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

by Howard Roger Garis

But now Rick was using the word "home" in a different way. Ruddy hardly understood. Rick had not spoken sternly. He was asking Ruddy a question—asking him to find the home that, somehow or other, Rick had lost sight of in the woods.

"Let's go home, Ruddy! Let's go home!" said Rick, over and over.

Still Ruddy did not understand. He leaped about, pawing aside the dried leaves. He was trying to find another box tortoise. Once he had uncovered a tortoise in the woods, and Rick had taken it home. That had been a great discovery for Ruddy.

"Maybe I can find another one of those funny, crawling things, that look like a stone, and which pull in their legs, head and tail as soon as I bark at them," thought Ruddy as he pawed among the leaves. "I'll try to find another. Maybe that's what Rick wants."

"No, I don't want anything like that!" said Rick, as he saw what his dog was doing. "No more turtles, Ruddy. Let's go home! I don't know which way it is, or I'd go. I'm all turned around, and if I go the wrong way I'll be more lost than I am now. Where is home, Ruddy?"

Rick was getting more and more uneasy. He was not exactly frightened, for he had often read of people becoming lost and spending a night in the woods.

"I won't mind that so much as long as Ruddy is with me," thought the boy. "But I'd rather be home. Maybe I can make Chot hear me now!"

He called and called again, Ruddy mingling his bark with the voice of his master. And though Rick seemed to call more loudly than did Ruddy, the dog's bark was heard farther. It is said that the bark of a dog can be heard farther than any other sound, and men who have gone up in balloons say that the last sounds that come to them, from the earth below, that seems to be dropping away beneath them, are the barkings of dogs. A dog's bark can be heard several miles.

But though Ruddy's bark was carried farther through the woods than was Rick's calling, those who heard Ruddy's "bow-wows" did not pay any attention to them. A dog barks so often, and so much, that few persons give any heed to it. All barks are alike to them, though there are really several different kinds, and each one means something different in dog language.

"It's no use," said Rick, after he had called aloud and shouted several times. "I guess Chot didn't come, or else he's lost too. We're both lost! I wonder what I can do to get home?"