The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog Read Online Free PDF

don’t give a rip, is what I’m saying.
    Well, I had nothing to work with, no evidence, no case. There wasn’t a thing I could do until the killer struck again. I could only hope that me and Drover could catch him in the act.
    I decided to change my strategy. Instead of throwing a guard around the chickenhouse, we would use the stake-out approach.
    â€œStake-out” is a technical term which we use in this business. Webster defines “stake” as “a length of wood or metal pointed at one end for driving into the ground.” It comes from the Anglo-Saxon word staca , akin to the Danish staak .
    â€œOut” is defined as “away from, forth from, or removed from a place, position, or situation.” It comes from the Middle English ut .
    That’s about as technical as I can make it.
    In layman’s terms, a stake-out is basically a trap. You leave the chickenhouse unguarded, don’t you see, and watch and wait and wait and watch until the villain makes his move, and then you swoop in and get him.
    It’s pretty simple, really, when you get used to the terminology.
    At dark, me and Drover staked the place out. We hid in some tall weeds maybe thirty feet from the chickenhouse.
    Time sure did drag. The first couple of hours we heard coyotes howling off in the pastures. Drover kept looking around with big eyes. I thought he might try to slip off to the machine shed, but he didn’t. After a while, he laid his head down on his paws and went to sleep.
    I could have kept him awake, I mean, pulled rank and demanded that he stay awake, but I thought, what the heck, the little guy probably needed the sleep. I figgered I could keep watch and wake him up when the time came for action.
    Then I fell asleep, but the funny thing about it was that I dreamed I was awake, sitting here and standing guard. I kept saying, “Hank, are you still awake?” And Hank said, “Sure I am. If I was asleep, you and I wouldn’t be talking like this, would we?” And I said, “No, I suppose not.”
    Seems to me it’s kind of a waste of good sleep to dream about what you were doing when you were awake, but that’s what happened.
    I heard something squawk, and I said, “Hank, what’s that?”
    â€œNuthin.”
    â€œYou sure?”
    â€œSure I’m sure. You’re wide awake and watching the stake-out, aren’t you?”
    â€œI think so, yes.”
    â€œThen stop worrying.
    The squawking went on and the next thing I knew, Drover was jumping up and down. “Hank, oh Hank, he’s back, murder, help, blood, we fell asleep, oh my gosh, Hank, wake up!”
    â€œHuh? I ain’t asleep.” And right then my eyes popped open and I woke up. “Dang the luck, I was asleep! I was afraid of that.”
    We dashed out of the weeds and found a body south of the chickenhouse door. The M.O. was the same. (There’s another technical term, M.O. It stands for Modus of Operationus, which means how it was done. We shorten it to M.O.)
    A pattern began to emerge. The killer had struck twice and both times he had killed a white leghorn hen. (Actually, that might not have been a crucial point because there weren’t any other-colored hens on the place, but I mention it to demonstrate the kind of deep thinking that goes into solving a case of this type. You can’t overlook a single detail, even those that don’t mean anything.)
    But the most revealing clue was that the murderer hadn’t dragged his victim off. That meant that he hadn’t killed for food, but only for the sport of it. In other words, we had a pathagorical killer on the loose.
    This was very significant, the first big break in the case. At last I had an M.O. that narrowed the suspects down to coyotes, coons, skunks, badgers, foxes . . . rats, it hadn’t eliminated anybody and I was right back where I started.
    I hunkered down and studied the body. It was still