The Case of the Hooking Bull Read Online Free PDF Page A

X-Wing Fighter. It’s a weal spaceship, and it can fwy off to the stars!”
    No kidding? I peered inside. It looked pretty muchly like a clothes dryer to me, but again, I was no expert on space stuff. I had my hands full trying to run a ranch on Planet Earth.
    The boy grabbed me around the chest and lifted me off the ground and tried to poke me into the cabin of the X-Wing Fighter. I, uh, resisted this opportunity.
    I mean, let’s face it. This kid had been known to pull pranks, and more than once I had been the victim. On the whole, little Alfred was a good boy, but he did have an ornery streak and my trust of his motives did have its limits.
    In other words, I wasn’t interested in being sent off alone into space in his X-Wing Fighter. Now, if he’d offered to go along and drive the thing, well, that might have been different, but as far as me flying off into space by myself . . . no.
    I guess he figgered that out, because after trying several times to poke my back legs into the cockpit, he gave up and set me back on the floor.
    He pressed his lips together and frowned at me. “Hankie, what’s wong wiff you? Don’t you want to wide in my spaceship?”
    I thumped my tail on the floor and, well, belched again (sure was full of strawberry ice cream), and avoided the focus of his eyes. I hated to disappoint the kid, but this just wasn’t the time for . . .
    â€œOkay, Hankie, I’ll get in first. Then you can join me.”
    Well . . . maybe and maybe not. We’d just have to take this deal one step at a time, but his offering to go in first was definitely the first step.
    Sure enough, he climbed into the cockpit and settled himself into the . . . well, there really wasn’t a seat in the thing, just a round something-or-other made of metal, looked kind of uncomfortable to me, but he settled into it and didn’t seem to mind.
    Then he took the . . . I guess it was a steering wheel, although I couldn’t really see it very well . . . he took the steering wheel in both hands, and I’ll be derned if that spaceship didn’t make a roaring sound—you know, motors or jets engines, rockets, whatever you call those things.
    At first I thought Alfred was making the sound. He’s pretty good at making loud noises, you know, but then I wasn’t so sure. By George, it sounded pretty real to me, so maybe that thing WAS an X-Wing Fighter after all.
    I couldn’t imagine why Sally May had bought a spaceship and installed it in her utility room, but you never know. Maybe it was one of those new models that served as a spaceship part of the time and as a clothes dryer part of the time.
    The boy did a fifteen-second burn on his en­gines and then shut them off. “Come on, Hankie, get in and wet’s go for a wide.”
    Well . . . why not? I coiled my legs under me and hopped up into the cockpit and took my place in the copilot’s seat. Alfred took the controls again, fired his engines, and away we went at a high rate of speed.
    After a bit, Captain Alfred came on the radio. “Captain Alfood to Hankie, appwoaching Pwanet Venus!” I gazed out the pothole . . . porthole, I guess it was, gazed out the porthole and sure enough, there was Planet Venus passing before our very eyes.
    â€œCaptain Alfood to Hankie, appwoaching Pwanet Okwahoma!” By George, there it was, Planet Oklahoma in all its splinter. “Captain Alfood to Hankie, I’m fixing to weave the ship and make a space walk. You dwive now.”
    Roger, Captain!
    I took over command of the ship, did a quick scan of the instrument panel just to be sure that all systems were up and functioning. Everything checked out.
    While I was absorbed in the instrument check and making double-sure that we didn’t fly too close to Planet Oklahoma, Captain Alfred slipped into his space suit and began his spacewalk maneuver. He exited the ship through the pothole and . . .
    Slammed the hatch? All at