meadows toward the farm. The little girl was powerless to turn it, and
when she set the pack at the cattle they only ran faster than ever
toward the fields. So she called the dogs off. Slowly, but surely, the
cows led the forbidden way, and as the little girl moved about on the
pinto, powerless to go where she wished or to turn them back, she
watched them, swelling with very rage in her helplessness, and wept
bitterly.
When the herd was out of sight over the rise south of the meadow, the
pinto, with her reluctant rider, again went riverward. This time the
mare took a good drink, wading in so far that the little girl's anger
turned to fear and she cried harder than ever. As the horse came out of
the stream, the loud _yur_, _yur_, of a frightened crow, whose nest was
in the willow fringe, startled the blind black colt, and he started on a
run up the river. His mother, whinnying loudly, followed him and broke
into such a hard gallop that the little girl was bounced rudely about
and would have fallen to the ground had not the hame-straps firmly held
her.
Away they went, the colt in the lead and the pinto after, until they
reached the bunch of cottonwoods far up the stream where the yanging
wild geese had their nests. Then the colt came to a halt and waited
tremblingly for his anxious mother.
The black colt had a wild fear of crows, for it was due to them that he
had been blind ever since, a few days after his birth, he had
accompanied his mother across the reservation road to the sloughs
beyond. He had trotted happily at her side as they went, but late in the
evening had run one knobby leg into a hole in the prairie-dog village
and taken a bad tumble. He had not been able to rise again, and, in
struggling had got wedged upon his back between two mounds, so that he
had to lie, feet up, all night. His mother had fed near him till dark
came on, and had stood over him through the night; and not till the sun
was well up did she leave him to go for water. It was then that he had
been blinded, for some crows, flying by to the stubble-fields around the
farm-house, had thought him dead and had alighted beside him with
inquiring cries.
Now, as he stood in the cottonwoods beside his mother, he shook his head
uneasily as if unpleasant memories were stirring in his baby brain, and
stamped crossly as the dogs came up, their tongues out with their hot
pursuit.
Time dragged slowly. Late in the afternoon a dash of rain found its way
down through the cottonwood leaves, splashed against the little girl's
face, and mingled with the tear-drops. The pinto moved farther into the
shelter of the grove and the light sprinkle did not wet her. As the
light slowly faded the peepers along the river began to send up their
lonesome chant, and a crow went whirring past to his home down the
river, with no cry to the blind black colt underneath, for his bill was
thrust through a redhead's egg. Near by, from the open prairie, the
brown pippets flew skyward against the rain-drops, greeting the coming
night with a last song, and then dropped silently to their nests in the
lush grass.
The framework of the smoke-house roof was in its place, and the laying
of the straw bundles, in long, overlapping rows, well started before the
shower began; and so rapidly did the big brothers work, that when the
collie came in with the sheep, the thatching was nearly finished, and
the squatty, straw-crowned building, with grass and flower tops
sticking, still fresh, from between its sods, looked like one of the
chocolate layer-cakes that the little girl's mother made for
Thanksgiving, only the filling was green instead of brown, and the top
coating was gold.
They were on top of the house, laying the last two rows of straw along
the ridge-pole, when their mother, who was in the kitchen getting
supper, noticed that it was sprinkling, looked northward through the
gloom to try to catch a glimpse of the little girl returning with the
herd, and then called to the big brothers to ask if they could not see
cattle moving about in the corn. They looked and, from their
vantage-point, made out a big herd. Their shout brought their mother
hurrying into the yard.
"They're not ours, are they?" she asked. But the big brothers were
bringing the wagon team and a cultivator horse out of the barn,
unsaddled and unbridled, and did not hear. Before she could reach them,
they had dashed off.
She stood looking after them, her apron over her head. She knew that if
the cattle in the field belonged to the farm, something had gone wrong
with the little girl; and she strained her eyes anxiously to where loud
bellows, shouts, and the cracking of cattle-gads told that the herd was
being routed.
Suddenly, from across the intervening corn and sorghum and into the
cottonwood break, crashed a great white bull, whose curly head was
swaying angrily and whose eyes shone with the lust of fight, while
behind, laying about him with a whip at every jump, came the biggest
brother. It was Napoleon.
