Where the Red Fern Grows

Billy carefully prepares his gear for hunting season. Papa tells him he won’t need much help at the farm, so Billy can hunt all he wants during the season. Mama doesn’t approve of his hunting and is worried about him, so Billy promises to tell his parents where he will be hunting in case something happens. Billy proudly realizes that his father speaks to him as if he’s a grown man, not a nearly-14-year-old boy.

The night the season begins, the entire family sees Billy and the hounds off. Mama says she will pray for him every night, making him nervous that something bad may happen after all.

Old Dan and Little Ann await him on the porch, as if they know the importance of this moment. It’s a beautiful, still night. Billy hears the baying of a hound in the distance, perhaps the one that haunted him last year. When he hears the first baying of Old Dan, tears fall from his eyes: “This was what I had prayed for, worked and sweated for, my own little hounds bawling on the trail of a river coon” (73).

The raccoon pulls its first trick on the hounds, leaping from a drift into the river. Both hounds are stumped for a long while, then Little Ann finally remembers her training and crosses the river, finding the trail again. The raccoon crosses the river again, climbs a tree, and seemingly disappears. When they’re about to give up, Little Ann finds the trail again, and they eventually tree the raccoon. The tree, however, is one of the biggest sycamores in the woods. Billy tries to leave, but the dogs don’t understand. Their pleading looks fire him up, and he decides to chop the tree down anyway.

Billy chops at the tree all night and through the morning, finally falling asleep against its trunk. Papa comes and finds him, saying they were all worried when he didn’t come home. He offers to help chop down the tree, but Billy refuses, saying he made an agreement with his dogs. If he doesn’t fulfill it himself, they’ll never believe in him again.

Papa sends Billy’s sister with some food for him and the hounds, and Billy keeps chopping at the tree. Night falls once more. 

Billy is about to collapse with exhaustion when Grandpa rolls up in his buggy. He tells Billy he must eat and rest if he’s to finish the monumental job of chopping down this immense tree. He shows Billy how to keep the raccoon treed while Billy goes home to recharge. He fabricates a scarecrow out of sticks, wire, old clothes and leaves. The raccoon will think it’s a real person and stay in the tree, at least for a few days.

Little Ann reluctantly comes when Billy calls, but they have to drag Old Dan from the tree and into Grandpa’s buggy. Mama prepares chicken and dumplings especially for Billy for dinner. As they eat, Billy muses that they must have treed a different raccoon than the original one they were trailing. Grandpa says no, it was the same raccoon, but had pulled a tricky move that most dogs would have missed. The raccoon backtracked along its own trail and then jumped onto a tree to hide until it thought the dogs gave up. When it came down, Little Ann must have heard or seen it. Grandpa says, “You mark my word, Billy, in no time at all that Little Ann will know every trick a coon can pull” (90).

Before leaving, Grandpa tells Billy that an East Coast fad of raccoon skin coats may drive up the price of hides. Before bed, Mama gives Billy a hot bath and rubs his sore muscles with liniment, but in the morning he’s still so sore he can barely put his clothes on.

When he goes to get the hounds, Papa says he may have heard Old Dan bawling in the night. Sure enough, Little Ann is alone in the doghouse. Old Dan has spent the night with the treed raccoon. When Mama realizes this, she voices her support for the first time: “I had no idea a dog loved to hunt that much. Yes, Billy, I can see now, and I want you to get him. I don’t care if you have to cut down every tree in those bottoms” (92-93).

When they reach the tree, Billy sees two dog bed indentations in the leaves, realizing that Little Ann stayed at the tree too, only coming back in the morning to fetch Billy. His pride soars.

His body is at its limit, however. Blisters begin popping all over his hands. He can’t go on. Just as he turns to leave, defeated, the tree begins to shake with the wind. None of the trees around the big sycamore seem affected. Billy watches in awe as another gust of wind hits the tree’s top branches and it finally begins to fall.

The raccoon races out and Old Dan runs straight into the trunk, hurting himself. Little Ann catches the raccoon by the river. It tears into her, and eventually Old Dan helps her kill it.

Returning to the tree for his ax, Billy laments killing the tree, a companion from his childhood. He apologizes, hoping the tree will understand. Returning home with his kill, his family greets him on the porch. Papa helps Billy skin the hide. Billy tells him he is convinced God helped him by blowing the tree over.