The Case of the Swirling Killer Tornado (3 page)

Chapter Four: The Polka-dot Midget

A
s you might have already guessed already, initiating the Moan and Bark Maneuver re­vealed our location to all the Charlies.

See, by that time the Charlie Monsters had advanced and captured most of the important positions around Headquarters, and even though we couldn't exactly see them, we knew they were there.

Yes, we knew they were there, sprinting from building to building on their hairy green legs and setting up listening devices that would zero in on the sounds of our barking. It was just a matter of time until they found us, and then . . . gulp.

We didn't have a moment to spare. Huddled together on the back porch, pressing our dripping bodies against the screen door, we barked and moaned. And then we moaned and barked. We HAD to get word of the attack to Loper and Sally May, because if we failed in this mission . . . gulp again.

But our best barking and moaning had no effect. No lights came on in the house. No one opened the door to let us in. No one rushed outside to help us defend our position.

Things were looking pretty bad.

KA-BLOOEY!

Another 88 exploded nearby, and in that brief but brilliant flash of light I saw . . .

“Drover, did you see what I just saw?”

“I don't think so. I've got my eyes covered with my paws. What was it?”

“I'm almost sure I saw . . . a bunch of little green Monster Men.”

“Oh my gosh!”

“Each one of 'em had six legs, Drover, six hairy green legs. And big heads with three eyes. They're out there running around in the rain and mud.”

“Oh my gosh, they're looking for US!”

“I'm afraid you're right.”

“And if we keep on barking, they'll find us.”

“Exactly.”

“Oh Hank, I want to go home!”

“You are home, Drover, but I don't think this is what you had in mind.”

“It's not. Do you reckon they eat dogs?”

“Oh sure, no question about it. They eat dogs until they're full and then they eat some more, just for sport.”

I could feel the little mutt shivering. “What are we going to do?”

“I was just asking myself that same question, Drover. We've failed to wake up Loper and Sally May with our barking. The only course of action left to us is to . . . chew our way into the house.”

I heard him gasp. “Chew our way . . . you mean, through the door?”

“Exactly. We'll take out the screen door first and then go to work on the wooden door.”

“Gosh, won't they be mad?”

“Sure, they'll be mad. They'll be furious. After all, they want to eat us.”

“Oh my gosh! You mean Loper and Sally May want to eat us too?”

“What?”

“Even our friends want to eat us!”

“Wait a minute. I'm talking about the Charlie Monsters. Who or whom are you talking about?”

“Well . . . I thought maybe Loper and Sally May would be mad if we chewed up their doors.”

“Oh. No, quite the contrary, Drover. If they were here right now, I'm sure they'd want us to chew down the doors, the walls, or whatever to save our­selves. Do you think they'd want to lose their entire Security Division?”

“Well, I hope not.”

“Believe me, son, they'll be delighted to see us. Now, let's go to work on this screen. Go to Full Claws and Teeth.”

Boy, you should have seen us digging on that screen door! We hit it with Full Claws and Teeth, and in just a matter of a few minutes, we had taken it out. You'd have thought we had chainsaws for teeth.

I paused for a moment to catch my breath and to admire our work. And spit splinters.

“Nice work, son. That screen didn't have much of a chance against us, did it? Ha! They thought they had us trapped! Little did they know.”

“Yeah, but that was the easy part. The next door won't be so easy.”

“Stand back and watch this. Hank the Cowdog is fixing to show you how we take out a wooden door.” I loosed up the muscles in my enormous shoulders and also the powerful muscles in my jaws. “In two minutes, we'll be inside the house. Watch.”

I threw my entire body and soul into the task of mowing down that door. I had become a chainsaw, a battering ram, a sludgehammer, a powerful laser-driven machine that was totally dedicated to the task of . . .

Some doors are thicker than you might suppose. This one proved to be pretty stubborn. I mean, chips and sawdust were flying everywhere, and my teeth were throwing up sparks and my claws were ripping huge hunks of wood from . . .

I stopped to rest. Drover was watching. “How's it going?”

“Piece of cake. We're almost there. Just a few more bites and we'll be inside the house.”

I took a gulp of air and hit it again, this time with the fury of . . . nobody had warned me that this particular door was ten inches thick and made of solid oak.

I mean, we're talking about a door that must have weighed, oh, five hundred pounds. It's a won­der they could find hinges to hold it up, and I doubt that any dog in the world could have . . .

And did I mention that it was covered with steel armored plate? Yes sir, one inch of solid steel, bolted into ten inches of solid oak, and I soon realized that if I kept up my frenzy of chewing, I would soon be toothless.

I stopped to catch my breath and spit wood. Steel, that is, from the steel plate.

Again, Drover was watching. “How's it going now?”

I gave him a withering glare and was about to give him worse than that when, all of a sudden and before our very eyes, the door opened.

I turned a worldly smile upon my companion. “As you can see, Drover, the door gave up.”

“You mean, it opened itself?”

“Of course it did. That door knew that if it didn't yield to my powerful attack, it would soon be nothing but splinters and sawdust. You probably thought . . .”

HUH?