"Oh, my poor pet lamb!" cried the little girl's mother, and retreated
into the smoke-house for safety as the bull and his pursuer came by.
It took hard riding to rid the grain of the cattle, for, under cover of
the dusk, they slipped back into the wheat again and again after having
been driven out. So it was long after supper-time before the herd was
bunched and driven around the farm to the reservation road and into the
wire pen by way of the ash lane in front of the house. Then the big
brothers came tramping into the kitchen, tired and hungry.
But what was their surprise to find it empty. And, on looking about,
they discovered a note from their mother. It had been put in plain sight
against the syrup-jug and read:
"_The dogs, all except Luffree, came home. If she has returned when you
read this, fire a musket._"
They stood in a circle and looked blankly at one another. For it had not
crossed their minds that the little girl was not home, but somewhere out
on the prairie, tied to a pinto, and all alone in the dark.
Without waiting to snatch a bite from the table, they started off to
search, leaving their jaded horses in the barn. The eldest brother went
straight for the river, which he meant to follow, and took a musket
with him; the youngest ran off up the path between the corn and the
wheat, and carried the cow-horn; while the biggest made for the
carnelian bluff, taking neither gun nor horn, but relying on his lungs
to carry any good news to the others. And behind them, as they hurried,
sounded the baying of the St. Bernard, ignominiously chained to a stake
by the kitchen door.
The evening wore on. Overhead the low-hanging clouds covered the
moonless sky like a hood, and not a star shone through the fleecy
thickness to aid in the search for the little girl. At a late hour it
began to sprinkle again, and, though no sound of shot or blast had
broken the silence of the prairie, one by one the anxious hunters came
straggling home, dumbly ate, and waited for the morning.
The little girl's mother, sitting behind the stove, cried heartbrokenly.
"If my poor baby ever comes back alive," she sobbed, "she shall have her
birthday in June and the best present I can get her." And all the big
brothers silently assented.
But while they were gathered thus, drying their damp clothes, the
biggest brother suddenly sprang up with a joyful cry.
"Why didn't we think of it before?" he said--"the St. Bernard!"
A moment later he was freeing the big dog, and his mother, lantern in
hand, was holding a little gingham dress against his muzzle.
"Find her! Find her!" she commanded. "Go, go! Find her!"
The St. Bernard shook himself free of the chain that had bound him,
looked into the faces that peered at him through the dim lantern-light,
and then, giving a long sniff, proud, human, and contemptuous, walked
slowly and majestically toward the sod barn. The family followed
wonderingly.
When the corn-cribs were reached, the dog quickened his pace to a trot
and began to wave his big, bushy tail in friendly greeting to something
that, farther on in the dark, could not be seen by the little girl's
mother and the big brothers. And when he came near the wide, closed door
of the barn, in front of which showed indistinctly the forms of a large
and a small animal, he leaped forward with a welcoming bark that was
answered by another from a dog lying in the deep shadow against the
door.
For there stood the blind black colt and the pinto with the bridle-reins
still swinging across her neck. And on her back lay the little girl, her
arms hanging down on either side of the sheepskin saddle-blanket, her
head pillowed in sleep against her horse's mane.
IV
A PARIAH OF THE PRAIRIES
THE young cowbird, perched tail to windward on a stone beside the road,
raised his head, and uttered a hoarse cry of hunger and lonesomeness as
a great black flock of his own kind, sweeping by on its way to the
grazing herd in the gully, shadowed the ground about him for an instant.
"Look-see! look-see!" he called plaintively, rolling his eyes and
ruffling his throat; "look-see! look-see!"
But the flock, dipping and rising in swift flight, sped on unheeding.
The long summer day was drawing to a close over the prairie, and with
early evening myriads of gnats and mosquitos swarmed up from the sloughs
to drink their fill on the flanks of the stamping cows. The insects
offered a fat supper to the birds as they clung to the twitching hides
of the cattle. So the flock was hastening to reach the gully before
milking-time.
The young cowbird called disconsolately again and again after the shadow
of the flock was far away, making a moving blot across the darkening
plains. Then, discouraged, he tucked his head under his wing, clutched
the stone more tightly with his claws, and rocked gently back and forth
as the soft south breeze spread his tail, lifted his growing pinions,
and blew his new feathers on end.
