the male population within eight or ten miles up and down the river—and
Sophy Perkins, of whom more hereafter. Most of the small politicians of
the county were affiliated with the club, and used it for such
propaganda as from time to time befitted their objects and petty
ambitions. Originally its purpose was to foster and finance the annual
“turkey shoot.” This popular event usually just preceded Thanksgiving,
and was the occasion of a general holiday.
During the forty odd years of the club’s existence it had gradually
broadened the scope of its early activities until it became more or less
identified with pretty much everything of a local public character. Its
only rival as a social focus was Posey’s store.
Under its auspices the Fourth of July, golden weddings, and other
anniversaries, were celebrated. Dances, amateur theatricals, old
settlers’ picnics, tax protest meetings, lectures, political “rallies,”
“grand raffles,” dog and chicken fights, greased pig contests, quilting
bees, ministerial showers and other affairs were “pulled off” during the
year. The ministerial showers were about the only functions that the
Reverend Butters did not consider unholy.
There were special meetings for discussion of diverse subjects,
including the mistakes of congress, advice to the President, the tariff,
the oppressions of capital, the tyranny of labor, prohibition, the negro
question, restriction of immigration, Shakespeare criticism, the Wrongs
of Ireland, and a host of other things that generated heat and lasting
acrimony. The meetings sometimes approached turbulency when some
over-zealous orator gave vent to unpopular ideas, or made statements
that seemed to justify somebody in the audience in calling him a liar.
Few participants ever left convinced of anything in particular, except
the correctness of the opinions they had brought with them.
We found a gathering of about a hundred club members and numerous small
boys in the grove back of the church. We strolled about through the
crowd and I was introduced by my companions to a number of their old
friends.
Bill was the official head of the club and deservedly popular. To the
small boys he was a deified personage. His constitutional title was
“Chief Gobbler,” and he bore it with easy grace and a quiet air of
_noblesse oblige_. His opinion prevailed on club matters, except when
Sophy Perkins was in contact with the situation, and this was most of
the time.
Sophy was the secretary, treasurer, general manager, board of directors,
and, to her mind, constituted the greater part of the membership,
although her duties were supposed to be merely clerical. All her life
she had yearned for something besides her husband to regulate and
superintend, and the Turkey Club had been a godsend.
She was a somewhat attenuated female, on the regretful side of fifty.
Her physiognomy was repelling and expressed characteristics of an alley
cat. There was a predatory gleam in her narrowly placed greenish eyes.
They bespoke malignant jealousy and relentless cupidity. She seemed
enveloped by an atmosphere—vague and indefinable—that prompted cautious
and immediate retirement from her vicinity. In private conversation she
was commonly referred to as “The Stinger,” and the soubriquet seemed to
have been justly earned by a badly speckled record of secret intrigue
and underhanded methods. Anonymous letters, petty trickery and duplicity
in manifold forms were included in the misdeeds that had been tacitly
laid at Sophy’s door.
She was of that female type that demands all male privileges, in
addition to those of her own sex, and she often took advantage of the
fact that she was a woman to do and say things that she would probably
have been knocked down for if she had been a man—one of the most
contemptible forms of cowardice.
Her shortcomings were legion, but nobody else was available who was
willing to carry the burden of the clerical duties of the club, and she
was allowed to run things to her heart’s content. Her main reward was
the occasional mention of her name in the county paper, in connection
with the activities of the club. She treasured the carefully garnered
clippings and gloated over them through the dreary years. To her they
were precious incense, and, while they gratified, but never satisfied
her vanity and hunger for notoriety, they were the compensation of her
narrow and disappointed life, and the food of her impoverished and
selfish spirit.
She was without the consolations of religion, the resources of culture,
or the sweet recompense of children’s voices, to soften the asperities
of her fruitless existence. The gray hairs had come and there was no
love around Sophy, for she had sent forth none during the period of life
in which temples of the soul must be builded, if kindly light beams from
their windows, and there be fit sanctuary for the weary spirit in the
after years.
Successive official heads of the club, who seemed to be attracting more
public attention than Sophy, were submarined, made officially sick, and
retired gracefully. The supply of these official heads finally became
restricted, and for the past few years Bill’s incumbency had been
undisturbed, although he frequently threatened to “throw up the job.”
J. Montgomery Perkins was a subdued helpmate. He was an inoffensive
little man, who was always alluded to as “Sophy’s husband,” and when
this happened somebody would usually exclaim sympathetically, “Poor
Perk!”
