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Biography of a Prairie Girl

<hr style="width: 65%;" />[242] <h2>XV</h2> <h3>THE FATE OF A CROWING HEN</h3> <div class='cap'>"SASSY" was all that her name implied. From the very beginning, when, as a small white egg, innocent enough in appearance, she left the hand of the little girl's mother and joined nine companions under a fat cochin, it was with something of an impudent roll that she gained her place in the nest. Three weeks later, after having been faithfully sat upon, and as faithfully turned each day by the cochin's beak, she gave another pert stir, very slight, and tapped a hole through her cracking shell. The next morning she swaggered forth, a round, fluffy, cheeping morsel.</div> She was not Sassy yet, however. It was later, when she lost her yellow down and grew a scant coat of white feathers, through which her skin showed in pimpled, pinkish spots, that she displayed the characteristics that christened her, and, by her precocity and brazenness, distinguished herself from among her leghorn brothers and sisters. At this period of her life, a pullet in both[243] months and experience, she should have conducted herself with becoming modesty. Instead, she developed a habit of taking her meals, morning, noon, and night, from the kitchen table, to which the little girl did not usually go until long after the big brothers had finished and withdrawn. Sassy made her entrance either by way of the hall or through the window nearest the stove. Once inside, she hopped to a bench, and thence to the oil-cloth. Her progress from one end of the board to the other was always attended by serious damage to the butter, of which she was inordinately fond. When, having fared well, she at last descended, she paraded up and down, with many sharp, inquiring cries of "C-a-w-k? c-a-w-k? c-a-w-k?" and wherever her claws chanced to touch left little, buttery fleurs-de-lis on the floor. She escaped the disastrous fire, not, like a dozen other fowls, by seeking refuge in the wind-break, but because she was in the coal-shed carrying on a hand-to-hand conflict with the tortoise-shell cat, who had five new babies. By Thanksgiving day, having developed into a juicy frier, more prone than ever to snoop, family opinion turned against her, so that when it came to the question which chickens, in view of the shortage of feed, should occupy the oven in place of the usual sizzling turkey, the big brothers and the little girl voted for[244] the heads of Sassy and of a certain mysterious young rooster who, though disturbing, had never been definitely singled out, since, on hearing his falsetto crow and looking about for him, the family invariably came upon the insolent pullet, alone and unconcerned. The day before Thanksgiving the little girl was directed to capture both the rooster and Sassy. For the first, she selected a young leghorn that she believed to be the guilty trumpeter and poked him into a box-coop beside the smoke-house. Then she set about jailing the culpable pullet. She was aided by Godfrey, the biggest brother's pet pointer, who scented Sassy in the vegetable patch, where she was scratching around the tomato vines. Together they pursued her at top speed, Godfrey keeping close to his bird, but, in true sportsmanlike fashion, refraining from seizing her. Through the tomatoes they ran, till the little girl sat down from sheer exhaustion, with Godfrey panting beside her and the pullet perched near by on a pile of seed onions. After a ten minutes' rest, the little girl and the pointer renewed their chase. This time Sassy left the tomato patch (foolishly enough, for the vines tripped the little girl), and fled, with hackles spread, toward the well, where a flock was dipping water. When they saw her coming, the chickens, among which were several[245] young leghorns, fled in terror toward the sorghum patch and lost themselves in its woody lanes. Godfrey and the little girl charged this western jungle with zest, thrashing about until the pullet—supposedly—emerged and flitted toward the sod barn. But when for the second time, and after a lengthy hunt that brought up at the new stacks, they paused for breath, the little girl discovered, to the mystification of the pointer, who did not know one leghorn from another, and to her own disgust, that since their threading of the sorghum they had been after the wrong chicken! The little girl sprawled on the sunny side of a stack for an hour or two after that, and chewed straws. She pulled off her shoes to rest her stockingless feet, and put her head on Godfrey's damp side. For she had resolved to postpone the catching of Sassy till evening, when the elusive pullet would be sleepily seated on a two-by-four in the empty cow-stall that now served for a