PIGS
"Take a hand to a wooster? Take a hand to a wooster!"
Dick Harding was standing out in the road near the white cottage one
morning about two weeks after the hunting party, trying to decide
whether he would take a walk or a ride to settle his breakfast. He
glanced down into Jilly's sober little face lifted to his appealingly.
"Take a hand to a wooster? Charmed, I'm sure. Point out the rooster. But
what has his rooster-ship done, and how can I make him keep still long
enough to lay hands on him, Jilly Dilly?"
Jilly clasped five fat fingers around two of his, smiled confidingly and
made her plea once more: "Take a hand to a wooster."
Dick looked puzzled, but Jilly was pulling and he meekly followed her
guidance. "I haven't the faintest idea what you are getting me into,
young lady, but go ahead, I'm at your service."
Jilly pattered along not deigning to reply to his remarks. Jilly
considered words as something to be reserved for business purposes only.
She led him to the chicken yard, pressed her small face against the wire
netting that enclosed it, and contemplated the fowls ecstatically. Dick
contemplated also, trying to pick out the offending rooster.
"Which rooster, Jilly?"
But Jilly only smiled vaguely. "Feed a wooster," she commanded after
another season of gazing.
"Yes, to be sure, but what would you suggest that I offer him? There
doesn't seem to be anything edible round here."
The chickens seconded Jilly's suggestion, coming to the fence and
clucking excitedly.
Jilly looked pained at Dick's indolence and, taking his hand, led him
over to a covered wooden box, which was found to contain shelled corn.
The chickens were duly fed, but Dick still puzzled over the unchastized
rooster until Marian enlightened him later.
"I shall have to give you a key to Jilly's dialect," Marian
laughed--"she merely wanted you to go with her to see the chickens."
Chicken Little was enjoying her guests. Her resolve to help mother was
carried out only semi-occasionally when there were raspberries or
currants to be picked or peas to be shelled, under the grape arbor so
they wouldn't be in Annie's way in the kitchen. At first, Mrs. Morton
had counted on having the girls help with the breakfast dishes, but they
developed such a genius for disappearing immediately after breakfast
that she gave it up as more bother than it was worth.
They tramped and rode, and waded and splashed and finally swam, in the
bathing hole down at the creek, under Marian's or Alice's supervision,
till Katie and Gertie were brown and hearty.
"Mrs. Halford wouldn't know Gertie--she's fairly made over," Alice
observed one morning.
Gertie was fast losing her timidity and had so much persistence in
learning to ride that she bade fair to have a more graceful seat in the
saddle than Jane herself. Sherm was deep in farm work and the girls saw
little either of him or of Ernest, except in the evenings and on
Sundays. Dick ran the reaper in the harvest field for Dr. Morton for
three days, but his zeal waned as the weather got hotter.
"This is my vacation and I don't want to sweat my sweet self entirely
away 'in little drops of water.' Think how pained you'd be, dearest," he
told Alice.
"I never dreamed there was so much farming to a ranch," Alice remarked
to Dr. Morton one day. "I thought you attended to the cattle----"
"And rode around in chaps and sombreros, looking picturesque, the rest
of the time," interrupted Dick. "My precious wife is disappointed
because she hasn't seen any cowboys cavorting about the place shooting
each other up or gambling with nice picturesque bags of gold dust."
"Dick Harding! I didn't. But we'd hardly know there were any cattle
round if we didn't go through the pasture occasionally."
"Our big pastures take them off our hands pretty well in summer, but in
winter they have to be fed and herded and looked after generally, don't
they, Chicken Little? Humbug has played herd boy herself more than once.
You are thinking of the big cattle ranges in Colorado and Montana and
Wyoming, Alice. This country is cut up into farms and the ranges are
gone. And we have to raise our corn and wheat and rye, not to mention
fruits and vegetables. It's a busy life, but I love its independence."
A day or two after this conversation, Ernest came in late to dinner,
exclaiming: "Father, the white sow and all her thirteen pigs are out."
"The Dickens, have you any idea where she's gone?" Dr. Morton looked
decidedly annoyed. "I told Jim Bart that pen wasn't strong enough to
hold her--she's the meanest animal on the place."
"One of the harvest hands said he thought he saw her down along the
slough. I am sorry for the porkers if she is--they aren't a week old
yet."
"Go down right after dinner and see if you can see anything of her. The
old fool will lose them all in that marshy ground. And I don't see how
we can spare a man to look after them. It looks like rain and that wheat
must be in the barns by night."
Ernest came back from his search to report that the sow and one lone pig
had wandered back to the barnyard and Jim Bart had got them into the
pen.
"One pig! You don't mean she has lost the other twelve? That's costly
business!"
"Looks that way. They're such little fellows--I suppose they're
squealing down there in the slough in that swamp grass--it's a regular
jungle three or four feet high."
