He didn’t say nothin’ to that—just yanked me to my feet, faced me towards the gin mill above mentioned, and exerted considerable pressure on my arm in urgin’ of me forward.
“You ain’t so much of a dreamer, after all,” thinks I. “In important matters you are plumb decisive.”
We sat down at little tables, and my friend ordered a beer and a chicken sandwich.
“Chickens,” says he, gazin’ at the sandwich, “is a dollar apiece in this country, and plumb scarce. Did you ever pause to ponder over the returns chickens would give on a small investment? Say you start with ten hens. Each hatches out thirteen aigs, of which allow a loss of say six for childish accidents. At the end of two years that flock has increased to six hundred and twenty. At the end of the third year—”
He had the medicine tongue! Ten days later him and me was occupyin’ of an old ranch fifty mile from anywhere. When they run stage-coaches this joint used to be a road-house. The outlook was on about a thousand little brown foothills. A road two miles four rods two foot eleven inches in sight run by in front of us. It come over one foothill and disappeared over another. I know just how long it was, for later in the game I measured it.
Out back was about a hundred little wire chicken corrals filled with chickens. We had two kinds. That was the doin’s of Tuscarora. My pardner called himself Tuscarora Maxillary. I asked him once if that was his real name.
“It’s the realest little old name you ever heerd tell of,” says he. “I know, for I made it myself—liked the sound of her. Parents ain’t got no rights to name their children. Parents don’t have to be called them names.”
Well, these chickens, as I said, was of two kinds. The first was these low-set, heavy-weight propositions with feathers on their laigs, and not much laigs at that, called Cochin Chinys. The other was a tall ridiculous outfit made up entire of bulgin’ breast and gangle laigs. They stood about two foot and a half tall, and when they went to peck the ground their tail feathers stuck straight up to the sky. Tusky called ’em Japanese Games.
“Which the chief advantage of them chickens is,” says he, “that in weight about ninety per cent. of ’em is breast meat. Now my idee is, that if we can cross ’em with these Cochin Chiny fowls we’ll have a low-hung, heavy-weight chicken runnin’ strong on breast meat. These Jap Games is too small, but if we can bring ’em up in size and shorten their laigs, we’ll shore have a winner.”
That looked good to me, so we started in on that idee. The theery was bully, but she didn’t work out. The first broods we hatched growed up with big husky Cochin Chiny bodies and little short necks, perched up on laigs three foot long. Them chickens couldn’t reach ground nohow. We had to build a table for ’em to eat off, and when they went out rustlin’ for themselves they had to confine themselves to side-hills or flyin’ insects. Their breasts was all right, though—“And think of them drumsticks for the boardin’-house trade!” says Tusky.
So far things wasn’t so bad. We had a good grub-stake. Tusky and me used to feed them chickens twict a day, and then used to set around watchin’ the playful critters chase grasshoppers up and down the wire corrals, while Tusky figgered out what’d happen if somebody was dumfool enough to gather up somethin’ and fix it in baskets or wagons or such. That was where we showed our ignorance of chickens.
One day in the spring I hitched up, rustled a dozen of the youngsters into coops, and druv over to the railroad to make our first sale. I couldn’t fold them chickens up into them coops at first, but then I stuck the coops up on aidge and they worked all right, though I will admit they was a comical sight. At the railroad one of them towerist trains had just slowed down to a halt as I come up, and the towerists was paradin’ up and down allowin’ they was particular enjoyin’ of the warm Californy sunshine. One old terrapin with gray chin whiskers, projected over, with his wife, and took a peek through the slats of my coop. He straightened up like some one had touched him off with a red-hot poker.
“Stranger,” said he, in a scared kind of whisper, “what’s them?”
“Them’s chickens,” says I.
He took another long look.
“Marthy,” says he to the old woman, “this will be about all! We come out from Ioway to see the Wonders of Californy, but I can’t go nothin’ stronger than this. If these is chickens, I don’t want to see no Big Trees.”
Well, I sold them chickens all right for a dollar and two bits, which was better than I expected, and got an order for more. About ten days later I got a letter from the commission house.