coop. When the early November twilight fell upon the farm-yard, the little girl roused Godfrey by gently pulling his tail and skipped round to the barn door. Under ordinary circumstances, the task of creeping upon an unsuspecting chicken and seizing it for the block would have been unpleasant. But, influenced by her long dislike of the pullet, and recalling her tiresome[246] experience of the afternoon, she chuckled to think that she would soon have her hands clasped tightly about Sassy's yellow legs. "I'll not make a mistake this time," she said to herself. She entered the barn slyly and stole down behind the stalls until she came opposite the perches. The chickens were settling themselves for the night, moving and murmuring drowsily. As she peeped among them, her glance fell upon Sassy, outlined against the small square window beyond and roosted comfortably with her beak toward the manger, all unconscious of her nearing doom. The little girl was certain that it was she, for there was no mistaking the rakish lop of the serrated comb, or the once white under-feathers soiled to a bluish cast. The little girl waited, restraining the excited pointer, until the light had faded from the square window. It was then so dark that the chickens could not see the malevolent fingers that, thrust softly up among them, grabbed a leghorn's shanks; and there was only a mildly concerned "k-r-r-r!" from an old, watchful hen as the little girl retreated, one hand doing almost fatal duty around an ill-starred neck. By the time that the little girl, triumphantly bearing both her prey, heads down, reached the mounting-log at the front door of the house,[247] where the eldest brother awaited her with the hatchet, it was nearly as dark outside as it had been in the barn. So the eldest brother—for the little girl had hurried away after giving him the chickens—could not tell which leghorn suffered the guillotine first. His sanguinary work being done, the little girl returned and carried the dead fowls into the coal-shed, where she tied their toes together and hung them over a nail. Early next morning the eldest brother was awakened by a prolonged falsetto crow,—the familiar disturbing salute of the chanticleer he had beheaded the night before! Puzzled and wondering, he got up, ran to the eastern window of the attic, and looked down upon the yard. An amazing discovery repaid his promptness. For, as the chicken once more raised its voice, he saw that the mysterious rooster was still alive! So was Sassy! They were combined in one and the same bird! Two innocent chickens had been sacrificed! So, until the next spring,—the spring following the fire, and one ever memorable for its wonderful grass and flowers, its gentle rains and windless, sunny days,—Sassy continued to exasperate the family, winning only censure. But when the depleted flock could not furnish half the eggs the family needed, she took it upon herself to lay one daily, and was considerate[248] ate enough to render it unnecessary for the little girl to go out and bring it in, by depositing it in the hay-twist box behind the kitchen stove, in the linen-barrel in the entry, or on the canopied bed. Then she found an appreciative friend in the little girl's mother, who, whenever she heard a proud, discordant announcement, half crow, half cackle, blessed the little white hen as she hurried to secure the offering. One afternoon during Sassy's career of prolificacy, the little girl remembered that her best thick dress was so threadbare that she would need a brand-new one for the next winter. She found, too, that if she was to have one she must devise a way to swell the small amount in the tin savings-bank; for the big brothers declared they would be able only to pay the heavy debt upon the farm and victual the house for the stormy months to follow. So she hit upon the idea of raising chickens, and broached it to her mother. The latter, remembering the sorry Christmas just past, at once presented her with Sassy, promising that all the eggs the leghorn laid should be credited to the little girl at the general merchandise store at the station, and that all the chicks hatched out by Sassy should go the same way. The little girl was jubilant over the plan, and each morning answered the "cut-cut-c't-a-a-ah-cut" of her hen with a gift of crumbs, and then[249] took possession of the new-laid egg, placing it carefully in a cracker-box. When, at the end of as many days, a dozen eggs lay side by side, she took them out, wrapped each one in paper, packed them all in a lard-bucket full of shorts, and, mounting the blue mare, rode to the station, where she had the satisfaction of seeing eleven cents put opposite her name in the egg-book at the general merchandise store. This was repeated four times, and, the price