Chapter 13

The little building, that had been saved in the prairie fire by the well-trodden oval around it, was crowded with the people of the district, assembled to enjoy their first public entertainment and tree. Among the younger ones were the Dutchman's girls and their baby nephew, the neighbor woman's children. "Frenchy's" brother, and the Swede boy. On either hand and behind were the grown people,--the Dutchman and his wife, the young couple from the West Fork, the cattleman, "Frenchy," the Swede, and the big brothers and their mother. When the family entered, the room was so full that the eldest and the youngest brothers had to content themselves with a perch on the coal-bins. The little girl, turning to survey the room, could not catch a glimpse of the biggest brother, however, and finally concluded that he was still busy with blanketing the horses and putting them away in the long shed.

The tree was ablaze from its top to the rim of the cloth-wound churn, and was hung with tinsel trimmings from the farm-house,--the selfsame trimmings that for years had twinkled and winked at the little girl each Christmas eve. Among the tinsel was festooned the pop-corn, while from every bending branch and stem hung apples and oranges supplied by the teacher, colored bags of candy and bright cornucopias given by the cattleman, sorghum taffies-on-a-stick made by the neighbor woman, while eggs, colored in gaudy and grotesque patterns by boiling them in pieces of calico, were suspended in tiny cunning willow baskets that testified to the nimble fingers of the Dutchman's wife. Around the base of the churn and heaped high against it was the pile of gifts.

The program opened immediately after the arrival of the family. The teacher, keeping one eye upon the fast burning and unstable candles above her, came forward to the edge of the platform to say a few words of greeting. The children then gave a rousing Yule chorus, the laden boughs over them waving gently in time with their voices. The little girl and her violin followed, and the tree was as still as those who sat before it while the strains of "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls" floated tremblingly out from under her uncertain bow. A new settler's four-year-old lisped "Six Little Rabbits," with many promptings and encouraging nods from the teacher. The Dutchman's youngest got up to recite "The Burial of Sir John Moore," and, though shaking from head to foot, attacked the doleful stanzas in a high key and with sprightly gesticulations. "Frenchy's" brother spoke in his own tongue a piece that was suitable to the occasion; much to his amazement, it elicited peals of laughter. When he sat down, the program wound on its tedious, recitative way until the tree was again supplied with candles by the neighbor woman's son, and the little girl arose to deliver a welcome to that same Santa Claus from whom she expected nothing.

If her mother, the big brothers, and the doting Swede boy hoped to see her final effort a triumphant one, they were disappointed, for she spoke falteringly and, at one juncture, forgot her lines. Her eyes wavered from her mother to the tree, from the tree to the teacher, and her closing words were inarticulate.

In the excitement of the moment, however, only the fond few noticed her confusion. The faint tinkle of bells and the swelling toots of a tin horn were announcing the approach of Santa Claus. Before the little girl had finished, and in spite of the teacher's admonition, the children were standing up and looking expectantly toward the rear; and no sooner had the little girl taken her seat, than they broke forth into excited chatter, calling to one another eagerly. Then the door was suddenly thrust open to the sound of a shrill toot, and Santa Claus came bounding in.

Amid the din of the horn and the shouts of the children, he clambered forward to the platform, bobbing to right and left, and tweaking the ears of those he passed. Long, yellow rope hair hung down from under a round, scarlet cap, and a rope beard reached to his portly waist. Cotton snow and another kind that melted promptly in the warm room covered his shoulders and sleeves. In a gruff though merry voice that sounded above all the others, he sang out the names pinned to an armful of candy-bags.

One by one, big and little hurried up to receive their gifts of sweets. The little girl evinced none of the delight that shone on the faces of the other children. She watched the distribution silently, with no glad throbs of the heart, and took her share of the fruit and candy with downcast eyes. Her mother sorrowfully noted that, even when the bags and cornucopias had been given out and Santa turned his attention to the pile around the churn, her interest did not increase.

