LITMIR.BIZ

      At that very moment, I heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. I looked up and saw Slim Chance, the ranch’s hired hand, pulling up in front of the feed shed. And I knew it was exactly eight o’clock in the morning.

      You’re probably amazed that a dog would have such an uncanny sense of time. I mean, we don’t carry watches or clocks, so how could I have known that it was exactly eight o’clock?

      I’m sorry, but I can’t reveal that information. See, the world is full of spies and enemy agents, and we have to be very careful about who knows the inner workings of the Security Division. Those guys never sleep, they never rest. Day and night, they’re plotting mischief and looking for ways of hacking into our secret files. Why, if they knew all the formulas we use for keeping time . . .

      Oh, what the heck, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to give you a little peek. Okay, here we go. First off, we take precise measurements of the positions of the sun, the moon, and the planet Neeptide just before sunrise. Since the sun doesn’t exist before sunrise, we drop it from the equation and mush on. We add the numbers together, divide by the number of legs on a spider (7.35), and multiply by three.

      Why three? Well, it’s a nice little number and we’ve always liked it. Furthermore, if you were taking a walk down Numbers Lane, three is the number you would meet between two and four.

      If you do the math right, this complex equation will yield the exact time of day. But just in case we make some mistakes in our clackulations, we have ways of checking our work. For example, we have learned through careful observation that at eight o’clock in the wintertime, Slim Chance arrives at the feed shed. He has a coffee mug hooked onto the index finger of his right hand, his eyes are puffy, and he communicates in a language called Gruntlish.

      In Gruntlish, “Uh” means “Good morning, dogs” and “Uh grunt grunt uh” means “Get out of the way.” That’s about the extent of his morning conversation. Anyway, our system of keeping time works to perfection and now you’ve had a little peek at our secret methods. When Slim parked the pickup in front of the feed shed, we knew it was exactly eight o’clock in the morning. What did we do with that information? Not much, actually, but we knew it wasn’t raining or Tuesday.

      Slim dragged himself out of the pickup, looked down at me with a pair of red-rimmed eyeballs, and said, “Uh grunt grunt uh.” (Look one paragraph above for the translation.) He took a sip of coffee and threw open the shed door. For a moment, he stared inside, and then he muttered, “Uh uh grunt uh grunt grunt grunt!”

      Drover turned a puzzled gaze on me. “What did he say?”

      “I’m not sure. He’s not usually so talkative in the morning. We’ve never had to translate such a long speech.”

      “Well, he looks kind of mad. Maybe he saw a mouse or something.”

      I studied Slim’s face. Sure enough, he looked mad. “But why would he be mad about a mouse?”

      “I don’t know. Maybe a mouse ate his cheese.”

      I beamed him a glare. “Drover, Slim puts his cheese in the refrigerator, not in the feed shed. Feed in the feed shed, cheese in the refrigerator. Do you see a pattern here?”

      “Yeah, but what about the pickles?”

      “Pickles? Drover, pickles have nothing to do with anything.”

      “Well, they have to do with hamburgers, and I love hamburgers.”

      I shoved him aside. “Out of the way, and don’t talk to me about pickles.”

      “Well, if you were a pickle, how would you feel if nobody ever talked about you?”

      I ignored him. Did I have time to discuss pickles? No. Slim had seen something unusual in the feed shed, and had gone to the effort of muttering, “Uh uh grunt uh grunt grunt grunt!” We had some kind of problem on the ranch and I had to find out what it was. I marched up beside my cowboy friend and turned my gaze into the shed.

      I was stunned, shocked. You see, Slim and I had just stumbled upon evidence of a terrible crime.

      Chapter Two: A Terrible Crime

      A fifty-pound paper sack of turkey corn had been ripped open and the contents strewn across the floor of the shed.

      What is “turkey corn”? Great question. See, Slim kept a sack of whole corn in the shed and every morning he threw some out on the ground for the wild turkeys. They’re shameless moochers, you know, those turkeys. Throw out a little corn and they’ll come running on their long gawky legs. After a few days of free corn, they won’t even wait for you to throw it out. They’ll run toward the sound of the pickup, and in fact that’s what they were doing at that very moment.

      I could hear them. Twenty-five head of turkey moochers were streaming toward the pickup, and had already started pushing and shoving, gobbling and squawking.

      It was enough to throw Drover into a panic. He came running up beside me. “Hank, oh my gosh, there’s a bunch of turkeys and I think . . .”

      “Shhh. Hush. Drover, we’ve had a break-in.”

      He stared into the shed and let out a gasp. “Oh my gosh, look what the mice did!”

      “Not mice, son. It’s more serious than that. Unless I’m badly mistaken, we’ve got a professional burglar on the loose.”

      I pointed to some tracks near the door. Tracks tell it all, you know, and these resembled the little hand prints of a child. Drover’s eyes bugged out. “Oh my gosh, Baby Molly’s been stealing corn!”

      I let out a groan. “Drover, please. Those are raccoon tracks, and unless I’m badly mistaken, they were left by a coon.”

      At that very moment, Slim began speaking in English. “Dadgum coons! Look at that mess. If we don’t get ’em stopped, they’ll tear open every sack in the shed.” He heaved a sigh and scowled at the old wooden door. If you recall, it was warped at the bottom, so that a coon or even a dog could slither inside. “One of these days, somebody needs to fix that door.”

      Yes? I waited for him to volunteer for the job—a job, by the way, that had needed doing for years.

      “But not today, I ain’t got time.” He hitched up his jeans and grinned. “But by grabs, I’ve got time to set a trap for the little feller. Heh. I’ll fix him.”

      I stared at him in disbelief. I don’t want to seem critical of my people, but this struck me as a bit nutty. The door was broken, so he was going to fix the coon? Did that make sense? No, but it was typical of Slim’s method of approaching any kind of construction work or repairs.

      Ignore the door and fix the coon. Oh, brother.

      Moments later, Slim had abandoned his plans for loading up sacks of feed and was driving up to the machine shed. (He didn’t invite us dogs to ride, so we had to escort the pickup.) He parked near the west side of the shed and waded out into some dead weeds that came up past his knees. This was the place where

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