The Case of the Vanishing Fishhook

by John R. Erickson

  Did that fit? I fed all the clues and information into Data Control and waited for confirmation. Seconds later, the report flashed across the screen of my mind: “Rhubarb Pie.” Apparently we had a small glitch in Data Control’s Master Program, so I switched all circuits over to Manual, jacked myself up to a sitting position, and yawned.

  That often helps, you know. There’s something about a good deep yawn that sweeps all the bird nests out of Data Control’s . . . whatever-it-is, but the point is that my mind snapped into sharp focus and I found myself staring at Little Alfred.

  I shifted over to Questioning Wags on the tail section, as if to say, “What are you doing out here? I thought you were in jail.”

  His eyes were sparkling. Somehow that worried me. “Hi, Hankie. My time’s up and I’m fwee.”

  Oh. That was nice. And what about the, uh, fishing stuff?

  “Mom’s taking a nap, so I’d better not wake her up. She needs the west.”

  Yes, yes? Where was this leading?

  The boy rolled his eyes towards the sky. “If she doesn’t say no, it means yes.”

  Wait a minute. That didn’t sound exactly right.

  “I don’t think she’d care if we went down to the cweek, ’cause I’ll have my doggie wiff me.”

  Hmm, good point. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but with the Head of Ranch Security in charge of things . . .

  “We won’t stay wong, and maybe we’ll get back before she wakes up. And we can pway Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. That’ll be fun.”

  Yes, it did sound kind of interesting, a whole lot better than broiling in the afternoon sun and gnawing at fleas, and . . . sure, what the heck.

  The boy tiptoed out the gate and closed it without a sound. Then we headed south in a brisk walk, off to see new sights and experience new adventures.

  We had an adventure, all right. A bad one.

  Chapter Eight: We Play Tom Sawyer

  As we marched down the hill and past the gas tanks, guess who came out to join us. Drover. I studied him out of the corner of my eye. He was grinning and prancing along and wiggling that stub tail of his and looking very chirpy about things.

  “Well, what brings you out of bed so early? It’s only three o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “Oh, there was a hard spot on my gunnysack and I couldn’t sleep.”

  “It wasn’t bothering you this morning at four-thirty when I left to go help Slim pull a calf. You seemed to be sleeping very well, but you always do when there’s work to do.”

  “Thanks. Yeah, I love to sleep, and it helps my allergies.”

  “What allergies?”

  “Oh, I’ve got terrible allergies, and they sure drag me down. I need lots of sleep.”

  “You don’t sound stopped up to me.”

  He grinned. “Yeah, when I get plenty of rest, they don’t bother me, so I guess it works.”

  “Drover, if you don’t show any symptoms, then maybe you don’t have allergies. Had you thought about that?”

  “Doe, ’cause every wudce id a wile, by dose gets stobbed up ed I ket breathe. See? It just hid be. Baby I deed bore sleeb.”

  “Drover, I have a feeling that you’re allergic to work and Life’s harsh realities.”

  “I sure get stobbed up, I doe that.” Just then, he lifted his nose and sniffed the air. “What’s that I smell?”

  “It’s probably your own rotten attitude.” I tested the air myself. “I don’t smell anything in particular. You must be hearing things.”

  He sniffed again, and I noticed that his ears perked up. “No, I smell something, and I think it’s . . . meat, fresh meat.”

  I lifted my nose and conducted a more thorough test of the atmosphere and so forth, and . . . hmm, by George, there was an interesting smell hanging in the air. And yes, it did bear a faint resemblance to the fragrance of . . .

  “Drover, I don’t want to alarm you, but I’m picking up the smell of fresh meat.”

  “Oh, that doesn’t alarm me, ’cause I smelled it first.”

  I shot him a piercing glare. “Who’s in charge around here, me or you?”

  “Well, let’s see.”

  “And which of us has a severe allergenic condition—and therefore can’t smell?”

  “Oops. Well, by does sure is stobbed up.”

  “And therefore it follows from simple logic that you couldn’t possibly have gotten First Whiff of the Mysterious Fresh Meat. Hencely, and following the same path of simple logic, we arrive at the only possible conclusion, that when I locate this stash of fresh meat, I will get First Dibs.”

