The Last Three Soldiers

by W. H. Shelton

The 15th of January in the new year, which was 1871, was the first of a four days' thaw. The sun beamed with unusual heat on the mountain, and under his rays the snow rapidly disappeared, and the ground came to light again with its store of dry seeds. The three-pronged tracks of the fowls were printed everywhere in the soft top-soil, where they scampered about in pursuit of grubs and worms. On the fourth day the avalanche fell from the great boulder into the Cove, with the usual midwinter crashes and reverberations, which reminded Philip of his narrow escape the winter before.

On the evening of this fourth day the thaw was followed by a light rain, which froze as it fell, and developed into a regular ice-storm during the night. When the three soldiers looked out on the morning of the 19th, they found their house coated with ice, and the mountain-top a scene of glittering enchantment. Every tree and bush was coated with a transparent armor of glass. The lithe limbs of the birches and young chestnuts were bent downward in graceful curves by the weight of the ice, which, under the rays of the rising sun, guttered and scintillated with all the colors of the rainbow. Every rock and stone had its separate casing, and every weed and blade of grass was stiffened with a tiny shining overcoat. The stalks on the plantation stood up like a glittering field of pikes.

Despite the difficulty of walking over the uneven ground and the slippery rocks, they made their way, not without occasional falls, to the western side of the plateau to observe the effect in the Cove. Philip was in raptures over the prismatic variety of colors, picking out and naming the tints with a childish glee and with a subtle appreciation of color that far outran the limited vision of his comrades, and made them think that Sherman Territory had possibly defrauded the world below of a first-rate painter.

As they turned back toward the house, after their first outburst of enthusiasm over the beauties of the ice-storm, Bromley remarked that it was strange they had not been awakened as usual by the crowing of the cocks. Indeed, the stillness of the hour was remarkable. It was strange that while they had lain in their bunks after daybreak they had not heard the cocks answering one another from one end of the plateau to the other.

Usually they heard first the clear, ringing note of some knowing old bird burst loud and shrill from under the very window, and then the pert reply of some upstart youngster who had not yet learned to manage his crow drifting faintly back from the rocks to the west; then straightway all the crowers, of all ages and of every condition of shrillness and hoarseness, tried for five mortal minutes to crow one another down; and when one weak, far-away chicken seemed to have got the last word, another would break the stillness, and the strident contest would begin again.

Perhaps they had heard all this and not noticed it. They were so used to the noise; it was like the ticking of a clock or the measured pounding of the Slow-John; but it was certain that nothing of the kind was going on at present.

In leaving the house they had been so enchanted by the hues of the ice-storm that they now remembered they had not so much as turned their eyes in the direction of the roost. When they came upon the brow of the hill which overlooked the mill,—which was a silver mill now,—the limbs of the trees which stretched along the bank beyond were crowded with the fowls, at least four hundred of them, sitting still on their perches. Philip, who fell down in his eagerness, and rolled over on the ice, remarked as he got upon his feet that it was too knowing a flock of birds to leave the sure hold it had on the limbs to come down onto the slippery ground.

As the soldiers came nearer, however, they noticed that their fowls in the sunlight were quite the most brilliantly prismatic objects they had seen; for their red combs and party-colored feathers made a rich showing through the transparent coating of ice which enveloped them like shells and held them fast to the limbs where they sat. Whether they had been frozen stiff or smothered by the icy envelop, they were unable to determine; but they could see that all the fowls had met with a very beautiful death, except two or three of the toughest old roosters, who had managed to crack the icy winding-sheet about their bills. One of these, who had more life in him than the others, made a dismal attempt to crow.

Bromley hastened to get the ladder from the mill, and the hatchet, and wherever a living bird was to be seen he put up the ladder regardless of the dead ones, which broke off and fell down, and chipping the ice about its claws, removed it tenderly to the ground. In the end the three soldiers carried just two apiece, one under each arm, of these tough old veterans into the house, and not daring to bring them near the fire, set them up to thaw gradually against the inner side of the door. Then they made a pot of hasty-pudding for their own breakfast; but before they touched it themselves they fed a little of it, steaming hot, to each reviving old bird. In fact, the poor fowls looked so much like colored-glass images, when tilted against the door, that, fearing at any moment they might topple over and break into fragments, they laid each rooster carefully on his side, where the ice melted by degrees into sloppy pools on the floor.

The oldest of these unhappy survivors had come up the mountain tied to a pack-saddle, and consequently was more than six years old. He was big of frame and tawny of color, and had long, sharp spurs curved like small powder-horns, and his crow when he was in good health proclaimed him the leader of the flock. The other five cocks, although but a trifle younger, belonged to the next generation, for they came of the first summer's hatching. Their plumage was red and black, and their long, sweeping tail-feathers cased in ice would certainly have been snapped off if they had had the least power to move their bodies. As the ice melted from their heads, they looked about the house with their round red eyes, and otherwise lay quite helpless on their sides, their claws drawn up to their crops, and curved as they had been taken from the limbs.