Monkey Business (3 page)

Chapter Four: The Cat Breaks Down Under Heavy Interrogation

W
e went roaring past the machine shed, past the chicken house, scattered chickens in all directions (I loved it!), past the water tank, and continued down the hill until we came to a stop in front of the yard gate.

There, we established a forward position and began barking. Boy, did we bark! I knew we'd get Sally May out of the house, and sure enough, before long the back door opened and she poked her head out.

“You dogs be quiet!”

HUH? Well, hey, there was a red box . . .

“Stop that barking right now!”

. . . out in the pasture, fell off a mysterious truck, an illegal shipment of . . .

“If you wake up the baby, I'll make you wish you hadn't!”

. . . but on the other hand, there was a time for serious barking and there was a time for serious non-barking, and it appeared that this might be a time to observe silence.

“Now, hush up!” The door slammed shut and Sally May went back into the house.

I turned to Drover and gave him a withering glare. “Why didn't you tell me the baby was asleep?”

“Well, I didn't know . . . I guess.”

“Ignorance is no excuse. My mind is occupied with the larger matters of strategy and I expect you to keep up with the insignificant details.”

“Well, if they're really insignificant, maybe . . .”

“Don't argue with me. Just admit you were wrong and we'll go on from there.”

“Oh, all right. I was wrong.”

“There. Don't you feel better already?”

“Not really.”

“I knew you would. Confession is good for all of us, Drover, but it's even better for you than for me. Try to remember that in the future.”

“Okay. What are we going to do about the box?”

Before I could answer, I noticed that a certain sniveling, sneaking, purring creature had joined us, and had begun rubbing up against Drover's leg. He tried to rub up against mine but I moved backward and showed him some fangs.

I don't like cats, see, and I don't allow them to rub on my legs.

“Hi, Hankie. What you going to do about the box?”

“We're going to leave it just where it is, cat, and . . . wait a minute. How did you know about the box? That was Top Secret information.”

Pete grinned and rubbed back and forth on Drover's leg. “Oh, I know just about everything, and I know you found a box.”

“Oh yeah? We'll see about that. Was it a big red box made of three-quarter-inch plywood?”

“Um-hmmm.”

“Fell off a truck and landed out in the horse pasture?”

“Umm-hmmm.”

“Had white letters written on the side?”

“That's the one, Hankie.”

I whirled around and faced Mister Spill-the-Beans-and-Can't-Keep-a-Secret. “So! Now you're sharing secret inside information with the cat! What next, Drover? What new act of treachery can you find to top this one?”

“I didn't do it, Hank, honest I didn't. I've been with you the whole time.”

“Hmm, that's true.” I whirled back around and turned my cold, steely eyes on the spy. “You're lying, cat. Drover couldn't have possibly leaked that information to you, because he's been with me the entire morning. I've trapped you in a lie, and now I want the whole story. How did you know about the Mysterious Red Box?”

He took his sweet time in answering. He arched his back, yawned, stretched, and dug his claws into the ground. “We cats are very clever, Hankie. We know just about everything. Would you like for me to tell you what was written on the side of the box in white letters?”

“Huh? Wait a minute! How did you know about the white letters?”

“How I know doesn't matter, Hankie. Would you like for me to tell you what the letters said?”

I took a step forward, growled, and gave him a shove. “No, I wouldn't. I saw it first, and if somebody's going to talk about it, I'll be that somebody. It's MY box.”

“You shouldn't be so selfish, Hankie. Someone who didn't know you might think you were rude, crude, uncouth, and socially unacceptable.”

“Oh yeah? Let's put it this way, cat. I'm crude and proud of it. And while we're at it, let's put it another way. It's my box and I'll do the talking about what was written on the side. You got that?”

He grinned and purred and flicked the end of his tail. “Whatever you think, Hankie.”

“It said, ‘Warning! Monkey! Do Not Open This Box.' So there you are, cat. Once again, I've beat you to the punch and exposed you as the fraud that you are. How does it feel to be on Life's Second String?”

“Sometimes it's hard to bear, but we do the best we can.”

