The Case of the Monkey Burglar

by John R. Erickson

  I tried to steady myself and beamed her . . . beamed him a gaze of purest steel. “Mot even for a mimute. I wasss on to your triss from very start, Bug.”

  His shoulders twitched in a shrug. “Oh, well. I knew I’d get caught sooner or later. I guess I’m under arrest, huh?”

  “Thass right, pal. You’re unner rest.”

  “I don’t care. You know, I hate this job. It’s so . . . so degrading, know what I mean?”

  I put my nose in his face. “Then why dun you juss run away? Muckys who hate their jobs quit, pal.”

  He rolled his eyes up to the sky. “I never thought of it that way. Good point. There’s the other side, isn’t there? The food is pretty good and . . . well, it’s interesting work, like being a movie star or something. You know, costumes, acting, adventure all the time.” He let out a weird giggle. “Gosh, maybe I don’t hate my job after all.”

  I tried to pull myself up to a dignified pose. “Thass juss what I thought, Blub. You shunt have come bakk eer. See, this issss smy ransh, and now I’m gun haff to arress you.”

  “Yes, you keep saying that, but . . .” He grinned and gave me a wink. “Are you sure you can stay awake?”

  “Huh? Sssure I kin say wake.”

  “I wonder. Here, let me show you another trick.”

  He placed one finger on my chest...and pushed. I’m sorry to report . . .

  PLOP.

  Okay, we’ve got some business to take care of. That passage you just read contains some . . . uh . . . very secret, highly classified information about our . . . uh . . . security systems. If that information ever leaked out to enemy spy organizations, it could have very serious consequences.

  So I’m sure you’ll agree that we need to do something about that, right? Of course you do. I would appreciate it if you would repeat the following Solemn Oath of Secrecy. Raise your right hand and repeat the oath:

  “I, (your name), do solemnly swear that I probably didn’t read the passage I just read, but if I did, I don’t remember one thing about it. In the unlikely event that I remember a few details, I understand that they were based on rumors and gossip, and I refuse to believe that Hank the Cowdog would get sandbagged by a monkey.”

  There! I feel better now. I hate to put you under oath, but you must understand that dogs in high positions sometimes have to . . . well, protect our little reader-friends from false impressions. See, we have your best interests at heart, we really do, and, gosh, wouldn’t we feel bad if you got the wrong idea? Ha ha. Sure we would.

  Anyway, we’re going to forget that last scene and mush on with the story. It was night, remember? Slim Chance had fallen asleep in the bathtub, and I was out there on Life’s Front Lines, expecting that the ranch would be struck by a gang of monkey burglars.

  Ha ha. Would you believe that nothing happened? No kidding. I mean, it seems funny now, that I got myself all worked up and worried over nothing. Ha ha. But nothing happened and nobody came.

  In fact, it turned out to be a pretty boring night, and sometime around ten o’clock, I just, you know, went to bed. Don’t forget that I was VERY TIRED. Exhausted from a long day in the hay field. No kidding.

  Anyway, that’s about the end of the story. We never heard another word about the monkey burglars and . . . well, everything turned out peachy keen. So you can put this book away and go brush your teeth or something, and I’ll see you down the . . .

  Wait. Stop. Hold everything. Don’t close your book. There’s something I haven’t told you.

  Sigh.

  Sit down and take a deep seat. This is liable to come as a terrible shock. I didn’t want to tell you this, but maybe I should.

  Here’s the deal. In that last scene, did you notice that my speech started getting slurred? Well, there’s a reason for that. See, you probably thought that Lucy was a sweet, innocent little monkey girl who had been led down the wrong path by a villain named Willie, right?

  Ha! What a joke. Lucy was a sweet, innocent little CROOK, only she wasn’t sweet or innocent, and she wasn’t even a girl. She was Bub, wearing a phony disguise and . . . well, maybe you’ve already figured that out.

  Anyway, she was Bub, and he gave me two pieces of candy that were loaded with a deadly poison from the jungles of Mamby Pamby. He slipped me a mickey, is what he did, and he sure didn’t do it by accident.

