The Shagganappi Part 22

It was late in April when little Jimmy Duffy's father was called to Buffalo on business. The night before leaving, he said: "It's most annoying! Here I have to go all that way for just about one hour's talk with a man; an entire day wasted for the sake of one hour, or--hold on, let's see, Jimmy. You have never seen Niagara Falls, have you?"

"No, dad," answered Jimmy, his face eager with hope.

"Then you be ready to come with me to-morrow. I'll get through my business by noon, and you and I will just 'do' the Falls until dark, and get home on the late train. How does that strike you?"

But Jimmy was speechless with delight. For years he had longed to see Niagara, but there was a number of older brothers and sisters, and Jimmy's turn never seemed to have come until to-day. But the treat was here at last. A whole day along with his big dad, prowling about Niagara Falls, feasting his eyes upon its wonders, listening to its everlasting roar as it plunges over the heights! Jimmy did not sleep very much that night, and, long before train time, he was up, dressed in his best suit, even got himself a fresh pocket-handkerchief, scrambled through breakfast, then sat fidgeting on the front doorstep, while his father took a leisurely meal, glanced calmly at his watch occasionally, then, pushing back his chair, stepped briskly into the hall, glanced at the weather, got his light coat and hat, said good-bye to Mrs. Duffy, and called out "Now, then, Jimmy!" But Jimmy was already at the gate, having kissed his mother good-bye almost an hour before, and presently they were swinging up to the station at a good gait, Mr. Duffy silent, thoughtful, engrossed in his coming business engagement, Jimmy dancing, whistling, strung up with excitement that bade fair to continue throughout the day.

It took three hours to reach Buffalo. Then poor Jimmy had to sit in a stuffy outer office while his father and "the man" talked on the other side of a gla.s.s door. Jimmy thought they would never stop, but in exactly one hour the door opened, and he heard "the man" say:

"Now, Mr. Duffy, will you come to my club and we will have luncheon together?"

"Not to-day, thanks, Mr. Brown. I have my small boy with me, and we're off for the Falls. Jimmy's never seen them yet."

"Well, well!" answered Mr. Brown. "That's nice! Going to be a boy again yourself, eh, Duffy? Well, have a good time, and good luck to you both!"

And the gla.s.s door closed.

His business ended, Jimmy's father seemed another person. He chatted and talked and laughed with his son, ordered a splendid luncheon for them both, swung aboard the train, and by two o'clock they were standing on the very edge of the precipice, with the glorious Falls of Niagara thundering into the basin at their feet. The column of filmy mist, the gorgeous rainbows, the stupendous cataract, leaping and snarling like a million wolves--it whirled about Jimmy's brain like a wild dream of No Man's Land, and he walked beside his father in a daze of delight. They prowled through the islands, crossed the cobwebby bridges from rock to rock above the Falls, and finally sprawled on a bald ledge of stone that jutted far out into the turbulent river.

"We'll just rest here a few minutes, James," said his father, playfully.

"Then we must go below the Falls and explore the ice-bridge. I see it is yet in perfect condition. You are fortunate, my boy, to be able to see it. There are some winters that never bring an ice-bridge. Then sometimes it thaws in March, so we are lucky to-day."

About them tossed and tumbled the angry rapids, wrangling and brawling around their granite sh.o.r.es, but, above their conflicting noises arose a far, clear, musical sound, like a hundred throats and lips that whistled in unison.

"What's that?" exclaimed Mr. Duffy, sitting erect suddenly.

"I don't know," said the boy, scanning the tangled waters with his unpractised young eyes.

"There it is again, dad!" he cried. "It is whistling. A great company, somewhere, whistling!" Then, looking quickly skyward, he pointed excitedly upstream, "Look, look! Birds! They are birds! Great white ones, dad! What are they? There's the whistle again!"

Mr. Duffy shaded his eyes from the sun, and watched; for there, in the smooth waters above the rapids, were settling, one by one, a magnificent host of snow-white swans, their wearied bodies almost drooping into the river, their exhausted pinions dropping, nerveless and trailing, into the dark, deceptive stream, which lured them like a snare to its breast.

"Jimmy, Jimmy!" shouted Mr. Duffy, "they're swans, and they're dead played out! They're migrating north for the summer! I bet they've flown a thousand miles! See, boy, they're spent, dead beat!"

Jimmy fairly held his breath. The magnificent band of birds were slowly floating towards them. Now they could distinguish each regal body, feathered in dazzling white, each bill, scarlet as a July poppy, each gracefully lifted throat. But the majestic creatures floated swiftly and silently on, on, on!

"Father!" The boy's voice trembled huskily. "Oh, father, you don't think they are in any danger of going over, do you?" His begging, pleading tones revealed his own childish fears.

"Oh, _surely_ not!" answered Mr. Duffy, but his tone lacked confidence.

Then, after a brief silence, he almost groaned: "Jimmy, they're done for! They don't see their danger, and they're too tired to rise if they do. Oh, boy, if we could save them!"

But Jimmy stood rigid, staring, his heart slowly breaking, breaking.

Anyone could see now that the stately battalion was doomed. With utter unconsciousness they drifted on, exhausted with their far journey from the lagoons and marshes of Chesapeake Bay, where the torrid suns had driven them from their winter haunts, to wing their way to their summer home in the far, white North.

"Oh, Jimmy, the pity of it!" murmured Mr. Duffy. But the boy stood wordless, as the irresistible giant current caught the trusting birds and swept them, with a hideous, overpowering force, to the very brink of the Horseshoe Fall. The boy, thrilling with the horror of it, shut his eyes, and flung himself, face downward, on the rocks. A strange, inarticulate moan left the man's lips. The boy lifted his head, lifted his eyes, but the river was empty.