He was a tramp and the descendant of a long line of tramps, all as black
and hoarse and homeless as himself. A vagabond of the blackbird world,
he had, like many an unfeathered exile, only sleep to make him forget
his empty craw, and only a wayside rock for his resting-place.
He had been an outcast from the beginning. One day in the spring his
tramp mother, too shiftless to build a home for herself, had come
peeping and spying about the fuzzy nest of some yellow warblers that had
built in an elder-bush by the river; and finding the birds away, had
laid a big white egg speckled with brown in the midst of four dainty
pale-blue ones that were wreathed with tiny dots. Then she had slipped
away as quickly as possible, abandoning her own to the more tender
mercies of the little canary pair.
It was the warblers' first nesting, or they would have known, the moment
they saw the large egg among their small ones, that they had been
imposed upon, and would either have pushed the interloper out or built
a second story to their home and left the cowbird's egg in the basement.
But they were young and inexperienced, so they had only wondered a
little at the size and color of their last lay, and let it remain.
The weeks had passed. Then, one day, there had been a great chattering
about the warm cup of milkweed fiber and thistle-down in the elder-bush,
husky cheeping from the nest mingling with the joyous chirps of the
mother-bird as she tilted and danced on its edge or fluttered
ecstatically above it; and from the end of a swaying twig close by had
swelled the proud song of the male.
The big egg had hatched.
When the first nestling had freed himself from his shell and tried his
long, wabbly legs, he opened a wide-gaping, clamorous red mouth above
his naked little body; and this set the yellowbirds on such persistent
and successful searches after worms, that by the time the young
cowbird's foster brothers and sisters were out, he had grown big and
strong. So the newer babies had been squeezed from the cozy center of
their warm home to a place on its chilly rim.
Affairs in the nest had soon come to a sad pass. The little warblers'
weak voices and short necks were not able to win the reward of tidbits
claimed by the young cowbird, who ruthlessly stood upon them as he
snatched his food from the bills of the yellowbirds. One by one they
sickened and died, and were then pushed out into the wet grass below.
After that the young cowbird had been fed faster and more fondly than
ever.
One afternoon, when the warblers were away foraging for the nest, the
cowbird, now well feathered, had tried his wings a little, and had flown
to a clump of tall weeds not far off. Alighting safely, and emboldened
by success, he had eluded a hungry snake that hunted him across the
gopher knolls, and finally gone on to the top of the hill. When twilight
came he had found a perch in a pile of tumbleweed, far from the
sheltering bushes by the river. So the warblers, coming home late with
two long wrigglers for him, had found the nest empty. They had darted
anxiously about it for a while, then the male had settled upon a
swinging elder-branch to sing a mournful song to his mute,
grief-stricken mate.
Their last baby was gone.
* * * * *
WHEN the little girl came trudging along the road that evening on her
way to the farm-house, she sat down for a moment opposite the stone on
which the cowbird was perched. And after examining a sand cut that was
giving her some trouble under her little toe, she suddenly caught sight
of the dumpy black ball that was moving back and forth with every gust.
She leaned forward on her knees to see what it was, and crept slowly
toward him until she was within reach. Then, before he had time to take
his head from under his wing, she put out one hand and seized him.
He was terribly frightened and struggled to get free, pushing vigorously
against her fingers with wings and claws. But she only tightened her
grasp as he fought, and he was soon so closely held that he could not
move. She forgot her sore toe in her happiness over catching him, and
started homeward on the run. As she bounded along, he watched her with
his small, scared eyes.
On reaching the farm-house the little girl put him into a rough slat
cage that hung in her room; and while he stretched his cramped legs, and
opened his crumpled wings, she hurried to the window, where she captured
a handful of house-flies. She placed them in front of him, and he
retreated to the farthest corner of the cage, to beat the bars in
terror. But after she had hidden herself behind the headboard of the
bed, he came forward and ate up the flies without stopping to take a
breath between gulps. Then he snuggled down on a piece of her worn-out
woolen dress, and went to sleep again.