She watched dully as the girls skipped boldly up, with proud, knowing looks, to seize their presents, or the boys sidled forward bashfully with changing color. All unwrapped and admired their gifts as soon as they were back in their seats. The Dutchman's girls shrieked with joy as they undid their presents, the neighbor woman's daughter could scarcely hold her share in her best apron. "Frenchy's" brother had distended pockets. The young farmer's baby crowed in purple delight over the stack of parcels before him.

The little girl's lap was empty, save for the candy and fruit dropped carelessly into it. When the pile around the churn had dwindled sorely and but a dozen gifts remained, the little girl had not yet gone forward to claim one. The other children had been too occupied to notice her ill fortune until they had spent their first joy over their gifts. Then one of the Dutchman's girls elbowed the neighbor woman's son, who sat next her, to call his attention to the little girl, and he passed the news on. Soon all the children were glancing questioningly at her and nudging one another.

The neighbor woman's daughter, who had often shared the generous fruit of the annual tree at the farm-house, took secret satisfaction in the unlooked-for fall of the little girl's pride, and leaned to all sides to whisper. She even stretched in front of the little girl to tell it to a boy beyond. Not daring to speak plainly, she resorted to pig-Latin. "Seegry," she cried, pulling at his coat, "shegry ain'tgry gotgry agry thinggry." But when the little girl, who knew pig-Latin in all its various dialects, turned angry, scornful eyes upon her, the neighbor woman's daughter sat up and her smile faded to a sickly blankness.

Santa Claus was now almost at the end of his resources. The floor was bare about the churn, and there remained only three or four parcels in his arms. The teacher was despoiling the tree of its pop-corn festoons and tossing them gaily about. Already there was a sound of crunching in the room, as the candy, nuts, and fruit met their destined fate.

But all at once, with the last package, a long, thick one, held up before his jovial face, Santa Claus started, looked a second time at the writing upon it, and then, with a jubilant laugh, called out the little girl's name!

The children about her hushed on the instant, and all eyes were turned upon her. The pitying expression on her mother's face changed to one of joy, and the eldest and the youngest brothers slid off the coal-bins as if they were possessed. The Swede boy and the cattleman, who had each been busy blaming himself for something worse than forgetfulness or negligence, fairly beamed at the back of the little girl's curly head.

Very deliberately she got up and stepped to the platform. A smile curved her mouth, and she carried her pink chin high. As she received her gift, she paused for one moment to drop a dainty curtsy and to thank Santa Claus, a proceeding which filled all the other girls with envy, since they had omitted it. Then she proudly took her seat, the long, thick package in one hand. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with white string.

The little girl did not open the package; instead, she sat quietly with it across her knee, displaying, as if unconsciously, her name printed in full across it in large letters that strayed upward, and that were headed by a "Miss" entirely of capitals. Under her name, in glowing red ink, was written "Merry Christmas," and, farther down, the words: "There are seven beautiful things in this box for you.--S. C."

When the teacher had made her closing speech, all rose to go. The little girl, as she put on her cap and the big buffalo coat, was the center of interest, for the children crowded about her and handled her package. The neighbor woman's daughter hung the closest, and even put one arm around the little girl. The latter did not seem to notice any one, but put the package under her coat and joined her mother.

When the pung drove up to the door the little girl lost no time in getting into it. The eldest and the youngest brothers followed her.

The biggest and his mother tarried a little, however, the one to speak to the Swede boy, the other to accost the cattleman.

There was a teasing look in the biggest brother's eyes as he gave the Swede boy a slap on the back. "Good for you!" he said in an undertone; "I'll never forget that, long 's I live." The Swede boy tried to answer, hung his head, and finally made off. The biggest brother took up the reins and, while he waited, continued to pick cotton from the lapels of his overcoat.

Meanwhile the cattleman, coming out of the school-house ready for his drive home, suddenly found himself face to face with a tearful little woman who gratefully seized his big hands. "Oh, how _good_ of you!" she cried; "how thoughtful and good and kind! Thank you! thank you!"

