Читать книгу The Case of the Night-Stalking Bone Monster - John R. Erickson - Страница 6

Chapter One: The Incredible Reindeer Snouts

It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. Do you believe in Bone Monsters? Neither did I, until one struck our ranch and made off with my fortune in buried bones, and then I had no choice but to believe in them.

Bone Monsters, that is. I had always believed in bones. Who wouldn’t believe in bones? They’re one of the things that give meaning to a dog’s life. I love bones, always have. They’re wonderful.

Bone Monsters, on the other hand, aren’t wonderful and I don’t love ’em. They’re very scary, as you will see if you should happen to work up the courage to read this story.

And let me warn you right here: Don’t tackle this story unless you’ve completed a course in Monster Safety, because . . . well, I don’t know what might happen. Something bad.

Bed-wetting. A runny nose. Heat rash. Pul­mo­n­ary Brouhaha.

You’ve been warned. Proceed with caution.

It all began, as I recall, around the middle of March. No, the middle of April, and I can pin it down to the very exact day. It was the fourteenth of April.

I happened to be sitting near the front gate, facing east. I had barked up the sun at precisely seven o’clock. After performing that very important duty, I lingered near the front gate to do a Turkey Patrol. Whilst I was barking up the sun, don’t you see, my ears began picking up unusual signals from a chinaberry grove near the creek.

I stopped—froze, actually—I stopped and froze, twisted my head from side to side, and initiated the Sound Detection Procedure. I went to Full Lift-Up on both Earatory Scanners and began monitoring the entire electromagical spectrum.

I was listening for turkey sounds, see. At that hour of the morning, they often make sounds. They gobble. And they make another sound, too, which I can’t reproduce because I’m not a turkey. It’s kind of a squawk or a cluck.

I picked up the sounds, just as clear as a bell. Those turkeys were down there in the chinaberry grove, squawking and gobbling, and little did they know that I was spying on them and picking up every word of their conversation.

Would you like to peek at a transcript of this monitoring session? Ordinarily we don’t release this information to the general public because . . . well, because we don’t. It’s classified information, see, and we usually withhold these transcripts for twenty-five years because . . .

Well, because we do, and that’s reason enough. We do it because we do it. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t.

But if you want to peek at one of the Turkey Transcripts, I can’t see that it would hurt anything.

Ready? Here we go.

OFFICIAL SECRET TRANSCRIPT

Turkey Monitoring Operations:

Codename “Starfish Sandwich”

East Yard Gate Station

April 14

Turkey 1: “Gobble, gobble, gobble.”

Turkey 2: “Cluck, cluck.”

Turkey 3: “Squawk, screek.”

Turkey 1: “Gobble?”

Turkey 3: “Cluck, squawk.”

Turkey 2: “Cluck, cluck, screek.”

Turkey 1: “Gobble, gobble, gobble.”

Turkey 2: “Cluck.”

END OF SECRET TRANSCRIPT

So there you are. Pretty impressive, huh? Those birds might as well have been in the movies, the way we had ’em covered. We knew all their secrets, their plans, everything. We knew what they were thinking before they even thought it.

Of course, the problem with turkeys is that they don’t do much thinking about anything, which makes their conversations a little on the dull side.

Pretty boring, actually.

I wouldn’t want to spend too much of my time monitoring turkeys.

Anyways, I was at the Turkey Wire, doing my job, when all at once I heard a vehicle approaching from the north. Unidentified Vehicles get an automatic override in our defense system, which means that at the first sound of a UV, all Turkey Traffic is blacked out so that we can sound the alarm.

I left my post at the gate . . . not the gatepost but my position near the gatepost . . . I left my post at the gatepost . . .

Phooey. I left the gate and never mind the post and went ripping out to intercept the . . .

Okay, relax. It was Slim’s pickup, which no doubt contained Slim. Slim was the driver, see, and once I had established this fact, I switched all circuits from Emergency Red to Routine Blue, and provided Slim with an escort all the way to . . .

That was odd. Instead of driving down to the corrals, where he usually went at this hour of the morning, he stopped in front of the house.

