The Case of the Vampire Cat

by John R. Erickson

  The Case of the Vampire Cat

  John R. Erickson

  Illustrations by Gerald L. Holmes

  Maverick Books, Inc.

  Publication Information

  MAVERICK BOOKS

  Published by Maverick Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 549, Perryton, TX 79070

  Phone: 806.435.7611

  www.hankthecowdog.com

  First published in the United States of America by Gulf Publishing Company, 1993.

  Subsequently published simultaneously by Viking Children’s Books and Puffin Books, members of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 1999.

  Currently published by Maverick Books, Inc., 2013.

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © John R. Erickson, 1993

  All rights reserved

  Maverick Books, Inc. Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59188-121-6

  Hank the Cowdog® is a registered trademark of John R. Erickson.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Dedication

  To Clayton Umbach, Director of Gulf Publishing Company’s Book Division, who has been Hank’s friend since the early days

  Contents

  Chapter One Frozen Water, No Coffee

  Chapter Two Loper Melts a Water Pipe

  Chapter Three We Meet the Weirdest Cat You Ever Saw

  Chapter Four The Kitty Is Lured into My Trap

  Chapter Five We Teach the Cat a Valuable Lesson About Life

  Chapter Six The Very Bad “Something” That Happened

  Chapter Seven Holy Smokes, I’ve Been Abandoned!

  Chapter Eight The Cat Insists on Being My Friend and Ally

  Chapter Nine Hint: His Name Was Leroy

  Chapter Ten I Can’t Believe I Decided to Help a Cat

  Chapter Eleven The Vampire Cat Appears

  Chapter Twelve I Am Turned into a Vampire! (Not Really)

  Chapter One: Frozen Water, No Coffee

  It’s me again, Harry the Hog Dog. Not really. I just thought I’d give you a little shock there and test to make sure you were wide awake and ready for the exciting story of how I escaped from the depths of Picket Canyon.

  Because you’d better be ready for this one. See, I got stranded and abandoned on the Hodges’ Place and had to find my way back home, in a snowstorm mind you, had to find my way back home in this terrible snowstorm.

  And in case you haven’t been lost and abandoned in Picket Canyon lately, let me tell you that it’s a very scary place, especially when the sun goes down, and the coyotes are as thick as hair on a dog. So you’d better get yourself prepared for a double-scary story, and maybe you shouldn’t read it at all unless you’re Certified Tough.

  Oh, and did I mention the cat? Maybe not. There was this cat named Mary D and she’d been marooned on the Hodges’ Place for years, staying down there all by herself, you see, and boy, was she weird.

  She was so weird, she’d turned into a VAMPIRE.

  No kidding.

  I told you this was going to be a scary story.

  But I seem to be getting the pony before the horse. Better go back and start at the beginning.

  Where was I?

  Oh yes. It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. It was sometime in the middle of February, and as you might know, that is a month when we often get snow in the Texas Panhandle, and when I awoke that morning and looked out the window at Slim’s shack, that’s what I saw.

  Big snowflakes falling from the sky.

  Drover and I had spent the night down at Slim’s place because . . . well, it should be obvious. Slim was a soft-hearted cowboy who took pity on poor ranch dogs who had to sleep out in the weather, and he’d invited us to bunk at his camp.

  He allowed us to sleep beside the wood-burning stove, don’t you see, and even though I’m opposed in principle to the idea of . . .

  It makes a dog soft, all that luxury, and soft is okay for your town dogs and your poodles and your little yip-yip breeds, but cowdogs need to be tough. And sleeping inside the house beside a nice warm stove is . . .

  Well, it’s pretty nice, to tell you the truth, and once in a while a guy has to compromise his principles for . . . I did it mainly for Drover, see. He’s something of a yip-yip, has a stub tail and short hair, and in cold weather he whines and moans and shivers all night, and who can sleep with all that noise?

  And so, in a gesture of deepest concern for Drover’s health and so forth, I agreed to sleep down at Slim’s place, beside the wood-burning stove. But I let Mister Moan-and-Groan know that we couldn’t make a habit of it.

  Staying down at Slim’s place is kind of fun, actually, when a guy gets over the notion that he’s being corrupted by luxury. There’s always a mouse or two to chase before bedtime, and sometimes, if it’s a particularly cold night, old Slim lets us dogs sleep in the bed with him.

  The only problem there is that Slim snores in his sleep, and he’s bad about stealing covers and throwing elbows. Oh yes, and I once caught fleas in his bed.

  Anyways, we got up that morning around daylight, which came a little later than usual because the sky was so dark and cloudy. I heard Slim coming out of his bedroom and down the hall.

  He was his usual jolly self in the morning: eyes half-open, hair down in his face, little balls of lint in his beard, bouncing off the walls as he staggered down the dark hall in search of the coffeepot.

  He made it to the kitchen and found the stove. He found the box of matches. He lit a match, lit a burner on the stove, found the coffee, turned on the water faucet, and . . . nothing came out. I raised my ears and rolled my eyes around and waited.

