Where the Red Fern Grows

In the morning, Billy puts his puppies into their sack and they continues on their way. At about midday, Billy begins to recognize the terrain around him and he knows he is close to home. Billy is relieved to be in familiar territory—but he’s also nervous about facing his mother and father and explaining why he ran away from home. After deciding that he’ll simply tell his parents the truth and “weather the storm,” he relaxes and enjoys watching his puppies play. He thinks of different names he could give them, but traditional dog names don’t fit.

As Billy looks around, he sees two names, Dan and Ann, carved into a nearby sycamore tree, a heart drawn around them. Billy settles on “Old Dan” for the boy dog and “Little Ann” for the girl dog. As soon as he finishes naming the dogs, he looks around and he realizes that he is in the fishermen’s camp where he first found the magazine ad. He marvels at how, in the very place he first asked God to help him get his hound pups, he has named them.

Billy walks the final stretch home along the river and he nervously arrives at the front porch of his house. As he steps inside, he sees his family gathered together in the living room. His mother looks up at him—Billy can see that her face is full of worry and grief. Papa, however, greets Billy warmly and happily and he asks to see the puppies—he reveals that after Billy went missing, he himself went to Grandpa’s store, where Grandpa spilled the beans as to what Billy had been up to with the dogs. Billy apologizes profusely to his mother for causing her such worry. He then opens his sack and pulls out all the presents he bought at the general store—bolts of cloth for his mother, overalls for his father, and candy for his sisters.

Billy tells his family all about his adventure, from the kindness of the stationmaster to the treachery of the mountain lion’s call on the way back. When Billy’s father asks him how he liked town, Billy replies that he hated it and that he’d never want to live anywhere near other people. Billy’s father’s face grows solemn. Papa tells Billy that he and Mama don’t intend to live in the mountains forever—one day, Billy and his sisters may very well have to get used to living in town. The mountains, Papa says, are “no place to raise a family.” Mama quietly says that she’s been praying every day for the opportunity to give her children a life and an education in a town nearby. 

The next morning, Billy gets right to work building a doghouse. Papa fashions collars for the dogs out of tough leather. That night, Billy confides in his mother about how hard he prayed for his dogs. He also tells her about the coincidence of finding his dogs’ names carved on the sycamore tree in the fishermen’s camp. Mama asks Billy if he believes God helped him after hearing his prayer, and Billy says that he knows in his heart that was the case.