The Case of the Deadly Ha-Ha Game
The Case of the Deadly Ha-Ha Game is the 37th book in the Hank the Cowdog series
Plot
The case starts on a subplot in the evening when Loper comes home from ranch work early to cook dinner for his family. Meanwhile, Pete the cat has convinced Hank that he should enter the yard and try Pete's cat food. Hank enters the yard, but is quickly distracted by the smell of the steaks that Loper is cooking on the barbecue grill. He, Drover and Pete get into a tugging match in the yard with one of the steaks, and are saved only when Little Alfred comes along, takes it back, and throws them all out of the yard, then puts the steak back with the others. Angry at losing the steak, Pete tricks Hank into running off into the pasture on a wild goose chase: trying to find the pot of chicken at the end of the rainbow. By the time Hank and Drover realize there is no chicken, they are far out in the pasture and have been captured by the coyote brothers Rip and Snort. Hank manages to get Rip and Snort into the Deadly Ha-Ha Game with him, in which they take turns saying "ha", "ha ha", "ha ha ha", "ha ha ha ha" and so on until one of them starts laughing. Soon the coyotes are laughing so hard they cannot stop, and Hank and Drover run away. Back at the ranch, with night fallen, Hank and Drover play the Ha-Ha Game themselves, and soon both are laughing- poor timing, as it turns out, because Rip and Snort have stopped laughing and soon reappear, more angry than ever. Hank and Drover hide in the machine shed and, when pursued by the coyotes, escape again and run to the yard, finally getting away from the coyotes by diving through Little Alfred's bedroom window. (By this time Hank has discovered that the Ha-Ha Game fails to work on Rip and Snort anymore.) The coyotes threaten to sit outside the window all night and wait for the dogs to come out but Loper arrives and drives them off. After he has gone to bed again, Little Alfred grabs a plate of steak leftovers and sets them in the backyard to get Hank and Drover out of the house. Hank leaves but runs into Pete again. Rather than fighting him for the scraps, he decides to beat him with "superior intelligence" and play the Ha-Ha Game with him. Predictably, Hank loses this time, but presumably still manages to leave the yard and return to his bed.
Characters
- Hank- Head of Ranch Security
- Drover- Hank's assistant
- Pete- barncat
- Rip- coyote
- Snort- coyote, Rip's brother
- Alfred- five-year-old boy
- High Loper- rancher, Alfred's father