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from the kitchen table, to which the little girl did not usually go until long after the big brothers had finished and withdrawn.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.