Where the Red Fern Grows

by Wilson Rawls

I had seen the time when an old hound like that had given his life so that I might live.

Yet those memories can be awakened and brought forth fresh and new, just by something you’ve seen, or something you’ve heard, or the sight of an old familiar face.

Although the old hound had no way of knowing it, he had stirred memories, and what priceless treasures they were. Memories of my boyhood days, an old K. C. Baking Powder can, and two little red hounds. Memories of a wonderful love, unselfish devotion, and death in its saddest form.

I remembered a passage from the Bible my mother had read to us: “God helps those who help themselves.”

I reached way back in Arkansas somewhere. By the time my fist had traveled all the way down to the Cherokee Strip, there was a lot of power behind it.

I looked up again to the names carved in the tree. Yes, it was all there like a large puzzle. Piece by piece, each fit perfectly until the puzzle was complete. It could not have happened without the help of an unseen power.

Theme of book- what was the purpose of the dogs? Build the life of a boy into a man, puzzling into the next step of life

so remember everything I taught you and I’m depending on you. Just put one up a tree and I’ll do the rest.”

If a man’s word isn’t any good, he’s no good himself.

I’m sure no one in the world can understand a young boy like his grandfather can. He drove up with a twinkle in his eyes and a smile on his whiskery old face.

Grandpa stood staring at my dogs. In a slow voice, as if he were picking his words, he said, “You know, I’ve always felt like there was something strange about those dogs. I don’t know just what it is, and I can’t exactly put my finger on it, yet I can feel it. Maybe it’s just my imagination. I don’t rightly know.”

“Men,” said Mr. Kyle, “people have been trying to understand dogs ever since the beginning of time. One never knows what they’ll do. You can read every day where a dog saved the life of a drowning child, or lay down his life for his master. Some people call this loyalty. I don’t. I may be wrong, but I call it love—the deepest kind of love.”

“It’s a shame that people all over the world can’t have that kind of love in their hearts,” he said. “There would be no wars, slaughter, or murder; no greed or selfishness. It would be the kind of world that God wants us to have—a wonderful world.”

I never saw my dogs when they got between the lion and me, but they were there. Side by side, they rose up from the ground as one. They sailed straight into those jaws of death, their small, red bodies taking the ripping, slashing claws meant for me.

So much of Billy’s life would be different if he didn’t have those specific dogs. In more ways than one, they saved his life time and again.

I looked at his grave and, with tears in my eyes, I voiced these words: “You were worth it, old friend, and a thousand times over.”

In my heart I knew that there in the grave lay a man’s best friend.

Love that is says “a man’s best friend”. He isn’t referring to mankind in general. He is remembering his best friends and who they were to him.

The story went on to say that only an angel could plant the seeds of a red fern, and that they never died; where one grew, that spot was sacred. Remembering the meaning of the legend, I turned and started hollering for Mama.

The dogs were a gift from heaven and to heaven they returned.