Dickey Downy Part 8

But the thing I liked best of all was to see Betty's seven white ducks crowd up to the kitchen door every time any one appeared with a pan of sc.r.a.ps. Such gabbling and quacking, such pushing and such stepping on each other and on the chickens, in their eagerness to get there first, was almost laughable. In fact, the pink-toed pigeons that walked up and down the ridge of the barn roof, did make fun of them openly. Had I not known the ducks were well fed and so fat they could scarcely waddle, I might have thought they were really hungry, but I soon discovered that they were simply greedy.

Standing on tiptoe and stretching up their long necks they often seized the food before it had a chance to fall to the ground. By this good management they usually got more than the chickens. Joe accused Betty of being partial to the ducks.

"You allus give 'em the best of everything, and twice as much as you do the chickens," he complained.

"They get the most because they've got the most confidence in me," said Betty, putting on a very wise look. "They come close up to me, while a chicken shies off and misses the goodies coz she's silly enough to be afraid. Besides, the ducks are mine. I raised 'em. I paid twenty cents a setting for the eggs out of my own money, and when you raise a thing you generally like it the best. Ducks are a heap smarter'n chickens, anyway," she a.s.serted. "I never can get one of the chickens to feed out of a spoon, and the ducks like it the best kind." To convince him she held toward them a large baking spoon of soured milk.

This milk was thickened into a paste or ball by being put on the stove and separated from the whey, or watery part, by the action of the heat.

It was a favorite dish with the fowls, and they all smacked their lips when they saw it coming.

As fast as Betty could fill the spoon it was emptied by the ducks, who stuck their big yellow bills into it and devoured the contents, letting the chickens below scramble and push and pick each other for any stray bits that fell to the ground.

"Didn't I tell you?" said Betty triumphantly. "Them chickens had just as good a chance as the ducks, but they wouldn't take it."

"Huh!" answered Joe. "Their necks ain't long enough, is what's the matter."

There were several trees in the yard, and often when the fowls were fed, birds flew down from their leafy recesses to pick up the crumbs left lying about. How I used to wish they would come near enough to my cage that I might converse with them, but it always happened that just at the time when one of them would settle close to the house, either Joe's little dog, Colly, would run across the yard, or Betty or her mother would appear at the door and frighten my feathered friend away.

Only once did I exchange a word with any of these birds, and that for but a few short minutes.

The bird did not belong to our family, nor had I ever met any of his relatives before, but that made but little difference. He was a bird, and that was enough. We did not wait for any formal introduction; but as he balanced himself on the edge of my cage he hurriedly told me news of the woods, and how he wished I might get free and come to live there. He told of the lovely dragon flies, with purple, burnished wings that floated in the forest, mingling their drowsy hum with the chirping of the birds. He told of the great mossy carpet spread under the trees; how at set of day the owls came out, and the moles rustled in the fallen leaves, and the frogs raised their evening hymn to the sinking sun.

I could have listened for hours to the sweet familiar tale my feathered brother told of life in the happy woodland, but Betty's mother suddenly hurrying out to the pump to fill her bucket, cut short the story, and away my bird friend skimmed out of sight without so much as saying "good-bye." Though I saw him several times after that, he never came so close again.

"Oh, what heaps and heaps of fireflies!" exclaimed Betty, as she unhooked my cage to move me into the house that evening. "It looks as if our door-yard was full of moving lanterns."

"Nothin' but lightnen bugs!" said Joe contemptuously. "Here, see me catch 'em," and in a few minutes he showed her a handful which he had killed by crushing between his hands.

"Hold on, I want to catch some too!" and hustling me into the kitchen, Betty ran along with him and was soon engaged in catching and killing the beautiful fireflies.

CHAPTER IX

THE HUNTERS

Song birds, plumage birds, water fowl, and many innocent birds of prey, are hunted from the everglades to the Arctic Circles for the barbaric purpose of decorating women's hats. The extent of this traffic is simply appalling.--_G. O. Shields._

When Joe and his father came back from their gunning expeditions, the accounts they gave of the day's slaughter made me very homesick and miserable, and wore sadly on my spirits in my captivity.

The heartless indifference with which the woman would ask her husband if it had been "a good day for killings," almost made me wail aloud.

"Best kind of luck; I bagged nearly a hundred this trip," he replied exultingly, one night when she put the usual question. "The birds were as thick as blackberries in the high weeds along the creek, and were havin' a mighty good time stuffing themselves with seeds. Joe fired the old gun to start 'em and, great Jerushy! in a minute the sky was dark with 'em; I just blazed away and they dropped thick all around us, and it kept us tol'ble busy for a while a pickin' 'em up."

"Pop, tell 'em about the old water bird down in the swamp," said Joe with a wicked laugh.

"Yes, tell us; what was it, pop?" urged Betty.

"Oh, nothin' partickler, I reckon; just an old bird that hadn't the grit to get away from me," and the man gave a low chuckle at the remembrance.