Dr. Morton studied a moment, perplexed. "Well, the grain is worth more
than the pigs. I guess they'll have to go until evening and then we'll
all go down and see how many we can find. They won't suffer greatly
before night unless they find enough water to drown themselves in."
"Oh, the poor piggies!" exclaimed Chicken Little. "Why, they'll be most
starved and maybe the bull snakes might get them."
"I hardly think they could manage a pig. But I can't help it, unless you
think you could rescue them, daughter." Dr. Morton said this last in
fun, but Chicken Little took it seriously.
"What could I put them in, Father?"
"Oh, you might take a small chicken coop," replied her father
carelessly. The wagons coming from the barn were already rattling into
the road and he was in a hurry to catch one and save himself the hot
walk to the fields.
Chicken Little was thinking. She sat twisting a corner of her apron into
a tight roll. "I believe we could do it," she said presently, "and the
bull snakes are perfectly harmless if they are big, ugly-looking things.
Will you help me, Katie?"
"Ugh, are there really snakes there, Jane?"
"Yes, but we've never seen any poisonous ones along there, though I saw
a water moccasin once right down by the spring, so you never can tell.
But snakes sound a lot worse than they really are, 'cause they're such
cowards they always run."
Katy considered. The task did not sound attractive, but Katy was plucky.
"I guess, if you can do it, I can."
Jane had not thought of asking Gertie and she was surprised to hear her
say: "I'm coming, too."
"Oh, Gertie, won't you be afraid?"
"Yes, I'm afraid, but I don't want the little piggies killed--just think
how you'd feel if you were lost in such a dreadful place and there were
snakes and awful things. If I see a snake I'll yell bloody murder, and I
guess it'll let me alone."
Jane threw herself on Gertie and hugged her. "Gertie Halford, I think
you'd make a real, sure enough book heroine, because you do things when
you think you ought to, whether you're scared or not."
"I wish Dick hadn't gone to town to-day," said Katy.
Chicken Little had her campaign already planned. "I'm going to get
Ernest's and Frank's and Sherm's rubber boots for us. They'll be lots
too big, but we can tie them around the legs to make them stick on. They
will be fine in the mud and water if we have to wade in the slough. Yes,
and they will protect us from the snakes, too. We won't put them on till
we get down there; they will be too hard to walk in. And we can take
Jilly's red wagon and put the smallest chicken coop on it. It isn't
heavy."
Mrs. Morton had gone to town with Dick and Alice for the day or the
girls would probably not have been permitted to carry out their unusual
undertaking. They quickly made their preparations with much joking about
the boots, and twenty minutes later came to the banks of the slough. The
slough was in reality a continuation of the spring stream, which spread
out in the meadows below the pond until it lost all semblance of a
stream and became merely a marshy stretch, whose waters finally found
their way into the creek. In the meadows adjoining, the finest hay on
the place was cut each year.
The girls sat down on the grass and fastened on the boots. The effect
was somewhat startling, for they reached well above the knee on Chicken
Little, who was the tallest of the three, while poor Gertie seemed to be
divided into two equal parts.
Both Katy and Jane giggled when she got laboriously to her feet.
"There's more boots than girl, Gertie," laughed Jane.
"You don't need to be afraid, Sis, you'll scare anything, even a snake!"
Katy remarked unfeelingly, though her words reassured Gertie
wonderfully.
"I don't feel so afraid in these," she said.
Chicken Little was slowly making her way in to the slough. "Jim found
the mother pig near here, Ernest said, but the little scamps may be most
anywhere. Let's listen and see if we can hear any squeals or grunts."
"Yes, I did--I'm most sure, but it didn't sound very close by," Gertie
answered.
Chicken Little listened. "Which way did the sound come from?"
"Toward the creek, but I don't hear it any more."
[Illustration: They had a pretty chase.]
"We'd better search pretty carefully as we go along so we won't have to
come back over the same ground," remarked Katy, who had a genius for
organizing--even a pig hunt. "You are the tallest, Jane, so you take the
tallest grass next the water, and I'll come along half way up the bank
and Gertie can walk through the meadow grass--that way we can't miss
them."
"No, for they must be on this side of the slough: they're too little to
wade across it."
Chicken Little made the first find, two discouraged little porkers,
hopelessly mired and grunting feebly when disturbed. They had no trouble
in catching these, but holding their wet, miry little bodies was a
different matter. They were slippery as eels. Chicken Little and Katy,
who each had one, found them a handful.
"Oh, mine most got away! And I'm all over mud--we'll be a sight!" Katy
giggled hysterically. "I wonder what mother would think if she could see
me now."
"Well, it will all wash off. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so hard
to clump along in these old boots. It takes forever to get any place."
