The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
“She thinks she can hatch out anything. I’ve found her with onions, and
last Tuesday I caught her on two balls of soap.”
In the afternoon the tall cow-puncher and I rode out to get an antelope.
After an hour, during which he was completely taciturn, he said: “I
reckon maybe this hyeh lonesome country ain’t been healthy for Em’ly to
live in. It ain’t for some humans. Them old trappers in the mountains
gets skewed in the haid mighty often, an’ talks out loud when nobody’s
nigher ’n a hundred miles.”
“Em’ly has not been solitary,” I replied. “There are forty chickens
here.”
“That’s so,” said he. “It don’t explain her.”
He fell silent again, riding beside me, easy and indolent in the saddle.
His long figure looked so loose and inert that the swift, light spring
he made to the ground seemed an impossible feat. He had seen an antelope
where I saw none.
“Take a shot yourself,” I urged him, as he motioned me to be quick. “You
never shoot when I’m with you.”
“I ain’t hyeh for that,” he answered. “Now you’ve let him get away on
yu’!”
The antelope had in truth departed.
“Why,” he said to my protest, “I can hit them things any day. What’s
your notion as to Em’ly?”
“I can’t account for her,” I replied.
“Well,” he said musingly, and then his mind took one of those particular
turns that made me love him, “Taylor ought to see her. She’d be just the
schoolmarm for Bear Creek!”
“She’s not much like the eating-house lady at Medicine Bow,” I said.
He gave a hilarious chuckle. “No, Em’ly knows nothing o’ them joys. So
yu’ have no notion about her? Well, I’ve got one. I reckon maybe she was
hatched after a big thunderstorm.”
“In a big thunderstorm!” I exclaimed.
“Yes. Don’t yu’ know about them, and what they’ll do to aiggs? A
big case o’ lightnin’ and thunder will addle aiggs and keep ’em from
hatchin’. And I expect one came along, and all the other aiggs of
Em’ly’s set didn’t hatch out, but got plumb addled, and she happened not
to get addled that far, and so she just managed to make it through. But
she cert’nly ain’t got a strong haid.”
“I fear she has not,” said I.
“Mighty hon’ble intentions,” he observed. “If she can’t make out to lay
anything, she wants to hatch somethin’, and be a mother anyways.”
“I wonder what relation the law considers that a hen is to the chicken
she hatched but did not lay?” I inquired.
The Virginian made no reply to this frivolous suggestion. He was gazing
over the wide landscape gravely and with apparent inattention. He
invariably saw game before I did, and was off his horse and crouched
among the sage while I was still getting my left foot clear of the
stirrup. I succeeded in killing an antelope, and we rode home with the
head and hind quarters.
“No,” said he. “It’s sure the thunder, and not the lonesomeness. How do
yu’ like the lonesomeness yourself?”
I told him that I liked it.
“I could not live without it now,” he said. “This has got into my
system.” He swept his hand out at the vast space of world. “I went back
home to see my folks onced. Mother was dyin’ slow, and she wanted me.
I stayed a year. But them Virginia mountains could please me no more.
Afteh she was gone, I told my brothers and sisters good-by. We like each
other well enough, but I reckon I’ll not go back.”
We found Em’ly seated upon a collection of green California peaches,
which the Judge had brought from the railroad.
“I don’t mind her any more,” I said; “I’m sorry for her.”
“I’ve been sorry for her right along,” said the Virginian. “She does
hate the roosters so.” And he said that he was making a collection of
every class of object which he found her treating as eggs.
But Em’ly’s egg-industry was terminated abruptly one morning, and her
unquestioned energies diverted to a new channel. A turkey which had been
sitting in the root-house appeared with twelve children, and a family of
bantams occurred almost simultaneously. Em’ly was importantly scratching
the soil inside Paladin’s corral when the bantam tribe of newly born
came by down the lane, and she caught sight of them through the bars.
She crossed the corral at a run, and intercepted two of the chicks that
were trailing somewhat behind their real mamma. These she undertook
to appropriate, and assumed a high tone with the bantam, who was the
smaller, and hence obliged to retreat with her still numerous family.
I interfered, and put matters straight; but the adjustment was only
temporary. In an hour I saw Em’ly immensely busy with two more bantams,
leading them about and taking a care of them which I must admit seemed
perfectly efficient.
And now came the first incident that made me suspect her to be demented.
She had proceeded with her changelings behind the kitchen, where one of
the irrigation ditches ran under the fence from the hay-field to supply
the house with water. Some distance along this ditch inside the field
were the twelve turkeys in the short, recently cut stubble. Again Em’ly
set off instantly like a deer. She left the dismayed bantams behind her.
She crossed the ditch with one jump of her stout blue legs, flew over
the grass, and was at once among the turkeys, where, with an instinct
of maternity as undiscriminating as it was reckless, she attempted to
huddle some of them away. But this other mamma was not a bantam, and in
a few moments Em’ly was entirely routed in her attempt to acquire a new
variety of family.
This spectacle was witnessed by the Virginian and myself, and it
overcame him. He went speechless across to the bunk-house, by himself,
and sat on his bed, while I took the abandoned bantams back to their own
circle.