I snorted at that. “Your so-called
best
would get you thrown off my security force in record time, kitty. You wouldn't last five minutes in my outfit.”

“Yeah,” said Drover, “and we don't let cats in our outfit anyway, so there.”

“Well said, Drover.” I patted the little mutt on the back. He doesn't often come up with a stinging retort that really stings, but I thought that one was pretty good.

We stood together, Drover and I, two proud members of an elite outfit. We held our heads high and smirked down at the cat.

He licked his paw and looked up at us with big lazy eyes. “Well, Hankie, are you going to let the monkey out of the box?”

Drover and I exchanged glances and started laughing. “Hey, Drover, did you hear that?”

“Yeah, I heard it but I don't believe it.”

“Where has this cat been all his life?”

“I don't know, but he didn't go to the same school we went to, did he?”

“No, he didn't, Drover, and I have my doubts that he could have even gotten in the front door.”

“Yeah, or the back door either.”

“Exactly. As a matter of fact . . .” I stopped laughing. I cut my eyes from side to side. I looked down at the cat. He was still licking his paw. “What makes you think there's a monkey in that box?”

“Because, Hankie, that's what the sign said: ‘Warning! Monkey! Do Not Open This Box.'”

Drover was still giggling. “Oh, that's a good one! A monkey in the box! Pete doesn't know about the monkey wrenches, does he?”

“Quiet, Drover, I'm thinking.” I pushed myself up and began pacing in front of the cat—also watching him out of the corner of my eye. “I'll need to ask you a few questions, cat, and I expect brief, factual answers, not your usual trash.”

“Oh good! I just love questions.”

“Number One: Do you know now, or have you ever known, the meaning of the word ‘hasp'?”

“Oh, but of course, Hankie. Anyone knows that a hasp is used to secure the lid on a box. And I'll bet there's even one on the monkey box.”

“Just answer my questions, cat. You can show off on your own time. Number Two: If you were shipping wrenches across country, would you pack them in a big red wooden box with a hasp on the lid?”

“Oh, that's a tough one.” He flexed his claws and studied them for a moment. “No, I wouldn't, Hankie. But if I were shipping a monkey across country,” he grinned, “I would.”

“Just as I suspected!” I stopped pacing and glared back at Drover. “You idiot, that box doesn't have wrenches in it. There's a monkey in there—a real live monkey!”

“Well, I . . . but you said . . .”

“Never mind the excuses, Drover. We deal in facts, not excuses, and the fact is that you came very close to bungling another investigation.” I paced back to the cat. “One last question and then you're excused.” I glanced over both shoulders and lowered my voice to a whisper. “How much do you know about monkeys?”

“Well, a little bit, Hankie, but nothing you'd be interested in hearing.”

“Out with it, before I lose my patience.”

He spent a moment admiring his claws. “They're cute. They're smart. They can do things with their little hands. They can be trained to perform tricks if . . .”

“Yes? Go on.”

“. . . if the master is smarter than the monkey.” He fluttered his eyes and began rubbing up against my leg. “Would you like some good advice, Hankie?”

“No. I don't take advice from cats. You're excused.”

“If I were you . . .”

“But you're not me. Too bad for you and good-bye. Scram. Get lost. Go chase your tail.”

And with that, Pete the Barncat left the interrogation room in complete disgrace. With just a few savage thrusts, I had broken him down, wrung the truth out of him, and exposed him as a sneak, a liar, and a pompous fraud.

“Well, Drover, that just about wraps up the Case of the Mysterious Red Box. As you might have guessed by now, we have come into possession of a circus monkey.”

“A circus monkey!” Drover shook his head and walked around in a small circle. “I'm all confused. Why would a circus monkey be riding on a cattle truck?”

I glared at the runt. “Drover, who's running this outfit?”

“Well, let's see. You?”

“That's correct. And who asks all the questions around here?”

“Uh . . . you?”

“Correct again. Did I ask anything about cattle trucks?”

“I don't think so.”

“Therefore, there is no question about cattle trucks. The only question before us at the moment is, what will we do with the monkey?”

“Oh, that's easy. We'll leave him in the box. I don't want a monkey running around here . . . do you?”