of eggs having gone up a few cents in each interval, the little girl had sixty cents to put in her bank, which raised her total to one dollar fifty-nine. On her June birthday the family presented her with four dimes; the week after she sold a wooden squirt-gun to the neighbor woman's son for five cents. It was then plain that, if Sassy should continue to furnish eggs faithfully, the dress was assured. But at this happy juncture, and, womanlike, without a single cluck of warning, the leghorn ceased her diurnal laying, and, after a spasmodic week, during which she scattered three or four eggs on the little girl's bed, gave no further sign of justifying her existence. The little girl was in despair, and at once confided Sassy's delinquency to the eldest brother, who knew a great deal about chickens. He said that a leghorn was an all-year-round layer, and that when a hen of the breed failed[250] to uphold the standard of her kind she was fit only for broiling. The youngest brother, overhearing the account of Sassy's conduct and the eldest brother's comments, volunteered the opinion that nothing ailed the chicken but the pip, and advised fat and pepper. But when three days had gone by and the leghorn, with generous doses of axle-grease and cayenne, ailed rather than recovered, the little girl ceased her administrations. It occurred to her, in the midst of her worry, that perhaps Sassy wanted to set. Accordingly she got ten eggs together, arranged them in a nest, caught the hen, and put her upon them. But here a new and unlooked-for thing happened. Sassy would not stay on the nest. Not at all daunted, the little girl procured a broad strip of calico and tied the hen down. But in her struggles to get free, Sassy broke nearly all of the eggs under her, and finally hied herself out of the new coop and over the smoke-house to liberty. Unhappy that her leghorn thus spurned to mother a brood, the little girl sought the biggest brother. "Oh, no wonder the mean thing crows," she said to him, as she told her story. The biggest brother conferred long and solemnly on the question. When it was settled, the little girl came out of the sitting-room with a look of hopeful determination upon her face[251] and hunted up Sassy. The latter had grown so bold since the Thanksgiving before that any one could pick her up without running after her. So the little girl, in two winks, had her under one arm and was on her way to the carnelian bluff. It was a hot, sultry day in midsummer, and not a breath of wind was blowing over the farm. The grain-fields were still. The blades of the corn drooped limply. The creamy sap of the milkweed growing in the timothy meadow was drying up in the stem. Below the bluff the herd stood, belly deep, lashing about them with wet tails, and the pigs wallowed among the wilting bulrushes in damp security. Yet, with all its heat and quiet, the afternoon was destined to be a stormy one. The swallows were flying low across the farm-yard; the colts, pestered by busy flies, were moving restlessly about the wire pen; the Maltese cat was trying her claws on a table leg in the kitchen; and, behind the wind-break, a collie had given over a beef-bone and was industriously eating grass. But all these signs, which should have foretold to her what was coming, were unnoticed by the little girl as she hurried along. At the southern base of the bluff she halted and put Sassy on the ground with her head pointing up the hill. Then, with apron held[252] wide, she began to shoo the hen gently toward the summit. For the biggest brother had said very emphatically that the only way to make a chicken lay is to drive her up a hill. Sassy did not pay any attention to the apron, but shook her wattles crossly, "k-r-r-red," and held her head so that one white ear lobe lay questioningly uppermost. "Now you go up," commanded the little girl; "go right straight up, or I'll just give it to you. I'll make you lay, you lazy thing!" Sassy tilted her head so that the opposite ear lobe showed, and lifted one foot against her breast. Otherwise she did not indicate that she had even heard her orders. Her disobedience angered the little girl. "Shoo! shoo! shoo!" she cried; "do you think I'm going to carry you? No, siree! You'll walk,—every step of it, too. I'll teach you." She seized Sassy by the tail and rudely shoved her forward. It availed no more than the shooing. The hen not only refused to advance, but turned and flew into the corn. When, after chasing her around a dozen hills, the little girl once more had the leghorn held tightly in her hands, she gave her a good shaking. But no matter how hard the little girl jerked her body from side to side, Sassy, by bending her neck, kept her head defiantly in one place.