THE STAINED-GLASS WINDOWS AND THE PRISMATIC FOWLS
Owing to the difficulties of the passage through the cave of the bats,
and the utter barrenness of the rocky half-acre which lay at its other
end, the three soldiers never entered it again during the fall and
winter which followed its discovery. The two blocks of isinglass which
they had brought away on their first visit were ample for their
purpose; and as soon as they had secured their supply of fat pine-knots
for light in the long winter evenings, they set about constructing two
windows to take the place of the sliding boards which closed those
openings in the cold, snowy days. It is true, they could not look out
through the new windows, but much light could enter where all had been
darkness before. Time was nothing to the soldiers in these late autumn
days; and, indeed, the more of it they could spend on any work they
undertook, the more such work contributed to their contentment and
happiness. They wished to have their windows ornamental as well as
useful; and it was Philip's suggestion that they should try an
imitation of stained glass.
They had some of the carbine cartridges left; and as they no longer
killed any creatures, the bullets would supply them with lead to unite
the small pieces of isinglass and outline their designs. One of the
mica blocks chanced to be of a pale-green color, and they made many
experiments to produce reds and blues. Oxide of iron, or the common
red iron-rust, gave a rich carmine powder, which, mixed with the white
of an egg, adhered to the inner side of the small panes. They found a
few dried huckleberries, from which they extracted a strong blue by
boiling. They could procure yellow only by beating a small bit of gold
to the thinnest leaf, which they pasted upon the flake of mica. The
reds and blues as they applied them were only water-colors; but the
inner side of the glass was not exposed to the rain. After the one
square window, which looked toward the Cove and consequently let in the
afternoon sun, was finished in a fantastic arrangement of the three
rich colors, bordered by pale green, it was decided, with great
enthusiasm, to reproduce in the opposite window their dear old flag
with its thirty-five stars. To do this, they cut away the logs on one
side until they had doubled the area of the opening. They managed to
stiffen the frame on the inner side with strips of dogwood, which made
a single cross against the light, leaving the blue field of stars
unobstructed.
It was a great comfort to their patriotic hearts to see the sun glowing
on their United States window when they awoke in the morning, or to see
the ruddy firelight dancing on the old flag, if one of them came in
from the mill or the branch in the evening. In fact, when this work
was finished, the three soldiers, wrapped in their faded blue
overcoats, were never tired of walking about outside their house, in
the chilly November evenings, to admire their first art-work
illuminated by the torch-light within. Their tough, bare feet,
insensible to the sharp stones and the gray hoar-frost, wore away the
withered grass opposite to each of their stained-glass windows; but the
patch of trodden earth outside the window which showed the glowing
stripes and gleaming stars of the old flag was much the larger.
Otherwise their prospects for the winter were by no means as brilliant
as their windows; for besides the failure in the potato crop, the white
grubs had made sad havoc with their corn in two successive plantings,
and the yield in October had been alarmingly light. Even the chestnuts
had been subject to a blight; and altogether it was what the farmers
would call "a bad year." The fowls had increased to an alarming
extent, considering the necessity of feeding so many, and as winter
approached their eggs were fewer than ever. The case was not so bad
that it would be necessary to shorten their rations, as they had done
before the harvest of the first year; but with so many mouths to feed,
there was danger that they would find themselves without seed for the
next planting. Then, too, there was a very grave danger that before
spring these stubborn vegetarians would be forced to resort to broiled
chicken, spiced with gunpowder, which was nearly as repulsive to their
minds as leaving the mountain and going down into a triumphant
Confederacy.
The bear, at least, would require no feeding, and with the very first
snow old Tumbler disappeared as usual, making the soldiers rather wish
that, for this particular winter, hibernation could be practised by
human animals as well as by bears.
After Christmas the weather became unusually cold, and the winds swept
with terrific force across the top of the mountain. The snow was so
deep that the path they dug to the mill was banked above their heads as
they walked in it, and the mill itself showed only its half-roof of
shingles and its long water-trough above the surface of the snow. From
the trough huge icicles were pendent, and it was ornamented with great
curves of snow; and when Philip set the wheels in motion, a gray dust
rose above the bank, and the whir of the grinding as heard at the house
was subdued and muffled like the very ghost of a sound. The soldiers
dug open spaces to give light, outside the stained-glass windows, and
through these the evening firelight repeated the gorgeous colors on the
snow.
