, laid down a withering barrage of Alert and Alarm Barks. “Freeze, turkey, on the ground, hands up, move it!” I charged into the office. The guy was so shocked, he hit the ground and covered his eyes with his paws, and screeched, “Help, murder, mayday!”

  I crept forward and noticed…hmm, in certain ways, the culprit resembled…well, Drover, but I had just left him at the cake house. Good grief, were they dressing up in Drover suits? What would they think of next?

  “Okay, pal, who are you, how did you get into this office, and what are you doing here?”

  He didn’t say a word but slithered the top-half of his body underneath Drover’s gunny sack bed. I could see it quivering, and at that point, I began to wonder…

  Huh?

  Okay, relax. Ha ha. Let’s take a moment to decompose. Decompress, I guess it should be, decompress. This will come as a big surprise. See, it actually was Drover, not an enemy spy wearing a Drover suit. Ha ha.

  Whoo! All the air hissed out of my chest of drawers and I almost collapsed as all the muscles in my body went into the Stand-Down response. “Drover, what are you doing here? I left you to guard the cake house and you beat me back to the office!”

  One eye peeked out from under the gunny sack. “Well, I heard a sound.”

  “You heard a sound. Okay, let’s get this over with. What exactly did you hear?”

  “Well, just as you were leaving, I heard these…these footsteps in the dark, and I figured you’d want to know.”

  I took a deep breath of carbon diego and tried to calm the pounding of my heart. “Did you catch sight of anyone who might have been the source of those alleged footsteps?”

  “Well…not exactly.”

  “Did you see anyone at all?”

  “Let me think here. Yeah, I saw you, but you were leaving.”

  I stepped forward, took a bite on his gunny sack, and jerked it off the quivering jelly of his whatever. “Did it ever occur to you that you were hearing my footsteps?”

  He blinked his eyes several times. “I’ll be derned, I never thought of that.”

  “Meathead! Get yourself back to the cake house and…never mind, I’ll take the first shift. And Drover, this WILL go into my report, and you WILL be written up with ten Chicken Marks.”

  “Oh no, not that!”

  “Yes, and you’re just lucky to be getting off with only ten. Next time, it’ll be ten thousand.”

  What can you say? Not much. Maybe the runt was doing his best with limited gifts, but his best just didn’t cut it in the world I occupied. Where I live and work every day…never mind. Fuming about Drover is a waste of time.

  I left him on his gunny sack and hiked up the hill to the cake house. There, I established a Secured Zone around the door: five paces north of the door, five paces south. Nothing and no one would go in or out of that space.

  I had marched my route several times when I began to realize…this was really boring.

  I couldn’t imagine keeping up this routine all night long, but I didn’t dare allow myself to fog asnerk…to fall asleep, that is. Somewho I herd to stay awerp…had to stay awake and fight against battle fatigue and snorking pork chops in the whooping crane pretzels….zzzzzzz.

  Okay, let’s be honest. Just for a few minutes, I slipped into a phase of dozing. I’m sure it was caused by my near-fatal encounter with the yellow jacket wasps. No, really, I’m serious. That yellow jacket venom is extremely powerful, and it’s a wonder I had survived.

  But the point here, the impointant poink, is that I slipped into a light dozing situation and was awakened by a series of odd thudding sounds: “Pah-DOO-pah. Pah-DOO-pah.” I rushed to the screen of my mind and called up Diagnostics. Data Control came back with a flashing message:

  “A series of odd thudding sounds, unidentified.”

  I pushed myself up to a standing position, cracked open both eyes, and did a Visual Sweep of the entire area. What I saw in the half-darkness was a little guy, sitting on his haunches and throwing a red rubber ball against the side of the barn.

  Are you following this? Okay, let me explain. The rubber ball was making those “odd thudding sounds,” don’t you see. The “pah” came when the ball hit the ground, the “doo” came when the ball bounced off the side of the barn, and the final “pah” came when it hit the ground again. At that point, the intruder caught the ball in his hands and went through the entire process again.

  No dog, cat, horse, or cow could toss a ball in that manner, and that gave me my first clue in this case: the suspect was not a dog, cat, horse, or cow. The second clue followed immediately: the guy was wearing a black bandit’s mask over his eyes.

  Do you get it now? I had set up a Secured Zone to intercept thieving raccoons, and here was one right in front of me! He had walked right into my trap and was throwing a ball against the side of the cake house.

  I went straight into Warning Growls and Hair Liftup. He caught the ball and swiveled his head around. “Oh, hi. How’s it going? Long night, huh?” He tossed the ball at the barn. Pah-doo-pah.

  There was something familiar about his voice. I squinted my eyes and took a closer look. “Eddy?” I rose to my full height of massiveness, lumbered over to him, and studied his facial so-forths. Sure enough, I knew the guy.

  Remember Eddy the Rac? He was a little shrimp of an orphan coon that Slim and I rescued from a pack of stray dogs. Slim kept him around as a pet, until he became such a home-wrecker and pain in the neck, we turned him loose and sent him back to the wild. Now and then he showed up around headquarters, and we could always be sure of one thing: any time Eddy showed up, trouble wasn’t far behind.

  And here he was, back again. “Eddy, what do you think you’re doing? You’re in a Secured Area.”

  “It’s a barn.”

  “It’s a barn that happens to be under tight security.”

  “Playing ball.”

  “I see that you’re playing ball and that’s nice. Coons need to stay busy with something.”