I have often wondered what the other fowls thought of all this. Some
impression it certainly did make upon them. The notion may seem out of
reason to those who have never closely attended to other animals than
man; but I am convinced that any community which shares some of our
instincts will share some of the resulting feelings, and that birds and
beasts have conventions, the breach of which startles them. If there be
anything in evolution, this would seem inevitable. At all events,
the chicken-house was upset during the following several days. Em’ly
disturbed now the bantams and now the turkeys, and several of these
latter had died, though I will not go so far as to say that this was
the result of her misplaced attentions. Nevertheless, I was seriously
thinking of locking her up till the broods should be a little older,
when another event happened, and all was suddenly at peace.
The Judge’s setter came in one morning, wagging her tail. She had had
her puppies, and she now took us to where they were housed, in between
the floor of a building and the hollow ground. Em’ly was seated on the
whole litter.
“No,” I said to the Judge, “I am not surprised. She is capable of
anything.”
In her new choice of offspring, this hen had at length encountered an
unworthy parent. The setter was bored by her own puppies. She found the
hole under the house an obscure and monotonous residence compared with
the dining room, and our company more stimulating and sympathetic than
that of her children. A much-petted contact with our superior race had
developed her dog intelligence above its natural level, and turned her
into an unnatural, neglectful mother, who was constantly forgetting her
nursery for worldly pleasures.
At certain periods of the day she repaired to the puppies and fed them,
but came away when this perfunctory ceremony was accomplished; and she
was glad enough to have a governess bring them up. She made no quarrel
with Em’ly, and the two understood each other perfectly. I have never
seen among animals any arrangement so civilized and so perverted.
It made Em’ly perfectly happy. To see her sitting all day jealously
spreading her wings over some blind puppies was sufficiently curious;
but when they became large enough to come out from under the house and
toddle about in the proud hen’s wake, I longed for some distinguished
naturalist. I felt that our ignorance made us inappropriate spectators
of such a phenomenon. Em’ly scratched and clucked, and the puppies ran
to her, pawed her with their fat limp little legs, and retreated beneath
her feathers in their games of hide and seek. Conceive, if you can, what
confusion must have reigned in their infant minds as to who the setter
was!
“I reckon they think she’s the wet-nurse,” said the Virginian.
When the puppies grew to be boisterous, I perceived that Em’ly’s
mission was approaching its end. They were too heavy for her, and their
increasing scope of playfulness was not in her line. Once or twice they
knocked her over, upon which she arose and pecked them severely, and
they retired to a safe distance, and sitting in a circle, yapped at
her. I think they began to suspect that she was only a hen after all.
So Em’ly resigned with an indifference which surprised me, until I
remembered that if it had been chickens, she would have ceased to look
after them by this time.
But here she was again “out of a job,” as the Virginian said.
“She’s raised them puppies for that triflin’ setter, and now she’ll
be huntin’ around for something else useful to do that ain’t in her
business.”
Now there were other broods of chickens to arrive in the hen-house, and
I did not desire any more bantam and turkey performances. So, to avoid
confusion, I played a trick upon Em’ly. I went down to Sunk Creek and
fetched some smooth, oval stones. She was quite satisfied with these,
and passed a quiet day with them in a box. This was not fair, the
Virginian asserted.
“You ain’t going to jus’ leave her fooled that a-way?”
I did not see why not.
“Why, she raised them puppies all right. Ain’t she showed she knows how
to be a mother anyways? Em’ly ain’t going to get her time took up for
nothing while I’m round hyeh,” said the cow-puncher.
He laid a gentle hold of Em’ly and tossed her to the ground. She, of
course, rushed out among the corrals in a great state of nerves.
“I don’t see what good you do meddling,” I protested.
To this he deigned no reply, but removed the unresponsive stones from
the straw.
“Why, if they ain’t right warm!” he exclaimed plaintively. “The poor,
deluded son-of-a-gun!” And with this unusual description of a lady, he
sent the stones sailing like a line of birds. “I’m regular getting stuck
on Em’ly,” continued the Virginian. “Yu’ needn’t to laugh. Don’t yu’ see
she’s got sort o’ human feelin’s and desires? I always knowed hawsses
was like people, and my collie, of course. It is kind of foolish, I
expect, but that hen’s goin’ to have a real aigg di-rectly, right now,
to set on.” With this he removed one from beneath another hen. “We’ll
have Em’ly raise this hyeh,” said he, “so she can put in her time
profitable.”
It was not accomplished at once; for Em’ly, singularly enough, would
not consent to stay in the box whence she had been routed. At length we
found another retreat for her, and in these new surroundings, with a
new piece of work for her to do, Em’ly sat on the one egg which the
Virginian had so carefully provided for her.
Thus, as in all genuine tragedies, was the stroke of Fate wrought by
chance and the best intentions.
Em’ly began sitting on Friday afternoon near sundown. Early next morning
my sleep was gradually dispersed by a sound unearthly and continuous.
Now it dwindled, receding to a distance; again it came near, took a
turn, drifted to the other side of the house; then, evidently, whatever
it was, passed my door close, and I jumped upright in my bed. The high,
tense strain of vibration, nearly, but not quite, a musical note, was
like the threatening scream of machinery, though weaker, and I bounded
out of the house in my pajamas.