Rick and Ruddy Part 8

Ruddy, the dog, looked up into the face of Rick, the boy. If Ruddy could have talked boy language he would have asked:

"What's the matter? Why are you stopping here instead of running along among the leaves? Come on, have a race! It's lots of fun! Throw a stick and I'll go after it!"

That was what Rick and Ruddy had been doing before Rick began to notice how late it was, or to think about how far he was from home, and to realize that he had not met his chum, Chot. Chot, whose real name was Charlie, was a little older than Rick, and knew his way better in the woods near Weed River and Silver Lake than did Rick.

"Ruddy, I--I guess we're lost," said Rick again.

"Bow-wow!" barked Ruddy. That was all he said that Rick could hear, and, in a way, the boy understood what that talk meant.

It was as if Ruddy had remarked:

"All right! I'm not afraid as long as I'm with you!"

For though often dogs may become frightened, because of some danger, they hardly ever show any sign of fear when they are with their master--be he a boy or man. It was as if the dog felt its master knew everything, and could get him, or any other dog, out of trouble.

And besides barking, Ruddy was talking in a language Rick could not even hear, much less understand, though, later on, he grew to know what his dog meant when he stood with head turned on the side, one ear c.o.c.ked a little forward and such a sharp look on his face. After he had barked once, to say, in dog talk: "All right!" Ruddy had gone on saying, in his silent, animal way:

"Don't worry, little master, I've been lost lots of times, and I always found myself. Leave it to me! I'll get you home all right!"

But Rick did not know this, and, for a time, Ruddy did not really think that Rick was worried or frightened. The dog had had such fun in the woods, playing with the boy, that he wanted to keep it up. Ruddy wanted to rustle through the dried leaves. He liked to hear the rattling sound they made. He wanted to chase more sticks, but Rick did not throw any.

"Ruddy, which way is home?" asked Rick, as he stood in the woods, and looked about him. "Where do we live?"

Ruddy could not quite get this thought. He looked at Rick, and he saw that his master was now beginning to be troubled. Dogs know when a person is in trouble more often than you think, and they can sympathize, or be sorry, for their master and others. But Ruddy was only a puppy and his thinking-out of things was not as clear as it became afterward. Just now he reasoned perhaps his master wanted to have some fun in a new way.

"Well, if he does," thought Ruddy to himself, "there are lots of games I haven't played with him yet. He doesn't care for chasing cats, so I'll find something else to chase. There are birds in these woods, I'll chase some of them!"

Giving a few short barks, and scrabbling about in the leaves, Ruddy leaped up and down in front of Rick. This was an invitation to come and play tag. Ruddy knew how to give that invitation, and he had often done it. That was one of the first games he had learned to play when he lived in the stable with his father and mother and the other little puppies.

"No, Ruddy," said Rick, as he saw his dog leaping about. "I don't want to do that now. Let's go home, Ruddy! Let's go home! I don't know the way, but maybe you do! Let's go home!"

Ruddy knew what that word "home" meant. Once or twice, when he had been tied up, as Rick and Mazie were about to start for school, the dog had broken loose and run after the master he loved so well. Then Rick would turn about and say, very sternly:

"Go home, Ruddy! Go back home!"

He would point to the house, and, with a sad look and with drooping tail, the red-brown puppy would slink back. He was a good dog to mind, was Ruddy.

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?"

He sat down on a log. Ruddy came up and put his cold nose close to Rick's face. As plainly as he could the dog was asking:

"What's the matter? Can't I help?"

"I want to go home, Ruddy! I want to go home!" said Rick. If he had been an older boy he might have started off by himself and have tried to find his home. But he was afraid of going the wrong way now. If only Ruddy would lead him!

As for the dog, if he had been by himself he would, as soon as he was ready, have trotted off in the direction of Belemere, and have gone straight to Rick's house. Once a dog has settled himself in a home he can, nearly always, find his way back to it, and sometimes even when he has been taken many miles away, in an automobile or a train. But, just now, Ruddy did not know that Rick wanted to go home.

"I guess he wants me to scare up a bird for him to chase," thought Ruddy, dog-fashion, of course. "That is the kind of fun he wants.

There's no fun sitting on a log and doing nothing. I'll chase a bird!"

Several times that day, on their walk through the woods, Ruddy had scrambled among the bushes and frightened out birds who were perched on the low branches of trees. Ruddy was a hunting dog and, in times past, the members of his family had thus driven birds out into the open for hunters to shoot at. Ruddy did not quite understand why Rick did not shoot at these birds. But of course Rick would not do that, even if he had had a gun; which he had not.

"I'll scare up some other birds," said Ruddy to himself. "That's what he must want."

With a cheerful bark, he plunged in among the bushes. Several birds flew out, and Ruddy barked all the louder. But instead of chasing after these fluttering creatures, as the dog expected he would, Rick sat on the log.

"Bow-wow!" barked Ruddy.

That meant, as plainly as he could say it:

"Come on! Help me catch a bird!"

"No! None of that," said Rick. "We must go home, Ruddy. Where is home, Ruddy?"

It took the dog some little time to find out what his master really wanted, and then it came to Ruddy in a flash. But perhaps it was more because the dog, himself, was getting hungry, and knew it was time for his supper to be given him in his kennel. He knew where that was, of course. That was "home" to him, and now he began to feel that it was time to go there.

Ruddy circled about in the leaves. His nose was close to the ground, and many smells came to him. Here a rabbit had leaped along, and over there a squirrel had jumped to the ground after a nut that had fallen from a tree. Ruddy knew these smells very well indeed, and another time he would have followed them along until he had come to where the rabbit was in his burrow, or the squirrel was perched high in some hollow tree.

But Ruddy had something else to do now. He was smelling among the leaves to catch the scent that led back along the way he and Rick had come--the trail back home--that is what Ruddy was smelling for. In a few moments it came to him. He knew he could find it when he wanted it, and here it was--through the clump of pines, down past where the willows drooped over the brook, up the hill, down a little hollow and then out on the road past Silver Lake and Weed River--that was the way home.

Ruddy knew it, even if Rick did not. With a bark the dog began to lead the way.

"Bow-wow!" he said again, and this time it was quite a different bark.

It was as if he said:

"Come along, Master! Now I know what you want! Home, of course! I'll lead you home. I know the path very well!"

Ruddy ran on ahead a little way and then turned around and waited for Rick to come to him. This time the boy understood. His dog was not playing in the leaves now, flushing birds or digging for turtles.