Yikes, someone was standing in the gloomy darkness in front of us. A small person, perhaps a midget, dressed in a strange red and white polkadot uniform.

I felt the hair rising on the back of my neck and a deep ferocious growl began to rumble in my . . .

Okay, relax. Did you think it was one of the green Charlie Monsters? Ha, ha, ha. No, not at all.

Little Alfred. Wearing red and white polka-dot pajamas. Ha, ha, ha. See, I had known, or had suspected . . .

Never mind.

It was our friend, Little Alfred, not a Charlie Monster, and that was the best news of the year. I almost fainted with relief. Or to view it at a slightly different angle,
Drover
almost fainted with relief, while I was merely glad to see him.

Little Alfred, that is. I was glad to see Little Alfred, not Drover. I had been with him all night and that was one night too many.

The boy switched on the utility room light and stared at the, uh, screen door, the damaged screen door. His eyes grew wide and his mouth fell open.

“Ummmmmmmm!”

At that very moment, I decided the time had come to switch all circuits over to Innocent Looks and Slow Tail Thumping. I mean, “Ummmmmm” is sort of a tip-off word, right? It warns of stormy weather ahead, so to speak.

“You dogs wecked the scween door and my mom's gonna be MAD!”

I found myself fidgeting and turning my gaze away from the, uh, screen door, and generally feeling uncomfortable about the whole thing. The very mention of Alfred's mom brought back a rush of unpleasant memories—our many misunderstandings, a relationship that had known its share of ups and downs, being chased around the yard by an angry ranch wife and her broom.

“Hankie, how come you wecked the scween?”

Well, I . . . that is, we thought . . . there were all these huge loud explosions and . . . well, Charlie Monsters running around all over the place and . . .

“Were you doggies scared of the storm?”

Storm? Oh no. Storms had never bothered me. What had scared me and Drover . . . well, mainly Drover, what had scared Drover had been something much bigger and far more serious than your average little . . .

“Well,” the boy dropped his voice to a whisper, “it scared me too, all that thundoo and wightning.”

Oh?

The boy was scared, huh? Well, yes, storms were, uh, pretty scary things. The big ones, that is, your major summer thunderstorms, we're talking about. Pretty scary.

“Do you doggies want to come into the house so we can be scared together?”

Come into the . . . no, we had Night Patrol and many other . . . there really wasn't time in our busy . . .

But when he opened what was left of the screen door, I suddenly realized that taking care of the kids and making sure they got a good night's sleep was the very most important job for every ranch dog and . . .

Okay, what the heck, we had time. If it would make Sally May's child sleep better and feel more secure . . .

KA-BOOOM!

We flew into the house . . . which might not have been one of the smartest things we ever did.

Chapter Five: The Bacon Temptation

I
went straight to the rug which lay in the middle of the utility room floor. There, I laid down and ordered Drover to do the same.

I wanted Little Alfred to know, and to SEE through our very actions, that our motives here were as pure as the driveled snow, and that we had every intention of being good dogs in the house.

I mean, some of your lower-class dogs will take advantage of every situation and every little gesture of kindness. You let 'em into the house and they go nuts.

Not us, fellers. We knew our place: on that rug in the utility room. That's all we needed or wanted, just a warm dry place in the same area of the house where the cowboys took off their dirty boots and spurs. That was plenty good for us.

Shucks, we didn't need to go even one step farther into Sally May's clean house. A ranch dog had no business in the kitchen or the living room anyways.

The utility room was just fine, and we laid down on that rug and became models of Perfect Dog Behavior in the House.

Alfred looked at us. “Are you gonna sweep out here?”

Oh yeah, sure, fine. Perfect place to sleep. We were just glad to have a dry rug and a roof over our heads.

He wrinkled his nose. “Pew! You doggies are wet and you stink.”

Yes, well, the Wet Dog Smell wasn't one of my favorites either, but sometimes a guy can't help how he smells. We were doing the best we could.

I mean, we don't try to stink. We don't wake up in the morning and say, “Gosh, I think I'll stink today.” Those things just happen.

“Well, nighty night.” He turned out the light and went back to bed.

Ah yes, this was the life! No dog could have asked for more. Outside in the Cruel World, the lightning tore through the dark fabric of night and the thunder boomed and the rain made a steady roar on the . . .

It was a thunderstorm, see. Perhaps you had thought it was an invasion of Charlie Monsters and, okay, there for a few minutes I had thought so too, but the evidence was beginning to point toward a thunderstorm instead of an invasion.

At first glance, they are very similar. Every dog gets fooled once in a while, and it's no disgrace, no big deal.

I stretched out on the rug and surrendered my grip on the world. At last, no cares or responsibilities, just a warm, dry porkchop to snorking mork sniffer, but there was a light shining in my eyes.

“Drover, turn out the light, will you?”

“Rumple snuffbox chicken feather.”

“Drover, I said . . .”

I sat up and cracked open one eye and . . . a light? A beam of light, cutting through the darkness and stabbing me in the retinas? I was about to deliver a Warning Bark to the whoever-it-was when, much to my surprise, I heard a whispering voice, which I recognized as Little Alfred's.

It appeared that he had crept back out to the utility room and was now wielding a lighted flashlight.

