The story’s protagonist and hero, the hound Ranger has a happy puppyhood with his mother but is stolen from the farm where he lives by Gar Face, a cruel man who lives in a run-down shack in the forest by the Tartine Bayou. Gar Face uses Ranger as a hunting dog; he helps Gar Face hunt down, trap, and kill animals, and Gar Face sells their pelts. One day, Ranger steps in front of a bobcat that he was helping Gar Face hunt. Gar Face accidentally shoots Ranger, and the bobcat escapes. Furious, Gar Face kicks Ranger and chains him to a post of the shack, where Ranger stays, lame and in pain, for years to come.

Ranger bays a lonely song of sadness, which a pregnant calico cat hears as she passes nearby. That cat comes to live with Ranger in the Underneath (the space under the shack), which brings Ranger immeasurable joy. He becomes family to the cat and a surrogate father to the kittens she gives birth to. Ranger is devastated when Puck, the boy kitten, and the mother cat are taken by Gar Face and thrown into the creek in a sack to drown.