“We are returnin’ a sample of your Arts and Crafts chickens with the lovin’ marks of the teeth still onto him,” says they. “Don’t send any more till they stops pursuin’ of the nimble grasshopper. Dentist bill will foller.”
With the letter came the remains of one of the chickens. Tusky and I, very indignant, cooked her for supper. She was tough, all right. We thought she might do better biled, so we put her in the pot over night. Nary bit. Well, then we got interested. Tusky kep’ the fire goin’ and I rustled greasewood. We cooked her three days and three nights. At the end of that time she was sort of pale and frazzled, but still givin’ points to three-year-old jerky on cohesion and other uncompromisin’ forces of Nature. We buried her then, and went out back to recuperate.
There we could gaze on the smilin’ landscape, dotted by about four hundred long-laigged chickens swoopin’ here and there after grasshoppers.
“We got to stop that,” says I.
“We can’t,” murmured Tusky, inspired. “We can’t. It’s born in ’em; it’s primal instinct, like the love of a mother for her young, and it can’t be eradicated! Them chickens is constructed by a divine providence for the express purpose of chasin’ grasshoppers, just as the beaver is made for building dams, and the cow-puncher is made for whisky and faro-games. We can’t keep ’em from it. If we was to shut ’em in a dark cellar, they’d flop after imaginary grasshoppers in their dreams, and die emaciated in the midst of plenty. Jimmy, we’re up agin the Cosmos, the oversoul—” Oh, he had the medicine tongue, Tusky had, and risin’ on the wings of eloquence that way, he had me faded in ten minutes. In fifteen I was wedded solid to the notion that the bottom had dropped out of the chicken business. I think now that if we’d shut them hens up, we might have—still, I don’t know; they was a good deal in what Tusky said.
“Tuscarora Maxillary,” says I, “did you ever stop to entertain that beautiful thought that if all the dumfoolishness possessed now by the human race could be gathered together, and lined up alongside of us, the first feller to come along would say to it, ‘Why, hello, Solomon!’”
We quit the notion of chickens for profit right then and there, but we couldn’t quit the place. We hadn’t much money, for one thing, and then we kind of liked loafin’ around and raisin’ a little garden truck, and—oh, well, I might as well say so, we had a notion about placers in the dry wash back of the house—you know how it is. So we stayed on, and kept a-raisin’ these long-laigs for the fun of it. I used to like to watch ’em projectin’ around, and I fed ’em twict a day about as usual.
So Tusky and I lived alone there together, happy as ducks in Arizona. About onc’t in a month somebody’d pike along the road. She wasn’t much of a road, generally more chuck-holes than bumps, though sometimes it was the other way around. Unless it happened to be a man horseback or maybe a freighter without the fear of God in his soul, we didn’t have no words with them; they was too busy cussin’ the highways and generally too mad for social discourses.
One day early in the year, when the ’dobe mud made ruts to add to the bumps, one of these automobeels went past. It was the first Tusky and me had seen in them parts, so we run out to view her.
“Which them folks don’t seem to be enjoyin’ of the scenery,” says I to Tusky. “Do you reckon that there blue trail is smoke from the machine or remarks from the inhabitants thereof?”
Tusky raised his head and sniffed long and inquirin’.
�
�It’s langwidge,” says he. “Did you ever stop to think that all the words in the dictionary hitched end to end would reach—”
But at that minute I catched sight of somethin’ brass lyin’ in the road. It proved to be a curled-up sort of horn with a rubber bulb on the end. I squoze the bulb and jumped twenty foot over the remark she made.
“Jarred off the machine,” says Tusky.
“Oh, did it?” says I, my nerves still wrong. “I thought maybe it had growed up from the soil like a toadstool.”
About this time we abolished the wire chicken corrals, because we needed some of the wire. Them long-laigs thereupon scattered all over the flat searchin’ out their prey. When feed time come I had to screech my lungs out gettin’ of ’em in, and then sometimes they didn’t all hear. It was plumb discouragin’, and I mighty nigh made up my mind to quit ’em, but they had come to be sort of pets, and I hated to turn ’em down. It used to tickle Tusky almost to death to see me out there hollerin’ away like an old bull-frog. He used to come out reg’la, with his pipe lit, just to enjoy me. Finally I got mad and opened up on him.
