The Case of the Mopwater Files
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, 1997.
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, 1997
All rights reserved
Maverick Books, Inc. Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59188-128-5
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 Kit and Geraldine
Contents
Chapter One Total Meltdown on the Ranch
Chapter Two Drover Eats a Grasshopper
Chapter Three I’m Forced to Humble the Cat
Chapter Four Grasshoppers Taste Yucko
Chapter Five My Tremendous Scientific Discovery
Chapter Six I Prepare to Thrash the Neighborhood Bully
Chapter Seven Poisoned by Mopwater
Chapter Eight Higher Duty Calls Me to Battle
Chapter Nine Madame Moonshine Is Captured by Cannibals
Chapter Ten The Singing Ignoramuses
Chapter Eleven I Manage to Save Madame Moonshine
Chapter Twelve Caution: Scary Ending
Chapter Thirteen There Isn’t a Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen The Story’s Over, Go Home
Chapter One: Total Meltdown on the Ranch
It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. Have we ever discussed the Mopwater Files? Maybe not, because it’s still Highly Classified information and we’re not ready to go public with it.
We may never go public with it. It’s too secret. Oh, and it has a scary ending. You wouldn’t like it.
That’s too bad. It was a pretty interesting case but I’m just not in a position to . . .
Do you remember Rufus the Doberman Pinscher? Big guy, little green eyes, sharp-pointed ears, long fangish teeth. A terrible bully, always tormenting Miss Beulah the Collie, and you talk about ugly! He was ugly, inside and out.
It’s still hard to believe that I actually challenged that guy to a fight to the death, but then came the bucket of toxic mopwater and . . .
Oops. I wasn’t supposed to reveal anything about the case. Forget I said anything. Why, if this information fell into the wrong hands . . . just forget it. That’s all I can say.
What were we talking about? Oh yes, the weather. It was the middle of the summer, see, and hotter than blue blazes. It had been hot for days and weeks, and there I was, wearing a fur coat.
Yellowjacket wasps hummed in the still air and you could see heat waves shimmering on the horizon. The wind had quit blowing. The windmills had quit pumping. The cowboys had quit working.
I had started out the morning in a nice piece of shade beneath the gas tanks, but by eleven o’clock the shade had . . . I don’t know what happened to it. It had burned up or boiled away or something, and I found myself lying in the scorching glare of the sun.
What a cheap trick! I had to summon up huge reserves of energy to move myself to another piece of shade on the west side of the storage tank. It was tough, let me tell you, and I just barely made it.
But you know what? Something happened to that shade too, and within an hour I was roasting again. And all at once I faced the toughest decision of the day: would I get up and move my freight to another shady spot, or would I just lie there and roast?
I raised my head and studied the situation. I could see the shade. There it was, not more than six inches from my present location, but to get there, I would have to go through the entire Jack Up and Move procedure, just as though I were moving halfway across the ranch.
That doesn’t seem fair, does it? If a guy travels no more than a few inches, he shouldn’t have to go to all that trouble. Think about it. Raise head. Position legs under body. Push up on front legs. Push up on back legs. Coordinate the Walking Pattern for all four feet. Walk six inches to the west. Collapse.
It wasn’t fair. It was an outrage, and I decided that I wouldn’t do it. By George, I would just lie there in the sun and roast. That would teach them . . . whoever They were . . . and I hoped They would take notice and quit messing around with my shade.
I laid my head down and began roasting. I heard my deep breathing and listened to the stupid flies buzzing around my ears. I hate ’em. If I’d had more energy, I would have raised up and snapped ’em all out of the air.
Snapped ’em out of the air and chewed ’em up into little bitty pieces of legs and wings, and then spit ’em all out on the ground. That’s what a fly deserves and that was how much I hated the little tormenting devils, but I didn’t have the energy to initiate a good Anti-fly Defense Program.
So I just lay there in the sun and roasted, and let the flies walk around my ears . . . over my face . . .
Into my nose?
Okay, that did it! They could have the ears but no fly walks into my nose. I lifted my head and cut loose a withering barrage of snapping. I missed them all, but they got the message and left my nose alone.
And, what the heck, once I had gone to all the trouble to raise my head, I figured I might as well go on into Jack Up and Move. I jacked myself up, staggered five steps to the west, and collapsed.
Whew! I was exhausted, but at least I wasn’t roasting. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. That’s what I needed. Sleep. About two weeks of solid sleep.
Unfortunately, Slim the Cowboy came along just then. I cracked one eye but didn’t lift my head. Too exhausted. Slim was a pretty good fellow, but not so good that I could afford to squander a lot of energy saying hello. Not in this heat.
He stopped in the same piece of shade that I was occupying. He pulled a bandanna out of his hip pocket and mopped his face.
“Boy, it’s