  There it is, the dreadful truth. Now you know.

  Did I survive the Poisoning Episode? To find out, you’ll have to keep on reading.

  Chapter Twelve: Ruined, Disgraced, a Dismal Failure

  Fellers, I had been ambushed, and I never saw it coming. Not only had I fallen for the Lucy disguise, but I had eaten the doctored candy—two pieces! I mean, hadn’t I heard Deputy Kile say that they used tranquilizers on dogs? Yes, I’d heard it. I’d had plenty of warning, yet somehow . . .

  I can’t even describe how stupid I felt.

  When I woke up, it was broad daylight and I was sprawled across the gravel drive in front of the machine shed like . . . something. Like a cuckoo clock that had been pitched out of a speeding car, and we’re talking about gears and wheels and springs spread out over half an acre.

  That’s exactly how I felt, like a busted clock. And you talk about headache! Obviously the deadly poison had worked its mischief on my head, and I was just lucky to have lived through the night.

  But the worst part of waking up was that two scowling men stood over me. I blinked my eyes, jacked myself up onto four sloshy legs, and finally figured out who they were. Slim and Deputy Kile.

  Deputy Kile held a little notebook in his hand. “So they tranquilized your dog. Where were you when it happened?”

  “I ain’t telling.”

  “Slim, I need to know.”

  “Can you keep it out of your report?”

  “Maybe. We’ll see.”

  Slim gazed off in the distance. “I fell asleep in the dadgum bathtub.”

  Deputy Kile looked up from his notebook, stared at Slim for a moment, and broke out laughing. “You fell asleep in the bathtub?”

  Slim looked miserable. He dug his hands into his pockets and kicked a rock. “Heck yes, and didn’t wake up till seven o’clock this morning. I’ve got dishpan hands all over my body.” He looked down at me. “At least Hank had a good excuse. My only excuse is that I seem to fall asleep at all the wrong times. And I’m dumber than dirt.” He shot a glance at Deputy Kile. “But that don’t need to go in your report.”

  He smiled. “What did they take?”

  “Everything that wasn’t nailed down, every stinking tool on the ranch. They picked us clean as a goose, and Loper’s going to cook what’s left of my goose when he finds out. Any chance we can get the tools back?”

  Deputy Kile wrote something down and slipped the notebook into his pocket. “We never give up on a case, but this guy’s a smart cookie. My guess is that he’s left the county and maybe the state. We’ll do what we can.” He gave Slim a pat on the shoulder. “Cheer up, buddy, and look at the bright side. They didn’t steal your dog.”

  Laughing at his own joke (I didn’t see the humor of it myself), Deputy Kile climbed into his car and drove away. Slim heaved a heavy sigh and dug his hands deeper into his pockets.

  “Well, I guess I’d better start looking for another job. Maybe they need somebody to sweep out the pool hall.”

  Yes, and maybe I needed to start looking around for another job too. I mean, I could already imagine what Loper would say when he heard that I had let a scheming little monkey rob us blind.

  Slim and I would be court-martialed, stripped of all rank and pay, fired, thrown out on the street. And you know what? We deserved it. There wasn’t a ranch in Texas that needed a hired hand who slept all the time, or a guard dog that was dumb enough to . . .

  You know what really hurt about this deal? I had relaxed my guard and had allowed a cyni
cal, conniving little monkey to use my decent impulses against me. I mean, he’d played me like a puppet on a violin.

  Remember when Bub said he hated his job? Ha! HE LOVED HIS JOB. He was born to be a crook, a liar, an impostor. He loved to steal and rob, and most of all, he loved slipping mickeys to guard dogs who thought they were too smart to get fooled by a monkey.

  That was a perfect description of ME, and it made me sick.

  The day started out bleak and got bleaker. Slim unloaded the rest of the hay in the stack lot and did some patching on a section of barbed-wire fence, but I could see that his heart wasn’t in it. The light had gone out of his eyes, and he dragged himself through his chores like a scarecrow.

