The Case of the Car-Barkaholic Dog
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 Gulf Publishing Company, 1991.
Subsequently published simultaneously by Viking Children’s Books and Puffin Books, members of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 1999.
Currently published by Maverick Books, Inc., 2013.
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Copyright © John R. Erickson, 1991
All rights reserved
Maverick Books, Inc. Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59188-117-9
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
This one is for my friends at Gulf Publishing Company. Thanks for giving Hank such a good home.
Contents
Chapter One On the Dilemmas of a Horn
Chapter Two Syruptishus Loaderation
Chapter Three Running the Eighteen-Wheeler Marathon
Chapter Four Chicken Bones Bring New Meaning to Life
Chapter Five A Case of Mistaken Identity
Chapter Six Maggie Has a Fainting Spell
Chapter Seven Uh-oh
Chapter Eight A Terrible Fight
Chapter Nine The Fort Is Surrounded
Chapter Ten Dog-Pound Ralph
Chapter Eleven Attacked on the Street by Rambo
Chapter Twelve The Plan Backfires—Almost
Chapter One: On the Dilemmas of a Horn
It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. It was in the fall of the year, seems to me. Yes, it was.
October. Warm days, cool nights, the chinaberries and elms showing the first colors of fall. And we’d just gotten in two truckloads of steers the week before.
Busy time on the ranch, getting all those steers straightened out and ready to go out on wheat pasture. I’d been up day and night with those steers, and it had just about worn me down.
I mean, overwork comes with the territory when you’re Head of Ranch Security. You expect it. Still, a guy needs a rest once in a while, a break from all the cares and responsibilities of running the ranch.
I needed the rest, yes, but the rest of what followed the rest I didn’t need at all. Little did I know that I would find myself stranded in town, or that I would be drawn into a dangerous situation involving my sister Maggie and a terrible bully named Rambo.
But that’s getting the kettle before the pot. We had received all these fresh cattle and we had a bunch of scrubs in the sick pen. I kind of like that sick-pen work. Some of us are born to take care of the sick and unfirmed, the crippled, and the lame. Not me. I was born to give ’em orders.
What we do, see, is drive the steers into the crowding pen and shut the gate on them. Then we run, oh, seven or eight of them into the alley that leads to the doctoring chute.
You ever see a top-of-the-line, blue-ribbon cowdog handle cattle in an alley? Very impressive. While the cowboys have a steer in the chute, I march up and down the alley, growling at the cattle and letting them know who’s running the show.
Usually that’s all it takes to make the deal run smooth. Course, every now and then we get one that’s new to the sick pen and doesn’t know how to follow orders, and that’s when I earn my pay. I have thirty-seven different ways of biting reluctant steers to make ’em move.
Yes, every once in a while I get kicked on the nose, but success is never free.
We made a pretty good team, me and the cowboys, and it didn’t take us long to run twelve head through the chute. I might point out, though, that while we were working, Little Drover sat over by the water tank. Goofing off.
That little mutt can find more ways to kill time and lollygag around than any dog I ever knew. For a while he watched the action, and now and then he would add his “yip-yip-yip.” Then he chewed on an old horn he’d found in the lot, and after he’d chewed on it for a while, he dug a hole and buried it—shoveled the dirt over it with his nose.
Why did he want to bury a horn? Beats me.
Well, when I’d finished my work and while the cowboys were putting up the medicine, I swaggered over to the water tank, where Mister Half-Stepper was licking on a piece of ice.
“Eating Popsicles on the job, huh?”
He grinned and wagged his stub tail. “Yeah. They’re pretty good. You want one?”
“No, I don’t want one. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, Drover, but somehow the idea of eating Popsicles on the job strikes me wrong. Where I come from, we do the work first and then we goof off.”
“I sure agree with that.”
“Then why don’t you show it with your actions?”
“I do. I always let you do the work first.”
“That’s exactly what I mean. Is there some reason why you don’t jump in and try to make a hand when we’re doctoring cattle?”
“Oh yeah. Last time I tried it, I got kicked.”
“You got kicked. Son, getting kicked is just part of the job. It happens all the time.”
“I know. And it always hurts.”
“Of course it hurts, but our ability to tolerate pain is one of the things that makes cowdogs just a little bit special.”
He rolled his eyes up at the clouds. “Seems to me that the best way to tolerate pain is not to get kicked.”
I moved closer and glared at him. “Are you saying that the best way to tolerate pain is to avoid it? What if I took that attitude? How long do you think this ranch would run without pain?”
“I don’t know.”
“About five minutes. Pain is our fuel, Drover. It’s the force that drives us. It’s pain that lets us know that we’re alive. To run from pain is to run from life.”
“Sounds like a pretty good idea to me.”
I could only shake my head. “All right, you leave me with no choice. Just for