“Doggies, I'm scared. Want to come sweep in my woom?”

Come into his room?
I ran that one through my data banks and received a confirmation of my first reaction: That wasn't a great idea.

Why, the very thought of moving deeper into a house which contained a potentially deadly ranch wife . . . uh-uh. No thanks. We were doing fine in the . . .

What was that in his right hand? Little Alfred's right hand, that is. He appeared to be holding a strip of something white in his right hand, and he seemed to be more or less gesturing with it, pointing it in our direction.

I squinted my eyes, lifted my ears to Full Alert position, and gave my tail several slow whaps on the floor. The light was so poor out there that I could hardly . . . sniff sniff.

BACON?

A strip of raw bacon?

I sampled the air again to confirm my original reading on the alleged material, and . . . yes, the boy had come armed with a slice of raw bacon.

Oh brother.

Have we ever discussed raw bacon? Maybe not. It's not a subject I enjoy discussing. I mean, it's a subject I love to discuss, also to dream about and eat, but any discussion of raw bacon is bound to expose a certain . . . well, weakness, you might say, in my innermost fundamental . . .

Okay, let's cut to the bottom line. I have a terrible weakness for raw bacon. There it is. I've never been able to say no to a slice of raw bacon.

Holy smokes, just saying it makes my mouth water!

Little Alfred was well aware of my weakness for bacon and he had come to tempt me.

I had to resist.
Hey, I had figgered out his little game, I knew what he was trying to pull (lure us into his bedroom), and I HAD TO BE STRONG.

I turned my nose toward the north wall, hoping that might . . . but the fragrant little bacon waves followed my nose and filled them with . . .

My ears began to jump around. My eyelids quivered. The last three inches of my tail began to squirm around like a . . . I don't know, like something that didn't belong to the rest of my body.

My mouth was watering so hard that I found it necessary to lick my chops, and that was a bad sign. I mean, when a guy goes to licking his chops, it usually means . . .

NO! Stop that! Tail, lie still. Mouth, go dry. Ears, be still. Nose, sniff no more.

I tried counting sheep. I pretended that I was locked in a sealed bubble, a soap bubble, into which no smell could penetrate.

No luck.

I tried to concentrate on the most unpleasant subject I could imagine—Pete the Barncat. I saw his grinning face and heard his sniveling, whining voice. Pete would want me to surrender to the Bacon Urge, to be lured into the depths of the house, and to be caught in the act by Sally May.

It seemed to be working, the Pete deal. I dis­liked him so much that the mere thought of him made the mere thought of raw bacon totally . . . boy, that stuff smelled delicious!

I couldn't turn off my nose. What's a guy to do?

I mean, you've got this very sensitive high-tech sensory device sitting out there on the end of your snoot and it can pick up the scent of a fly three hundred yards away in the midst of a hurricane and most of the time that's good, but sometimes it works against you when . . .

The smell of that bacon was about to drive me bazooka!

I was trembling. The waterworks of my mouth were pumping away, I mean, we're talking about an artesian well flowing a hundred gallons a minute, and when a guy has a river running through his mouth, he's got to . . . lick his chops.

“Drover, wake up. This is an emergency.” Much to my surprise, he sat straight up. “Thanks, pal. I really hate to bother you, but I need your help, perhaps more than at any time in my entire career!”

“I smell bacon.”

“Yes, and I don't have time to go into all the details, but we must stiffen our resolve and deny ourselves the momentary pleasure of . . .”

“Raw bacon?”

“Exactly. And as I was saying, this is going to be one of those deals where we have to operate on total blind trust.”

“I see.”

“So I guess it all comes down to this, Drover: Do you trust me totally, or would you rather be struck blind for the rest of your life?”

“Oh my gosh!”

“I must confide in you, my friend. The smell of that bacon is pulling me, luring me, tugging me into Sally May's House of Horrors, from which no dog has ever returned alive.”

“Oh my gosh!”

“And I'm depending on you to be strong, Drover. After years and years of being a dingbat, you must rise to the occasion and help me resist the lure of that bacon smell.”

“Oh my gosh.”

“We're depending on you, son, the entire amassed forces of the Security Division. If you weaken and crumble now, we'll all be thrashed by Sally May's broom, swept away like . . . I love bacon, Drover, stop me, do something, hurry!”

“Okay, Hank, I think I can handle it.”

“I knew you could, Drover, honest I did. I always knew that somewhere in the garbage heap of your mind, there was a tiny bean sprout of courage, just waiting to grow into a mighty oak tree.”

“I can do it, Hank. You can depend on me.”

It was, to say the least, a touching moment. I mean, there we were, the elite of the Security Divi­sion, the cream of the tuna on toast. The smartest, the strongest, the best in our profession. We were fighting for our dignity, our honor, our very survival, and why was Drover . . .

The moron, the dunce, the back-stabbing, two-timing, cheating, bushwhacking, counterfeit little . . . do you know what he did?
He marched
over to Little Alfred and ate my bacon!

Okay, so be it. This was war. Nobody eats MY bacon and lives to eat the second piece. Drover lived but he didn't eat the second piece—or did he? You'll see.

I love bacon.