Moonlight Madness

By John Erickson and Gerald L. Holmes

Slim rescues an orphan raccoon, and much to Hank’s dismay, everyone on the ranch is enchanted with the “cute” baby coon with the beady little eyes and amazing little hands. Yet, little do they know that every time midnight rolls around, Eddy the Rac is seized with uncontrollable fits and it’s Hank’s responsibility to guard the crafty masked bandit every moment! Soon Hank finds himself teaming up with Eddy to liberate the poor “singing” cookies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MAVERICK BOOKS INC
• Release date: Oct 15, 1994
• ISBN: 9781591887232

Book preview

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Moonlight Madness

John R. Erickson

Illustrations by Gerald L. Holmes

Maverick Books, Inc.

Publication Information

MAVERICK BOOKS

Published by Maverick Books, Inc.

P.O. Box 549, Perryton, TX 79070

Phone: [phone]

www.hankthecowdog.com

First published in the United States of America by Gulf Publishing Company, 1994.

Subsequently published simultaneously by Viking Children’s Books and Puffin Books, members of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 1999.

Currently published by Maverick Books, Inc., 2013.

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright © John R. Erickson, 1994

All rights reserved

Maverick Books, Inc. Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59188-123-0

Hank the Cowdog® is a registered trademark of John R. Erickson.

Printed in the United States of America

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Dedication

To Annie Love, my twelfth-grade English teacher, who said, I love your poems—write me some more.

Contents

Chapter One Wicked Thoughts Exposed

Chapter Two A Gang of Hoodlums on the Ranch

Chapter Three I Teach the Thugs a Valuable Lesson

Chapter Four Eddy the Rac

Chapter Five Ignoring the Coon

Chapter Six The Phony Elevator

Chapter Seven Conned by a Coon

Chapter Eight Laughed At by All My Friends

Chapter Nine Laying Down the Law to Eddy the Rac

Chapter Ten This Is Pretty Weird, So Hang On

Chapter Eleven Freedom for the Cookies

Chapter Twelve A Happy Ending Except That Slim Got Caught Up a Tree

Chapter One: Wicked Thoughts Exposed

It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. Have we ever discussed the time when Sally May invited her Sunday school class out to the ranch for a picnic?

Maybe not, but we should. It was a pretty strange day.

And did I mention Eddy the Rac? Maybe not. Well, he was a pretty interesting guy and he appeared on the ranch about this same time, just a couple of days before Sally May’s picnic.

But maybe we ought to start at the beginning. That’s the very best place to start a story, at the beginning.

Okay, let’s get organized.

It was Monday, as I recall, and it was also July. How could one day be both Monday and July? I don’t know, but it was, and Slim and Loper had spent the morning loading and stacking bales of hay in the . . . well, in the hay field, of course. Where else would you load and stack hay?

They had been hauling hay and they were tired and sweaty and they had come to the house for lunch, only lunch wasn’t quite ready. You see, Sally May had spent part of the morning talking on the phone. So the boys got out their ropes and started playing a game of Horse.

Have you ever played Horse with ropes and a roping dummy? I haven’t, but I’ve watched it several times. They’ve got this roping dummy, see, which is made out of scrap lumber. It has a kind of head with horns and two front legs made of two-by-fours, but the funny part is that it has only ONE back leg.

That’s correct, one back leg right in the middle, and Slim and Loper practiced their roping by tossing loops at the dummy. If one guy makes a catch, the second guy has to make the same catch. If he doesn’t, he gets one letter from the word horse. The first one to spell out the whole word loses the game.

I agree, it’s a pretty silly thing for two grown men to be doing, and it looks even sillier when their roping dummy has only three legs.

Think about it. The roping dummy is supposed to represent a calf, right? Would you care to guess how many tripod calves we have on this ranch? None. Zero. There are no three-legged calves on this outfit.

So why does their roping dummy have only three legs? I have my theories.

Theory #1: When they were building the dummy, they ran out of scrap lumber and weren’t able to finish the job right. Instead of going to the lumber yard and investing five bucks on some good lumber, they chose the Path of Leased Resistance and built a dummy that was a freak of nature.

Theory #2: When they were building the dummy, they had plenty of lumber but ran out of ambition. Perhaps the day was too hot or too cold. Perhaps their carpentry skills had been strained to the breaking point.

But for whatever reason, they figgered out that two back legs would take twice as long to build as one leg, so they cobbled up a three-legged roping dummy and justified it by saying, Close enough for cowboy work.

You can guess which theory I’d choose. Number Two. It sounds just like those guys. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. They’ll start a project that requires time and patience, and halfway through they begin to short out, so to speak. They get tired. They get bored. They start talking about all the other work that needs to be done.

And that’s where three-legged roping dummies come from.

Now, if I was running this ranch . . . but we needn’t get started on that subject. Nobody pays any attention to the Head of Ranch Security.

All they expect out of us is that we put in eighteen or twenty hours of work every day, with no comments or complaints or questions. After you’ve done that for ten or fifteen years, then they still won’t listen to you.

Anyways, they had dragged up their freakish three-legged roping dummy and were in the middle of a hot game of Horse. Loper had been making some pretty fancy hoolihan throws and Slim was behind with a score of H-O . . .

Just then, Sally May came out the back door. And when the screen door slammed,

Reviews for Moonlight Madness

[jalenv_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Moonlight Madness isn't just the title of this Hank the Cowdog offering, it's the excuse Eddy the Rac uses to explain why he's a day angel and a night devil. Who is Eddie the Rac? He's an orphaned half-grown raccoon Hank and Slim Chance rescue from a nasty pack of stray dogs. That pack consists of Buster, Muggsy, and two dogs who are so low on the totem pole that we're not given their names. They've already appeared in Murder in the Middle Pasture and The Wounded Buzzard on Christmas Eve. Pity they haven't met the Coyote Nation. I'd love to see Buster the Boastful try to take on the scariest coyote, Scraunch.Hank thinks of raccoons as his natural enemy. The fact that Slim and the Lopers think Eddy should be under their care really sticks in his craw. If it starts out as a toss-up between Eddy the Rac and Pete the Barncat for the first slot on Hank's hate list, Eddy soon shows he's even better than Pete for tricking Hank and getting him in trouble. (Sally May's reaction to Eddy's first stunt really set the seal on Hank's total humiliation.)Drover has only a walk-on part in this one, but the little dog with the stub tail shows more sense than his boss.I loved the way Mr. Erickson made Eddy sound quite hyper and weird once the moonlight madness hit him. I sure hope there was no camera present at the end. All poor Slim would need is to have his Miss Viola see a photo of what happened.There were some old-time tunes, as usual, but the only one I recall was 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic.' 'Cowboys [Cowboy's?] Transfusion' was a silly song, but 'Free the Cookies' was a good piece of rationalization. (I managed to refrain from visiting the pantry, though.)There's plenty here to keep the family entertained for a few hours. (Hope the kids don't take the cookie song seriously...)