  “Oh drat.”

  “And we don’t need any of your naughty language.”

  “Oh fiddle.”

  “That’s better. Now, let’s see if I can get a fix on this . . . my, my, that’s an exciting aroma, isn’t it?”

  “I ket sbell a thig.”

  I switched all instruments over to our Locater Program, and within seconds all the data were pointing to a white package which Little Alfred appeared to be carrying . . . hmm, on top of his tackle box. I, uh, tossed a glance at the boy and saw that he wasn’t watching, so I quickened my pace just a bit and suddenly found my nose right next to the . . .

  WOW!

  I turned to Drover. “Holy smokes, Drover, do you realize what we’ve been smelling?”

  “Well, let’s see. Fresh liver?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “I thought you couldn’t smell. If you can’t smell, what made you think it was fresh liver?”

  “I didn’t say fresh liver. I said fish lever, and doe, I ket sbell a thig.”

  “Hmmm, I wonder . . . but never mind. The impointant point is that Little Alfred smuggled a package of fresh liver out of his mother’s kitchen, and no doubt he brought it for us. Or to frame it up from another direction, he brought it for ME.”

  “I just wish I could sbell.”

  I turned away from Drover and his hypocardiac complaints, and directed my full attention to the package of fresh liver. It was all coming clear now. No doubt the boy realized that he had eaten a “good nourishing lunch” (his mother’s very words, right?) and that everyone else on the ranch had eaten a “good nourishing lunch,” but that his faithful dog, his dearest friend who had waited for him outside the prison walls—that same dear and faithful friend had not eaten in days.

  Well, in hours maybe, but it had seemed much longer than that—days and days, weeks and weeks of slow hunger and starvation. Ribs showing. Backbone protruding. Constant dreams about food and rhubarb pie and . . . fresh liver.

  Have we ever talked about fresh liver? Wonderful stuff, I love it. Give me a choice between fresh liver and fresh T-bone steak and I’ll take the liver every time, especially on fishing trips when, heh-heh, steak isn’t on the menu.

  No contest at all. “Give me liver or give me death!” I don’t remember who said that, but he was a famous American, and he sure knew his liver.

  It has a dark red color, liver does, and a dark red taste, and you don’t even have to chew it. Just bite off a hunk and let ’er slide down the old guzzle. Great stuff, and I was so touched and happy that my little pal had brought me . . .

  Maybe he’d been planning a little picnic down by the creek, but I saw no reason to postpone the instant graffication of . . . that is, once we reached the creek, we’d be busy catching fish and so forth, much too busy to stop for a picnic, so in the interest of time . . .

  I, uh, eased my nose over the edge of the tackle box and managed to snag the package with that long tooth on the upper righthand side of my mouth. Then, very carefully I tugged and pulled it into the embrace of my full set of teeth, until I had it in the grisp of my grasp, and then I . . . uh . . . dropped out of the marching formation, shall we say, and let Little Alfred go on without me.

  I unslackened my jaws and let the p
ackage fall to the ground. There it was! It was mine, all mine, and now all I had to do was remove the papers and . . .

  WHACK!

  Huh?

  Some strange outside force had just struck me on the hinalary region. I uttered a squeak and leaped high into the air and landed several feet away. Once back on earth, I whirled around and . . .

  Okay, relax. It was Little Alfred. He had discovered my . . . uh . . . my plan for the Pre-picnic Picnic, and maybe that hadn’t pleased him . . . or something. Anyways, he had whacked me across the tail section with his fishing pole, and now he was shaking a finger in my general direction.

  “No, no, Hankie. Don’t eat my bait.”

  Oh. Bait. Well, I had never dreamed . . . if he’d only said that it was bait . . . sure, no problem. Yes sir, if that was bait, we sure didn’t need to be . . . uh . . . snacking on it, you might say. One of the first rules of fishing is “Never eat your bait.” Right?

  No problem, no big deal. We’d just had a little mixup in, uh, communications.

