FullReads

We made a little on our placer–just enough to keep interested. Then the supervisors decided to fix our road, and what’s more, THEY DONE IT! That’s the only part in this yarn that’s hard to believe, but, boys, you’ll have to take it on faith. They ploughed her, and crowned her, and scraped her, and rolled her, and when they moved on we had the fanciest highway in the State of Californy.

That noon–the day they called her a job–Tusky and I sat smokin’ our pipes as per usual, when way over the foothills we seen a cloud of dust and faint to our ears was bore a whizzin’ sound. The chickens was gathered under the cottonwood for the heat of the day, but they didn’t pay no attention. Then faint, but clear, we heard another of them brass horns:

“Honk! honk!” says it, and every one of them chickens woke up, and stood at attention.

“Honk! honk!” it hollered clearer and nearer.

Then over the hill come an automobeel, blowin’ vigorous at every jump.

“My God!” I yells to Tusky, kickin’ over my chair, as I springs to my feet. “Stop ’em! Stop ’em!”

But it was too late. Out the gate sprinted them poor devoted chickens, and up the road they trailed in vain pursuit. The last we seen of ’em was a mingling of dust and dim figgers goin’ thirty mile an hour after a disappearin’ automobeel.

That was all we seen for the moment. About three o’clock the first straggler came limpin’ in, his wings hangin’, his mouth open, his eyes glazed with the heat. By sundown fourteen had returned. All the rest had disappeared utter; we never seen ’em again. I reckon they just naturally run themselves into a sunstroke and died on the road.

It takes a long time to learn a chicken a thing, but a heap longer to unlearn him. After that two or three of these yere automobeels went by every day, all a-blowin’ of their horns, all kickin’ up a hell of a dust. And every time them fourteen Honk-honks of mine took along after ’em, just as I’d taught ’em to do, layin’ to get to their corn when they caught up. No more of ’em died, but that fourteen did get into elegant trainin’. After a while they got plumb to enjoyin’ it. When you come right down to it, a chicken don’t have many amusements and relaxations in this life. Searchin’ for worms, chasin’ grasshoppers, and wallerin’ in the dust is about the limits of joys for chickens.

It was sure a fine sight to see ’em after they got well into the game. About nine o’clock every mornin’ they would saunter down to the rise of the road where they would wait patient until a machine came along. Then it would warm your heart to see the enthusiasm of them. With, exultant cackles of joy they’d trail in, reachin’ out like quarter-horses, their wings half spread out, their eyes beamin’ with delight. At the lower turn they’d quit. Then, after talkin’ it over excited-like for a few minutes, they’d calm down and wait for another.

After a few months of this sort of trainin’ they got purty good at it. I had one two-year-old rooster that made fifty-four mile an hour behind one of those sixty-horsepower Panhandles. When cars didn’t come along often enough, they’d all turn out and chase jack-rabbits. They wasn’t much fun at that. After a short, brief sprint the rabbit would crouch down plumb terrified, while the Honk-honks pulled off triumphal dances around his shrinkin’ form.

Our ranch got to be purty well known them days among automobeelists. The strength of their cars was horse-power, of course, but the speed of them they got to ratin’ by chicken-power. Some of them used to come way up from Los Angeles just to try out a new car along our road with the Honk-honks for pace-makers. We charged them a little somethin’, and then, too, we opened up the road-house and the bar, so we did purty well. It wasn’t necessary to work any longer at that bogus placer. Evenin’s we sat around outside and swapped yarns, and I bragged on my chickens. The chickens would gather round close to listen.

They liked to hear their praises sung, all right. You bet they sabe! The only reason a chicken, or any other critter, isn’t intelligent is because he hasn’t no chance to expand.

Why, we used to run races with ’em. Some of us would hold two or more chickens back of a chalk line, and the starter’d blow the horn from a hundred yards to a mile away, dependin’ on whether it was a sprint or for distance. We had pools on the results, gave odds, made books, and kept records. After the thing got knowed we made money hand over fist.

The stranger broke off abruptly and began to roll a cigarette.

“What did you quit it for, then?” ventured Charley, out of the hushed silence.

“Pride,” replied the stranger solemnly. “Haughtiness of spirit.”

“How so?” urged Charley, after a pause.

“Them chickens,” continued the stranger, after a moment, “stood around listenin’ to me a-braggin’ of what superior fowls they was until they got all puffed up. They wouldn’t have nothin’ whatever to do with the ordinary chickens we brought in for eatin’ purposes, but stood around lookin’ bored when there wasn’t no sport doin’. They got to be just like that Four Hundred you read about in the papers. It was one continual round of grasshopper balls, race meets, and afternoon hen-parties. They got idle and haughty, just like folks. Then come race suicide. They got to feelin’ so aristocratic the hens wouldn’t have no eggs.”

Nobody dared say a word.

“Windy Bill’s snake–” began the narrator genially.

“Stranger,” broke in Windy Bill, with great emphasis, “as to that snake, I want you to understand this: yereafter in my estimation that snake is nothin’ but an ornery angleworm!”