OVER THE SNOW
Chot and Tom, standing the first guard watch outside the log cabin, had been walking around it, now and then stepping inside to get a drink of water. They did not go far away, for what they wanted to see, if such a thing should happen, was the coming back of the sailor or the junk man.
For the first hour of their watch nothing had happened. It had been too early, perhaps. And perhaps the junk man had no idea of coming back for his horse and wagon until morning. At any rate Tom and Chot walked silently around the log cabin, now and then listening to see if they could hear any strange noises.
They heard noises—plenty of them—noises of the night, but they were not strange to these boys who had lived much of their lives in what was part country and part town.
There were the chirp of the crickets, the disputing calls of the Katy-dids and the Katy-didn'ts, the whistling call of the tree toad and, now and then, the distant bark of a dog. As I have told you, the sound of a dog's bark carries a long way, especially at night.
"Wonder if that's Rick's dog?" asked Tom of his chum in a low voice as they met in front of the log cabin door.
"It might be," agreed Chot. "I hope we can get Ruddy back."
"So do I," added Tom.
The two boys had divided the cabin neighborhood into two sections. Each one walked half way around the shack at intervals, so that part of the time they met in back, and part of the time in front, like two coast guards meeting each other on their beach patrols.
After a while it grew more silent as the creatures of the night ceased their calling, and seemed to go to sleep. It was colder, too, and Tom and Chot were glad they had put on warm clothes. But they rather liked the time they were having. As Boy Scouts they had often camped out, but never for the reason they were now doing it—to help a chum get back his dog.
"Well, our time is 'most up," remarked Tom, as he looked at the radium-dial of a wrist watch his father had given him. "It'll soon be twelve," he added.
"Then Rick and Sam will come out," spoke Chot. "Wouldn't it be funny if Rick should find his own dog when it was his turn to be on guard."
"It would be dandy!" said Tom. "But I guess——"
All at once the two boys heard a little crackling and rustling in the bushes which grew almost up to the old log cabin.
"Someone's coming!" whispered Chot.
"Yes," agreed Tom, in a low voice. "I wonder who it is?"
And just then there came the bark of a dog close at hand—the bark of a dog in the night.
Hearing it so near, Tom and Chot, for the moment, were quite startled. Then Chot exclaimed:
"It sounds just like Ruddy!"
He spoke aloud and the dog heard him—heard his own name. This was enough for the brown setter, for he it was who had barked. He had smelled his way back along the path over which the sailor had led him, until he reached the log cabin. Then had come to him the odor he knew so well—the scent of Chot with whom Ruddy had romped and played.
Then Ruddy barked loudly—the first, real bark he had given since he had been cut loose by the good sailor. And it was this bark that Chot and Tom heard.
"Do you s'pose it is Ruddy?" asked Tom.
"I hope so," murmured Chot.
Then the dog heard more plainly the voices—the voices of boys whom he knew. It was almost as good as if he had heard Rick's voice.
Once more Ruddy barked, and then he sprang forward, straight toward the cabin and the two lads on guard. Dimly, in the darkness of the night, Tom and Chot saw a dog bounding toward them, along the path that led to the front door of the old cabin.
"There he is!" cried Tom.
For a moment Chot thought perhaps it might be some other dog, maybe some half-wild sheep-killing dog that had come to dispute with them for the possession of the old cabin. But, an instant later, Ruddy was leaping and barking about his two friends, trying to get into their very arms, it seemed, he was so glad to be back with them again.
And how he did bark!
"Where's Rick? Where's that boy Rick?" Ruddy seemed to be saying.
"Oh, Ruddy! You did come back! We've found you! Rick will be so glad!" cried Tom. "We must tell Rick that Ruddy is back!" he added.
Chot rushed into the cabin and shook Rick, who was asleep in one of the bunks.
"Get up! Get up, Rick!" Chot called.
Slowly and sleepily Rick opened his eyes.
"What's the matter? Is it my turn to stand watch?" he asked.
And then he was almost smothered by the rush of Ruddy, who fairly threw himself upon the bunk which held his master, and the dog filled the cabin with his loud bark, so that Scout Master Taylor and the other boys were awakened.
"What is it? What's the matter?" asked the Scout Master, for he slept off in one corner, and all he could see, in the dim light of the lantern, was a mass of moving forms—several boys and a dog.
"Ruddy's come back!" cried Tom. "Ruddy is here!"
"He came up to us when we were on guard outside," explained Chot. "And he barked!"
"Is it really Ruddy?" asked Mr. Taylor.
"Oh, yes, it's Ruddy! It's my dog, all right!" cried Rick.
"Oh, yes, it's Ruddy! It's my dog all right!" cried Rick. And it needed but one look to show how glad the dog and his boy-master were to be together again.
Then the lantern was turned higher and, when matters had quieted down a little, it was seen that Ruddy carried around his neck a collar of rope.
"He's been tied up!" exclaimed Rick. "The sailor and the junk man must have tied him up so he couldn't get away."
"And he broke loose," said Tom.
"No, this rope has been cut," said the Scout Master, as he looked carefully at the end of the heavy cord on the dog's neck. "This has been cut by a sharp knife. If some one tied Ruddy up some one cut him loose."
And so, without having seen it done, Mr. Taylor told exactly what had happened. He had read the "signs," just as Indians and scouts of the plains used to read signs, and as Boy Scouts of to-day are learning to do.
