The Golden Bird

by Maria Thompson Daviess

"Now don't be bothered, sweetheart," he again said, as he picked up another of the Ladies Bird and turned towards the huge old tumble-down barn that was yawning a black midnight out into the gray moonlight. "Let's all go into the barn and settle down to live happily together ever after."

"I think that will be lovely," I answered, while beautiful Mrs. Bird made her reply with a consenting cluck. I never supposed I would make an affirmative answer to a domestic proposal that was at least uncertain of intent, but then I also never dreamed of being in the position of guardian to eleven head of prize live stock, and I think anything I did or said under the circumstances was excusable.

"Don't you want to come with me and bring the cock with you. Old Rufus wouldn't touch one of them for a gold rock," he asked, and I felt slightly aggrieved when I discovered that I was to know when I was being addressed by a lack of any term of endearment, though the caressing flutiness of Adam's voice was the same to me as to any one of the Ladies Leghorn.

"Naw, Marster, chickens am my hoodoo. To tetch one makes my flesh crawl like they was walking on my grave, and if little Mis' will permit of me, I wanter git back to see to the browning of my muffins ginst the time Mas' Cradd rars at me fer his supper," and without waiting for the consent he had asked, old Rufus shuffled hurriedly back into the house.

"I'll bring Mr. Golden Bird. I adore the creeps his feathers give me," I said as I reached in the coach and took the Sultan in my arms. He gave not a single note of remonstrance, but I suppose it was imagination that made me think that he fluffed himself into my embrace with friendly joy.

"Come on, let's put them for to-night over in the feed-room. There, ladies, did you ever see a greater old barn than this?" As he spoke to us he led the way with four of the admiring and obedient Ladies, in his arms, while the fifth, who was I, followed him into the deep, purple, hay-scented darkness.

"I never did see anything like it," I answered, while only one of the Leghorn ladies gave a sleepy cluck of assent to their part of the question.

I really did have a thrill of pure joy in that old barn. It wasn't like anything I had ever seen before, and was as far removed from a garage as is a brown-hearted chestnut burr from a soufflé of maroons served on a silver dish. I could hear the moth-eaten string of steeds munching noisily over at one end of the huge darkness, and the odor that arose from their repast was of corn and not of suffocating gasoline. Tall weeds and long frames with teeth in them, which gave them the appearance of huge alligator mouths yawning from the dusk to snap me, pressed close on each side. Straps and ropes and harness were draped from the beams and along the walls, and the combined aroma of corn and hay and leather and horses seemed an inspiration to a lusty breath.

"There, sweeties, is a nice smooth bin for you to go to bed on," said Adam as he set the Ladies Leghorn one by one from his arms on the edge of a long narrow box that was piled high with corn. "Now you stay here with them until I bring the rest. Put your Golden Bird down beside the biddies, and I'll bring the others to put on the other side of him to roost, and in the morning he can begin scratching for a happy and united family." With which command Pan disappeared into the purple darkness and left me alone in the snapping monster shadows with only the sleepy Golden Bird for company. The Bird shook himself after being deposited beside the half-portion of his family, puffed himself up, sank his long neck into his shoulders, and evidently went to sleep. I shivered up close to him and looked over my shoulder into the blackness behind the teeth and then didn't look again until I heard the soft pad of the weird leather shoes behind me.

"Now all's shipshape for the night," said Pan as he spread out his armful of feathers into a bunchy line on the edge of the bin. "Just throw them about two double handfulls of mixed corn and wheat down in the hay litter on the floor at daybreak and keep them shut up and scratching until you are sure none of them are going to lay. From the red of their combs I judge they will all be laying in a few days."