Part 19 (1/2)
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, 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 Sa.s.sy! 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 gra.s.s and flowers, its gentle rains and windless, sunny days,--Sa.s.sy 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 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 Sa.s.sy'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 Sa.s.sy, 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 Sa.s.sy 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 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 Sa.s.sy should continue to furnish eggs faithfully, the dress was a.s.sured.
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 Sa.s.sy'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 to uphold the standard of her kind she was fit only for broiling. The youngest brother, overhearing the account of Sa.s.sy'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 Sa.s.sy 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. Sa.s.sy 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, Sa.s.sy 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 and hunted up Sa.s.sy. 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, las.h.i.+ng 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 gra.s.s. 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 Sa.s.sy on the ground with her head pointing up the hill. Then, with ap.r.o.n held 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.
Sa.s.sy did not pay any attention to the ap.r.o.n, 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!”
Sa.s.sy 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 Sa.s.sy 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, Sa.s.sy, by bending her neck, kept her head defiantly in one place.
The little girl was at her wits' end. The biggest brother had specified that Sa.s.sy 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 Sa.s.sy 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 Sa.s.sy under her arm once more, she toiled up the gra.s.sy 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 Sa.s.sy fairly gasped for breath. Over the gra.s.s 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 a.s.sumed 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 came on. She was thinking, with the hopefulness of youth, over Sa.s.sy'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, s.h.i.+fting and lowering as if it were picking spots upon which to alight. A breeze sprang up and hurried to meet it, and all the gra.s.s and corn-stalks bowed that way.