LITMIR.BIZ

      It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. Let’s get right to the point of this case. Our ranch was visited, struck, and robbed by a saddle thief.

      Saddle thieves steal saddles, right? That’s what this one did. Even though we had been warned, even though I was on the case from the start, the clever rogue managed to . . .

      This will be painful. See, I had him cornered in the saddle shed, yet somehow . . . somehow I let him slip away. Maybe you find that hard to believe. Me too. Hard to believe and even harder to accept. I failed my ranch, that’s the bottom line, and it almost got me . . .

      But let me hasten to add that he cheated. Who would expect a saddle thief to appear in broad day­light? Thieves are supposed to strike in the darkness of night, but this guy came in the middle of the day. It was a dirty sneaky trick, and no dog would have . . .

      Oh, and did I mention the chocolate candy? Maybe not. That was really a low-down dirty trick, using a dog’s natural love of . . . well, yummy chocolate . . .

      I’m not sure I can go on with this. It’s too painful.

      It happened in the winter, as I recall. Yes, of course it was, the middle of winter. Cold mornings. Short days. Long nights. That’s an accurate description of winter on the ranch.

      Me, I was sick of long nights and short days. I mean, the sun didn’t come up until almost eight o’clock! That was shocking, disgraceful. Those of us who work for a living, and who take pride in working long hours, get impatient when the day doesn’t start until eight o’clock.

      Those were Drover hours. He loved our winter schedule. It allowed him to sleep his life away. I, however, had better things to do with my life, and on that particular morning at approximately 0716, I decided to take matters in my own hands. Of course I had no way of knowing . . .

      Acting on a sudden impulse, I decided to bark up the sun at 0730 instead of waiting until 0800. Pretty bold, huh? You bet it was, but I’d had it up to here with gloom and darkness and short working days. By George, we needed more daylight and I was just the guy to handle that situation.

      And so it was that I left Mister Snore-and-Squeak on his gunnysack and began my march toward that little hill just east of the house, the same hill where I barked up the sun every morning of the year.

      As you might have guessed, it was dark, very dark, and in the gloomy black of the black gloominess I collided with something—something hairy, warm, and alive, possibly one of the many varieties of Night Monster that roam the ranch at night. We have many of them: Bush Monsters, Shadow Monsters, Thunder Monsters, Moaning Wind Monsters . . . and they’re all pretty scary.

      It caught me by surprise. Perhaps I had been so preoccupied with my thoughts that I had, well, neglected to check my instruments. See, I had been running on Smell-o-radar and should have picked up a signal, but somehow I’d missed it.

      And I ran into this Hairy Thing in the inky darkness and . . . okay, let’s be honest. It gave me quite a scare. I’m no chicken liver when it comes to defending my ranch against monsters, but I don’t go shopping for trouble either.

      Those monsters can be ferocious. A guy needs to pick his fights pretty carefully. Bumping into them in the dark is bad business.

      It sent a shockwave all the way out to the end of my tail. I bristled my hair and leaped several feet to the left. Right. Who cares? I leaped, that’s the point.

      “Halt! Stop! Who goes there? Stop in the name of the law and reach for the sky. I’ve got this place surrounded!”

      Pretty tough, huh? You bet it was, but that’s the way you have to talk to those monsters. Give ’em an inch and they’ll take every nickel.

      Having issued the Halt-Stop-Who-Goes-There, I waited for some kind of response. If I was lucky, the monster would run. They do that sometimes, just run away and vanish in the night and you never see ’em again. But sometimes they don’t and a guy never knows . . .

      I waited, poised and cocked and . . . well, ready to go streaking for the front porch, if events, uh, got out of control. (Monsters never follow dogs to front porches, don’t you see. I don’t know why, but it’s true.) But then I heard a voice.

      “Mmmm, my goodness, I think I’ve just been stepped on by Hankie the Wonder Dog.”

      The air hissed out of my lungs. My whole body went limp. I almost fainted with relief. You probably thought it was a ferocious Night Monster, right? Nope. It was just a cat—Pete the Barncat, to be exact, my least-favorite character on the ranch. Have we discussed cats? Maybe not. I don’t like ’em, have no use for ’em at all.

      “What are you doing out here, you little sneak? I thought you were a . . . that is, I picked up an odd unidentified sound and rushed right over to check it out.”

      “Did you now?”

      “Yes I did,

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