Read Online The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog by John R. Erickson - Free Book Online

have to . . .” I tried to ease around the three coyotes who were blocking my path. When I moved, they moved. They didn’t intend to let me out of there, is the way it looked.
    â€œStay, not leave,” the chief went on. “Old coyote tradition, adopt brave dog, make brother.”
    â€œBrave? Well, I can set you straight on that. You see . . .”
    â€œTogether we kill many chicken, eat cat every day, howl at moon, oh boy.”
    â€œI don’t know about eating cat. I never . . .” I tried again to edge around those three bruisers, but they pushed me back.
    â€œ Dog not leave, ” said the chief.
    â€œYes sir.”
    â€œMaybe later marry daughter, have many pup. Everybody happy but Scraunch. Too bad. He not understand secret.”
    There was no chance of me getting out of there, so I walked over to the chief. “You figgered out the secret?”
    He laughed and nodded his head. “Oh yes, berry much.”
    â€œWhat did you figger out?”
    Gut glanced over his shoulders and brought his mouth right next to my ear. “Secret too secret to tell.”
    â€œYou got it, all right, you sure did.”
    We had a good laugh, me and Old Gut, but I doubt that we were laughing about the same thing.

Chapter Nine: Me Just a Worthless Coyote

    T hat business about the secret was the perfect stroke, and it probably saved my life. In desperation, I had lucked into it. Turns out that coyotes are superstitious animals, even though they’re known to be cunning and vijalent vijalunt vijallunt vijjullunt . . . 
    I don’t know how to spell that word. Spelling is a pain in the neck. I do my best with it, but I figger if a guy has tremendous gifts as a writer, his audience will forgive a few slip-ups in the spelling department.
    I mean, it doesn’t take any brains to open a dickshunary and look up a word. Anybody can do that. The real test of a writer comes in the creative process. I try to attend to the big picture, don’t you see, and let the spelling take care of itself.
    Vidgalent. Vidgallunt. Still doesn’t look right.
    Anyway, coyotes are superstitious brutes, and that deal about the secret caught them just right and saved my hide. Actually, it did better than that. It made me a kind of celebrity in the tribe, and I was treated like a visiting dignutarry digneterry dignitary, who cares?
    By everyone but Scraunch, that is, and he continued to give me hateful glances and mutter under his breath every time our paths crossed. I couldn’t blame him for being sore. I had won and he had lost, and you can’t expect everyone to be a good loser. As we say in the security business, show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.
    Scraunch had lost a big one, and I was confident that he would hate my guts forevermore, even though there was a good chance that I would eventually become his brother-in-law.
    You know, when Missy had first mentioned that possibility, it hadn’t struck me as a real good idea. I suppose at that time I was still thinking of going back home, back to Drover and Pete, the chickens, the sewer, the cowboys, my old job. But a couple of days in the coyote village pretty muchly convinced me that I had found my true place in the world as a savage.
    The life of a savage ain’t too bad. I admit that I was raised with a natural prejjudise predguduss bias against coyotes. Ma always told us that they were lazy, sneaky, undisciplined, and didn’t have any ambition. But what chapped her most about coyotes was that they ate rotten meat and it made them smell bad.
    True, every word of it. But what she didn’t tell us was that laziness and riotous living can be a lot of fun. I don’t blame her for not telling us that. I mean, she was trying to raise a litter of registered, papered, blue-ribbon, top-of-the-line cowdogs, and there’s no better way to mess up a good cowdog than to let him discover