Chapter Eleven: Sure ‘Nuff, We Found a . . . HUH?

How did I know it was a coon? Easy. Let’s do a quick review of the Clue List.

Musky smell: Raccoons have a lot of oil on their hair and skin.

Roundish form: In the wintertime, coons get lard-fat and grow a heavy coat of hair, and the combination makes them about twice as big as they look in the summer.

Eating something: The “something” was horse feed, also known as “sweet feed.” It contains oats and molasses, and coons love it. Who or whom would you expect to find stealing horse feed on a cold winter night?

Do you get it now? Heh heh. I had just walked into a burglary-in-progress and things were fixing to get exciting. I mean, scuffling with a coon can be a lot of fun when we’ve got a cowboy around to break up the fight in case it gets out of hand. A shovel works wonders in those situations—applied to the coon, don’t you see.

The only question was whether the perp was my old pal Eddy the Rac or one of his thuggish cousins. The profile suggested someone quite a big bigger than Eddy, maybe one of his cousins, Harley or Choo Choo. I’d sparred a few rounds with those bums and they were pretty tough, but now, with Slim backing me up…

Just to be on the safe side, I tossed a glance behind me. The door had blown shut and my partner seemed to be struggling to open it in the wind. I waited. At last, he pried it open and I saw the glow of his flashlight.

“What you got, Hankie, a mouse?”

The sound of his voice gave me a rush of courage. A mouse? Oh no, much better than a mouse. I whirled back to the thieving raccoon and announced our presence with a jarring bark. “Hank the Cowdog, Special Crimes Division. Hands up and reach for the sky!”

I love doing that. It makes me feel so…so…so something. Strong. Stern. Powerful. Important. A figure of great authority. The Dog in Charge.

At that very moment, the beam of the flashlight landed on the…my goodness, that was a big coon, and he’d sure piled on the lard over the winter months.

That was a real big coon.

That coon was HUGE.

Slowly, he turned his head around: short muzzle, little green eyes, enormous teeth, and slobber dripping from his lips. I felt the hair rising on my back, and ten thousand volts of electricity shot down my spine and went all the way out to the end of my tail.

And then he growled. Coons don’t growl like that. My eyes bugged out and my ears flew up.

Behind me, I heard Slim’s astonished voice. “Good honk, that’s a BEAR!”

Right. And then he roared. He didn’t growl or grumble or snarl. He ROARED.

What happened at that point became a blur. We’re talking about a “stampede amongst the yearlings,” as the cowboys often say. Chaos, pure nerve-burning, eye-popping, spine-chilling chaos.

I hit Full Afterburners and headed for the door. So did Slim, only the door slammed shut in the screaming wind, and for a moment of heartbeats, it appeared that we were about to be eaten alive.

But Slim put his shoulder to the door and forced it open, and the two of us went flying outside, running for our very lives, and I can vouch that neither one of us gave the slightest thought to the bitter cold. Do you know why? Because the bear was coming after us! Over the scream of the wind, we could hear the thud of his feet on the frozen ground and the rumble of his growling voice.

I wish I could report that Slim and I made it to the house, barricaded the doors, and armed ourselves with knives and guns and swords, but you know, Life has its way of playing nasty tricks upon us.

I don’t know how it happened…okay, maybe I know how it happened and it doesn’t make me proud. See, in the sheer panic of the moment, I somehow got myself tangled up in his legs.

Hey, I didn’t plan it that way. All I can say is that in moments of terror, a dog wishes to be as close to his human friends as possible, and…hang on, this is going to get REALLY SPOOKY. See, he didn’t just fall on the ground. He lost his balance, started falling, and….

Gulp.

Okay, Slim had been running at full speed, but lost his balance and started stumbling toward the ground. If he’d only hit the ground, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but he stayed on his feet just long enough to run into a tree. Head-first. Center-punched it and dropped like a sack of rocks.

This was bad. This was very, very bad.

The wind screamed, Slim was down, and I was…let’s be honest here, suddenly I was overwhelmed by sheer terror and began doing the strangest things you can imagine: cackling with insane laughter, moaning, and barking in a random fashion. I dropped to the ground, flopped around, leaped up, and ran in circles.

And the bear kept coming…toward Slim.

It sounds hopeless, doesn’t it? That’s the way it looked to me, but then I experienced a moment of…how can I say this? I experienced a moment of calm and clarity. It seemed to come out of nowhere. All at once, I realized that this was…this was a Halloween party and someone had dressed up in a bear suit!

Yes, of course, why hadn’t I thought of it sooner? Ha ha. Some guy had dressed up in a bear costume and he was trying to scare everyone, ha ha, and by George, he was doing a pretty good job of that, but it was all just a joke and if I ran to the porch and hid behind the wood pile, morning would come and it would all go away.

See, parties are just play-like stuff. They’re not real. They come and go. It happens all the time, right? Sure it does, so, yes, I headed for the porch as fast as my legs would take me.

Slim would be fine, and tomorrow, we would share our memories and laugh around the wood burning stove. What a warm, wonderful scene it would be! A cowboy and his dog, laughing and sharing and building the bonds of trust.

I made it to the porch and was on my way to the woodpile, when I encountered…what was that? Oh, Drover, of course. He was sitting there like a statue, but with a look of horror on his face.

Over the howl of the wind, I yelled, “What’s wrong with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Not a ghost, a b-b-b-bear!”

“It’s not a bear, Drover, it’s some guy in a Halloween costume. Don’t worry about it. Let’s hide behind the wood pile, hurry!”

He didn’t move. His eyes were glazed and they looked a little crazy. He gave his head a hard shake. “It’s a bear…and Slim’s in trouble.” His eyes focused on me. “We’ve got to help him!”

“Drover, listen to me. This isn’t real, it’s…it’s just a costume party, no kidding. All we have to do is hide and…”

The voice that came out of Drover’s mouth sent chills down the back of my neck. It didn’t sound like Drover’s voice, or any voice I’d ever associated with him. It said, “If you won’t help him, I WILL.”

He leaped off the porch and vanished in the howling storm.

I was so shocked, I couldn’t move or think. Had I been talking to Drover, and had he spoken the words I thought I’d heard? And had he actually raced out into the storm to…to do what he’d said he was going to do?

My mind swirled—thoughts, memories, faces, words, feelings—and above it all, I began hearing a frenzied, high-pitched yipping sound (Drover’s barking), followed by a man’s voice: “Hank, over here, I need you! Help!”

You know what? This is WAY TOO SCARY and I can’t go on with it. You know me, I worry about the little children and…hey, let’s be frank about this. It’s too scary for me too! I mean, if the guy who’s telling the story gets so spooked that he can’t continue, what’s left to do?

Let’s just fold it up, brush our teeth, say our prayers, and go to bed, what do you say? Nightie night, and sweet dreams.