"What fer?" demanded the cattleman. "I hain't done nothin', my dear lady."

"Oh, that will do to say," laughed the little girl's mother through her tears, as she got into the pung and pulled one corner of the tick over her head.

The little girl was silent during the homeward ride; and on their arrival, when the family entered the kitchen, she dropped her package beside the stove and began to take off her coat and cap. Her mother and the biggest and the youngest brothers looked at her in amazement.

"Why, pet lamb," her mother said at last, "aren't you going to look at your presents?" She picked up the package and carried it to the table.

The little girl slowly shook her head. The biggest brother saw that all the bravado and indifference shown at the school-house were gone. In their place was a look of keen pain. He lifted her and held her on his lap, guessing, all at once, the secret of the seven gifts. "My baby sister!" he said, and trusted himself to speak no further. She understood, and put her head against his breast.

The youngest brother, spurred by curiosity, was opening the package. His mother stood beside him. As the brown paper fell away at the severing of the white string, he sprang back with an exclamation of surprise. The biggest brother put the little girl to one side, got up, and stepped across to look down at the contents thus disclosed.

He was reminded of the rear half of the attic, where for years had been gathering odds and ends. There was a bit of torn and faded mosquito-netting, an old mouth-organ, a broken domino, a pair of half-worn mittens, a ten-penny nail, a dog-eared copy of "Alice in Wonderland," and a slate-pencil.

"My daughter!" said the little girl's mother, light breaking in upon the situation; "my brave little daughter!" She turned to breathe a mother's comfort.

But the little girl, her cap and coat resumed, was disappearing into the chill shadows of the sitting-room.

XV

THE FATE OF A CROWING HEN

"SASSY" was all that her name implied. From the very beginning, when, as a small white egg, innocent enough in appearance, she left the hand of the little girl's mother and joined nine companions under a fat cochin, it was with something of an impudent roll that she gained her place in the nest. Three weeks later, after having been faithfully sat upon, and as faithfully turned each day by the cochin's beak, she gave another pert stir, very slight, and tapped a hole through her cracking shell. The next morning she swaggered forth, a round, fluffy, cheeping morsel.

She was not Sassy yet, however. It was later, when she lost her yellow down and grew a scant coat of white feathers, through which her skin showed in pimpled, pinkish spots, that she displayed the characteristics that christened her, and, by her precocity and brazenness, distinguished herself from among her leghorn brothers and sisters.

At this period of her life, a pullet in both months and experience, she should have conducted herself with becoming modesty. Instead, she developed a habit of taking her meals, morning, noon, and night, from the kitchen table, to which the little girl did not usually go until long after the big brothers had finished and withdrawn. Sassy made her entrance either by way of the hall or through the window nearest the stove. Once inside, she hopped to a bench, and thence to the oil-cloth. Her progress from one end of the board to the other was always attended by serious damage to the butter, of which she was inordinately fond. When, having fared well, she at last descended, she paraded up and down, with many sharp, inquiring cries of "C-a-w-k? c-a-w-k? c-a-w-k?" and wherever her claws chanced to touch left little, buttery fleurs-de-lis on the floor. She escaped the disastrous fire, not, like a dozen other fowls, by seeking refuge in the wind-break, but because she was in the coal-shed carrying on a hand-to-hand conflict with the tortoise-shell cat, who had five new babies.

By Thanksgiving day, having developed into a juicy frier, more prone than ever to snoop, family opinion turned against her, so that when it came to the question which chickens, in view of the shortage of feed, should occupy the oven in place of the usual sizzling turkey, the big brothers and the little girl voted for the heads of Sassy and of a certain mysterious young rooster who, though disturbing, had never been definitely singled out, since, on hearing his falsetto crow and looking about for him, the family invariably came upon the insolent pullet, alone and unconcerned.