  There was a long throbbing silence, followed by a deep sigh of deepest despair. Then, “Thanks, Lord. I guess I needed the water to be froze up this morning. I’m sure you wouldn’t do that to a poor old cowboy without a good reason.

  “Dadgum water! I knew I should have wrapped them pipes. I knew it would turn off cold one of these days and I’d get caught, and sure ’nuff, I did.”

  He wandered out into the room where we were. He sure looked lost and pitiful. I mean, here was a guy who was having to face the cold cruel world without a cup of coffee, and even though I don’t drink coffee myself, I know it’s important to these cowboys.

  He yawned, raked the hair out of his eyes, and shuffled over to the stove. That’s when he greeted me with his first words of the day: “Move, pooch, or I’ll chunk up the stove with your carcass.”

  Not “Good morning, Hank,” or “Hi, doggie,” or “Thanks for protecting the house last night, Hank.” Oh no. Just “Move, pooch, or I’ll chunk up the stove with your carcass.”

  And I, being an intelligent dog and not wanting to be chunked or stoved, moved my carcass—and just barely in time to avoid being clunked on the head by the stove door when he opened it.

  He opened it and peeked inside. “Huh. Still got a few coals of bodark left. Good.” He reached into his wood box, brought out some bark, twigs, and kindling, and tossed them into the stove. He blew on the coals. Then he . . .

  That was strange. He jerked his head back, jumped to his feet, and started . . . this was very strange . . . started slapping himself on the face! Now, why
would he . . .

  Okay, I’ve got it now. See, Slim used big chunks of bodark in his stove at night. Bodark, being the very hardest wood on the ranch, made the best all-nighter logs for the stove, because the hardest wood burns the longest.

  The only problem with bodark is that it tends to pop and make sparks, and that’s not exactly what Slim was thinking about when he got down on his hands and knees and blew on the embers. They popped and threw a spark into his beard, and that’s why he was slapping himself on the face.

  Putting out the spark, don’t you see.

  Well, he got the kindling going and added a few small sticks of cottonwood and a few medium-sized chunks of hackberry. He closed up the stove, opened the draft and the damper, and wandered over to the window. That’s when he saw the snow.

  “Thanks, Lord. I sure needed some snow, since my plumbing is froze up and I have to step out on the porch.” He scratched his beard for a moment. “Guess I could put on my slippers, but I’d have to walk all the way back to the bedroom. Too much trouble.”

  He yawned, went to the door, and stepped out on the porch. He came back a whole lot faster than he went out, and he ran to the stove on crumpled toes and stood there, shivering and warming his hands. Then his eyes fell on me.

  “You need to go out too, Muttfuzz. I don’t want to be steppin’ on any surprises this morning.”

  Well, uh, I really didn’t care much for the idea of going out into the frozen cold and snow and so forth, and if it was okay . . .

  “Out! Come on. You too, Stub Tail.”

  And so it was that we were tossed out of house and hearth. It was bad enough, just going out into the cold and snow, but on top of that, I had to listen to Drover’s moaning and groaning. He took two steps off the porch and locked down in his tracks, and there he stood, crying and whining.

  Not me. I made a quick tour of the area, checked out the grounds, sniffed a few trees, and, yes, it was pretty cold and miserable out there, so I hurried back to the front of the house and stationed myself right in front of the picture window, where Slim couldn’t miss seeing me.

  There, I went into a little routine called “We’re Freezing Out Here,” which consists of Shivers, Sad Eyes, Slow Wags, and Heavy Begs. It’s a crackerjack routine and it should have worked.

  I mean, there I was, standing out in the frozen wastes of Antarctica, and there he was, pulling on his red long-john underwear in front of a nice warm stove. I could see him in there, and he saw me out there. I know he did because he waved at me, and I saw his lips move and form the words “Hi, puppy.” And then he grinned.

  He thinks he’s so funny. Hi, puppy! Who did he think he was? How would he have felt if . . . oh well.

  The Heavy Begs routine didn’t work. We stayed out in the snow and the frozen tundra, shivering and so forth, until he had put on all his layers of clothes and came out of the house.

  He was wearing galoshes, a sheeplined coat, and his wool cap with the ear flappers. He fired up the pickup and we were ready to drive up to headquarters and begin the day.

  And what a day it turned out to be.

  Chapter Two: Loper Melts a Water Pipe

  Well, at least he was kind and decent enough to let us ride in the cab with him, although it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d made us ride in the back.

  He has this strange theory, you see, that snow makes dogs wet and wet dogs stink. I’ve tested that theory myself and I can report that it just doesn’t hold water, so to speak. If you ask me, wet cowboys stink, but nobody ever asks my opinion.

  He let us ride in the front, and we made our way through the snow and ice to headquarters. Along the way, we passed several bunches of cows. Their backs were covered with snow, and they were humped up and facing away from the north wind. And every time they breathed, which was fairly often, their breath made fog in the air.

  Yes, it was a cold, miserable day, and according to the weather report Slim picked up on the radio, the day promised to get even colder and miserabler.

  When he heard the report, he pressed his lips together and shook his head. “And I have to face all that without a cup of coffee.”