  I followed around behind him, carrying my own share of burdens. We were a sad pair, Slim and I. I don’t know where Drover went during all of this, but he just vanished without a trace.

  The last thing in the world Slim wanted to do that day was take Miss Viola to the dance at Lipscomb, but he had promised. We quit work around five and drove down to Slim’s shack. He cleaned up and changed clothes, and when he came outside, I was waiting on the porch.

  Our eyes met, and he said, “It hurts, don’t it?”

  Yes, more than I could express.

  “You want to go to Lipscomb?”

  Actually, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do, but going to Lipscomb might be better than brooding all night on the porch. Sure.

  “You’ll have to ride in the back. I don’t want you stinking up the cab for Viola.”

  I didn’t care. I no longer felt worthy of Miss Viola’s love, and I didn’t have any desire to argue about my smell.

  We picked up Viola at her parents’ house down the creek. In the voice of a beaten man, Slim told her the whole story. She didn’t say much, just nodded and gave him a pat on the arm.

  It was a long, silent thirty-mile drive to Lipscomb, a tiny village that consisted of a few stores on the town square, and maybe fifty houses. We parked on the square, and Slim and Viola got out.

  Viola said, “Try to cheer up. Let’s dance and have a little fun.”

  “I’ll try,” Slim said, but he was so lost in dark thoughts that he didn’t even tell me to stay in the back of the pickup.

  They walked across the street to the out-door dance platform, where dozens of couples were waltzing and two-stepping to Frankie McWhorter’s fiddle music. Viola took Slim by the arm and dragged him onto the dance floor, and they vanished into the crowd.

  I curled up in the back of the pickup and tried to lose myself in sleep, but the sounds of music and laughter kept me awake. I stood up and looked around. Well, I might as well take a walk and check out the sights of downtown Lipscomb. Moping in the back of the pickup wasn’t going to change anything.

  I’d heard it said that Lipscomb had more wild turkeys than people, but tonight it was hopping, filled with country folks who’d come to town for the big dance. I was walking down the street, trying to avoid getting stepped on, when suddenly I stopped dead in my tracks.

  On the wooden porch in front of Beeson’s Saddle Shop, I saw a monkey dancing the Texas Two-Step in front of a crowd of people. He was dressed in a cute little cowboy costume and held out a tin cup, as he moved his bare feet in time with “San Antonio Rose.” The crowd laughed and clapped and dropped money into the cup.

  A monkey? On an average weekend in the Texas Panhandle, how many monkeys could you expect to see? Not many. All at once, I felt myself becoming very suspicious. I moved in for a closer look.

  My gaze swept across the crowd until I found the missing piece of the puzzle. Almost invisible, standing in the shadows on the edge of the crowd, a tall man with cold dark eyes watched the show. He observed it all with a silent smirk.

  Willie.

  We had our man, right there in downtown Lipscomb! And I had to get the word to Slim!

  I raced down the street toward the dance platform, darting between legs and dodging the feet of strolling couples. I had reached the steps leading up to the dance floor, when someone reached out and grabbed me.

  “Hey, pooch, you can’t go up there!”

  I looked around and saw that . . . yipes . . . I had just been nabbed by Deputy Kile!

  I didn’t want to show any disrespect for the law, but I was on a very important mission, and I didn’t have time to explain it. He tried to hold me back, but I fought and struggled and finally broke out of his grasp. I raced up the steps and . . . ouch! . . . got trampled by a pair of cowboy boots.

  The dance floor was packed with dancers. I ran my gaze over the crowd and saw dozens of people, old, young, and in between: a gray-headed man dancing with his granddaughter, an elderly lady creeping along in the arms of a handsome cowboy, a young mother and dad two-stepping with a baby in their arms.

  I would never find Slim in this crowd! It was hopeless. I turned and was about to leave, when I heard a voice above me. “Hank, get back in the pickup.” I lifted my eyes and looked into the faces of Slim and Viola. He nudged me with his boot. “Go on. You can’t stay here.”

