"Is--is he really your dog?" asked Rick again, slowly.

"Well, don't you see how he comes to me?" asked Sig with a laugh, as he patted the brown head. "I found him last night. Washed off some wreck, I reckon. I gave him a bit of my snack, and then I got more from Bill Park. Told the pup to wait up among the dunes for me, where the wind didn't blow so hard, but he must have run along for I didn't see him after that."

"He--he came right here to me," spoke Rick. "I--I wanted a dog a long while. I--I prayed for him and he came. But if--if he's your dog, Mr.

Bailey----"

"Oh, shucks! He isn't my dog; that is special!" exclaimed the coast guard. He really had no idea of claiming Ruddy, but was only teasing Rick. And when he saw how badly the boy felt, Sig had not the heart to keep up the little fun he was having.

"I don't want him," the coast guard went on. "Course he's a nice pup, but my wife's got a cat, and they might not get along good together. As I say, I saw him on the beach in the storm last night. Must have been washed off some craft, and he swam ash.o.r.e. Keep him for all of me!"

"Oh, thanks! Thanks!" cried Rick. "Oh, he's my dog after all! He's mine!

Did you hear, mother!" he exclaimed. "He's a dog from the ocean, just like Mazie said, and he's mine!"

Again Rick threw his arms about the wiggling, brown puppy whose tail was wagging so joyously. Ruddy knew when he was loved, and he began to have great hopes for the future. Surely a happier day was dawning for him.

"Did you really find the dog on the beach?" asked Mr. Dalton, as he came out to go to work.

"Yes, he's a regular sea-dog!" laughed the guard. "Poor pup! He doesn't look as if he'd had a very good time. Seems sort of thin!"

"Yes, he does need filling out," agreed Mr. Dalton, with a glance at Ruddy's ribs that plainly showed through the thin sides. "Well, we'll keep him for a day or so, anyhow."

"Can't I keep him always, Dad?" asked Rick.

"I don't know. Better settle that with your mother," was the answer. "I don't mind having a dog, 'specially such a nice one as this seems to be.

But my wife's sort of afraid about Mazie and a dog," he added to the coast guard.

"A good dog doesn't bite--that is bite children," declared Mr. Bailey.

"It's queer how even a dog that's surly and snappy to strangers will let a baby pull his tail and ears, and never so much as growl. If you like dogs I'd let Rick keep this one. You won't have any trouble about him biting Mazie."

And the little girl herself, coming out just then, seemed to have no fear of her brother's new pet. For she put her arms around the neck of Ruddy and he nestled his head close against her.

"My! What a lot of friends I'm making all of a sudden!" said Ruddy to himself, in a way all dogs have of thinking.

"Where you going to keep your pet when you go to school?" asked Mr.

Dalton of his son. "We haven't a good place for a dog."

"He can sleep in the box where I used to keep my rabbits," Rick answered. "I'll make it into a kennel for him."

"Yes, that might answer," agreed Mr. Dalton. "I'll help you fix it up when I come home to-night. If we're going to keep a dog we must keep him right--give him a warm, clean kennel to start with. And be sure he has plenty of water, Rick. Dogs need more water than lots of other animals.

Give him fresh water three or four times a day."

"I guess he got plenty of _salt_ water, swimming in through the waves last night," spoke the coast guard, as he walked on toward his home. "A little bit of fresh would be a change for him."

Ruddy was thirsty, and he quickly lapped up the water that Rick brought to him in a clean basin. And how glad Ruddy was that the water was _clean_. All animals, even pigs, love to be clean and to have clean food, just as much as we do.

"Are you going to let Rick keep this dog?" asked Mrs. Dalton, as she came out in the yard, and watched Ruddy following Rick and Mazie about in the gra.s.s.

"Well, we might try it," said her husband slowly. "He appears like a nice, clean puppy. And a boy and dog seem to go together, somehow."

"But Mazie----" began the mother.

"I guess she likes him as much as Rick does. Let him stay a while. If he makes trouble, of course we'll have to get rid of him," he added in a low voice. "But we'll give Rick and Ruddy a chance together. Quite a team they make--Rick and Ruddy!" and he smiled as he saw the boy toss a stick, which Ruddy ran after and brought back to his little master.