“Oh,” he explains, “it just plumb amuses me to see the dumfool at his childish work. Why don’t you teach ’em to come to that brass horn, and save your voice?”
“Tusky,” says I, with feelin’, “sometimes you do seem to get a glimmer of real sense.”
Well, first off them chickens used to throw back-summersets over that horn. You have no idee how slow chickens is to learn things. I could tell you things about chickens—say, this yere bluff about roosters bein’ gallant is all wrong. I’ve watched ’em. When one finds a nice feed he gobbles it so fast that the pieces foller down his throat like yearlin’s through a hole in the fence. It’s only when he scratches up a measly one-grain quick-lunch that he calls up the hens and stands noble and self-sacrificin’ to one side. That ain’t the point, which is, that after two months I had them long-laigs so they’d drop everythin’ and come kitin’ at the honk-honk of that horn. It was a purty sight to see ’em, sailin’ in from all directions twenty foot at a stride. I was proud of ’em, and named ’em the Honk-honk Breed. We didn’t have no others, for by now the coyotes and bob-cats had nailed the straight-breds. There wasn’t no wild cat or coyote could catch one of my Honk-honks, no, sir!
We made a little on our placer—just enough to keep interested. Then the supervisors decided to fix our road, and what’s more, they done it! That’s the only part in this yarn that’s hard to believe, but, boys, you’ll have to take it on faith. They plowed her, and crowned her, and scraped her, and rolled her, and when they moved on we had the fanciest highway in the State of Californy.
That noon—the day they called her a job—Tusky and I sat smokin’ our pipes as per usual, when way over the foothills we seen a cloud of dust and faint to our ears was bore a whizzin’ sound. The chickens was gathered under the cottonwood for the heat of the day, but they didn’t pay no attention. Then faint, but clear, we heard another of them brass horns:
“Honk! honk!” says it, and every one of them chickens woke up, and stood at attention.
“Honk! honk!” it hollered clearer and nearer. Then over the hill come an automobeel, blowin’ vigorous at every jump.
“Stop ’em! Stop ’em!” I yells to Tusky, kickin’ over my chair, as I springs to my feet.
But it was too late. Out the gate sprinted them poor devoted chickens, and up the road they trailed in vain pursuit. The last we seen of ’em was a minglin’ of dust and dim figgers goin’ thirty mile an hour after a disappearin’ automobeel.
That was all we seen for the moment. About three o’clock the first straggler came limpin’ in, his wings hangin’, his mouth open, his eyes glazed with the heat. By sundown fourteen had returned. All the rest had disappeared utter; we never seen ’em again. I reckon they just naturally run themselves into a sunstroke and died on the road.
It takes a long time to learn a chicken a thing, but a heap longer to unlearn him. After that two or three of these yere automobeels went by every day, all a-blowin’ of their horns. And every time them fourteen Honk-honks of mine took along after ’em, just as I’d taught ’em to do, layin’ to get to their corn when they caught up. No more of ’em died, but that fourteen did get into elegant trainin’. After a while they got plumb to enjoyin’ it. When you come right down to it, a chicken don’t have many amusements and relaxations in this life. Searchin’ for worms, chasin’ grasshoppers, and wallerin’ in the dust is about the limits of joys for chickens.
It was sure a fine sight to see ’em after they got well into the game. About nine o’clock every mornin’ they would saunter down to the rise of the road where they would wait patient until a machine came along. Then it would warm your heart to see the enthusiasm of them. With exultant cackles of joy they’d trail in, reachin’ out like quarter-horses, their wings half spread out, their eyes beamin’ with delight. At the lower turn they’d quit. Then, after talkin’ it over excited-like for a few minutes, they’d calm down and wait for another.
After a few months of this sort of trainin’ they got purty good at it. I had one two-year-old rooster that made fifty-four mile an hour behind one of those sixty-horsepower Panhandles. When cars didn’t come along often enough, they’d all turn out and chase jack-rabbits. They wasn’t much fun at that. After a short, brief sprint the rabbit would crouch down plumb terrified, while the Honk-honks pulled off triumphal dances around his shrinkin’ form.