  He threw the ball up in the air and caught it. “Right. Moonlight Madness. Can’t sit still, got to boogey.”

  I paced around him and gave him a steady gaze. He didn’t seem as concerned about this deal as he should have been. After throwing the ball in the air several times, now he was rolling it around in his hands. I had to admit, he had an amazing pair of hands.

  “Eddy, I’ve got nothing personal against you. It just happens that we’re on opposite sides of the law. Coons are not allowed anywhere close to this barn. For security reasons, I can’t tell you why, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.”

  “Fresh cow feed?”

  I flinched. “That is supposed to be classified information.”

  “Smell.”

  I lifted my nose and drew in air samples. Hmm. They carried the strong, nutty smell of…well, ten tons of fresh cottonseed cake. “Okay, smart guy, you’ve got a good smeller. It makes me twice as suspicious about why you happen to be in front of this feed barn.”

  “Playing wall ball. Want to see?”

  “No. I’ve already seen it.”

  “Great wall.”

  “It’s a great wall, but there are plenty of other walls you could be using: the machine shed, the chicken house, the tool shed. I’d advise you to run along and…”

  “Want to see a trick?”

  “No. The point I’m making…what trick?”

  He held up the ball in the fingers of his right hand. “Magic. Make the ball disappear, poof.”

  I had to laugh. “Eddy, Eddy. You never grow up. Look, pal, I’ve studied your tactics and these so-called magic tricks are just part of your tired, sad routine. Nobody on this ranch believes in magic.”

  “Watch this.” He held the ball in the fingers of his right hand, passed his left hand over the ball, then flung both hands into the air. The ball had…well, vanished, so to speak. “Hee hee. Bingo. What do you think?”

  “It’s a variation of the old coin trick, Eddy. I’ve seen you do it before. It’s not magic, it’s trickery.”

  “Where’s the ball?”

  “Probably behind your ear.”

  He brushed his paws across his ears. “Nope.”

  “Just as I thought. It’s concealed in one of your arm pits.”

  He raised both arms. “Nope. Hee hee.”

  “Just as I suspected. That leaves only one place, pal. You’re sitting on it.” He stared off into space and didn’t respond, so I knew I’d nailed him. “Stand up, Eddy.”

  “Huh?”

  “Stand up.”

  “Now?”

  “That’s the order, stand up now.”

  “Darn.”

  Heh heh. I had exposed the little fraud.

  Chapter Ten: The Chase-Ball Olympics

  Imagine Eddy thinking that he could fool me with the Disappearing Ball trick! Ha. Sneaky little raccoons who think they can fool the Head of Ranch Security eventually learn a hard lesson: It can’t be done. No coon can out-fox a dog, not when I’m the dog.

  See, Eddy had overplayed his hand, and that’s one of the tendencies I had spotted in our Profiles of Coon Behavior. They can do amazing things with those little hands, and they have the kind of mind that’s good at producing schemes and tricks, but the combination of the two makes them overconfident.

  They get to thinking they’re smarter than they actually are, don’t you see, and that’s always a mistake, thinking you’re the smartest guy in the room.

  Although, come to think about it, in my case, it’s usually true.

  But back to the interrogation. I had pushed Little Houdini to the point where he was out of hiding places for the so-called vanishing ball, and I ordered him to stand up.

  Disappointment showed all over his face, but I remained firm. “Stand up, Eddy.”

  “You’re tough.”

  “Of course I’m tough. It’s part of my job.”

  “Hard to fool you.”

  “Exactly right. Now, are you going to stand up or do you need help?”

  He sighed and pushed himself up to a standing position. My gaze went straight to the spot where…I couldn’t believe it. There was no ball!

  I lumbered over to him. “Okay, Shorty, that’s enough. Where’s the ball?”

  He made a little basket with his hands and looked into it. “In there? What do you think?”

  “Hurry up.”

  He pulled his hands apart and threw them into the air. “Nope. Wait.” He reached out his hand and touched the back of my left ear, withdrew the hand and held up…a red rubber ball! “Hee hee. Behind your ear all along.”

  “Hey Eddy, I don’t know how you did that, but the ball wasn’t behind my ear.”

  “Magic. You ever chase a ball?”

  “What?”

  “Chase a ball. What do you think?”

  I paced a few steps away and looked up at the stars. There were many of them, all up in the sky. “Eddy, I don’t know how to say this in a nice way, so I’ll just blurt it out. I’m an important dog. I run this entire ranch. I have a real job. Do you have any idea what that means?”

  “Guard dog, bark, stuff like that?”

  “That’s a tiny part of it. I work eighteen hours a day, which is something you’ve never done in your entire life, and something you will never understand. The point is that, no, I don’t chase balls. It’s a silly, insignificant amusement for mutts that have nothing better to do.”

  “Fun. Watch.” He rolled the ball across the ground, about five feet, then scampered after it, picked it up in his mouth, and brought it back. He dropped it at my feet. “Cool or what?”

  I shook my head. “Eddy, you have too much time on your hands. You think that’s a big deal, chasing a ball?”

  “Try it.”

  “I will not try it.” He reached out a foot and gave the ball a gentle kick. It rolled about ten inches. “So this is…what? Some kind of challenge? Okay, pal, just for the record…” I walked over to the ball, picked it up in my mouth, and dropped it at his feet. “I fetched the ball. It was no big deal. That’s the end of it.”