Monkey Business Read Online Free PDF Page A

minutes the argument raged back and forth in my mind. “Yes. No. Yes! No! Yes yes! No no!” As you can see, the argument began to tilt in favor of yes. ‘Yes,’ being a three-letter word, carried exactly one-third more weight than ‘no,’ which was a two-letter word.
    The longer the argument raged, the more weight accumulated on the yes-side, until at last the scales of justice could no longer resist the weight of reason, and the balance tipped in favor of yes.
    Oh, and there was one other small factor: The lettering on the side. It said, “Do Not Open This Box!” I have never taken orders from a box, and I never will. No box tells Hank the Cowdog what he can do on his own ranch.
    I marched forward, hopped my front legs up on the top of the device, and proceeded to remove the wooden peg from the hasp.
    At that moment, I was greeted, if that’s the proper word, by the thunder of hooves. It caught me completely by surprise, I mean, it sounded like a whole herd of horses was coming out of that box.
    Oh. I was in the horse pasture, so to speak, and so it was natural that . . . what I’m driving at here is that the horses had seen me out there in their pasture and had come thundering over to check things out.
    They are curious brutes, you see, and very snotty and possessive about their pasture. They have never recognized my jurisdiction in their territory, and they seldom pass up a chance to torment me when I enter it.

    I may have mentioned this before, but I don’t like horses at all, and I have every reason to suppose that they don’t like dogs either.
    Well, here they came—snorting, bucking, laughing, and grinning with those big ugly awkward green-stained teeth of theirs. I’d drawn the whole crowd: Popeye, Casey, Chief, Cookie, Happy, Deuce, Frisco, Calypso, Bonny Bonita, Lightning, every stinking horse on the ranch.
    And before I could run, they had me surrounded. The first to speak was Casey, the smartest aleck of all the smart alecks.
    â€œSay, puppy dog, you in the wrong place, and you fixin’ to wish you was in the right place.” They all got a big laugh out of that. “We got a law against dogs in the horse pasture, and son, you have broke the law!”
    To which I made a brilliant and stinging reply: “Oh yeah?”
    â€œYou know what we do when we catch puppy dogs on our side of the fence? We tough, son. We tear up a dog like a Dixie cup.”
    I tried a different approach. “Oh yeah?”
    â€œOh yeah. And we love it too. And now . . .”
    At that very precise moment, the lid on the box flew open and a hairy little man in a red fez and a red jacket popped out, screamed and waved his arms at the horses, and jumped on my back .
    Two things happened real quick. First, fourteen head of saddle horses dropped their heads, lifted their ears, widened their eyes, snorted, and headed for the south end of the pasture in a dead run.

    Second, I did exactly the same thing, heading in the opposite direction. I figgered that anybody who was dangerous enough to scare fourteen head of horses didn’t belong on my back, or anywhere close.
    I ran, I bucked, I twisted, I barked, I did everything I could think of to get him off me, but he must have been a professional bronc rider because I couldn’t shake him loose. Not only did he have a good grip with his legs, but he was also using my ears for bridle reins.
    I bucked until I couldn’t buck any more, ran until I couldn’t run another step, barked until I was completely out of breath. And at that point, fellers, I knew I’d been beat and that I belonged to that bronc-riding son of a gun in the red hat.
    I stopped to catch my breath. “Okay, you win. I surrender. I don’t know who you are, pal, but you’ve sure taken the fire out of this old dog.”
    He climbed off my back and said something in a strange, squeaky voice: “Eee eee.” I noticed that he had a