Of late years the club had suffered from “too much Sophy Perkins.”
Interest had begun to lag and apathy was creeping over the membership.
“You want to look out fer Sophy,” confided Hyatt, before I had met her.
“She’s got a lot o’ wires loose in the upper story, but she knows where
the ends of all of ’em are when they’s anything in it fer her.”
Promptly at 2 P.M. Bill pounded with a big stick on a board that was
sustained at the ends by the heads of two resonant barrels. The confused
hum of voices ceased and the eyes of the scattered groups were upon him.
Sophy whispered to him that he was now to announce the opening of the
shoot. It was Bill’s intention to do this anyway, but Sophy thought it
better that she should take part in what was going on. Substantially his
remarks were as follows:
“Gentlemen and One Lady: This ain’t no time fer a long speech. The
annual turkey shoot o’ this club’s now on, an’ anybody that’s paid ’is
dues an’ ’is entrance fee c’n git in on the game. Ten fat an’ husky
birds are in them boxes, an’ the boxes are fifty yards from the rope
that’s stretched between them two trees, an’ that’s the shoot’n stand.
The chair has made the meas’erments. The birds’ll keep their heads poked
up out o’ the holes in the tops o’ the boxes to rubber at the scenery,
an’ they gotta be killed by a bullet in the head er neck. Hit’n ’em
through the boxes don’t go this year like it did last. Them stone piles
is to protect ’em up to the tops. Any eggs found in the boxes after the
shoot’n belongs to the winners. Ev’ry shooter’ll have ten shots for ’is
dollar, an’ ’e must stand an’ shoot without rest’n ’is rifle on anything
but ’imself. No bullet bigger’n yer thumb’s allowed. If you bust the
bird’s head, er break ’is neck, it’s yours, an’ if you don’t hit nuth’n
in the first ten shots you c’n buy more chances as long as the turkeys
an’ yer money last. The money from the shoot’n’ll go to pay fer the
fowls, an’ if they’s any live ones left after the show, they’ll be
auctioned off to the highest bidders, if they don’t git insulted by the
low bids an’ fly off with the boxes.
“I guess I’ve told all they is to say, but if they’s anything anybody
don’t understand, er if anybody’s got any kick comin’, speak up. Oh,
yes, I fergot to say there’ll be a booby prize of a little tin horn with
a purple ribbon on it, fer them that can’t shoot should be allowed to
toot. If they ain’t no objection the shoot’n’ll now commence.”
With another loud bang on the board the address closed and the crowd
drifted toward the taut rope.
“Hold on there!” yelled Sophy Perkins, frantically waving a small book.
“Nobody’s paid a cent yet!”
“You fellers’ll have to ante up before any blood runs!” shouted Bill as
he again pounded the board.
Nineteen contestants qualified at the barrel behind which Sophy
presided. Her fishy orbs lighted up at the sight of the money, which she
deftly deposited in her stocking after modestly turning her back to the
crowd.
“She’ll chaperone that cash to the day o’ the resurrection if somebody
don’t kep tab on it,” said Hyatt in an undertone as the proceeds
disappeared among the mysteries of Sophy’s apparel. “We’re goin’ to put
rollers under that old girl some day, but we can’t do it till we c’n git
somebody else willin’ to do the work.”
Posey and Hyatt were provided with firearms, and Pop Wilkins had brought
an old-fashioned muzzle loading rifle with a long barrel, which he
handled with much tenderness.
“I used to shoot lady-bugs offen the edges o’ the leaves on the tops o’
high trees with this old iron when I was young an’ spry, an’ mebbe I’ll
hit sump’n with it today,” he declared, as he ambled over toward the
shooting stand.
“I didn’t bring no gun, an’ I won’t do no shoot’n,” remarked Bill. “It
wouldn’t be dignified fer me as head of the club, an’ it wouldn’t be
fair fer the rest fer me to shoot. It ’ud be like swip’n candy from
little boys.”
As Bill had not been known to kill anything with a gun for over twenty
years, his explanation was accepted without comment.
Mr. Joshua T. Varney appeared at this stage of the proceedings, and
offered to take two dollars’ worth of chances and pay three dollars
premium if he could have the first trial and twenty successive shots. As
it usually took a great many shots to hit a turkey’s head at fifty
yards, his proposition was accepted after some discussion.