The moment he stepped out of the pickup, I was there to greet him. I gave him Broad Wags and Joyful Leaps, just to let him know that, by George, it was sure good to see him again.

That should have been enough to start his day off right, but yikes, he looked at me with a pair of stony eyes and said, “What are you so happy about, pooch? Don’t you know what day this is?”

Well, I . . . no, I didn’t. Up until that very moment, I had thought it was a fairly normal day. Obviously, I had missed something.

He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and trudged up to the front door. He carried a bundle of something under his arm, a mess of papers, it appeared. His back was bent and his head was low, as though he were packing several sacks of feed, only he wasn’t.

He tapped on the door. Loper appeared. He was not smiling too. “Come in,” was all he said. The door closed behind them.

My goodness, this was a dark day. Something bad was happening on my ranch, and I didn’t even know what it was.

(You probably think it had something to do with the Night-Stalking Bone Monster, but I’ll give you a hint: It didn’t, not yet. That came later.)

I had planned to move along and do a routine sweep of the entire headquarters area, but it was clear by then that we had a serious problem on the ranch, and I needed to remain on call until we cleared it up.

After marking two of Slim’s tires—I saw no real need to mark all four of them; I mean, we knew the vehicle and a Short Mark was good enough—after the so-forth, I curled up beside the front gate and . . . snork, mirk . . . perhaps I dozed off for a moment or two.

The next thing I knew, they were coming down the sidewalk. Slim and Loper, that is. “Get out of the gate, Hank!” I leaped to my feet, staggered three steps to the north, and did a quick scan of their faces. They were still dark, depressed, angry.

The sun had climbed fairly high above the horizon. Perhaps I had dozed for an hour or two instead of a moment or two.

They came through the gate. Instead of doing Joyous Leaps and Broad Wags, I switched all circuits over to Graveyard Mode. If they were de­pressed, I was depressed. If they were sad, so was I. That’s just part of being a loyal dog.

Fellers, we were sad and depressed. Perhaps we were going to climb into Slim’s pickup and drive to a funeral. Yes, this was a very sad . . . only they didn’t climb into the pickup. They started walking north, toward the county road.

Now, that was strange. These two cowboys weren’t fond of walking, yet here they were . . . walking. It was hard to believe, but I fell in step beside them. We walked in silence. Oh, and did I mention that each of them carried a white envelope? Yes, they did.

At last, Slim spoke. “Well, here goes another year down the drain. You reckon we’ll ever find happiness again?”

“Oh sure. Fools always forget. Give us six months and we’ll be able to smile again. By Christ­mas, we’ll be laughing.”

“I ain’t so sure. I think my giggle box is permanently broke, and so am I.”

“Well, look at it this way, Slim. If you had that money, you’d spend it on something foolish.”

“I’d sure try.”

“Yeah, me too. But I guess Sally May didn’t need that new dress.”

“Nope. And I didn’t need to get these boots half-soled.”

“Heck no. Wear a thicker sock.”

“I sure hope this check don’t bounce.”

“They’ll be in touch, don’t worry.”

“I’ll bet.”

None of this made any sense to me. As near as I could figure it, Slim had worn out all his socks and was sending off an order for more. He hoped they would arrive by Christmas, and if they did, he would . . . laugh, I guess.

Sounded crazy to me.

By that time we had reached the mailbox, which appeared to be our destination. Ah ha, yes. The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. Loper opened the little door and pitched his letter inside.

“Well, back to work.”

Slim held his letter up and gave it a pat. “Here we are, little feller. Go find the IRS and tell ’em that they’ve ruined my life—again.” He pitched his letter inside and slammed the door.

We trudged back down to the house. There, we split up and went our separate ways: Loper into the house; Slim to the corrals; and me to the gas tanks.

And you know what? I never did figure out what we were all being so sad about. What the heck was an IRS?

International Reserve of Socks?

Interplanetary Rhubarb Society?

Incredible Reindeer Snouts?

I decided to stop worrying about it. If you can’t figure out why you’re miserable, maybe you’re not.

I had more important things to worry about, such as . . . well, you’ll soon find out.