[253] The little girl was at her wits' end. The biggest brother had specified that Sassy should be driven; but the leghorn would not drive. The little girl had tried her best to carry out her instructions, and had only discovered the truth of the old adage about leading a horse to water. She could bring Sassy to the very spot where a cure could be effected—and the hen would refuse treatment. Chagrined, warm, and discouraged, she resolved to carry the chicken bodily to the stone-pile, a bare half way, and there think over her failure. So, with Sassy under her arm once more, she toiled up the grassy slope. While she was lying beside the pile, worried and distraught, with the leghorn at close quarters throwing up dirt and pebbles, the air became so ominously and deathly still that the little girl and Sassy fairly gasped for breath. Over the grass tops the heat halted and lay in long, faintly visible waves, like a ghostly sea. And in the west there began to arise, silently and swiftly, a vast mountain of peculiar, dense arched clouds. It bulged upward until its top seemed half way to the sun. Then, with lightning rapidity, it closed in at its middle and assumed the shape of a monster toad-stool, and traveled forward toward the Vermillion with a mighty roar. The little girl neither saw nor heard it as it[254] came on. She was thinking, with the hopefulness of youth, over Sassy's future possibilities. "She'll surely start laying again some time," she mused, "and I'll borrow a hen from mother to set on the eggs. So I'll have all those chickens, and when they grow up I'll have all their eggs, and some of them will set, and—" She lost herself in an endless chain of computation. The toad-stool, topped with angry, boiling clouds, was now but five or six miles away. It swayed like the trunk of an elephant as it darted forward, one second touching the ground, the next lifting itself into the air, shifting and lowering as if it were picking spots upon which to alight. A breeze sprang up and hurried to meet it, and all the grass and corn-stalks bowed that way. Suddenly the rustling about her made the little girl look up. The bright sunshine had changed to threatening gloom, the sultry quiet was broken by whispers of tempest and rain. She saw the nearing cloud-column, now an hour-glass in form, and realized her awful danger. Calling to Sassy, she got up on her knees with the thought of flight. Sassy answered with little joyous cries. She was gratefully welcoming the forerunning breeze of the cyclone by raising her wings, and was walking sidewise down the hill.[255] The next moment, a torrent of water struck the little girl as she attempted to get to her feet, and rolled Sassy farther away from the pile. Then, with a horrid growl, the cyclone crossed the river, skipped over the swaying wheat, and, alighting on the edge of the corn, dragged its ravaging base across the field with a terrific whirling of stalks and a rending and grinding that bespoke the very end of things. Its center was midway between the bluff and the farm-house. And, as its farther edge braided the cottonwoods in the wind-break and uprooted the stunted apple-trees, its near edge came close to the stone-pile with a mighty sucking breath. The little girl, seeing that escape was impossible, for the rain was beating her down, flung herself in the lee of the pile and clutched at the grass. "Sassy!" she shouted again; "Sassy!" But the cyclone drowned her cry. With starting eyes she saw the swirling currents draw Sassy, maelstromlike, in and in. The hen lost her feet, was next tossed like a white ball hither and thither, and then sped out of sight into the vortex of the storm's wild mingling of matter, taking with her all the little girl's hopes of future revenue—the unlaid eggs and the unhatched chicks. As she disappeared, she gave a final frightened, crowing cluck. It was her swan song.[256] <hr style="width: 45%;" /> When the tornado had swept on, leaving in its wake a wide path of bare ground fringed with wreckage, the little girl hurried home to assure herself that her mother and the big brothers had gotten into the storm-cellar, and that the blue mare was unhurt, and to gaze into the sitting-room mirror to see if her hair had turned white. Satisfied upon all points, she changed her clothes and started eastward on horseback, following the streaked road of the cyclone. As she traveled, she kept steadfastly on the lookout, and jogged along until the prairie was wrapped in night. When, at last, she turned and started back, she carried, as trophies of her search, her mother's wooden chopping-bowl, dusty and unharmed, and, thrust in her hat-band, a solitary memento of the vanished crowing hen, a broken, soiled white feather. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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