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      Publication Information

      MAVERICK BOOKS

      Published by Maverick Books, Inc.

      P.O. Box 549, Perryton, TX 79070

      Phone: 806.435.7611

      www.hankthecowdog.com

      First published in the United States of America by Texas Monthly Press, 1989, and Gulf Publishing Company, 1990.

      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., 2011.

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      Copyright © John R. Erickson, 1989

      All rights reserved

      library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

      Erickson, John R., date

      The wounded buzzard on Christmas Eve / John R. Erickson ; illustrations by Gerald L. Holmes.

      p. cm.

      Previously published: Houston, Tex. : Maverick Books, c1989. (Hank the Cowdog ; #13)

      Summary: Accompanying Slim and Little Alfred into town on a Christmas shopping trip, Hank and Drover run into a wounded buzzard and a gang of toughs so mean and heartless, it’s a wonder they ever make it back to the ranch.

      ISBN 0-14-130389-1 (pbk.)

      [1. Dogs Fiction. 2. Christmas Fiction. 3. Ranch life—West (U.S.) Fiction. 4. West (U.S.) Fiction. 5. Humorous stories.] I. Holmes, Gerald L., ill. II. Title. III. Series: Erickson, John R., date Hank the Cowdog ; #13

      [PZ7.E72556Wo 1999] [Fic]—dc21 99-19576 CIP

      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

      This one is for Gerald Holmes and Trev Tevis, who have contributed so much to the Hank adventure.

      Contents

      Chapter One An Unusually Exciting First Chapter, as You’ll See

      Chapter Two A Gift for Me?

      Chapter Three A Head-On Collision

      Chapter Four A Moral Dilemmon: What Do You Do with a Wounded Buzzard?

      Chapter Five I Discover Three Mysterious Camels

      Chapter Six The Poodle Incident

      Chapter Seven Leonard’s Saddle Shop

      Chapter Eight Drover Snaps at Snowflakes

      Chapter Nine Little Alfred Opens Pandowdy’s Box

      Chapter Ten The Big Showdown with Buggs and Muster

      Chapter Eleven Oh, It Was Santie Claus, Not Sandy Clothes

      Chapter Twelve All’s Swell That Ends Swell

      Chapter One: An Unusually Exciting First Chapter, as You’ll See

      It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog. You want to know all about the Wounded Buzzard, right? Such as his name and how he got wounded and other juicy morsels of the mystery? All in good time.

      For the moment, let me set the scenery. It was a cold morning in December, the 24th of December to be exact, which just happened to be the day before Christmas—or, as we put it in the Security Business, “Christmas Eve.”

      Drover and I had come in from the night shift and were settling into our gunnysack beds, hoping to catch a little sleep and get a break from the grueling routine of ranch work, when all of a sudden we heard a car coming toward the house.

      I leaped to my feet and began to bark. Whoever these trespassers were, they had no business on our ranch . . . only it wasn’t a car.

      Did you think it was a car? Not a bad guess, but it just happens that you’re wrong. As I went sprinting out to challenge the trespassers, I began piecing together a profile of this strange vehicle that was uncroaching on my territory.

      Clue #1: It had a flatbed in the back. Cars don’t have flatbeds, see. They have back seats and back doors. That was my first clue that this was no ordinary car, but rather a pickup.

      Clue #2: Lying upon and scattered about the flatbed were several items: a high-lift jack, a spare tire, several empty soda pop cans, a jumble of baling wire, and five or six empty gunnysacks. In other words, this alleged vehicle had all the markings of a cowboy rig.

      Clue #3: But this was no ordinary cowboy’s pickup, for you see, instead of having your usual telescoping radio ariel . . . errial . . . heirial . . . aireal . . .

      Instead of having the usual telescoping radio antenna, which would be standard on most ranch pickups, this one was equipped with a special, highly sensitive radar antenna, and we’re talking about a top secret electronic device that could see in the dark and pick up small objects up to a mile away.

      The next question was, “Who or whom would need that kind of sophisticated electronic surveillance gear in a pickup truck?” The answer was obvious. What we had here was a CATTLE RUSTLER who had equipped his pickup with highly sensitive, top secret, sophisticated radar equipment, capable of spotting cattle out in the pasture even in the dead of night.

      Well, you know where I stand on the issue of cattle rustlers. If there’s anything that gets me stirred up and brings out all of my inbred cowdog instinks, it’s cattle rustlers.

      So it should come as no surprise that, while streaking out to intercept this villain, I not only barked but I put the entire ranch under Red Alert. That was a drastic measure I’ll admit, but it had to be done.

      The key to the whole thing was that radar antenna. That was the key to the lock to the door to the dark cellar of . . . it was definitely the key.

      At first glance, that radar dish resembled an ordinary coat hanger that had been wired to the stump of the radio antenna, but that could very well have been a clever disguise calculated to throw children, fools, and dogs untrained in security work off the . . .

      Hold up. Cancel the Red Alert. Forget what I just said. Never mind.

      Okay, what we had here was Slim driving his red, flatbed, four-wheel drive, Ford pickup into headquarters. Yes, I recognized the spare tire and the web of baling wire in the back end, and I remembered very clearly the day a bale of alfalfa hay had slipped off the top of the load and sheared off the radio antenna.

      I also remembered very clearly that right after lunch that same day, Slim had wired a coat hanger onto the stump.

      Okay. Drover had noticed none of this, of course, and now he was yipping

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