The day before Thanksgiving the little girl was directed to capture both the rooster and Sassy. For the first, she selected a young leghorn that she believed to be the guilty trumpeter and poked him into a box-coop beside the smoke-house. Then she set about jailing the culpable pullet. She was aided by Godfrey, the biggest brother's pet pointer, who scented Sassy in the vegetable patch, where she was scratching around the tomato vines. Together they pursued her at top speed, Godfrey keeping close to his bird, but, in true sportsmanlike fashion, refraining from seizing her. Through the tomatoes they ran, till the little girl sat down from sheer exhaustion, with Godfrey panting beside her and the pullet perched near by on a pile of seed onions.

After a ten minutes' rest, the little girl and the pointer renewed their chase. This time Sassy left the tomato patch (foolishly enough, for the vines tripped the little girl), and fled, with hackles spread, toward the well, where a flock was dipping water. When they saw her coming, the chickens, among which were several young leghorns, fled in terror toward the sorghum patch and lost themselves in its woody lanes. Godfrey and the little girl charged this western jungle with zest, thrashing about until the pullet--supposedly--emerged and flitted toward the sod barn. But when for the second time, and after a lengthy hunt that brought up at the new stacks, they paused for breath, the little girl discovered, to the mystification of the pointer, who did not know one leghorn from another, and to her own disgust, that since their threading of the sorghum they had been after the wrong chicken!

The little girl sprawled on the sunny side of a stack for an hour or two after that, and chewed straws. She pulled off her shoes to rest her stockingless feet, and put her head on Godfrey's damp side. For she had resolved to postpone the catching of Sassy till evening, when the elusive pullet would be sleepily seated on a two-by-four in the empty cow-stall that now served for a coop.

When the early November twilight fell upon the farm-yard, the little girl roused Godfrey by gently pulling his tail and skipped round to the barn door. Under ordinary circumstances, the task of creeping upon an unsuspecting chicken and seizing it for the block would have been unpleasant. But, influenced by her long dislike of the pullet, and recalling her tiresome experience of the afternoon, she chuckled to think that she would soon have her hands clasped tightly about Sassy's yellow legs. "I'll not make a mistake _this_ time," she said to herself.

She entered the barn slyly and stole down behind the stalls until she came opposite the perches. The chickens were settling themselves for the night, moving and murmuring drowsily. As she peeped among them, her glance fell upon Sassy, outlined against the small square window beyond and roosted comfortably with her beak toward the manger, all unconscious of her nearing doom. The little girl was certain that it was she, for there was no mistaking the rakish lop of the serrated comb, or the once white under-feathers soiled to a bluish cast.

The little girl waited, restraining the excited pointer, until the light had faded from the square window. It was then so dark that the chickens could not see the malevolent fingers that, thrust softly up among them, grabbed a leghorn's shanks; and there was only a mildly concerned "k-r-r-r!" from an old, watchful hen as the little girl retreated, one hand doing almost fatal duty around an ill-starred neck.

By the time that the little girl, triumphantly bearing both her prey, heads down, reached the mounting-log at the front door of the house, where the eldest brother awaited her with the hatchet, it was nearly as dark outside as it had been in the barn. So the eldest brother--for the little girl had hurried away after giving him the chickens--could not tell which leghorn suffered the guillotine first. His sanguinary work being done, the little girl returned and carried the dead fowls into the coal-shed, where she tied their toes together and hung them over a nail.

Early next morning the eldest brother was awakened by a prolonged falsetto crow,--the familiar disturbing salute of the chanticleer he had beheaded the night before! Puzzled and wondering, he got up, ran to the eastern window of the attic, and looked down upon the yard. An amazing discovery repaid his promptness. For, as the chicken once more raised its voice, he saw that the mysterious rooster was still alive! So was Sassy! They were combined in one and the same bird! Two innocent chickens had been sacrificed!