They ran breathlessly across the cobwebby bridges, around Goat Island, then to the sh.o.r.e, then to the elevator, and descended to the ice-bridge; but, above the angry battle of Niagara, arose the plaintive, dying cries of scores of snow-white birds, the shouts of gathering sightseers. Against the ruthless edges of ice lay, bleeding and broken, what was left of that superb company homeward bound. Their poor, twisted legs, their crushed heads, their flattened bodies, their pitiful, dying struggles, would melt a heart of stone. No more those graceful throats would whistle through the April airs, beneath the early suns and the late morning stars. The sweet, wild chorus was stilled forever.

By the time Jimmy and his father arrived, crowds of people had descended with stones and sticks anything they could lay their hands on--and were beating the remaining spark of life out of the helpless birds, then seizing and quarrelling over the bodies, without one word of pity or regret for the dreadful catastrophe, so long as they could secure the coveted specimens of this rare migratory bird. Then Jimmy noticed that some few had actually escaped injury, but, before he could reach them, older and stronger people had rushed upon the terrified and weakened creatures, and were clubbing them to death.

"Stop it! stop it!" he shouted. "Those birds are not injured! Save them!

Let them go!"

"Not if _I_ know it!" yelled back a huge fellow with the face of a greedy demon. "Why, these birds are worth twenty dollars apiece!"

he blurted, "and I'm going to have every one of them."

Down, down, down, went one after another as they tried to rise and spread their magnificent wings, until only one remained. With the quickness of a cat, Jimmy flung his thin little body between the flopping victim and the upraised club.

"You strike that swan if you dare!" he cried, fiercely, glaring up at the would-be murderer with indignant eyes.

"h.e.l.lo, bantam! You after twenty dollars, too?" sneered the man.

"No; I'm after this swan's life, and I'm going to have it!" growled the boy. "The bird is mine!"

"Yes, Jimmy," said his father, approaching sadly. "And it's the only one that has life. I have counted one hundred and sixteen, either dead or slain."*

[*It is a fact that occurred in April, 1908, that a company of one hundred and sixteen whistling swans were carried over Niagara Falls, and that the only one which escaped the weapons of destroyers was rescued by a little boy, and cared for exclusively by him.]

The boy took off his coat, wrapping it about the superb bird, then carried it carefully to the elevator, and, soon after reaching the summit of the sh.o.r.e, had it fed and tended, then gently crated for shipment home. The tired bird submitted without protest to being measured. From tip to tail it measured fifty-one inches, with the magnificent expansion of wing of eighty-one inches, the only survivor of that glorious white company that was whistling its way to the North. And it was the kindly, boyish hand of little Jimmy Duffy, youngest member of the "Animal Rescue Club," that had saved it from a crueller death than even old, heartless Niagara could have given it, and it was his hands that gently removed the bars of the crate in the Duffys' big backyard.

"There, you beautiful thing," he said, as he removed the last slat, "stay with us if you can, but go when and where you want. There are no prisons around here."

But the next morning the swan was still in the yard. The ducks talked to it, but its sad, wondering eyes and listless wings spoke louder than words of its weariness and woe. Scores of boys came to see it that day, and the evening brought Benson's father. After hearing the story all he could say was: "It's a good thing for me that I was not there. I'm a pretty big fellow, and can lick chaps that are even bigger than I am, and if I'd caught that brute killing those uninjured birds, I'd have thrown him into the Whirlpool Rapids, sure as you're born; I'd be in jail now, and probably get hanged in the autumn. Yes, taking it altogether, I'm glad I wasn't there!"

Of course, many of the townspeople were for having Jimmy confine the bird, or at least send it to a museum, or enclose it in a wire netting; but the boy replied:

"No, thanks. I have seen enough of them die, and I don't want my swan to die of a broken heart."

But the swan stayed on day after day, seemingly content and happy. Then there dawned a beautiful day in May. The sun shone hot and level on the little backyard. In the middle of the morning a clear, musical, distinct whistle brought Jimmy running to the side door. The swan's head was uplifted, its crimson beak pointing away from the sun. Presently it spread its regal wings and floated up, up, up. One more clear, lingering whistle, and it was away, while Jimmy watched it with eyes both dumbly sad and unspeakably glad, until it was but a radiant white speck sailing into the north, to search for others of its kind.

The Delaware Idol*

[*This tale is absolutely true. The writer's father was the boy who destroyed the Delaware idol, the head of which is at this time one of the treasures in the family collection of Indian relics and curios.]

Young "Wampum" sat listening to the two old hunters as they talked and chuckled, boasted and bragged, and smoked their curious stone pipes hour after hour. He was a splendid boy, this Wampum of the Mohawks, as quick and lithe as a lynx. His face was strikingly handsome, for it lacked the usual melancholy of the redman, having in its place a haughty, daring expression that gave it the appearance of extreme bravery, and even a dash of wild majesty. That he was a favorite with the older men of his tribe was generally acknowledged, for he was a magnificent hunter, an unerring shot, and, best of all, he could go without food for untold hours, always a thing to be very proud of among the Indian people. So the two old hunters told their stories and laughed over adventures with the same freedom as if the boy had not been present.

"Yes," said old "Fire-Flower," beginning his story, "that was the strangest bear hunt the Grand River ever saw. These white men think they can come here and kill game, but a bear knows more than a paleface, at least that one did."

"Fish-Carrier," the other hunter, nodded his head understandingly, refilled his stone pipe, and said tauntingly, "I know some Indians that don't know as much as a bear."

Fire-Flower chuckled, pa.s.sing the insinuation with a knowing smile. "No bear knows more than _this_ Indian," he boasted. "At least no bear I ever came across could outwit me."

"We'll hear what you have to tell," answered Fish-Carrier, with great condescension.