"Well, I hope it will be all right," said Mrs. Dalton, with something like a sigh. "And he does seem like a nice dog. Come, Rick!" she called.

"Time to get ready for school!"

"Yes'm!" answered the boy, and he came running in more promptly than he sometimes did. Somehow Rick felt that if he were to be allowed to keep the dog he must be "on his mark," and give no chance for complaints.

"I'll tie him up so he won't run after me," Rick said. "You'll feed him and give him water while I'm gone; won't you, Mother?" he asked.

"Yes, I'll look after him," promised Mrs. Dalton. "But don't be thinking so much of your new dog that you forget your lessons."

"Oh, he really _is_ my dog; isn't he?" exclaimed Rick in delight. "I always wanted a dog but I never thought I'd get one. Now I have! Yes, I'll study good and hard to-day!" he promised.

Ruddy did not take very kindly to being tied to the side of the box in which Rick had once kept some pet rabbits. At first the dog tried to pull loose from the soft rope about his neck, and follow Rick and Mazie, who soon went down the street together to school. But Ruddy knew what it was to be tied up, though not since the happy days of his early puppyhood had he so wanted to break away and follow the beloved boy-master as he wanted to follow now.

"Stay there! I'll come back soon!" called Rick, as he turned for a last look at his new pet.

"Yes, and I'll come, too!" added Mazie. "I can like your dog; can't I, Rick?" she asked.

"Sure!" answered her brother. "We'll both like him and he'll like us, and he won't bite you, Mazie."

"I'm not afraid," she said.

Ruddy pulled and tugged at the rope once or twice and then, giving a sad little howl and whine, as if saying he would make the best of it, he began to look about his new home.

The first thing Ruddy noticed was the rabbit smell--the smell of wild creatures--about his kennel. For though Rick's rabbits were tame, still they had had that smell of the wild, of the open fields and the thick woods--a smell that made Ruddy want to tear loose and go racing among the trees, scattering the dried leaves about. Ruddy had never hunted wild things, but, coming from a race of hunting dogs, the feeling was there in his blood. He whimpered and whined as he smelt about the cracks of the box. He was trying to understand where the rabbits had gone, for they were not in sight, though the smell remained.

Then, as Rick's mother came out with some pieces of carpet to make a bed for the puppy, and as she gave him a large bone on which to gnaw, Ruddy forgot about the rabbits for the time.

The bone interested him more. It was a large bone, with very little meat on it, and what there was took a deal of gnawing to get off. But that was good for Ruddy, whether he knew it or not, for it made his teeth stronger. The more a dog gnaws the better his teeth become, and a dog's teeth are the only weapons he has. A cat has claws and also teeth, but a dog's claws are of scarcely any use to drive away anything that attacks him. He has only his teeth.

So Ruddy gnawed the bone, drank a little of the fresh water and then he settled himself for a sleep. Around and around he turned on the piece of carpet Mrs. Dalton had spread in his kennel. Just as the old wolf-dogs and jungle hounds had turned around and around to drive out any stray snakes, so Ruddy turned. And then he went to sleep, waiting for Rick to come home from school.

As for Rick, I'm afraid he didn't study quite as well as he might have done if he had not been thinking so much about his dog. Once, during the day, he wrote a note, and tossed it to his chum, Chot Benson.

"I got a dog!"

That was what Rick's note said.

"Where did you get him? Is he a hunting dog?" asked Chot in his answering note.

Then, before Rick had a chance to flip over an answer in reply, the teacher saw what was going on, and, as it was against the rule to pa.s.s notes in school, both boys had to stay in five minutes after the others had left the cla.s.s room. It was because of this that Mazie reached home before her brother. And, not stopping to go in the house, she hurried to the back yard.

"Ruddy! Ruddy! Where are you?" she called.

With a joyful yelp and bark the dog came from inside the kennel, wagging his tail until it thumped against the sides like the sticks of a drum.

Happy and joyous, Ruddy leaped about Mazie as far as his rope would let him, and the little girl was trying to loosen it from around his neck when her brother and Chot, released at last from their punishment, came racing into the yard.