“I don’t suppose any one will object to my penning in those fowls until I find some way of getting them in trim to go on.”
“They can’t do much harm,” suggested Andy. “I say, I’ll help you gather up the stray ones.”
“I wish you would,” responded the man, with a sound half-way between a sigh and a groan. “I am nigh distracted with the antics of those fowls. We had eight hundred and fifty when we started. We’ve lost nigh on to a hundred in two days.”
“What’s the trouble? Do they stray off?” inquired Andy, getting quite interested.
“No; not many of them. The trouble is traveling. I was foolish to ever dream I could drive up to nearly one thousand geese across country sixty miles. The worst thing has been where we have hit the hill roads and the highways they’re ballasting with crushed stone. The geese get their feet so cut they can’t walk. If we try the side of the roads, then we run into ditches, or the fowls get under farm fences, and then it’s trouble and a chase. I say, lad,” continued the man, with a glance at Andy’s bandaged foot, “you don’t look any too able to get about yourself.”
“Oh, that isn’t worth thinking of,” declared Andy. “I’ll be glad to help.”
He quite cheered up the owner of the geese by his willingness and activity. In half an hour’s time they had all the disabled stray fowls in the enclosure. Some dead ones were left where they had fallen by the wayside.
“I reckon the old nag is rested enough to climb up the rest of the hill now,” spoke the man to his companion, who was his son. “Fetch Dobbin along, Silas, and we’ll feed the fowls and get a snack ourselves.”
Andy curiously regarded the poor crowbait of a horse soon driven into view attached to a ramshackly wagon. The horse was put to the grass near the enclosure, and two bags of grain unearthed from a box under the seat of the wagon and fed to the penned-in geese.
Next Silas produced a small oil-stove, a coffee-pot and some packages, and, seated on the grass, Andy partook of a coarse but substantial breakfast with his new friends.