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The Belled Buzzard
by
An hour after breakfast the squire was on his way down through the weedfield to the county road. He went half eagerly, half unwillingly. He wanted to make sure about those buzzards. It might be that they were aiming for the old pasture at the head of the swamp. There were sheep grazing there–and it might be that a sheep had died. Buzzards were notoriously fond of sheep, when dead. Or, if they were pointed for the swamp, he must satisfy himself exactly what part of the swamp it was. He was at the stake-and-rider fence when a mare came jogging down the road, drawing a rig with a man in it. At sight of the squire in the field the man pulled up.
“Hi, squire!” he saluted. “Goin’ somewheres?”
“No; jest knockin’ about,” the squire said–“jest sorter lookin’ the place over.”
“Hot agin–ain’t it?” said the other.
The squire allowed that it was, for a fact, mighty hot. Commonplaces of gossip followed this–county politics and a neighbor’s wife sick of breakbone fever down the road a piece. The subject of crops succeeded inevitably. The squire spoke of the need of rain. Instantly he regretted it, for the other man, who was by way of being a weather wiseacre, cocked his head aloft to study the sky for any signs of clouds.
“Wonder whut all them buzzards are doin’ yonder, squire,” he said, pointing upward with his whipstock.
“Whut buzzards–where?” asked the squire with an elaborate note of carelessness in his voice.
“Right yonder, over Little Niggerwool–see ’em there?”
“Oh, yes,” the squire made answer. “Now I see ’em. They ain’t doin’ nothin’, I reckin–jest flyin’ round same as they always do in clear weather.”
“Must be somethin’ dead over there!” speculated the man in the buggy.
“A hawg probably,” said the squire promptly–almost too promptly. “There’s likely to be hawgs usin’ in Niggerwool. Bristow, over on the other side from here–he’s got a big drove of hawgs.”
“Well, mebbe so,” said the man; “but hawgs is a heap more apt to be feedin’ on high ground, seems like to me. Well, I’ll be gittin’ along towards town. G’day, squire.” And he slapped the lines down on the mare’s flank and jogged off through the dust.
He could not have suspected anything–that man couldn’t. As the squire turned away from the road and headed for his house he congratulated himself upon that stroke of his in bringing in Bristow’s hogs; and yet there remained this disquieting note in the situation, that buzzards flying, and especially buzzards flying over Little Niggerwool, made people curious–made them ask questions.
He was half-way across the weedfield when, above the hum of insect life, above the inward clamor of his own busy speculations, there came to his ear dimly and distantly a sound that made him halt and cant his head to one side the better to hear it. Somewhere, a good way off, there was a thin, thready, broken strain of metallic clinking and clanking–an eery ghost-chime ringing. It came nearer and became plainer–tonk-tonk-tonk; then the tonks all running together briskly.
A sheep bell or a cowbell–that was it; but why did it seem to come from overhead, from up in the sky, like? And why did it shift so abruptly from one quarter to another–from left to right and back again to left? And how was it that the clapper seemed to strike so fast? Not even the breachiest of breachy young heifers could be expected to tinkle a cowbell with such briskness. The squire’s eye searched the earth and the sky, his troubled mind giving to his eye a quick and flashing scrutiny. He had it. It was not a cow at all. It was not anything that went on four legs.
One of the loathly flock had left the others. The orbit of his swing had carried him across the road and over Squire Gathers’ land. He was sailing right toward and over the squire now. Craning his flabby neck, the squire could make out the unwholesome contour of the huge bird. He could see the ragged black wings–a buzzard’s wings are so often ragged and uneven–and the naked throat; the slim, naked head; the big feet folded up against the dingy belly. And he could see a bell too–an undersized cowbell–that dangled at the creature’s breast and jangled incessantly. All his life nearly Squire Gathers had been hearing about the Belled Buzzard. Now with his own eye he was seeing him.