From the path to the mill they dug a branch to the forge, and tunneled
a passage to the water, from which they broke the ice every day. Short
as was their supply of corn, they were obliged to feed it to the fowls
with a lavish hand as long as the deep snow remained. This necessity
kept them busy shelling the ears by the fire in the warm house, after
they had brought them in from the mill or the forge, and half a
gunny-sack of corn was thrown out on the snow at the morning and
evening feeding. Since the hut of the old man of the mountain had been
made into a forge, the fowls had roosted in the branches of the old
chestnuts, and had got on very well, even in the winters that were
past. With full crops, they seemed to be thriving equally well during
the severe cold which attended the period of deep snow.
The 15th of January in the new year, which was 1871, was the first of a
four days' thaw. The sun beamed with unusual heat on the mountain, and
under his rays the snow rapidly disappeared, and the ground came to
light again with its store of dry seeds. The three-pronged tracks of
the fowls were printed everywhere in the soft top-soil, where they
scampered about in pursuit of grubs and worms. On the fourth day the
avalanche fell from the great boulder into the Cove, with the usual
midwinter crashes and reverberations, which reminded Philip of his
narrow escape the winter before.
On the evening of this fourth day the thaw was followed by a light
rain, which froze as it fell, and developed into a regular ice-storm
during the night. When the three soldiers looked out on the morning of
the 19th, they found their house coated with ice, and the mountain-top
a scene of glittering enchantment. Every tree and bush was coated with
a transparent armor of glass. The lithe limbs of the birches and young
chestnuts were bent downward in graceful curves by the weight of the
ice, which, under the rays of the rising sun, guttered and scintillated
with all the colors of the rainbow. Every rock and stone had its
separate casing, and every weed and blade of grass was stiffened with a
tiny shining overcoat. The stalks on the plantation stood up like a
glittering field of pikes.
Despite the difficulty of walking over the uneven ground and the
slippery rocks, they made their way, not without occasional falls, to
the western side of the plateau to observe the effect in the Cove.
Philip was in raptures over the prismatic variety of colors, picking
out and naming the tints with a childish glee and with a subtle
appreciation of color that far outran the limited vision of his
comrades, and made them think that Sherman Territory had possibly
defrauded the world below of a first-rate painter.
As they turned back toward the house, after their first outburst of
enthusiasm over the beauties of the ice-storm, Bromley remarked that it
was strange they had not been awakened as usual by the crowing of the
cocks. Indeed, the stillness of the hour was remarkable. It was
strange that while they had lain in their bunks after daybreak they had
not heard the cocks answering one another from one end of the plateau
to the other.
Usually they heard first the clear, ringing note of some knowing old
bird burst loud and shrill from under the very window, and then the
pert reply of some upstart youngster who had not yet learned to manage
his crow drifting faintly back from the rocks to the west; then
straightway all the crowers, of all ages and of every condition of
shrillness and hoarseness, tried for five mortal minutes to crow one
another down; and when one weak, far-away chicken seemed to have got
the last word, another would break the stillness, and the strident
contest would begin again.
Perhaps they had heard all this and not noticed it. They were so used
to the noise; it was like the ticking of a clock or the measured
pounding of the Slow-John; but it was certain that nothing of the kind
was going on at present.
In leaving the house they had been so enchanted by the hues of the
ice-storm that they now remembered they had not so much as turned their
eyes in the direction of the roost. When they came upon the brow of
the hill which overlooked the mill,--which was a silver mill now,--the
limbs of the trees which stretched along the bank beyond were crowded
with the fowls, at least four hundred of them, sitting still on their
perches. Philip, who fell down in his eagerness, and rolled over on
the ice, remarked as he got upon his feet that it was too knowing a
flock of birds to leave the sure hold it had on the limbs to come down
onto the slippery ground.
As the soldiers came nearer, however, they noticed that their fowls in
the sunlight were quite the most brilliantly prismatic objects they had
seen; for their red combs and party-colored feathers made a rich
showing through the transparent coating of ice which enveloped them
like shells and held them fast to the limbs where they sat. Whether
they had been frozen stiff or smothered by the icy envelop, they were
unable to determine; but they could see that all the fowls had met with
a very beautiful death, except two or three of the toughest old
roosters, who had managed to crack the icy winding-sheet about their
bills. One of these, who had more life in him than the others, made a
dismal attempt to crow.
Bromley hastened to get the ladder from the mill, and the hatchet, and
wherever a living bird was to be seen he put up the ladder regardless
of the dead ones, which broke off and fell down, and chipping the ice
about its claws, removed it tenderly to the ground. In the end the
three soldiers carried just two apiece, one under each arm, of these
tough old veterans into the house, and not daring to bring them near
the fire, set them up to thaw gradually against the inner side of the
door. Then they made a pot of hasty-pudding for their own breakfast;
but before they touched it themselves they fed a little of it, steaming
hot, to each reviving old bird. In fact, the poor fowls looked so much
like colored-glass images, when tilted against the door, that, fearing
at any moment they might topple over and break into fragments, they
laid each rooster carefully on his side, where the ice melted by
degrees into sloppy pools on the floor.