I gave him a veiled smile. “Of course not, Drover. Of course not.”

Chapter Five: A Stranger Emerges from the Box

A
s soon as possible, I sent Drover on a mission to patrol the eastern quadrant of ranch headquarters. He didn't want to go and came up with the usual excuses: His leg hurt, his sinuses were bothering him, and there was no particular reason for going on patrol in the light of day.

On the last score, he happened to be right. What he didn't know was that I wanted to get rid of him for a while because, shall we say, I had some other business to attend to.

When he was out of sight, I turned to the west and went streaking away from headquarters and out into the horse pasture. By that time I had begun conducting a serious debate within the inner sanctum of my mind: Did I want to release the monkey or did I not?

Or to phrase it another way: Was there actually a monkey in the box or was there not? For you see, if there was no monkey in the box, the question of whether or not to release him became mute. Mutt. Mood. Moot, I suppose it is.

The question became mute. Therefore, the logical sequence of events would be for me to determine . . . I think you get the drift.

I reached Point X very shortly after leaving hindquarters . . . headquarters, that is . . . and found the box exactly where we had left it. In other words, it hadn't moved. I approached it with caution, sniffed it out, barked at it, and circled it three times, with each circle bringing me closer to it.

At last, satisfied that it wasn't going to move or spring at me or do anything of a suspicious nature, I spoke to it:

“The voice you're hearing belongs to Hank the Cowdog, Head of Ranch Security. You are trespassing on my ranch, which means that you have gotten yourself into serious trouble.

“If you are in there and can hear my voice, I demand that you come out immediately and identify yourself. If you're not in there, you may disregard this message.”

I lifted my ears to the Full Alert position and waited. At first I heard nothing. Then . . . a scratching sound? Yes! A certain scratching sound, as though someone or something were scratching on the inside of the alleged box.

Did it scare me? Well . . . a little bit, might as well admit it, okay, yes, maybe it scared me a little bit, but after running backward for twenty or thirty yards, I regained my poise and approached it again.

“I'll repeat the message one more time,” I said in my firmest voice. “We have your box surrounded. There's no chance of escape or any other kinds of mischief. You will come out of the box and identify yourself at once.”

More scratching from inside the box, and oh yes, the hasp.

Let me pause here to point out that your heavy boxes, such as the type used to transport circus animals, often have a device on the lid called a
hasp
. Hasp is a technical term, you've probably not run into it before, but we use it all the time in the security business.

A hasp secures the lid to the box
, see, and until I removed the wooden peg from the eye of the hasp, the lid would not open.

Okay. We had gotten down to the meat of the heart . . . the core of the meat . . . the heart of the core . . . the central issue in the whole deal. DID I WANT TO OPEN THE DOOR AND RELEASE THE MONKEY, OR WHATEVER IT WAS, ONTO MY RANCH?

If you've fooled around with geometry, you know that there are three sides on a pyramid, three legs on a triangle, four legs on a donkey, and two sides to every question. Before moving any closer to the box, I pondered both sides of this particular question.

On one side, we had yes. Immediately across from it, on the other side, we had no. Yes and no are not only spelled differently, but they don't mean the same thing. In fact, they are diaboli­cally opposed. Thrown together in a small space, they will fight until only one emerges the winner. Hence, by simple logic, it followed that I could not possibly decide both yes and no on the same question. It had to be one or the other.

For several 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.

“Say, 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?”

“You 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?”

“Oh 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 tail, a wide mouth, kind of a monkey-looking face, fingers and thumbs on his feet and . . .

Come to think of it, if you'd taken away his coat and hat, he would have looked a lot like a . . . hmmmmm.

You probably thought he was a hairy little man in a red jacket and fez, who bore a passing resemblance to a monkey. I might have made that mistake too, had I not been armed with the stern discipline of a trained observer.

He was a monkey, see, not a man at all. I had suspected . . . there for a second he did look a little bit . . .

At last I had cleared up the mystery. As I had surmised, the box had contained a circky monkus. A circus monkey, that is. And the next step was to open lines of communication with the little brute and to establish whether I was working for him or if he was working for me.

That was kind of an important question, see.