Читать книгу The Case of the Wandering Goats - John R. Erickson - Страница 6

Chapter One: The Monkey Pirates

It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. It was a gloomy, dark night in May, as I recall. Yes, it was May, and as I paced the deck, I noted the location of every star. They were all overhead in the sky.

I felt uneasy. This was no ordinary gang of pirates we were after, but a crew of monkey pirates under the command of the notorious Captain Gooey Louie. They had captured a shipload of boiled turkey necks, and had spread fear up and down the coast of Menudo.

I was commanding a three-masted man-of-war, HMS Whickerbill, and the Admiralty had sent us around the Cape of Good Honk in pursuit of the pirates. My orders were to engage them in combat, eat the cargo, and sink the ship.

I made my way across the creaking deck and joined the young sailor who was steering the ship. In the hazy moonlight, he looked nervous and not very smart.

“How long have you been at sea, lad?”

“Murgle skiffer pork chop.”

“That’s a long time. I guess you’re missing home.”

“Mork snerk snicklefritz.”

“I understand. This ocean is a huge place, and it’s always full of water.”

“Watery pottery slottery, the mouse ran down the clock.”

“Oh? Set three traps and arm them with peanut butter. Steer a course south by southwest.”

“Hank?”

“You may call me Captain.”

“I hear someone coming.”

I cocked one ear and listened. “You’re right, it must be the monkeys. Draw cutlasses and prepare to board the ship!”

“Hank, you’d better wake up.”

“What do you mean, ‘wake up’?” I blinked my eyes and glanced around. Everything had changed. “Good grief, it’s daylight and our ship has vanished! Where is the ocean? Why wasn’t I informed?”

“Well, I guess we were asleep.”

“Don’t be absurd. I had the night watch and you…” I staggered a few steps and took a closer look at the sailor. “Who are you?”

“I’m Drover, remember me?”

“No. Wait. Did you say Drover?”

“Yeah, Drover with a D.”

“You’re the one with the stub tail?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Neither do I.” I glanced around. We appeared to be in a room of some kind. “Drover, I don’t want to alarm you, but there’s a strange man over there, dressed in boxer shorts and a T-shirt. He’s sitting in a chair. What’s going on around here?”

“That’s Slim. He’s eating breakfast.”

“He’s eating a dead lizard?”

“No, it’s a boiled turkey neck.”

“Ah, of course, yes. He must have gotten it from the pirates.”

“There aren’t any pirates.”

“No pirates? Wait, hold everything. Don’t you get it? That’s Slim Chance!”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“Maybe we spent the night in his house.”

“Duh.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I think you were dreaming about monkeys.”

I glanced around, in case we were being watched. “Who told you that?”

“You did. You were babbling about monkeys and ships.”

“Let’s get one thing straight: I don’t babble.”

“You do when you’re half-asleep. I heard you.”

“Stop eavesdropping on me.” The fog lifted and my head began to clear. “Okay, I’m seeing a pattern here. You’re Drover. We spent the night at Slim’s place and that’s him sitting in the chair.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Please don’t interrupt. Did he offer us a bite of his breakfast?”

“Not yet.”

“That’s very slurp of him. Maybe we should…” My ears began picking up signals from outside. “Is that a vehicle?”

“Yeah, I tried to tell you.”

“Why didn’t you bark?”

He yawned. “It seemed like a lot of trouble.”

“Drover, this is shocking, and please stop yawning. An intruder is approaching the house, and all you can do is yawn about it?”

“Well…”

“Battle stations! Load up guns one and two. Let’s lay down some cover fire!”

We turned our big guns toward the front door and began pumping out some heavy-duty barks. You should have been there to see it! It was an awesome display of…

“Hank, dry up!”

Huh? Had I heard a voice?

Yes, and it came again. “It’s probably Loper, so knock it off.”

Okay, that was Slim’s voice and maybe our blasts of barking had disturbed his breakfast. How’s a dog supposed to know? We just try to do our jobs, but speaking of breakfast, I left the artillery and made my way over to his chair. Maybe…

“No.”

What a grouch. I hadn’t begged for food. What kind of lunatic would eat a cold, leftover, boiled turkey neck for breakfast anyway? It looked revolting.

“You want a bone?”

No.

He pitched it in the air and, well, what could I do but snag it? Snarf. It crunched up pretty nicely. Turkey neck bones don’t look so great and a lot of dogs wouldn’t touch one first thing in the morning, but they’re not all that bad.

Crunch, crack.

Pretty good in fact. Give me a choice between a neck bone and a plate of scrambled eggs, and I’ll take the bone every time. You know why? Because in Slim’s house, a decent, civilized breakfast will never happen, so we take anything we can get.

As a matter of fact…

“That’s all you get.”

You see how he is? The man seems to think that a dog has only one thing on his mind and all we ever do is chase after the next meal. It’s very discouraging and even insulting. For his infor-mation, the mind of a dog is an awesome thing.

The only reason dogs aren’t listed among the world’s greatest philosophers and poets and composers is that we’re stuck with the job of protecting knot-heads like Slim Chance—for which we receive no credit or appreciation, only criticism and scorn.

Free us from that burden and see what happens. We’ll write the great books, think the great thoughts, and compose the great slumphonies.

Timpanies. We’ll compose the greatest timpanies ever heard.

That doesn’t sound right. It drives me batty when the perfect word is right on the tang of my torque and I can’t come up with it.

The word I’m searching for has to do with fiddles and horns and a guy standing on a platform, wearing tusk and tails, and waving a little stick around.

Phooey.

You know what? I don’t care and I’m not going to waste half my life looking for a word I don’t care about. The important poink is that dogs need nutrition and energy, and we can’t get it by eating sheet music.

We need FOOD, and would it drive the ranch into bankrubble if Slim shared one more turkey vertebra with his best friend in the whole world?

Was that unreasonable?

I mean, we ask so little of this life!

I unloosed a moan from deep in my throatalary region, moved my front paws up and down, and beamed him an expression of Adoration and Starvoration.

I studied his face. His mouth was stiff, cold, lifeless, without even a hint of warmth or compossem. This wasn’t going to work. But wait…

There was a flicker of something…a softness came into his eyes…his lips stirred ever so slightly and the corners moved upwardly at the corners.

Holy smokes, IT WAS A SMILE!

“Okay, pooch, one more. See if you can catch it.”

With his thumb, he flipped a vertebra high into the air. I loaded the Reentry Data into the computer and moved into the Recovery Position. When the object began its downward plunge, I was waiting and snapped it right out of the sky.

Crunch.

Oh yes! The bonds of our bondage had bonded, and we were friends again, friends forever, friends to the bone!

A little humor there, did you get it? “Friends to the BONE,” as in a turkey vertebra. Ha ha.

Anyway, he was pleased and proud. He not only smiled, he uttered a chuckle, and don’t forget, this was early morning, not his best time of day. “Nice work, pup. You’ve got talent nobody ever dreamed was there.”

Right. Did we have time for one more?

No, because at that very moment, we heard pounding at the door. Our pleasant episode came to a sudden end and I was back on duty.

“Symphony,” that’s the word I was looking for.