“Josh” Varney was a traveling salesman, who for several years had
periodically visited Posey’s store, on his rounds through the county,
and sold supplies adapted to the general country trade.
He was a smooth faced man of about forty, with keen gray eyes, a good
story teller, and from him radiated the assurance and suavity of his
kind. He had always been a “good mixer,” and was considered an all
around good fellow. He had joined the club two years before, but had
never attended a “shoot.”
He went to his buggy, that stood near the roadside among numerous other
vehicles, and returned with a small repeating rifle. He then stepped
over to the rope and began shooting at the bobbing heads above the
boxes. In this way hundreds of venerable gobblers and dignified hen
turkeys had lost their lives in past years through innocent curiosity as
to the doings of the outside world.
The birds were all dead when Mr. Varney had fired fourteen times. Quiet
but well chosen profanity troubled the air when the tenth bird succumbed
and the performance was ended.
Bill again belabored the board and announced the end of the contest.
“Gentlemen, you prob’ly notice that the shoot’n’s all over! Sump’n has
been done unto us, an’ somebody has had an elegant pastime. This ain’t
been no turkey shoot, it’s been a horr’ble massacre, an’ after this all
Deadwood Dicks’ll be barred, unless they git a mile away when they shoot
at anything ’round ’ere. We better kill our turkeys with axes after
this, an’ only sell the chance o’ one whopp. We ain’t got but one booby
prize, an’ I guess you all better take turns blowin’ on it. This ain’t
been no kind of a day, an’ it’s come to a sad end. The club’ll now
perceed to its annual business, an’ as the day is nice an’ warm we might
as well do it out doors ’stid o’ goin’ in an’ muss’n up the church.
Sophy, what you got on the fire that ’as to be ’tended to?”
“They ain’t no business that I can’t ’tend to myself,” replied Sophy
grimly. “The treasurer’s report’s been left home by accident, an’ they
ain’t nuth’n else to come up, ’less somebody wants to pay dues, or you
want to ’lect some new members.”
With this she favored me with a stealthy sidelong glance and I was
thereupon proposed for membership by Rat Hyatt, who added that I seemed
to be the “only outsider present from a distance that hadn’t
hornswoggled the club durin’ the past hour.”
Sophy’s talon-like fingers closed quickly on the two-dollar bill that I
handed her as the first year’s dues, after my election and the formal
adjournment of the meeting.
While I was entirely out of sympathy with the turkey shoots, I was glad
for several reasons to become a member.
After most of the crowd had dispersed I was solemnly conducted into the
church and informed that, in order to become a full-fledged member,
certain things must be imparted to me to complete my initiation. I was
then told that all “Turkeys” knew each other by certain grips and
cabalistic words. The “grip” consisted of shaking hands with three
fingers only, representing the three front toes of a turkey. The
“countersign” was “Pop-Pop!” signifying rifle firing at the annual
shoot. The countersign, loudly uttered, with three fingers held aloft,
constituted “the grand high sign,” and I was told that I must always
relieve any brother Turkey who hungered or thirsted, and made such a
sign. With my promise to remember all this, the ceremony, which my
instructors, Bill and Rat, considered very humorous, was ended.
The Reverend Butters had been a sorrowful spectator of the proceedings
of the afternoon, but his furrowed face brightened when Josh Varney
gracefully presented him with one of the big dripping birds that he was
carrying to his buggy. In prayer before his congregation on the
following Sunday he expressed humble gratitude with the words, “Out of
the iniquities of the world, O Lord, has sustenance come to the body of
thy servant, and beneath a cloak of sin have Thy blessings been
transmitted unto Thine anointed one.”
The relations between the old preacher and Rat Hyatt had been slightly
embarrassing since Rat’s conversion and sudden backsliding of the year
before, and they had little to say to each other when they met. Rat was
now regarded as a hopeless loss and a minute part of hell’s future fuel
supply. He considered his former spiritual comforter “a busted wind
bag,” so there seemed little left to say on either side.
On the way back to the boats I reflected on the degrading entertainment
of the afternoon. Outside of what Pop Wilkins called “the horning in of
that turkey pirate,” the day was considered a success. The well aimed
bullets had thrilled the spectators with savage joy, for somewhere in
the heart of nearly every average human abides the primitive lust for
blood. The marksmanship might just as well have been exhibited on
inanimate and unsuffering targets. The helpless turkeys in the boxes
gratified the baser instincts to the extent of their limitations, and
when they were all dead the crowd went home as happy as if it had been
to a bull fight, a prize ring, or to any other brutal spectacle
disguised by pretended admiration of scientific ability. On the way back
down the river, our boats kept close together and there was much
discussion over the day’s events.
