The Case of the Vanishing Fishhook by John R. Erickson

Author:John R. Erickson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: cowdog, Hank the Cowdog, John R. Erickson, John Erickson, ranching, Texas, dog, adventure, mystery, Hank, Drover, Pete, Sally May
Publisher: Maverick Books, Inc.
Published: 2015-05-06T19:58:41+00:00

I don’t think he meant to cause as much trouble as he ended up causing. I figure it was just a passing impulse that seized him. He should have resisted it. Even I knew that. But he didn’t.

There he was in the yard, see, with a loaded garden hose in his hands. He had scattered all the cats and dogs, and had become the King of the Yard. That’s when he spied his mother. She was working at the kitchen sink, her face framed by the open window.

My guess is that a wicked thought popped into his head: Wouldn’t it be funny if the hose somehow pointed itself towards the window screen and his mom somehow got sprayed?

I saw it coming but was helpless to do anything about it. It happened in a flash. With a flick of his wrist, he beamed a jet of water at the side of the house and began moving it southward, towards the open window. When it hit the window, we heard a screech from inside the house, and Sally May’s face disappeared.

Well, he had wanted to get his mommy’s attention, and he had certainly gotten it.

Moments later, she came boiling out the back door, throwing it open with such vigor that it hit the side of the house with a loud whack. Her face was red and something bad had happened to her hairdo. A prairie fire burned inside her eyeballs.

I was sitting in the weeds, some seventy-five feet west of the scene, yet the very sight of her caused me to melt into my tracks. It was clear, even at a distance, that Sally May had entered into one of her Thermonuclear Moments.

Birds stopped singing. Crickets ceased chirping. The wind stopped blowing. Ants scurried into their holes. Grasshoppers dived for cover. Butterflies sped away as fast as they could fly.

In that moment of awful silence, Little Alfred realized that he had made a BIG mistake, squirting his momma with the garden hose. He threw down the hose and headed for the front yard, pumping his little legs as fast as they would go.

“I didn’t mean to, Mom. Honest. It was an accident.”

“Alfred Leroy, you come back here!”

She started after him in a stiff-legged walk, swinging her arms. I had seen that walk before, and it sent chills of fear rolling down my backbone. I sank deeper into the weeds. She stalked around the side of the house and called his name again. He didn’t answer. It appeared that he had gone into hiding.

Just then, Loper arrived for lunch. He stepped out of the pickup, slapped some hay dust off his clothes, and started towards the house. Sally May met him at the front gate and they held a high-level conference. I was far enough away so that I couldn’t hear every word, but I heard enough to catch the drift of it.

“Your son . . . NOT funny . . . disrespectful . . . acting like a brat . . .”

Loper listened, nodded his head, and patted her on the arm.

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