"They do look exactly like the brown Leghorns, and do you know, Kate, that when I first saw a brood of Leghorns, I thought they were young quails."
"I expect we shall have little trouble in raising them, for Jenny Campbell had as many as a dozen of them in her cellar all last summer. Her brother caught them as we did these, in the spring, just as they were coming out of their shells. They will eat small grain like chickens."
"Well, we won't keep them in our cellar," said Gertrude; "we'll get Joe or Rob to build us a big cage out of lath, and then we can make them as tame as the mocking-birds."
"Do you purpose to eat them?" inquired Kate.
"Certainly; why not? Mamma and papa love them broiled on toast, and so do I. I don't expect to make such pets of them that when the time comes to eat them, I shall think so much of them that I can't do it; and you must not either, Kate."
The girls arrived safely at the ranche with their charge, and Joe being begged to make a cage, set about it at once, and had it ready in less than an hour. The birds were put in it, and it was set on the veranda, where the little things could get plenty of air and sunlight. They picked up millet seed as readily as an old chicken, when Gertrude threw in a handful to them. In a few days they were contented in their confinement and became very tame.
Kate and her sister intended to raise a great many chickens this spring, and they set as many as forty hens; for their eggs and young broilers brought a good price at the fort and in the village. They had excellent luck at hatching time, but as the little ones began to grow, when the girls counted them every morning they found their number decreasing day by day. They could not divine the cause at first, so Rob was set to watch, and discover, if he could, what caused their disappearance. Some hens that had fifteen or sixteen would come around the yard next morning with only six or seven.
They had three cats: one named Dame Trot, a pure tabby; one called Mischief, a white and gray; and Tortoise, because of her color. Tortoise had a litter of kittens which she kept under the front porch. Joe had suspected that the cats knew something of the disappearance of the little birds, and told Rob to keep his eyes on them. As he sat one evening on the veranda he saw Tortoise suddenly spring from behind a cherry tree and catch one of the young Leghorns in her mouth and carry it to her nest under the porch. Rob immediately crawled there, and to his surprise found the heads of more than twenty chickens. He ran into the house and told of his discovery. His father said that the cat must be killed at once; for when a cat gets a taste for chickens, it is impossible to break it of the habit, and Joe was commissioned to put the guilty Tortoise out of the way.
Kate cried and was in great distress, for Tortoise was her cat, and she begged her father to put off its death until to-morrow morning, when she would go and spend the day with Jenny Campbell. She could not bear to stay and see her favorite cat killed. Her request was granted, and Tortoise had a respite until morning, but she was shut up in a box so that she could not get any more of the chickens.
When morning came, Kate got Rob to saddle Ginger, but before she started she begged Joe to bury Tortoise in some out of the way place where she would never find her grave. Joe promised he would, and when his sister was out of sight down the trail, he took the cat out of her prison and went to the woodpile, and with one stroke of the axe cut off her head. Then he took her down into the woods and buried her under a bunch of wild plum bushes, where no one would ever see the grave.