"Ruddy had a regular collar on," said Rick, as he looked at the harsh rope around his pet's neck. "I wonder where it is?"
"Well, I guess the junk man took it off to sell it," said Sam Brown. "Those fellows will sell anything they get that way."
"I'll cut this rope off," went on Rick. "It may hurt him."
"Hadn't you better leave it on?" asked Tom. "You'll want to tie him up, Rick, so he won't be taken away again."
"Oh, I guess nobody will take him now!" boasted Rick. "He'll stay right in here the rest of the night."
And that is what Ruddy did. The dog was given some food and water and then he lay down beneath Rick's bunk and refused to move from there. Ruddy knew when he had found what he wanted.
Of course there was no more need of standing guard that night. As the recovery of Ruddy was all that was desired, Mr. Taylor said there was no use in sitting up, just to catch the junk man and sailor.
"We have your dog," he said to Rick, "and the most we could do would be to have the men arrested. And perhaps it would be hard to prove that they really enticed Ruddy away. So let them go, if they come."
But they did not return during the night, neither the sailor, nor the junk man after his horse and wagon. For the rather bony steed was still tied to the old log cabin and the wagon load of junk was in the grass-grown yard in the morning.
"Well, now we'll have breakfast and go home with Ruddy," said Rick, as morning dawned and the boys, rather stiff and cold it must be confessed, arose and stretched themselves out of the bunks. They had been obliged to "double-up" when it was decided that it was no longer needful to stand watch as the bunks were only intended to hold four.
"Yes, we'll be getting back," the Scout Master said. "We have just about enough food for breakfast."
"Won't you come up to our house?" invited Sam Brown. "Mother will be glad to have you."
"Yes, come on!" urged his brother Pete. "I'll run ahead and tell 'em you're coming," and before they could stop him he had sped away. He came back a little later shouting:
"Come on! Mother's all ready for you! She's going to have pancakes and sausage and hot coffee and syrup and gravy and everything! Come on!"
And you may well believe that Rick and his friends did not pass by an invitation like this.
Ruddy had a good breakfast, too, though he did not eat at the table with the boys and the Scout Master. And between bites the boys told the farmer and his wife of the events of the night.
"Those junk fellows ought to be cleaned out!" declared Mr. Brown. "They're as bad as the Gypsies! We farmers will have to get together and drive 'em away."
After breakfast preparations were made for the boys to go back to their homes. As it was Saturday there would be no school, so they planned to have a good time after reaching Belemere.
"But first I want to take a look at the log cabin," said Mr. Brown. "If those junk fellows are around I'm going to give 'em notice to clear out."
However he did not have that chance, for when Rick and his friends reached the old log cabin where they had camped out for the night the junk man's horse, and the wagon loaded with odds and ends, were gone.
"They came and got 'em while we were eating!" exclaimed Mr. Brown. "They must have been watching their chance."
And, very likely, the men were. At any rate there was no further sign of them, and as Rick had Ruddy back, and as it was thought best not to get into a dispute, just then, with the junk men living in the ramshackle old house near the swamp, nothing was done about it.
"But we farmers will get together and drive those fellows out!" declared Mr. Brown. "If they'll take dogs they'll take other things, especially now with winter coming on. We must clear them out!"
Then Rick, with Ruddy following joyously, the dog now and then running back and sniffing at the legs of the boys, started for home.
"We did what we set out to do," said Mr. Taylor, "and that is generally the way with Boy Scouts. But we didn't do it in just the way we planned."
"But we got Ruddy back!" exclaimed Rick, "and I'm going to be a Boy Scout!"
"That's the way to talk!" cried Chot.
Mr. and Mrs. Dalton and Mazie listened eagerly to the story Rick told—of the night spent in the log cabin, and how Ruddy came back.
"But who cut him loose?" asked Rick's father.
"That's what we don't know," said the boy. "It must have been somebody who liked dogs."
And it was not until some time later that they heard about the sailor, who, with his knife, slashed the rope that kept Ruddy a prisoner.
For several days after this adventure Rick kept close watch over Ruddy, as, indeed, Mrs. Dalton did when Rick was at school. The whole Dalton family, as well as the boys and girls in the neighborhood of Rick's house, had come to know and care for the brown setter. The setter is a very lovable sort of dog, not perhaps as strong in character as a bull, a collie or Airedale, but of a disposition that makes you love him in spite of the tricks he sometimes plays.
But as the days passed, and neither the ragged sailor nor the still more ragged junk man was seen in Belemere, Rick began to feel that his dog was safe.
"I guess he won't try to take him again, Rick," said Sig Bailey, the coast guard. "And if I see that sailor along the beach again I'll tell him what I think of him!"
But the sailor did not come again for a long time.
Winter was now at hand. Several times the clouds had seemed to promise snow, and the hopes of the boys and girls who had sleds rose high. But the hopes came to naught, for the clouds blew away without sending down the sifting, white flakes.
At last, however, the glorious days of winter really came. One morning when Rick jumped out of bed and looked from the window, he saw a sight that gladdened his heart.
"Oh, Mazie!" he cried. "It's snowing! It's snowing!"
And Mazie took up the happy cry:
"It's snowing! It's snowing!"
Down in the kitchen, where he was having a warm breakfast, Ruddy barked joyously.
"Oh, what fun we'll have!" chanted Rick. "We'll ride down hill, we'll make a snow man, a snow house, a fort and everything! Oh, what fun we'll have!"
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.