  The boy placed our package of liver bait back on his tackle box and we resumed our march. I found myself marching next to Drover. I noticed that he was staring at me.

  “Yes? You have something to say?”

  “Oh, not really. I just wondered what that was all about.”

  “It was all about bait, Drover. You might have warned me that the purpose of the liver was bait.”

  “Gosh, I never dreamed that liver had a purpose.”

  “It does, but the question that faces us now is, Do you have a purpose?”

  “Well, I never thought about that.”

  “You should think about it. You should think about it long and hard. How does it make you feel that a lowly package of liver has a purpose in this life, and you don’t?” He didn’t answer. “Hello?”

  “Oh, hi. Where do you reckon we’re going?”

  “We’re going fishing, Drover.”

  “Oh good, how fun. I guess that’s why Little Alfred brought his fishing pole and some bait— ’cause we’re all going fishing.”

  I held the runt in the sideward sweep of my eyes for several seconds as I tried to think of an appropriate response. Nothing came to mind, so I just let it drop. That was fine with me. Talking to Drover never leads anywhere. Sometimes I think . . .

  Never mind.

  Chapter Nine: A Bait Thief Eats Our Liver

  By that time we had reached the banks of Wolf Creek. Little Alfred set down his equipment, then he told us dogs to sit down whilst he stood in front of us and gave us our instructions.

  “Okay, y’all dogs, we’re gonna pway Tom Sawyer. I’ll be Tom Sawyer and Hank can be Huck Finn, and Dwover can be . . . who can Dwover be?”

  He was looking at me when he asked this. I whapped my tail on the ground and gave him a blank stare, as if to say, “Hey, pal, you’re the one who read the book. This is all new to me.”

  The boy chewed his lip and gave it some heavy thought. “Do you weckon he could be Becky Thatchoo?”

  Becky Thatcher? A girl? That didn’t sound right to me. Drover was too ugly to be a girl, and besides, he had a stub tail. No girl in a book would ever have a stub tail. I tried to express these thoughts through wags and facial expressions.

  Alfred shook his head. “Nah, better not wet him be Becky. We’ll pwetend he’s Tom’s dog, and his name’s Dwovoo. How does that sound?”

  Drover wasn’t listening, so I gave him an elbow in the ribs. “Hey, wake up, you’ve just been given your assignment.”

  His eyes came into focus. “Oh, hi. Were you talking to me?”

  “We were both talking to you. Do you want to be part of this deal or not?”

  “Oh sure, what are we doing?”

  “We’re playing Tom Sawyer. Alfred is Tom, I’m Huck Finn, and you are Tom’s dog.”

  “Oh good. That sure fits, ’cause I’m a dog. What’s my name?”

  “Your name is Drover.”

  He grinned. “I’ll be derned. That’s my name too. This’ll be easy.” His grin faded. “Now, let’s see. I’m Drover and you’re Hank Finn, so who’s Alfred?”

  “Alfred is Tom Sawyer.”

  “Oh. Who’s Tom Sawyer?”

  “Alfred. I just said that.”

  “Yeah, but I mean really.”

  “He’s . . . I don’t know who he is. Some guy in a book.”

  “What if we haven’t read the book?”

  I glared at the runt. “Do you want to play or not? It’s all pretend, it’s not meant to be Reality as It Really Is. If it’s too complicated, then maybe you ought to run along.”

  There was a moment of silence. “You mean, my name really isn’t Drover?”

  “No, your name really IS Drover, but we’re also pretending that it’s Drover.”

  “If my name really is Drover, how come we have to pretend?”

  Many thoughts marched across the parade ground of my mind as I looked into the emptiness of his eyes. “Drover, please shut up.”

  “Sure, I can handle that. I just . . . ”

  “Hush!”

  Whew! I turned away from him and tried to shake the vapors out of my head. That little mutt could take a simple idea and run it straight into the ground.

  Well, whilst I had been listening to Drover’s blabber, Little Alfred had opened up the package of . . . mmmmmm . . . the package of liver, so to speak, and had baited his hook with a hunk of . . . boy, that stuff smelled wonderful, but of course I now realized that it was merely bait.