  We pulled around in front of the machine shed and came to a stop beside the water well. Loper was there, doing something with the cutting torch, and whatever he was doing didn’t appear to be bringing him much happiness. He wore a frown.

  Slim watched him for a moment. “Plumbing froze up?”

  Loper looked up from his work. “Yeah. You got any cute remarks about it?”

  “No, only that if you’d take the time to wrap them pipes when it’s warm, they wouldn’t freeze up when it’s cold.”

  “No kidding? Thanks.” He went back to heating the pipe with the torch.

  “This happens every year, Loper. A good ranch manager would catch on after a while. You’ll notice that my pipes don’t freeze. That’s because I take care of my business.”

  What? I stared at Slim and thumped my tail on the seat. Unless I had heard him wrong, he had just told a big whopper of a lie. His water pipes HAD frozen up, that very morning.

  Slim’s gaze shifted to me. “Hush. What he don’t know won’t help him.” Back to Loper. “You know, Loper, I was thawing out pipes with a torch one time and burned a hole in the pipe. Boy, that sure makes a mess.”

  Loper turned off the torch and came over to the window. “Do you want to do it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Good. I’ll do it and you can either watch or go do something constructive, but don’t sit there in a warm pickup and give me advice.”

  “Well, you don’t need to get snarly about it. I was just trying to help.”

  “Thanks. When I need your advice on plumbing, I’ll give you a call. We’ve got phones, you know.”

  “I know how you operate, Loper: slam-bang and always in a rush. That’s the wrong way to thaw out pipes.”

  Loper went back to the torch, shaking his head and talking to himself. “No wonder you’re still a bachelor. No woman could stand you in the morning.”

  “Well, you ain’t such a sugar cake yourself, if you want to know the truth, and I’ve often wondered how Sally May has put up with you all these years.”

  Loper started the torch again and tuned in the flame. “She’s a very lucky woman and she knows it.”

  “That’s too much fire, Loper.”

  “Just hush, Slim. Control yourself for two minutes and I’ll have this thing thawed out, and then we’ll find some little job for you to . . .”

  By George, he struck water.

  Slim shook his head. “I tried to tell you.”

  Loper shut off the torch and threw it down in the snow and came storming over to the window. “Get me a hacksaw with a sharp blade, and don’t say one more word. It was a sorry pipe to start with.”

  Slim got out. “Sure it was. What are you going to fix it with, bubble gum?”

  Loper was scrambling to shut off the main water valve. “Get me one of those compression joints off the workbench. And if it’s not too much trouble, why don’t you hurry.”

  It took ’em an hour to fix the pipe. They had to cut out the bad section with a hacksaw. The blade was not sharp. I could have predicted that. This ranch has never had a sharp hacksaw blade. I think they buy dull blades at a special store.

  Once they got the pipe cut out, the rest was fairly easy. They slipped the compression joint over both ends and tightened them down. They pressured up the lines, stopped all the leaks, and hollered down for Sally May to turn on a faucet.

  She did. It worked. The job was done, and Slim and Loper had managed to do it without any bloodshed. Sally May even brought out cups of coffee for the “heroes,” as she called them.

  I waited to see if Slim would admit that this was his first cup of the morning, and then explain why, but he didn’t.

  Well, the boys p
ut up their tools and stood at the door of the machine shed, sipping their coffee and watching the snow come down.

  “Well, what do you reckon?” asked Loper.

  “Radio says more this afternoon and tonight. It’s liable to take us all day to feed and bust ice.”

  “I think what we’d better do is split up. I’ll take the flatbed and get Sally May to drive for me, and we’ll feed hay up north. You take the old pickup down to the Hodges’ Place and feed there. You probably better use the army truck, bad as those roads are liable to be.”

  Slim nodded. “What if it won’t start?”

  “Well . . . why don’t you take Alfred? He can pull you. He’s done that before, and then he can drive while you string out the feed.”

  “Okay with me, but his momma might not go for the idea of me taking him off in a snowstorm, and I’ve got a few questions about that myself. I’d hate to get stranded with him along.”

  Loper chuckled. “Why, he’s a nice boy, Slim. You two would have a ball together.”

  “I know he’s a nice boy. That ain’t the problem. I just hate being responsible for somebody else’s child in a storm.”

  Loper gazed up at the clouds. “Well, I think we’re going to need all the help we can get today. I’ll clear it with his momma. Oh, and you can take the dogs.”

  “Thanks a bunch. Two wet dogs and one urchin child ought to fix me right up.”

  Loper went back to the house to organize the troops. Slim finished his coffee and then pulled the flatbed pickup around to the hay lot and started loading it up for Loper. The snow was coming down harder than ever.

  While I looked for mice under the bales, Drover stood out in the snow, shivering and moaning.

  “Oh Hank, I’m so cold! I wish I could go back to bed.”

  “Drover, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

  “I don’t know what that means, and I’m freezing!”

  “It means that if you could turn your fondest wish into a horse, you could . . . I don’t know, give some beggar a ride into town, I guess.”