They had sent Gertie on ahead to open the coop door. With a sigh of
relief, Katy shoved hers into it. Jane was not so lucky. Instead of
going in, as a well-regulated pig should, the small, black-and-white
sinner shot off to one side and made for the slough again. They had a
pretty chase before he finally tangled himself up in the grass and was
captured once more.
They plodded back to take up the search where they had left off, going
through the shorter grass till they should reach the point where they
had found the pigs. They were clumping along, chattering gaily, when
Katy jumped and let out a yell that could have been heard a block away.
"Oh, there's the biggest snake I ever saw--over there near that
rock--don't you see?"
Gertie turned white, but Chicken Little encouraged her by starting
toward the monster, which was indeed a huge bull snake fully five feet
long, as Ernest and Sherm found by actual measurement that evening.
"Pooh," said Chicken Little, "it looks dreadful, but it won't hurt you.
If I can find some stones I'm going to try to kill it."
"Don't you dare go near it." Katy grabbed her dress and held on tight.
"But we'll all be scared to death all the time, for fear we come across
it again, if I don't. There are some rocks over there big enough, if I
can get them out of the ground."
She went resolutely over and, prying with a stick, secured two
good-sized rocks. Armed with these, she started toward the snake coiled
up asleep in the hot July sunshine. Katy and Gertie watched her
breathlessly. Chicken Little advanced with caution. She didn't like the
job herself, though she was sure the snake wouldn't do anything worse
than run. She had seen her elders kill them more than once, and they had
always been cowardly. Nevertheless, her heart thumped and her breath
came fast, as she crept nearer. She must go close and aim at the head if
she hoped to do any execution. Step by step she crept forward till she
was within four feet of that ugly coil. Stopping, she raised the heavy
stone and took careful aim. At this instant her presence disturbed the
snake. It raised its oval head, fixing her with its beady, bright eyes.
A thrill of horror shot through her. What if it should fascinate her so
she couldn't move? She had heard of such things. She heaved the stone,
shutting her eyes tight as it left her hand.
Katy and Gertie both screamed and jumped back. Jane opened her eyes
quickly to see the snake uncoil and start to glide away. She saw
something else, too. She saw that her stone had wounded it just behind
the head. Her courage flowed back in a trice. She raised the other stone
and moved forward. The snake was slipping over the ground at a swift
pace. She had to run, catching up with it as it came to its hole, a few
feet distant. She smashed down the second rock almost in the same place
she had hit before. The reptile moved feebly about six inches farther
till its ugly head was hidden inside the hole, then thrashed its heavy
body through another undulation, and lay still.
Chicken Little stood looking at it in dazed surprise for several
seconds. She was white and trembling with excitement. Seeing that it did
not move, Katy and Gertie crept a little closer. No one said a word for
a full minute, then Chicken Little came to life, her face convulsed with
loathing.
"Ugh, the nasty thing--I hate them. I don't see what God wanted to make
such horrid, wicked things for!"
"Well, the Bible says they weren't wicked till Eve ate the apple," Katy
replied, staring curiously down at the snake. She had never seen such a
big one outside of a circus. "But I think they must have always looked
wicked, anyhow. How did you ever dare, Chicken Little, to tackle it? I
was expecting it to wind right round you like that picture of Laocoon in
our mythology."
"I shouldn't have dared if I hadn't seen so many of them before. I guess
being brave is mostly being used to things. But I hate snakes worse than
anything in the world--I don't feel a bit sorry about killing them!"
"Oh, dear," said Gertie, shuddering, "I s'pose we have got to find the
rest of the pigs."
Katy and Chicken Little each echoed the sigh. They all started ahead
resolutely. But they kept closer together for a time. They went some
little distance without finding any further signs of the lost animals.
"You don't suppose we could have passed them, do you?" Katy inquired
anxiously.
"We couldn't, if they are on this side of the slough."
A few rods farther on something moved in the swamp grass. All three
jumped and screamed: their nerve had been sadly weakened by the bull
snake.
A squeal and chorus of grunts reassured them.
"Here they are--a lot of them. Oh, dear, I wish we'd brought the coop
along so we wouldn't have to go back." Jane parted the tall grass and
discovered five of the fugitives huddled together. They were much
livelier than the first ones and showed symptoms of bolting if the girls
approached nearer.
"I'll go back for it," said Katy. "I'll go through the short grass and I
won't be afraid."
Chicken Little and Gertie watched and waited.
"Isn't that little white one with the pink ears and curly tail cunning?
I didn't suppose pigs could be so pretty."
"They are only pretty when they are weenties. As soon as they grow old
enough to root in the mud, they are horrid."
When Katy returned they anchored the red wagon with the chicken coop and
the two captured piglets as close to the slough as possible. All three
crept upon the pig cache cautiously.
