BIG REDDY, STRATEGIST 49 
with the aid now of his keen scent and keen eyes 
as well as his cars, he would suddenly go up in 
the air, clear off the ground, and come down with 
his two front paws on the mouse. A mouse, of 
course, wasn’t more than a mouthful, but it 
helped, between meals. 
It didn’t take Reddy long, either, to learn what 
dogs in his part of the world to fear, what dogs 
to respect, and what dogs merely to laugh at. He 
may have made still further distinctions, for all I 
know, but these three he certainly conveyed by 
his actions so even a man could see. The only 
dog in the whole town he really feared was Lucy, 
a smallish fox hound belonging to a “ gentleman 
farmer ” down the road, who occasionally hunted. 
Lucy came from Kentucky, and she was a thor- 
oughbred in every bone and sinew. She had a 
nose that knew no other smell when once it was 
laid to a track. She had a challenging, trium- 
phant, trumpet bay, and she had as much speed as 
Reddy, on the level at least, and almost as much 
endurance. Her he undoubtedly feared, and so 
did every other fox in the region. 
Then there were perhaps three or four more 