Though the little girl was yet only five and a half years old, she had
tried many times in her life, without success, to make the slat cage the
home of some feathery pet. Snipes and plover, orioles and ovenbirds,
bobolinks and meadow-larks, all had lived in it by turns for a few days.
But the snipes and plover had gone into a decline, the orioles and
ovenbirds had grown thin and unkempt, and the bobolinks and meadow-larks
had eaten themselves to death. Sorrowful over so much misfortune, she
had longed to secure a hardy bird that would not only live in captivity,
but would repay her loving care with songs.
The young cowbird proved to be just what she had wanted. Every day he
grew larger, plumper, and hungrier; and though he was not a song-bird,
his attempts at melody, made with much choking and wheezing and many wry
faces,--as if the countless flies he had swallowed were sticking in his
throat,--pleased her more than carols. Within a week after his capture
he was so tame that he would sit on her shoulder as she walked about her
room and peck at her teeth. She was certain that he was giving her so
many loving kisses; but her big brothers unsympathetically explained
that he thought she had some kernels of corn between her lips.
It was not long before he was allowed the freedom of the sitting-room a
little while every afternoon, and the little girl always sat and
watched him as he walked solemnly about it, taking long steps, calling
happily in his husky voice, and pecking curiously at the bright rags in
the crocheted rug.
This freedom worked wonders with his plumage. His dark brown head fairly
shone, his sable breast and back grew glossy, and his wings took on
faint, changing tints of purple and blue. His jet rudder, daily dressed
to its iridescent tip by his ebony beak, was flicked jauntily as he
strode around on his long black legs. And all this alert, engaging
beauty won the friendship of the farm-house, including even that of the
little girl's big brothers, who advised her to clip his wings if she
wanted to keep him; for when he had once reached full size, they said,
he would fly away to join the cowbird colonies up the river. But the
little girl would never consent to any use of the scissors.
Throughout the remainder of the summer he went everywhere with her,
perching on her shoulder when she drove the cattle to the meadows,
riding with her on the pinto if she were sent on an errand, or walking
beside her in the farm-yard. He never flew far from her, and could
always be coaxed back if she whistled and showed her teeth. They spent
many an afternoon together on the prairie while the little girl herded.
And when the cows were headed away from the wheat and were grazing
quietly, he would leave her and fly to the back of Liney, the muley,
where he would walk up and down the broad, white mark that ran from her
horns to her tail, and catch insects. Liney, who liked the sharp thrust
of his bill where a mosquito had been stinging, was careful not to
wiggle her hide and scare him away. At dinner-time he joined the little
girl and shared her gingerbread.
One night, just before the cows started for the milking-pen, a big flock
of cowbirds flew down and alighted in the midst of them, some of the
birds perching upon the backs of the cattle to catch their supper. When
the little girl saw the black company, she looked around for her bird,
but could not tell him from the others. There were three perched upon
Liney's back, and, hoping that one of them was he, she ran toward the
cow, calling softly and showing her teeth. But as she came close, the
three flew away to the roan heifer. Half weeping, she ran after them,
calling still, and smiling to entice him. The birds rose into the air
again, this time alighting around the farthest cow in the herd.
Overwhelmed with sorrow, the little girl turned back to where the
cattle-gad lay, holding her apron up to her wet eyes as she stumbled
miserably along. But just as she flung herself down beside the whip,
there came a harsh call from behind her, where the lunch-pail stood. It
was the cowbird.
"Look-see! look-see!" he cried, pecking at the brown paper that held the
gingerbread. Jumping up, the little girl ran to him and caught him
tenderly to her breast.
He was so inquisitive that he soon became unpopular at the farm-house,
and on several occasions all but had his neck wrung for wrongdoing. One
day he picked the eldest brother's fiddle-strings in two; another time
he was discovered digging holes in the newly baked loaves of bread that
had been set in a window to cool; and, again, he stole hot potatoes out
of a kettle on the kitchen stove. But whenever danger threatened, the
little girl championed him valiantly. So time after time he escaped
merited punishment, which was to have been not less than death or exile;
for he was too small to whip.