Pop Wilkins delivered a long tirade against Varney, and wound up by
modestly admitting that probably he would have beheaded all of the birds
with his squirrel rifle if he had had the opportunity, so after all it
was merely a question as to who shot first.
“That feller c’d prob’ly thread needles with that damn rifle,” observed
Bill. “I’ve read o’ fellers that had telescope eyes an’ a sixth sense
that somehow couldn’t miss nuth’n they ever shot at. They c’d plunk
holes wherever they wanted to, like they was use’n a gimlet. I wonder
what ’e wasted them four extry catritches fer? Prob’ly so’s to make a
nice sociable feel’n all ’round an’ make ’em think it wasn’t quite so
raw. He prob’ly goes to shoots all over the country an’ sells the
plunder in the market.”
The chill winds of a desolate winter had swept through the naked woods
along the river, and a balmy May had come, with its tender unfolding
leaves of hope and perfumed blossoms, when Josh Varney again appeared on
the scene.
“Well! Well! How’s everybody?” he shouted genially as he drove up in
front of Posey’s store one forenoon with a roan horse and a smart new
buggy.
“We’re slowly git’n well. Say, Perfessor, you ain’t got no gun with you,
have you?” queried Bill, as the pair shook hands. “’Cause if you have
they’s a lot of us that’s goin’ to hide some poultry.”
“Now, look ’ere Bill, you don’t want to be sore ’bout that little
shoot’n last fall. I gave all them turkeys to some poor people, an’ they
done a lot o’ good. I just happened to hit ’em, an’ I couldn’t repeat
that performance in a hundred years.”
“You bet you couldn’t ’round ’ere if we seen you first,” replied Bill.
“I’d hate to furnish turkeys fer you to shoot at fer a hundred years, an
I’d hate to be the poor people wait’n fer you to feed the birds to ’em.
Say, what you got up yer sleeve this trip? Sump’n still funnier, I
s’pose.”
Posey was busy with a customer, and Varney remained with us on the
platform. He produced some murky and doubtful cigars that Bill declared
looked like genuine “El Hempos” and we smoked and talked for some time.
Pop Wilkins joined us, and Sophy Perkins arrived at the store to
purchase some calico. She bestowed a reserved nod and a feline glance on
Varney, and greeted the rest of the party with scant politeness. She
stood just inside, near the entrance, and utilized the time Posey was
spending with his other customer in listening to our conversation. She
soon became so absorbed in it that she forgot all about her calico and
remained riveted to her point of vantage. Posey respected her
preoccupation and busied himself with other things after his first
visitor had left through the side door.
The chairs outside were tipped against the long window sill, and the
party was making itself comfortable in the spring sunshine. Varney was
relating a wondrous tale, and was fully aware of the acute eavesdropping
within. Many of the romantic touches in his discourse were apparently
for Sophy’s benefit.
“I got a long letter from a friend of mine,” said Josh, as he felt
through his inside pockets, “an’ I wish I had it with me, but I guess
I’ve left it somewhere. He’s making a trip ’round the world an’ ’e
writes me that in India he ran across a marvellous breed of turkeys. You
know turkeys originated in India, an’ they come from there first about
five hundred years ago. These strange birds he writes about live away up
in the Himalaya mountains and are pure white. They’re much larger than
ordinary turkeys, an’ their color adapts ’em to the snowy peaks, an’
protects ’em from the natives when they pursue ’em out o’ the valleys,
where they go to eat frogs along the water courses. They live almost
entirely on frogs when they c’n git ’em. When they’re disturbed they
wing back to the frozen heights, an’ sometimes don’t come down for a
year. When they’re hunted up there they fly from crag to crag an’
they’re almost invisible, an’ its a funny thing, but their meat’s all
white, too. They ain’t no dark meat on ’em like there is on common
turkeys.
“They lay enormous eggs an’ the eggs generally have two yolks. Sometimes
twins hatch out of ’em. The double yolks give an extra amount of
vitality to the young turks, which is necessary up among the cold rocks
where they’re hatched.