"Pick out which one you'll grab, for they are going to run sure,"
Chicken Little admonished.
They made a dash and each got a pig, but, alas, the two free ones made a
dash also--a break for liberty worthy of an Indian. They selected routes
immediately in front of, and immediately behind Chicken Little, whose
attention was absorbed with trying to hold a squealing, squirming pig.
The result was disastrous to all concerned. Pig No. 1 tripped her up
neatly and she sat down hastily and unexpectedly upon Pig No. 2, who
gave one agonized squeal, in which the pig in her arms joined.
Fortunately, her victim did not get her whole weight or there would have
been one pig the less in this vale of tears. Chicken Little squashed him
down gently into some two inches of oozy mud and water. It splashed in
all directions, baptizing Katy and Gertie and the fleeing pig as well as
completing the ruin of Jane's pink gingham frock, fresh that morning.
The sight of her amazed and disgusted face generously decorated with
mud, was too much for Katy. She giggled till the tears stood in her
eyes. Chicken Little was indignant.
"I guess you wouldn't think it was so funny, if it was you," she replied
with dignity. Dignity did not become her tout ensemble. Katy went off
into fresh screams of mirth. Chicken Little had stood about all she
could that afternoon. Her face flamed with wrath, and, gathering up the
struggling pig in her arms, she hurled it at Katy, as the only missile
within reach. Piggy just missed Katy's head, tumbling harmlessly into
the ooze. Chicken Little was instantly remorseful, not on Katy's account
but on Piggy's.
Katy was furious. She didn't say a word, but walked deliberately over to
the coop, deposited her pig very gently and started toward the house.
Gertie tried to stop her, but she shook her off. Chicken Little, too
angry to care what happened, relieved herself of the rest of her
ill-temper.
"Go off and be hateful if you want to--a lot I care, Miss Katy Halford.
I should think you'd be ashamed to act so when you are most fifteen."
A swift retort rose to Katy's lips, but she decided it would be more
impressive to remain dignifiedly silent. She stalked on. Gertie
hesitated as to which of the belligerents she should follow, but finally
decided in favor of the one who needed her worst. She put her pig in the
coop and came to help Jane up. The latter was already ashamed of her
outburst, but was far from being ready to acknowledge it. The other
three pigs had not gone far and they soon had them safely in the coop.
They were debating as to whether they should give up hunting for the
others, when a hail from the road brought aid and comfort. Katy had met
Dr. Morton coming from the field on an errand and had told him what they
were trying to do. He was delighted and surprised to see the seven
rescued pigs.
"Why, Chicken Little, I didn't really suppose you were in earnest
or----" Dr. Morton stopped suddenly, he had just taken a good look at
his only daughter--the look was effective. He threw back his head and
roared.
"Oh, if you could just see yourself, Jane!"
This was adding insult to injury and Chicken Little burst into tears.
"You can just hunt your old pigs yourself--I don't think it's nice of
you to laugh when I tried so hard!"
"Come, come, I beg your pardon, but you are enough to make an owl laugh,
Humbug. It was fine of you to try to rescue the pigs. You girls deserve
a great deal of credit, for it is a disagreeable, muddy job. I guess
I'll have to make it up to you. I'll tell you what I'll do. You may have
this litter for your very own, and we'll send the little girls their
share over the cost of keeping, when the pigs are sold. How will that
do?"
Chicken Little was not in the mood to be easily appeased.
"Yes, but you say things are mine till you want to sell them, and then I
never see the money."
This was touching a sore point. The Doctor had been a little remiss on
the subject of the children's ownership of their pets. He was nettled by
this accusation.
"My dear, when I say a thing I mean it. I was about to add, though, that
if I give you the entire proceeds of the pigs I shall expect you to
attend to feeding them until they are big enough to be turned in with
the drove."
"I thought the mother fed them."
"Well, the mother pig has to be fed."
"Do you really, truly, mean it, Father?"
"Truly."
Chicken Little forgot the late unpleasantness. "Oh, goody, let's call
Katy back and tell her!"
Katy was not so far away as might have been anticipated. Her wrath was
dissipating also.
Dr. Morton lingered to help them a few moments and to satisfy himself
that they could not do themselves any damage that a bath and the wash
tub could not repair, then left them once more to their own resources.
By four o'clock they had all but one of the missing pigs safely stowed
in the coop. They were very tired and hot, and decided to save the joy
of hunting for the last pig for Ernest and Sherm in the evening.
It was well they did. The wee stray would have led them a chase. He had
found his way almost to the creek, and it took the boys a good hour of
wading and beating the swamp grass to discover him.
Just as Chicken Little was dropping off to sleep that night, Katy roused
her.
"Do you suppose we'll get as much as five dollars apiece from those
pigs?"