The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains by Owen Wister (beach read book txt) 📗

The anecdote met with instantaneous success, and I hurried away into the dark. The next morning I was occupied with the chickens. Two hens were fighting to sit on some eggs that a third was daily laying, and which I did not want hatched, and for the third time I had kicked Em'ly off seven potatoes she had rolled together and was determined to raise I know not what sort of family from. She was shrieking about the hen-house as the Virginian came in to observe (I suspect) what I might be doing now that could be useful for him to mention in the bunk-house.

He stood awhile, and at length said, “We lost our best rooster when Mrs. Henry came to live hyeh.”

I paid no attention.

“He was a right elegant Dominicker,” he continued.

I felt a little riled about the snapping-turtle, and showed no interest in what he was saying, but continued my functions among the hens. This unusual silence of mine seemed to elicit unusual speech from him.

“Yu' see, that rooster he'd always lived round hyeh when the Judge was a bachelor, and he never seen no ladies or any persons wearing female gyarments. You ain't got rheumatism, seh?”

“Me? No.”

“I reckoned maybe them little odd divers yu' got damp goin' afteh—” He paused.

“Oh, no, not in the least, thank you.”

“Yu' seemed sort o' grave this mawnin', and I'm cert'nly glad it ain't them divers.”

“Well, the rooster?” I inquired finally.

“Oh, him! He weren't raised where he could see petticoats. Mrs. Henry she come hyeh from the railroad with the Judge afteh dark. Next mawnin' early she walked out to view her new home, and the rooster was a-feedin' by the door, and he seen her. Well, seh, he screeched that awful I run out of the bunk-house; and he jus' went over the fence and took down Sunk Creek shoutin' fire, right along. He has never come back.”

“There's a hen over there now that has no judgment,” I said, indicating Em'ly. She had got herself outside the house, and was on the bars of a corral, her vociferations reduced to an occasional squawk. I told him about the potatoes.

“I never knowed her name before,” said he. “That runaway rooster, he hated her. And she hated him same as she hates 'em all.”

“I named her myself,” said I, “after I came to notice her particularly. There's an old maid at home who's charitable, and belongs to the Cruelty to Animals, and she never knows whether she had better cross in front of a street car or wait. I named the hen after her. Does she ever lay eggs?”

The Virginian had not “troubled his haid” over the poultry.

“Well, I don't believe she knows how. I think she came near being a rooster.”

“She's sure manly-lookin',” said the Virginian. We had walked toward the corral, and he was now scrutinizing Em'ly with interest.

She was an egregious fowl. She was huge and gaunt, with great yellow beak, and she stood straight and alert in the manner of responsible people. There was something wrong with her tail. It slanted far to one side, one feather in it twice as long as the rest. Feathers on her breast there were none. These had been worn entirely off by her habit of sitting upon potatoes and other rough abnormal objects. And this lent to her appearance an air of being décollete, singularly at variance with her otherwise prudish ensemble. Her eye was remarkably bright, but somehow it had an outraged expression. It was as if she went about the world perpetually scandalized over the doings that fell beneath her notice. Her legs were blue, long, and remarkably stout.

“She'd ought to wear knickerbockers,” murmured the Virginian. “She'd look a heap better 'n some o' them college students. And she'll set on potatoes, yu' say?”

“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