Читать книгу The Return of the Charlie Monsters - John R. Erickson - Страница 6

Chapter One: Case Number RA-VS 2335

It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. When the sun came up that morning, I had no idea what lay ahead—that we would face a full-scale, two-pronged invasion by the Charlie Monsters, that they would try to bump me off with a poisoned egg, or that my relationship with Sally May would hit an all-time low.

What we’re looking at here is one of the scariest stories of my whole career, but before we go any farther, let’s take care of some ranch business. See, once we get into the scary parts, I might forget to tell you that this is Case Number RA-VS 2335.

It’s important that you know the case number and maybe you’re wondering why it’s so important. The answer might surprise you. It’s so important, I can’t tell you why it’s so important. It’s Classified Information, and we’re talking about a Heavy Duty Keep-Your-Trap-Shut kind of secret.

All you need to know is that the Security Division has a numbering system and we keep records on all our cases. We’re allowed to reveal the case number and that’s about it. If you’re okay with that, we’ll move along. Ready?

Okay, in our filing system, “RA-VS” is shorthand for “Red Alert, Very Serious” and the number “2335” tells us that it happened after Case #2334 and before Case #2336. Do you get it? Case 2335 occurred in between Case 2334 and Case 2336.

The “dash” between RA and VS doesn’t mean anything dark or mysterious. We put it there because…I’m not sure why we put it there. Maybe it breaks the monotony of having four letters in a row: “RAVS.” Also, it makes it sound more official when we say, “This is Case Number RA-dash-VS 2335.”

You have to admit that it’s a pretty slick system. I mean, a lot of your ordinary mutts just slop through life and never keep a good set of records. On my outfit, we keep track of every little detail. For example, at this very moment, even as we speak, a flea is creeping around in the region of my left armpit. In fact…

Hee hee! It tickles. Okay, this information will go into our data files, including my response. Pay close attention. I will now sit on the ground, hike up my left hind leg, and use the claws of my left rear paw to hack the flea into salad and smithereens. Death to all fleas!

Hack, hack, hack!

Pay special attention to the angle of my head during this procedure, with the neck fully extended. Also note the shape of my mouth, expressing grim determination but also pleasure. See, I get a kick out of vaporizing fleas.

A little humor there. Did you get it? I get a kick out of kicking fleas. Ha ha. Pretty clever, huh?

Anyway, that flea thinks he’s safe, slipping through the hairs in my armpit, but we’ll get him.

Hack, hack, hack!

There! By George, that’s one flea we won’t see again. When they mess with the Head of Ranch Security, they pay a terrible price.

Now, where were we? I have no idea.

Does anyone remember what we were talking about?

It really burns me up when this happens. Okay, never mind. We’ll start all over. It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. It was early morning, it was summer, it was dry, and it was worse than dry. We were in the second year of a drought, terrible drought. The country looked awful, but oddly enough, the mornings were beautiful—desert mornings with clear, still air and the early sunlight painting our valley with vivid colors of red, orange, and purple.

We had very little grass that summer but a huge population of grasshoppers, and we’re talking about those big fat jumbos. Figure that one out. If you have very little grass, how can you have billions of grasshoppers? What do they eat? If grasshoppers don’t have grass, how can they hop?

I don’t know, but we had billions of them. They not only hopped, but any time I was trotting across the pasture, I could count on getting smacked in the face by four or five of the hateful things. And it hurt.

Nobody on this ranch had anything good to say about grasshoppers, but the wild turkeys were having the time of their lives. They eat grasshoppers, don’t you know. Chasing grasshoppers is what they do for a living, so their business was booming.

We’ll have more to say about turkeys later on.

During this drought, Sally May was trying her best to keep the shrubs and flowers alive in the yard, and she was running the sprinkler in the garden every day to keep the squash, okra, tomatoes, and melons from turning up their toes and dying.

She had succeeded in keeping most of the garden plants alive, and had waged a constant war against the grasshoppers, squash bugs, and tomato worms. Then the deer and rabbits started poaching the green plants. We had a good hog wire fence around the garden, but that didn’t stop the rabbits from crawling under it, nor did it keep the deer from jumping over it. In a bad drought, it’s hard to keep the poachers out of your garden.

The Security Division had set up a special Task Force to deal with this issue, and let me tell you, we were putting in some hours—day and night, morning and evening, eighteen hours every day, chasing rabbits and deer away from the garden. On this ranch, the work never ends, and in a drought, it neverest enders.

And that’s what we were doing on the morning we opened Case #RA-Dash-VS 2335. Loper and Slim had left the ranch before daylight to attend a farm auction. Apparently they thought our ranch didn’t have enough junk, so they went shopping for more junk. Sally May was scurrying around the house, trying to get ready for a trip to town. As I recall, she was helping out at Vacation Bible School. Yes, she had volunteered to teach at VBS and this was to be her first day.

Drover and I had slept late. Let me rephrase that. Drover had slept late. I had been up most of the night, doing Poacher Patrol, but the impointant pork is that around seven o’clock in the morning, we were pulling guard duty in Observation Post 9 in front of the machine shed.

All at once, I got a call on the radio. “Hank, you’d better wake up. Something’s going on out there.”

I leaped to my feet and took command of the ship. “Dive, dive! All ahead two-thirds. Level off at fifty feet and rig for depth charges!” One of the men was standing in front of me. I blinked my eyes and took a closer look. “Who are you?”

“Pretty good. How ‘bout yourself?”

“Doing fine, thanks. Are we at fifty feet?”

“Well, I’ve got four feet and you’ve got four, and that makes nine.”

“Good. Level off at nine feet and let’s take a look. Up scope! Who are you and do you have clearance to be here?”

He gazed up at the sky. “Well, I’m Drover. Clarence isn’t here.”

“Hmmm, that’s odd. Do you suppose he went to the engine room?”

“Where’s that?”

“Down below, where we keep the engines.”

“Down below is where we keep the dirt.” He pointed his paw in a downward direction. “That’s dirt.”

My gaze followed the path indicated by his paw. “Good grief, it IS dirt. We’ve run aground! Why wasn’t I informed? How can I command this ship when nobody tells me…did you say your name is Drover?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Hi.”

“Hi. Are you the same Drover who was here yesterday?”

“Yep, that’s me, Drover with a D.”

“Roger that. Okay, bring me up to speed. What’s going on around here?”

“Well, I saw some turkeys.”

“Rubbish. They must have been seagulls.”

“No, they were turkeys.”

I melted him with a glare. “Turkeys don’t live on the ocean. Get your facts straight.”

“We don’t have any oceans.”

“That’s absurd. How can this be a submarine if we don’t have any oceans?”

He moved closer and whispered, “It’s not a submarine. It’s a ranch in Texas and I think you were dreaming.”

I was about to place him under arrest for making slanderous remarks about his commanding officer, but instead, I cut my eyes from side to slide and noticed…hmmm. Everything in my field of vision bore a strong resemblance to…well, a ranch in Texas.

I marched a few steps away and filled my lungs with three big gulps of air. Slowly my head began to clear and I was ready to deal with this latest crisis.

Keep reading. You’ll want to hear what happened to the ship.