"What you got there?"

"Oh, a red pup I picked up," was the answer. "The old ship needs a mascot and I brought this one along. I always wanted a dog."

"You don't act as if you cared much for this one," spoke the first man.

"Oh, I didn't hurt him," was the reply. But Ruddy was hurt, and from then on he feared that man.

He did not remember much--but there was a confused memory of being on a floor that heaved up and down, and slid this way and that as the floors, or decks of boats always do. And then came a great storm wave--Ruddy felt himself washed overboard and into the sea.

It was not the first time he had been in water, so he knew how to swim.

But he had never tried before to swim in such a smother and swirl of salty waves, where the wind seemed to blow away his gasping breath.

Still he swam on, until he was cast up on the beach and he met the coast guard.

And even the guard had seemed to drive Ruddy away. Of course poor Ruddy was mistaken, but that was his thought. He slunk up among the sand dunes.

That little bit of bread and meat meant much to him, for he was starving. It gave him a little courage. In the storm and darkness he wandered among the dunes, or little sand hills, until presently he found himself down on the beach again, where the wind and rain and salty spume were worse than ever.

"Oh, if I only had a home--some warm place into which I could crawl!"

That would have been Ruddy's thought if he could have spoken.

How he did want a home!

And how Rick, sleeping in his little white bed, did want a dog!

CHAPTER III

RICK AND RUDDY

Washed overboard from the deck of the vessel, not long after he had been roughly tossed into a box by the man who wanted a lucky "mascot," Ruddy had swam ash.o.r.e. The food given him by the coast guard had dulled, just a little, the gnawing pangs of hunger, and now, as Ruddy crouched among the sand hills, trying to find shelter from the storm, he felt the first gleam of hope that had come to him in many a day.

"Maybe I'll find a home after all," he thought to himself, for I believe that dogs can talk and think--not as we do, of course; perhaps sometimes not as well, and again, perhaps, better. But they do think. And so Ruddy, which was to be his name, as it was now his color, thought and hoped.

The man had driven him away--so Ruddy believed, but in this he was wrong. Very well. It was not the first time he had been driven away. He would have to look for someone else who would feed him, or at least give him the chance to feed himself. He would have to look for someone else whom he might love as only a dog can love--with all his heart and being.

"I'll stay here until morning," reasoned Ruddy, dog-fashion. "It's too dark now to see where to go, and it's raining too hard. I'll stay here in the sand until morning, then I can see better."

Dogs do not have very good eyesight--not nearly as good as cats. In fact a dog can not see far enough to tell his master from among a group of other boys, if his master is more than a few hundred feet away. But if the wind is blowing toward the dog, and he once catches a whiff of the scent, or smell, of the boy he knows so well, he does not need eyes to tell him what he wants to know. An eagle could not dart with any more sureness toward an object than can a dog, once he catches the smell of his master.

And Ruddy, like all dogs, poor of sight even in daytime, and hardly able to see at all in the dark, knew it was useless to try to look for a home in that blackness and storm. A cat might have found her way to where she wanted to go, but Ruddy did not even know where to look for a home. He was a wanderer--an outcast.

Up among the sand dunes grew clumps of tall, coa.r.s.e gra.s.s. One of these clumps would make a resting place for the dog. He found a ma.s.s of green stems that were thicker than the others, found it by smelling his way and feeling, rather than by sight, and then made himself a sort of nest, by turning around and around before he curled up to lie down.

Nearly all dogs--even the tiny poodle that sleeps on a blue cushion in some lady's parlor--turn around and around on their bed before settling down to go to sleep. Perhaps the dogs themselves do not know why they do this, but it is because all dogs were once wild, like wolves. In fact dogs really come from wolves, ages back. And wild animals, going to sleep in the woods or jungle, have to be careful of where they make their bed. If they curled up in the first bunch of gra.s.s they came to, they might lie down on some snake, or scorpion, which would bite them.

So, ages back, the wild dogs, little different from wolves, got in the habit of trampling their gra.s.sy bed, walking around and around in it.

They did not do this to make it snug and cozy, as perhaps a cat might do. They did it to trample on and drive out any snakes that might be hidden in the gra.s.s.

And so Ruddy, before he curled up to try to go to sleep in the sedge gra.s.s of the sand dunes, did just as his wild, wolfish ancestors had done--he trampled the gra.s.s. Of course there were no snakes in it, but Ruddy must make sure in the only way he knew.