But one morning in the early fall he was confronted with a very grave
charge--one that was, if proved true, to cost him his life or his home:
the little girl's mother, on going into the kitchen at sunrise to
prepare breakfast, discovered all her crocks of milk disturbed and the
shelf behind the stove, on which they stood in a long, yellow row,
spattered with milk from end to end. As she turned, very puzzled, from
the shelf to the table, she saw the cowbird gravely walking about on
the white oil-cloth.
"Look-see! look-see!" he cried to her, flirting his tail and blinking
his eyes. "Look-see! look-see!"
She ran to the table and seized him angrily in her hands, certain that
he had forsaken his own little pan of water to bathe in the milk. But
when she had looked him over carefully, and found him dry and tidy from
top to toe, she let him go again, forgetting to feel of the white
oil-cloth upon which he had been promenading, and which was spattered
with milk like the shelf.
Before the contents of the crocks were thrown out that morning, the
little girl's mother called all of the big brothers in to view the mess;
and by the time breakfast was over, the cowbird had been passed around,
for every one wanted to see if any milk could be found on him. None was
discovered, however, so the little girl was allowed to carry him away in
triumph on her shoulder.
For two or three mornings after that the milk was not visited by the
marauder. Then for several days in succession it was splashed about on
shelf, stove, and floor, and the little girl's mother was more puzzled
than ever. The cowbird was no longer under suspicion, for the big
brothers had not been able to fasten the guilt upon him, since his
feathers were always as sleek and shining as the coat of a curried
horse.
It was decided to poison a part of the milk for several nights and put
the rest carefully in the cupboard. This was done; but though morning
after morning the shelf was sprinkled as badly as ever, no dead body of
cat, bird, or wild animal was ever found in the kitchen to solve the
mystery. So a new plan was adopted, and tin pans were put upside down
over the crocks to keep the nightly visitor out.
This arrangement worked well for a week or more; then one morning there
was a terrific rattling and banging in the kitchen, followed by deathly
stillness. Certain that the disturber of the milk was at hand, the
entire family rushed pell-mell through the sitting-room and down the
entry to the kitchen door, which they flung wide open, and excitedly
peered in. On the floor lay a tin pan that had been knocked from its
place, and in one side of it was a large dent where it had struck the
stove in falling. The milk in the uncovered vessel was not disturbed,
and there was no sign of any living thing in the room.
Baffled and wondering, they returned to their beds. But the little girl,
before going back to hers, remained behind a moment to look for the
cowbird. At last she spied him, perched high up on the elbow of the
stovepipe. He was trembling violently, and his glossy, black feathers
were standing out--straight on end.
The neighbor woman, who dropped in that noon, made a suggestion that the
big brothers decided to act upon. She declared that the kitchen visitor
was a milk-snake, and that one night spent on the watch without a light
would prove her correct. So that very evening, the eldest brother,
wrapped in a buffalo robe and a pair of blankets, sat on a bench behind
the kitchen door, resolved to keep awake till morning in wait for the
mysterious disturber. The rest of the family prepared for bed, after
providing him with the musket, powder and buck-shot, and the
clothes-stick; and on looking in upon him before retiring, found him
sitting grimly in his corner, the musket leaning against one shoulder,
while upon the other perched the cowbird.
The sun was just rising next day when the little girl's mother awoke.
She was surprised at not having been aroused earlier by the noise of an
encounter, and, accompanied by the little girl and the other big
brothers, tiptoed quickly but softly down the entry to listen. All was
quiet. She pushed the kitchen door open a little to look at the crocks.
They had not been molested. Then she put her head in. As she did so, the
husky cry of the cowbird came from the bench behind the door.
"Look-see! look-see!" he called, as he walked up and down the eldest
brother from head to foot; "look-see! look-see!"
And the family, entering, beheld the eldest brother stretched upon the
bench--fast asleep.
He was so provoked at having been found napping that, when he heard
their laughter and awoke, he grabbed the cowbird and threw him across
the kitchen. The cowbird lighted upon his feet unhurt, and started
boldly back again. But the little girl was frightened over his bad
treatment, and running to him, took him up tenderly, and carried him to
her room. He was put into the slat cage for the rest of the day, and for
several weeks after that slept in it every night.