So, until the next spring,--the spring following the fire, and one ever memorable for its wonderful grass and flowers, its gentle rains and windless, sunny days,--Sassy continued to exasperate the family, winning only censure. But when the depleted flock could not furnish half the eggs the family needed, she took it upon herself to lay one daily, and was considerate ate enough to render it unnecessary for the little girl to go out and bring it in, by depositing it in the hay-twist box behind the kitchen stove, in the linen-barrel in the entry, or on the canopied bed. Then she found an appreciative friend in the little girl's mother, who, whenever she heard a proud, discordant announcement, half crow, half cackle, blessed the little white hen as she hurried to secure the offering.

One afternoon during Sassy's career of prolificacy, the little girl remembered that her best thick dress was so threadbare that she would need a brand-new one for the next winter. She found, too, that if she was to have one she must devise a way to swell the small amount in the tin savings-bank; for the big brothers declared they would be able only to pay the heavy debt upon the farm and victual the house for the stormy months to follow. So she hit upon the idea of raising chickens, and broached it to her mother. The latter, remembering the sorry Christmas just past, at once presented her with Sassy, promising that all the eggs the leghorn laid should be credited to the little girl at the general merchandise store at the station, and that all the chicks hatched out by Sassy should go the same way.

The little girl was jubilant over the plan, and each morning answered the "cut-cut-c't-a-a-ah-cut" of her hen with a gift of crumbs, and then took possession of the new-laid egg, placing it carefully in a cracker-box. When, at the end of as many days, a dozen eggs lay side by side, she took them out, wrapped each one in paper, packed them all in a lard-bucket full of shorts, and, mounting the blue mare, rode to the station, where she had the satisfaction of seeing eleven cents put opposite her name in the egg-book at the general merchandise store.

This was repeated four times, and, the price of eggs having gone up a few cents in each interval, the little girl had sixty cents to put in her bank, which raised her total to one dollar fifty-nine. On her June birthday the family presented her with four dimes; the week after she sold a wooden squirt-gun to the neighbor woman's son for five cents. It was then plain that, if Sassy should continue to furnish eggs faithfully, the dress was assured.

But at this happy juncture, and, womanlike, without a single cluck of warning, the leghorn ceased her diurnal laying, and, after a spasmodic week, during which she scattered three or four eggs on the little girl's bed, gave no further sign of justifying her existence.

The little girl was in despair, and at once confided Sassy's delinquency to the eldest brother, who knew a great deal about chickens. He said that a leghorn was an all-year-round layer, and that when a hen of the breed failed to uphold the standard of her kind she was fit only for broiling. The youngest brother, overhearing the account of Sassy's conduct and the eldest brother's comments, volunteered the opinion that nothing ailed the chicken but the pip, and advised fat and pepper. But when three days had gone by and the leghorn, with generous doses of axle-grease and cayenne, ailed rather than recovered, the little girl ceased her administrations.

It occurred to her, in the midst of her worry, that perhaps Sassy wanted to set. Accordingly she got ten eggs together, arranged them in a nest, caught the hen, and put her upon them. But here a new and unlooked-for thing happened. Sassy would not stay on the nest. Not at all daunted, the little girl procured a broad strip of calico and tied the hen down. But in her struggles to get free, Sassy broke nearly all of the eggs under her, and finally hied herself out of the new coop and over the smoke-house to liberty.

Unhappy that her leghorn thus spurned to mother a brood, the little girl sought the biggest brother. "Oh, no wonder the mean thing crows," she said to him, as she told her story.

The biggest brother conferred long and solemnly on the question. When it was settled, the little girl came out of the sitting-room with a look of hopeful determination upon her face and hunted up Sassy. The latter had grown so bold since the Thanksgiving before that any one could pick her up without running after her. So the little girl, in two winks, had her under one arm and was on her way to the carnelian bluff.

It was a hot, sultry day in midsummer, and not a breath of wind was blowing over the farm. The grain-fields were still. The blades of the corn drooped limply. The creamy sap of the milkweed growing in the timothy meadow was drying up in the stem. Below the bluff the herd stood, belly deep, lashing about them with wet tails, and the pigs wallowed among the wilting bulrushes in damp security.