  There are times in a dog’s life when he absolutely MUST communicate a message to his people. Most of the time, it doesn’t matter. They don’t listen to us and we don’t always pay attention to them, and we just bungle along while our words pass one another like fishing bobbers in the night.

  But this time it mattered. I looked him straight in the eyes and gave him a bark that contained an edge of urgency. “Slim, we spend a lot of time goofing off, but this time it’s different. I’ve got something to show you, and you have to trust me.”

  I searched his face and held my breath. He scowled and started to say something, but Viola spoke first. “Slim, let’s take a walk. I need some fresh air.”

  Had she understood my message? I don’t know, but she’d made the right call. They left the dance floor and made their way toward the street. I went in front of them, pointing the way and trying to keep my savage impulses under control.

  Once we’d gotten Slim moving in the right direction, everything else fell into place pretty quickly. When he saw the dancing monkey, he knew what he was looking at. His eyes darted around until he spotted Willie, still lurking in the shadows and looking suspicious. “It’s them,” Slim whispered, and walked a hundred feet to the east, where Deputy Kile was eating a bowl of homemade ice cream with his wife.

  Slim whispered something in his ear. The deputy set his bowl of ice cream down on a wooden bench, pulled a two-way radio off his belt, and made a call. Five minutes later, a deputy sheriff’s car pulled up in front of the saddle shop. The two officers walked over to a very surprised Willie and eased him off to the side.

  When they opened up the camper and shined flashlights inside, they found every tool he’d robbed from our ranch, from Viola’s place, and from several other farms and ranches in the area. While the officers loaded Willie into the backseat of the deputy’s car, I walked over to Bub, who was wearing handcuffs and waiting his turn.

  He was surprised to see me. “You!”

  “Hi, Bub. Well, you were right about one thing. Being a thief is degrading. I don’t think your mother would be proud of you tonight.”

  He curled his lips into an ugly sneer. “Yeah? Well, how would your old lady feel about you being a dumbbell, huh? Get used to it, big shot, I made a monkey out of you!”

  I waited for his laughter to fade out. Then I leaned forward and whispered, “You got it wrong, Bub. The monkey’s the one who gets sent to the zoo. Have a nice day, you little creep.”

  And that’s about all the story. The next afternoon around four, Loper and Sally May returned from their vacation. When Slim asked if they’d had fun, Loper said, “Oh, you bet. Alfred caught a couple of high-class trout. I figure they cost me about five hundred bucks apiece. How’d it go here at the ranch?”

  Slim shrugged. “Oh, just normal.” He looked down
at me and gave me a wink. “We hauled a little hay and patched up some fence. Same old stuff.”

  Slim never said a word about napping under the truck or falling asleep in the bathtub, and I knew better than to open my mouth. That story will go with us to our graves.

  Case cl—

  Wait. There’s one little problem. Let’s try to . . . you know, keep this story to ourselves, what do you say? Don’t forget that you swore a solemn oath.

  Thanks. Oh, and that Lucy business? Ha ha. Look, I never really fell for that disguise, not a hundred percent. No kidding.

  Case closed.

  Further Reading

  Have you read all of Hank’s adventures?

  1 The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog

  2 The Further Adventures of Hank the Cowdog

  3 It’s a Dog’s Life

  4 Murder in the Middle Pasture

  5 Faded Love

  6 Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

  7 The Curse of the Incredible Priceless Corncob

  8 The Case of the One-Eyed Killer Stud Horse

  9 The Case of the Halloween Ghost

  10 Every Dog Has His Day

  11 Lost in the Dark Unchanted Forest

  12 The Case of the Fiddle-Playing Fox

  13 The Wounded Buzzard on Christmas Eve

  14 Hank the Cowdog and Monkey Business

  15 The Case of the Missing Cat

  16 Lost in the Blinded Blizzard

  17 The Case of the Car-Barkaholic Dog

  18 The Case of the Hooking Bull

  19 The Case of the Midnight Rustler

  20 The Phantom in the Mirror

  21 The Case of the Vampire Cat