"There, I guess this will do until morning," said Ruddy to himself, thinking in dog-fashion, of course.

Then he curled up and went to sleep. He was tired from his swim to sh.o.r.e through the storm, and he was still hungry. The bit of bread and meat the coast guard had given him was hardly enough for a small kitten, and Ruddy was quite a large puppy now. But it was the best he could get.

"Maybe, in the morning, I'll find a home," thought Ruddy. "The kind of a home I used to have when I was very little."

And Rick, sleeping in his white bed, safe and snug and warm away from the north-easter, awakened for a moment and stared up at the ceiling. He heard the beat of rain on the dark window of his room.

"Maybe, when it's morning, I'll have a dog," he whispered. "I--I hope it isn't a cat!"

Perhaps Ruddy dreamed of the happy days of his smallest puppyhood. Those days had been happy, for he had lived them in a fine barn, with his mother, and several other little reddish-brown puppies like himself.

They tumbled about in the straw, and there were horses that Ruddy learned to love, in the short time he knew them, almost as much as he loved a certain boy and girl who raced out from the big house, every morning, to look at, laugh over and play with the puppies, of whom Ruddy was one.

Then had come sad days, when he was sold and taken away from the tumbling, weak-legged brothers and sisters, and the mother dog, against whose warm flanks Ruddy loved to cuddle.

At first these changed days had not been unhappy, for Ruddy was given a home in another barn, where there was only one horse, instead of many, and where a man came to feed him every morning. But a tramp had stolen Ruddy away, and then had left him behind in the woods, too lazy to take the little dog with him.

After that Ruddy had taken part in many adventures, coming at last to live in the slums of a city, where a man claimed him as his own. And the man had taken Ruddy with him on the ship, and then had come a terrible time in the storm, when the red-brown puppy was washed overboard.

All these thoughts and remembrances fleetingly came to Ruddy as he was curled up in the sedge gra.s.s, sheltered as much as he could be sheltered from the rain and salty spume-scattering wind.

The longest night must have an end, and so to Ruddy daylight finally came, and, with it, the breaking of the storm. It was cold, though it was early September, but September was being crowded off the calendar by October, and the rays of the early sun, as the big, golden ball seemed to rise from the heaving ocean, had little warmth in them. It was as if the sun's rays came from a looking gla.s.s.

Cold, shivery and hungry, Ruddy crept from his nest in the gra.s.s, even as his jungle ancestors might have crept from theirs. But there was no warmth to greet him, and he did not know where to get any food.

"I'm certainly hungry!" said Ruddy to himself. "I wonder where I can get something to eat?"

Down a little way from the sand dunes stretched the beach, with the surf pounding on it. Here and there a stray fish was cast up, and, had Ruddy known it, this might have provided a breakfast for him. But Ruddy was not a cat. He was not specially fond of fish, and he was afraid of the ocean--at any rate for a time. He had nearly been drowned in it, and he did not want to go near the big waves again; at least right away. So he turned from the beach and, heading inland, sniffed the air, with head held as high as he could raise it.

Ruddy remembered that his mother, among the lessons she had taught him, had told him how much depended on his nose.

"You can't tell so much about a thing by _looking_ at it as you can by _smelling_ of it," she had said. That is why Ruddy, as all dogs do, always smelled of anything before he ate it. His eyesight could not be depended on, but his nose could. And now Ruddy was sniffing the air.

It was not because he wanted to eat air for his breakfast, but the air, and the wind, which is only air in motion, might bring to him the whiff, or smell, that would tell him where he could find food.

Now from the ocean came the smell of the salty sea. Ruddy was sure he had had enough of that. But as he turned his nose insh.o.r.e he caught the smell of men and boys and horses--the human smell, so to speak, and he knew that there, if anywhere, he would find something to eat.

And so, traveling on rather weak and uncertain legs, because he needed food, Ruddy started toward the little village of Belemere, where Rick, the boy, lived. Though, of course, Ruddy did not yet know that.

It was early, for the sun was just rising, and not many persons were up and about. Here a milkman was going his rounds, and soon the baker would follow, for even in the little fishing town few did their own baking, at least of their daily bread, and there were scarcely any cows.

Ruddy looked at the rattling milk wagon. He knew what was in the cans and bottles, and he would have loved a drink of milk. But the man on the wagon had not time for small, brown puppies, even if he had seen Ruddy, which perhaps he did not.

The baker, too, might have tossed him a roll, for there were many in the wooden bin back of the seat. But the baker did not give Ruddy a thought.