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

by Howard Roger Garis

And Rick and the boys did have fun. So did the girls. So did Ruddy and his friend Peter, the bulldog, floundering about in the snow. It was ever so much more fun for the dogs to play in the snow than in the rain, just as it is more fun for boys and girls to scatter the white flakes rather than dodge the pattering drops of water.

As Rick had said, there was coasting and the building of snow houses. Snow men were made, and pelted with snowballs. Snow forts were built on the hills and the boys divided into soldier companies and had battles with snowballs.

One day when Rick had been coasting with the other boys he had stayed so late that it was almost dark. One by one his chums went home after long, swift rides over the snow-covered hill, but Rick and Ruddy remained on the slope. One or twice Rick took Ruddy down on the sled with him, and the dog seemed to like the swift motion, just as dogs like auto riding.

"One more coast and we'll go!" said Rick, as he saw that he was the last boy left on the hill. His sister Mazie had gone home some time before, telling Rick he had better hurry or he would be late for supper.

"One more ride!" the boy told himself.

He got on his sled. Ruddy, who had been capering about until he was tired, lay down in the snow at the top of the hill. Rick gave himself a push and started down the steep grade.

Just how it happened he never knew, but his sled must have struck a stone, or some obstruction, and in a moment it went off the side of the hill, down into a deep gully, filled with a deep, white drift.

Into this drift plunged Rick, head first, sled and all. And down into the soft snow he fell. At first he was not alarmed, for he had often rolled from his sled into a drift. But this drift was different. At one edge was a big rock, and Rick's head struck on this.

In an instant all seemed to get black before the eyes of the boy—much blacker than the blackness of approaching night. A queer, dizzy feeling came over Rick. He appeared to be sinking away down deep—as if into the depths of the ocean out of which Ruddy had come to him.

And the last thing Rick remembered was the distant barking of his dog. Then the boy fell into the drift, making a hole as he plunged into the soft mass of snow. Down, down he went, he and his sled. And then Rick disappeared from the view of Ruddy up on top of the hill.