  Fishing bait. Bait for the fish. It was strictly off-limits to us dogs.

  The boy pitched his line out into the water. “Okay, dogs, here comes a big old fish.”

  The line plunked into the water and the cork bobbed to the surface. We sat down on the bank and waited. And waited. And waited. I found myself stealing glances at Alfred. Where was the fish? I didn’t mean to complain, but if a guy’s going to fish, he ought to catch one, right?

  We were just . . . staring at the cork. I mean, it was a great little cork, white with red stripes, but show me a great little cork and I’ll show you something I don’t need to stare at for very long.

  I found myself getting restless. I moved my front paws up and down. I whimpered. When that didn’t tear Alfred’s attention away from the cork, I decided to try something bolder. I barked.

  His eyes came up. “Shhhh. You’ll scare the fish.”

  Oops. Sorry. But if you asked me . . .

  Hmmm. All at once it dawned on me that the boy was very muchly preoccupied with his, uh, fishing experience, which meant . . .

  Which meant that I needed to, uh, stretch my legs and, you know, walk around a little bit to . . . well, stretch my legs and muscles and bodily fluids. It’s not good for a dog to sit in one spot for too long, don’t you know, because . . . well, it just isn’t good.

  So I eased myself to a standing position and entered into a Yawn and Stretch Procedure. The boy wasn’t watching, so I took several steps to the north, which more or less placed me out of his line of sight. I paused to see if he would notice or call me back. He did neither.

  Okay, I had just been cleared to take a little . . . uh stroll, a short walk around the immediate area to loosen up my muscles and so forth. By sheer chance and coincidence, my footsteps led me towards . . . by George, it was a piece of white wrapping paper, lying there on the sand and flapping in the breeze.

  Now, wasn’t that odd? What would a piece of wrapping paper be doing down here beside the creek? Perhaps some careless person had tossed it out the window of a passing . . . well, car or pickup or maybe even an airplane. Yes, that was it, an airplane. Some careless person or persons had thrown garbage out the window of a passing airplane, and you know where I stand on the issue of garbage and litter.

  I don’t allow it, not on my outfit.


  And so it was perfectly natural that I took one last glance at Little Alfred (he wasn’t watching) and decided that I sure needed to, uh, check out this shocking case of littering. I altered my course and headed straight for the . . .

  HUH?

  The liver was gone!

  I froze. My mind tumbled. At last the pieces of the puzzle began falling into place. We had a Bait Thief running loose on the ranch. Whilst we’d been preoccupied with the Fishing Experience, some cheating sneaking thieving outlaw rascal had sneaked into our camp and stolen all of Little Alfred’s bait!

  I was furious. What kind of brute would steal bait from a five-year-old boy? What was this world coming to? I mean, if an innocent child can’t go fishing on his own family’s ranch without getting his bait stolen . . .

  I gave the empty paper a good sniffing, just to make sure . . . WOW! . . . just to make sure I wasn’t barking up a blind tree, and I wasn’t. The strong aroma of . . . well, bait, still lingered on the empty paper.

  Okay, somebody would pay for this. I made a vow then and there not to rest or sleep until I had brought this thief to justice.

  I rushed over to the spot where Drover was sitting and looking up at the clouds. I dropped my voice to a low murmur. “Drover, I don’t want to alarm you, but I’m afraid we’ve got a Bait Thief running loose on the ranch.”

  His eyes drifted down from the clouds. “Oh, hi. What’s a Bait Thief?”

  “It’s someone or something who steals bait, such as an entire package of raw liver.”

  “I’ll be derned. You mean Little Alfred’s liver?”

  “Not his own liver, but the package of beef liver he brought along as bait. It’s all gone. Someone stole it.”

  “I’ll be derned.”

  “You don’t seem alarmed.”

  He grinned. “Well, you told me not to be alarmed, so I guess I’m not.”

  “Hmmm, yes. Nice work.”

  “Thanks.”

  I studied him more closely. “Drover, you’ve got something red on your lips. When you’re on duty, I’d appreciate it if you’d show a little more pride in your personal appearance. After all, we are the elite forces of the Security Division.”