Our ranch got to be purty well known them days among automobeelists. The strength of their cars was horsepower, of course, but the speed of them they got to ratin’ by chickenpower. Some of them used to come way up from Los Angeles just to try out a new car along our road with the Honk-honks for pacemakers. We charged them a little somethin’ and then, too, we opened up the road-house and the bar, so we did purty well. It wasn’t necessary to work any longer at that bogus placer. Evenin’s we sat around outside and swapped yarns, and I bragged on my chickens. The chickens would gather round close to listen. They liked to hear their praises sung, all right. You bet they sabe! The only reason a chicken, or any other critter, isn’t intelligent is because he hasn’t no chance to expand.
Why, we used to run races with ’em. Some of us would hold two or more chickens back of a chalk line, and the starter’d blow the horn from a hundred yards to a mile away, dependin’ on whether it was a sprint or for distance. We had pools on the results, gave odds, made books, and kept records. After the thing got knowed we made money hand over fist.
The stranger broke off abruptly and began to roll a cigarette.
“What did you quit it for, then?” ventured Charley, out of the hushed silence.
“Pride,” replied the stranger solemnly. “Haughtiness of spirit.”
“How so?” urged Charley, after a pause.
“Them chickens,” continued the stranger, after a moment, “stood around listenin’ to me a-braggin’ of what superior fowls they was until they got all puffed up. They wouldn’t have nothin’ whatever to do with the ordinary chickens we brought in for eatin’ purposes, but stood around lookin’ bored when there wasn’t no sport doin’. They got to be just like that Four Hundred you read about in the papers. It was one continual round of grasshopper balls, race meets, and afternoon hen-parties. They got idle and haughty, just like folks. They got to feelin’ so aristocratic the hens wouldn’t have no eggs.”
Nobody dared say a word.
“Windy Bill’s snake—” began the narrator genially.
“Stranger,” broke in Windy Bill, with great emphasis, “as to that snake, I want you to understand this: yereafter in my estimation that snake is nothin’ but an ornery angle-worm!”
THE TEXAN SCOUTS, by Joseph A. Altsheler
A STORY OF THE ALAMO AND GOLIAD
CHAPTER I
IN THE STORM
The horseman rode slowly toward the west, stopping once or twice to examine the wide circle of the horizon with eyes that were trained to note every aspec
t of the wilderness. On his right the plains melted away in gentle swell after swell, until they met the horizon. Their brown surface was broken only by the spiked and thorny cactus and stray bits of chaparral.
On his left was the wide bed of a river which flowed through the sand, breaking here and there into several streams, and then reuniting, only to scatter its volume a hundred yards further into three or four channels. A bird of prey flew on strong wing over the water, dipped and then rose again, but there was no other sign of life. Beyond, the country southward rolled away, gray and bare, sterile and desolate.
The horseman looked most often into the south. His glances into the north were few and brief, but his eyes dwelled long on the lonely land that lay beyond the yellow current. His was an attractive face. He was young, only a boy, but the brow was broad and high, and the eyes, grave and steady, were those of one who thought much. He was clad completely in buckskin, and his hat was wide of brim. A rifle held in one hand layacross the pommel of his saddle and there were weapons in his belt. Two light, but warm, blankets, folded closely, were tied behind him. The tanned face and the lithe, strong figure showed a wonderful degree of health and strength.
Several hours passed and the horseman rode on steadily though slowly. His main direction was toward the west, and always he kept the river two or three hundred yards on his left. He never failed to search the plains on either side, but chiefly in the south, with the eager, intent gaze that missed nothing. But the lonesome gray land, cut by the coiling yellow river, still rolled before him, and its desolation and chill struck to his heart. It was the depth of the Texan winter, and, at times, icy gusts, born in far mountains, swept across the plains.
The rider presently turned his horse toward the river and stopped on a low bluff overlooking it. His face showed a tinge of disappointment, as if his eyes failed to find objects for which they sought. Again he gazed long and patiently into the south, but without reward.
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