“The eggs have a delicious spicy flavor that comes from the spearmint
and other pungent plants that the frogs nibble along the streams. The
eggs are highly prized by epicures, an’ there’s a Frenchman livin’ in
Bombay that pays two rupees apiece for all ’e c’n git of ’em. He makes
what ’e calls ‘_omelets de frog secondaire_,’ or something like that,
with ’em, an’ ’e says there’s nothing like ’em. With him its hen eggs no
more.
“There’s a sacred caste in India called the Brahmins, and they believe
that these white turkeys are what they call reincarnations of a
supernatural race of beings that ruled the earth before man existed.
“Somebody ought to import some o’ them turkeys an’ breed ’em in this
country. Along a river like this they’d find plenty to eat an’ they
wouldn’t be no expense at all. My friend writes that ’e hopes to bring
two or three back with him when ’e comes home, an’ I’m anxious to see
’em. Oh, yes, come to think of it, I put a photograph in my pocket book
that was in the letter.”
Varney thereupon produced a kodak print of a stately white bird. Some
figures in oriental costume, somewhat out of focus and indistinct, were
grouped back of it in the picture. Varney explained that these were
Brahmins and native hunters.
Sophy peeked over the pile of straw hats in the window and had a good
look at the photograph as Varney deftly held it so that it could be seen
from that direction without appearing to do so.
We were greatly entertained by the story.
“Say, Perfessor,” asked Bill, “what do them fowls an’ their young ones
feed on when they don’t git offen the snow an’ go down fer frogs? Do
they have to have the frogs fer their complexions?”
“That’s the strange part of it,” replied Varney. “You see they sort o’
lead double lives. Nature is wonderful in all her works. In the
Himalayas there’s a small red mosquito that has never been found except
away above the timber line. They have ’em out west in this country, too.
They sometimes cover the snow so thick that it looks like blood, an’ the
little turks patter ’round on the drifts an’ eat ’em with voracity, an’
the big ones do, too.”
“‘Voracity,’ what’s that—sump’n their mixed with?” asked Bill.
“No, it means their awful appetite.”
“I’d s’pose them skeets ’ud make the turkey meat taste kin’ o’ nippy an’
prickly, sort o’ red-pepper like,” observed Bill, winking solemnly in
our direction. “It oughta be hot stuff.”
“The insects make the finest kind o’ food for ’em,” continued Varney,
ignoring Bill’s gentle raillery, and the incredulous smiles of the rest
of us. “When the mosquito crop’s extra good they get so fat they can’t
fly or run very far, and are easily caught. When they’re lean they c’n
run like a race horse. The bird that’s in the picture weighed nearly
seventy pounds when ’e was captured. He couldn’t fly, an’ ’e was chased
into a cleft in a big rock and a net was slipped over ’im. The man that
caught ’im was named Bungush Swamee, an ’e was a famous hunter. You see
everybody has funny names in India.”
“What was that Bungush feller doin’ up there with a net?” asked Pop
Wilkins. “Did ’e s’pect to find fish?”
“No, he took it up there for that very purpose. He wanted to catch ’is
birds alive, without injury, so ’e c’d sell ’em to the museums an’
menageries. One year he caught seven an’ shipped ’em to the Zoo in
Bombay, an’ that’s how that Frenchman I just spoke of happened to try
the eggs. They laid ’em in the Zoo and the keeper o’ the Zoo was a
friend o’ his.
“You askin’ about expecting to find fish up there reminds me that my
friend said in ’is letter that another way they had o’ catching the
birds was to lay out set lines over the snow with big fish hooks on ’em.
They fastened ’em to the jagged rocks an’ left ’em out three or four
days. They baited the hooks with frogs they’d brought up from down
below. The frogs, of course, froze, but the turkeys would swallow ’em,
an’ when the frogs thawed out inside their crops they’d be stuck with
the hooks. My friend wrote that one man got three on one line once an’
had a terrible time pullin’ ’em in over the rough ice and snow. They
have some awful snow storms up in them mountains. Sometimes it snows for
years without let’n up, an’ the snow gits to be half a mile deep, so you
see there’s lots of uncertainties.”
At this point Bill removed his tattered hat and bowed reverently to
Varney.
Pop Wilkins remarked that he had often caught turkeys on fish lines, but
his custom had been to troll for them through the open fields with spoon
hooks, or use a pole and line with a casting bait when the birds were in
the trees. Although he had never tried set lines on snow, he had no
doubt it would work.
The subject was changed, and Sophy, after making her purchase, departed
without looking in our direction.