"My, oh! the way them old birds hung around and wouldn't scare worth a cent when we was right up close to 'em was funny, I tell ye," and Joe leaned back in his chair and slapped his knees in a fresh burst of merriment.

"There was eggs in the nest was the cause," said the man; "them birds are always as tame as kittens then. You can go right up to 'em and they won't leave the nest. Them birds has two broods in a season, and then's the chance to get a good whack at 'em."

Joe rubbed his hands together in delight as he turned to his sister, "You'd ought to have seen 'em, Betty. There was pop in his rubber boots a creepin' along--a c-r-e-e-p-i-n' along as sly as a mouse toward 'em, and there they stayed. The male bird he fluttered and' squawked, and the female she stuck to the nest till pop he got right up and he didn't even have to shoot her. He just clubbed her over the back and down she went ker-splash as dead as you please. Them there eggs won't hardly hatch out this year, I don't reckon," and at the prospect Joe broke into a malicious guffaw.

"I think to club it was meaner'n to shoot the poor thing," said Betty indignantly. "And, anyway, I wouldn't a-killed it on the nest. It's mean to treat an 'fectionate bird so."

"Pshaw, you'd do big things!" was Joe's scornful reply.

"Well, I wouldn't be so tremenj'us cruel," persisted Betty; "I don't believe in killing a pretty bird."

"But what would the wimmen do without bunnet trimmen' if we didn't kill 'em, hey?" and Joe finished his question with a taunting whistle.

As the shadows of each evening gathered around the cottage, the shadow over my life seemed to deepen and grow more gloomy. Outside the door I could hear the hum of the bees as they flew homeward, the wind-harp played in the yellow pines its softest, sweetest music, and I scented the odor of honeysuckles and roses far away. The rushing of the waters over the stones in the creek tinkled dreamily, but in the midst of all earth's loveliness I was desolate, because I was not free.

And thus the summer days dragged wearily along, and the autumn came.

It is not surprising then that I was overjoyed when later on I learned that I was to be given as a present to a young relative of Betty's, who lived to the northward in a distant State. My present existence had grown almost intolerable, and I felt that any change could scarcely make my condition worse, and there was a chance of its being better.

The prospect put new life into me.

Preening my feathers became a pleasant task once more. I whetted my bill till it glistened, and my long-neglected toilet again became my daily care.

"I shall be mighty glad to get rid of the mopy creature," Betty's mother had, said when they talked of my departure. "I wouldn't give the thing house-room for my part."

"Cousin Polly will like it, though," Betty answered her mother. "Polly was always fond of pets, and she'll be powerful pleased to get it as a present from her Southern kinfolks."

"We'll have to go to the cost of a new cage, I reckon, and I don't feel like spending the money, neither," mused the mother. "Polly might like a bresspin better. I don't know as it will pay to send her the bird after all."

How my heart sank at this announcement! so fearful was I that I might have to remain at the cottage; but Betty's answer gave me new hope.

"Oh, certain it will pay!" she exclaimed eagerly. "You know how many nice things Cousin Dunbar's sent us off-and-on, and only last Christmas Polly sent me my string of beads. As for giving her a bresspin for a keepsake, she can get a heap nicer one out of their own store than any we could send her, and I'm certain she'd like the bird best of all; it's such a good chance to send it by Uncle Dan when he is going to their town and can hand it right over to Polly."

"I reckon you're right. Well, it will be only the cost of the cage,"

said her mother, and so the matter was settled, much to my satisfaction.

My new cage was very pretty, if anything can be said in praise of a prison, and was much lighter and pleasanter than the old, heavy, home-made structure in which I had been shut up so long. Its rim was painted a cheerful green, and the wires were burnished like gold.

Ornamental sconces held the gla.s.s cups for my food and there were decorated hoops to swing in. Altogether it was a very handsome house, yet I could not forget it was a prison house.

Betty busied herself in fixing it comfortably for me, and was full of kind attentions. She begged me many times not to get frightened when the cover would be put on my cage. The hood was necessary when I was traveling, but Uncle Dan would be sitting right near me all the time and would be very good to me. She further a.s.sured me that I would find the motion of the cars delightful, and that all I would have to do was to sit on my perch and munch my seed and have a good time. How jolly it would be to go whizzing past fences and over bridges and through tunnels and towns and never know it, she said. She also charged me particularly not to be scared when I would hear an occasional horrible shriek and a rumbling like thunder, as if the day of judgment was at hand. I must remember it was only the locomotive, and it was obliged to do those disagreeable things to make the cars go faster'n, faster'n, faster'n------

How much faster I did not have time to find out, for Uncle Dan just then called to get me. A light cover with a hole in the top was slipped over my cage, and I started on my journey. Of my trip, of course, I knew nothing. Part of the way we rode in a wagon through the country to the station where we took the train, but as Uncle Dan did not remove my cover in the railway car the time spent on the journey was almost a blank to me.

Right glad was I, after what seemed a long, long time of jarring and jolting, to find the cage once more swinging from his hand and to hear the click of his boot heels on the pavements as we went through the streets of the town where Polly lived.

CHAPTER X