A Busy Year at the Old Squire's

by C. A. Stephens

By September we began to look the flock over and pick out the one that bade fair to be the largest and handsomest in November. There was much "hefting" and sometimes weighing of birds on the barn scales. We carefully inspected their skins under their feathers, for we sent the judge a "yellow skin," and never a "blue skin," however heavy.

That autumn there was considerable difference of opinion among us which young gobbler, out of twenty or more, was the best and promised to "dress off" finest by Thanksgiving. Addison chose a dark, burnished bird with a yellow skin; at that time our flock was made up of a mixture of breeds—white, speckled, bronze and golden. Halstead chose a large speckled gobbler with heavy purple wattles and a long "quitter" that bothered him in picking up his food.

Theodora and Ellen also selected two, and I had my eye on one with golden markings, but of that I need say no more here; as weeks passed, it proved inferior to Addison's and to Theodora's.

Even as late as October 20, it was not easy to say which was the best one out of five; at about that time I also discovered that Addison was secretly feeding his bronze turkey, out at the west barn, with rations of warm dough. Theodora and I exchanged confidences and began feeding ours on dough mixed with boiled squash, for we had been told that this was good diet for fattening turkeys.

When Halstead found out what we were doing, he was indignant and declared we were not playing fair; but we rejoined that he had the same chance to "feed up," if he desired to take the trouble.

At the Corners, about a mile from the old Squire's, there lived a person who had far too great an influence over Halstead. His name was Tibbetts; he was post-master and kept a grocery; also he sold intoxicants covertly, in violation of the state law, and was a gambler in a small, mean way. Claiming to know something of farming and of poultry, he told Halstead that the best way to fatten a turkey speedily was to shut it up and not allow it to run with the rest of the flock. He said, too, that if a turkey were shut up in a well-lighted place, it would fret itself, running to and fro, particularly if it heard other turkeys calling to it.

The food for fattening turkeys, said Tibbetts, should consist of a warm dough, made from two parts corn meal and one part wheat bran. To a quart of such dough he asserted that a tablespoonful of powdered eggshells should be added, also a dust of Cayenne pepper. And if a really perfect food for fattening poultry were desired, Tibbetts declared that a tablespoonful of new rum should be added to the water with which the quart of dough was mixed. A wonderful turkey food, no doubt!

Tibbetts also told Halstead to take a pair of sharp shears and cut off an inch and a half of his turkey's "quitter," if it were too long and bothered him about eating. If the turkey grew "dainty," as Tibbetts expressed it, Halstead was to make the dough into rolls about the size of his thumb, then open the bird's beak, shove the rolls in, and make him swallow them—three or four of them, three times a day.

Halstead came home from the Corners and made a quart of dough according to the Tibbetts formula. I do not know certainly about the spoonful of rum. If Tibbetts gave him the rum, Halstead kept quiet about it; the old Squire was a strict observer of the Maine law.

None of us found out what Halstead was doing for four or five days, and then only by accident. For he had caught his speckled gobbler and put him down at the foot of the stairs in the wagon-house cellar; and he got a sheet of hemlock bark, four feet long by two or three feet wide, such as are peeled off hemlock logs, and sold at tanneries, for the turkey to stand on.