Rick and Ruddy: The Story of a Boy and His Dog

by Howard Roger Garis

So, in a way, it did not matter much about the dark. It was better for him that it was dark, as the sailor who had taken him from Rick's house would not see the brown dog running away.

"Ha! This is the path I came! This is where he dragged me with a rope around my neck after he took me out of the wagon," said Ruddy to himself, dog fashion, as he ran along in the darkness, his nose close to the ground. I don't mean, of course, that Ruddy said that out loud, or that he even thought it, as you or I would think it. But he thought, and he knew, in his own dog way, that he was on the right track back toward the place where he had been taken out of the wagon.

By running with his nose close to the ground Ruddy could smell where his own paws had left a scent on the earth. He could also catch the scent of the junk man and the sailor who had walked along with him. And Ruddy's nose was so keen that he could tell where the sailor had stepped and where the junk man had left his shoe marks on the roadside path. To Ruddy each person had a different scent, just as to us, even over a telephone when we can not see them, each of our friends has a different voice.

"Yes, this is where they led me along, after they took me out of the wagon," thought Ruddy, dog fashion. "I'll soon get back to that place. Then—well, after that, I'll have to do the best I can."

Ruddy was doing what is called, by hunters, "back-tracking." That is he was following the scent back to the place where it had started from. In running after game birds, and animals, Ruddy, or any other dog used for that kind of sport, generally does just the opposite. That is they follow the scent along until they get to the place where the rabbit, squirrel or bird has gone, and not to the place where they have come from. Once in a while, though, a hunting dog will make a mistake and "back-track" when he ought to "front-track." A dog that does this is not of much value to a hunter, for the man with the gun wants to go where the game is, not where it isn't.

So Ruddy, running through the night, with his nose to the ground, traced his way along the path where he had been led with the rope around his neck. As yet he had caught no scent of his master, for Rick and his friends had not come this far. They had not gone more than a hundred feet beyond the old cabin, after seeing there the junk man's horse and wagon.

"I certainly want to find Rick," was the thought that kept coming again and again into Ruddy's mind. "I want to find that Boy!"

Once or twice Ruddy got off the trail. He was a young setter, and they often make mistakes. And the errors Ruddy made were because other dogs and different animals had crossed his tracks since he had made them.

Twice he caught the scent of other dogs. Who they were he did not know, of course, being a stranger in the neighborhood. But they probably were animals living on the farms nearby; and they had crossed Ruddy's trail, very likely catching a whiff of his scent as he did of theirs.

Once Ruddy caught the odor of a rabbit which had leaped across the road to get a drink of water from a spring that bubbled up under a rock. At any other time Ruddy would have followed this trail of the rabbit, barking joyously to call Rick to follow. That is Ruddy would have done this if his boy master had been with him.