The Big Question. John R. Erickson
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Название: The Big Question
Автор: John R. Erickson
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Учебная литература
Серия: Hank the Cowdog
isbn: 9781591887607
isbn:
“I did not steal it. You fell asleep and it walked out the door.”
“Did not.”
“Did too, and I’ll thank you to stop spewing cookie crumbs in my face!”
“You’re welcome.”
“You did it again!”
“Well, quit making me talk and I won’t spit crumbs.”
“You’re still spitting crumbs! Every time you open your cheating little mouth, you spew crumbs in my face!”
“It’s the best cookie I ever ate.”
“And you’re still spewing crumbs on me!” I marched two steps away and brushed the crumbs off my nose, face, and eyebrows. “Okay, pal, you’ve really done it this time.”
“Thanks for the cookie.”
“Shut your trap. For robbing cookies and spewing crumbs in the face of a superior officer, you will get seven Chicken Marks.”
He grinned. “Yeah, but I didn’t mean to spit crumbs.”
“Okay, ten Chicken Marks.”
“How come it went up?”
“Because you’re a greedy little pig, that’s why, and this will go into my report. The whole world will find out what a shameless little cookie-grabber you turned out to be.”
He swallowed down the last wad of cookie. “You can keep the turkey necks. I’ll take a cookie every time.”
I drew in a huge gulp of air and was about to give him the tongue-lashing of his young life, when I realized that Miss Viola was holding another cookie in her fingers, and she said, “Here, Hank, this one is for you. Drover…no.”
She pitched it into the air and…SNARF…this time, I snared it right out of the sky. Chewing the delicious cookie, I marched back to Mister Buttinski. “There, you see? She loves me ten times more than she doesn’t love you, so there!”
“You’re spitting crumbs in my face.”
“Good. Here’s some more.” And with that, I proceeded to blow crumbs all over his cheating little…oops, somehow in the process of crumbulating Drover, the main part of my cookie spurted out of my mouth and landed…
Guess who pounced on it and gobbled it down. Drover.
“Give me that cookie!”
He gobbled and slurped. “Finders keepers.”
“Yeah, well, I’m fixing to find your keepers, and when I do, you’ll lose your sweepers! Give me that!”
It was too late. He swallowed a lump of cookie so big, it made his eyes bulge. He grinned. “All gone.”
For a long moment of heartbeats, I stood there, trembling with righteous anger, until at last I was able to say, “Drover, in the space of two minutes, you have stolen two cookies from the Head of Ranch Security. This court finds you guilty as charged and you will now be fed to the buzzards!”
“Yeah, but that last one was only half a cookie.”
“The buzzards won’t care. I don’t care. This court doesn’t care and the sentence will be carried out as soon as we can locate a buzzard.”
Suddenly, he pointed a paw toward the north and let out a gasp. “Oh my gosh, there’s one now!”
I whirled to the left, expecting to see…well, a buzzard. How or why a buzzard had sneaked into Slim’s house, I didn’t know, but by George he was fixing to…I did a Visual Scan of the entire room, and we’re talking about Visual Detectors that could pick up the tiniest of details. I saw a chair, a coffee table, a lamp, two coffee cups, a sprawl of old newspapers and magazines, and no buzzards.
“False alarm. There are no buzzards in this room.” I whirled back to the prisoner and saw…a faint cloud of dust hanging in the air. I cut my eyes from side to side, as the truth began nibbling at the edges of my mind. Do you see the meaning of this? The little thief had jumped bail and left the country!
Oh well. Justice has a long memory and a long arm. He would pay for his crimes, and until the Day of Judgment arrived….well, maybe I could, uh, find some replacements for the cookies he had robbed.
Slim and Miss Viola were talking, see, and the plate of goodies was sitting on the coffee table…all alone, shall we say, unnoticed and unguarded. Heh heh. You’ll never guess what wicked thoughts began creeping through the underbrush of my mind, and that’s okay because I’m not sure I want you to know.
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