The oldest of these unhappy survivors had come up the mountain tied to
a pack-saddle, and consequently was more than six years old. He was
big of frame and tawny of color, and had long, sharp spurs curved like
small powder-horns, and his crow when he was in good health proclaimed
him the leader of the flock. The other five cocks, although but a
trifle younger, belonged to the next generation, for they came of the
first summer's hatching. Their plumage was red and black, and their
long, sweeping tail-feathers cased in ice would certainly have been
snapped off if they had had the least power to move their bodies. As
the ice melted from their heads, they looked about the house with their
round red eyes, and otherwise lay quite helpless on their sides, their
claws drawn up to their crops, and curved as they had been taken from
the limbs.
The soldiers looked on, full of sympathy, and fed their patients now
and then with a small portion of warm pudding; and finally, remembering
their medicine-chest, which they had never yet had occasion to use,
they waited patiently until the ice melted, so that they could handle
the fowls without danger of breaking, and then they held each rooster
up by the neck and dosed him with a spoonful of whisky and quinine.
Following this prescription they laid the old birds in a row on a warm
blanket, sufficiently elevating their heads, and covering them up to
their bills, and left them to sleep and sweat after the most approved
hospital practice.
And now, having done their duty by the living, they went outside to
look at the dead, which were, if possible, more beautiful than ever.
The sun was unusually warm, and by this time everything was dripping
and glittering in the light, which was half blinding, and the thin ice
was snapping everywhere as the lightened limbs sought to regain their
natural positions. As to the dead fowls, a few had fallen to the
ground, but most of them remained rigidly perched on the great limbs,
dripping a shower of raindrops upon the ice below. Here and there,
where a few rays of the sun had found passage to a particular limb, a
section of the icy coating had turned so that a half-dozen fowls hung
heads downward, or the casing of a hen had melted, while her claws were
still frozen fast, leaving her to lop over against her neighbor for
support.
By afternoon they began to fall off the branches like ripened fruit,
and drop on the ground with a thud like apples in an orchard on a windy
day. It was a dismal sound in the ears of the three soldiers, and a
sad sight to see the heaps of dead fowls as they accumulated on the
ground.
The military training of these young men had taught them to make the
most of every reverse, and if possible to turn defeat into victory; and
so they fell to work and plucked off a great quantity of soft feathers,
and all the next day was spent in skinning the breasts, which they
would find some way to cure and make into covers for their beds, or
even garments for themselves. A portion of the carcases they tried out
over the fire, and made a brave supply of oil for the mill, and then
the poor remains were thrown over the cliff.
The six old roosters remained alive in a crippled and deformed
condition, some having three stumpy toes to a foot, and others two or
one, on which they wabbled and limped about with molting feathers and
abbreviated combs, the most dismal-looking fowls that can be imagined.
The old yellow patriarch was paralyzed as to his legs and thighs, so
that he was nearly as helpless as a tailor's goose, and had to be set
about and fed like an infant. For the five red ones Bromley fixed a
roost in the corner of the house behind the door, where some of them
had to be helped up at night, and where they crowed hoarsely in the
morning, over against the window of the stained-glass flag.
Philip, in pursuance of a brilliant idea which he kept to himself,
selected a dozen of the new-laid eggs which they happened to have in
the house, and put them away in a warm place where no breath of frost
could reach them. When the first warm days of spring came, he made a
nest of corn-husks and feathers on a sunny shoulder of rock. Into this
nest he put the eggs he had saved, and covered them with the old
paralyzed yellow rooster, who had never been known to move from where
he was set down since the night he was frozen on the limb. The
indignant old bird certainly gave Philip a look of remonstrance as he
left him in this degrading position; and when Philip came a few hours
later to feed him, this cunning old rooster, strengthened perhaps by
his outraged feelings, had in some way managed to turn over so that he
lay on his side on the rock, his helpless claws extending stiffly over
the nest. As often as he was set back he managed to accomplish the
same feat, when if left on the ground he would sit for a week where he
was placed, as stolid and immovable as a decoy-duck.
The loss of the fowls had left an abundance of corn for planting; but
when the warm days came after this trying winter, it was a queer sight
to see the three soldiers walking about the top of the mountain, with
their five sad roosters wabbling at their heels.