Em'ly

: The Virginian

My personage was a hen, and she lived at the Sunk Creek Ranch.



Judge Henry's ranch was notable for several luxuries. He had milk, for

example. In those days his brother ranchmen had thousands of cattle very

often, but not a drop of milk, save the condensed variety. Therefore

they had no butter. The Judge had plenty. Next rarest to butter and milk

in the cattle country were eggs. But my host had chickens. Whether this< r />
was because he had followed cock-fighting in his early days, or whether

it was due to Mrs. Henry, I cannot say. I only know that when I took a

meal elsewhere, I was likely to find nothing but the eternal "sowbelly,"

beans, and coffee; while at Sunk Creek the omelet and the custard were

frequent. The passing traveller was glad to tie his horse to the fence

here, and sit down to the Judge's table. For its fame was as wide as

Wyoming. It was an oasis in the Territory's desolate bill-of-fare.



The long fences of Judge Henry's home ranch began upon Sunk Creek soon

after that stream emerged from its canyon through the Bow Leg. It was

a place always well cared for by the owner, even in the days of his

bachelorhood. The placid regiments of cattle lay in the cool of the

cottonwoods by the water, or slowly moved among the sage-brush, feeding

upon the grass that in those forever departed years was plentiful and

tall. The steers came fat off his unenclosed range and fattened still

more in his large pasture; while his small pasture, a field some eight

miles square, was for several seasons given to the Judge's horses, and

over this ample space there played and prospered the good colts which

he raised from Paladin, his imported stallion. After he married, I have

been assured that his wife's influence became visible in and about the

house at once. Shade trees were planted, flowers attempted, and to the

chickens was added the much more troublesome turkey. I, the visitor, was

pressed into service when I arrived, green from the East. I took hold of

the farmyard and began building a better chicken house, while the Judge

was off creating meadow land in his gray and yellow wilderness. When

any cow-boy was unoccupied, he would lounge over to my neighborhood, and

silently regard my carpentering.



Those cow-punchers bore names of various denominations. There was Honey

Wiggin; there was Nebrasky, and Dollar Bill, and Chalkeye. And they came

from farms and cities, from Maine and from California. But the romance

of American adventure had drawn them all alike to this great playground

of young men, and in their courage, their generosity, and their

amusement at me they bore a close resemblance to each other. Each one

would silently observe my achievements with the hammer and the chisel.

Then he would retire to the bunk-house, and presently I would over hear

laughter. But this was only in the morning. In the afternoon on many

days of the summer which I spent at the Sunk Creek Ranch I would go

shooting, or ride up toward the entrance of the canyon and watch the men

working on the irrigation ditches. Pleasant systems of water running

in channels were being led through the soil, and there was a sound of

rippling here and there among the yellow grain; the green thick alfalfa

grass waved almost, it seemed, of its own accord, for the wind never

blew; and when at evening the sun lay against the plain, the rift of the

canyon was filled with a violet light, and the Bow Leg Mountains became

transfigured with hues of floating and unimaginable color. The sun shone

in a sky where never a cloud came, and noon was not too warm nor the

dark too cool. And so for two months I went through these pleasant

uneventful days, improving the chickens, an object of mirth, living in

the open air, and basking in the perfection of content.



I was justly styled a tenderfoot. Mrs. Henry had in the beginning

endeavored to shield me from this humiliation; but when she found that I

was inveterate in laying my inexperience of Western matters bare to all

the world, begging to be enlightened upon rattlesnakes, prairie-dogs,

owls, blue and willow grouse, sage-hens, how to rope a horse or tighten

the front cinch of my saddle, and that my spirit soared into enthusiasm

at the mere sight of so ordinary an animal as a white-tailed deer, she

let me rush about with my firearms and made no further effort to stave

off the ridicule that my blunders perpetually earned from the ranch

hands, her own humorous husband, and any chance visitor who stopped for

a meal or stayed the night.



I was not called by my name after the first feeble etiquette due to a

stranger in his first few hours had died away. I was known simply as

"the tenderfoot." I was introduced to the neighborhood (a circle

of eighty miles) as "the tenderfoot." It was thus that Balaam, the

maltreater of horses, learned to address me when he came a two

days' journey to pay a visit. And it was this name and my notorious

helplessness that bid fair to end what relations I had with the

Virginian. For when Judge Henry ascertained that nothing could prevent

me from losing myself, that it was not uncommon for me to saunter out

after breakfast with a gun and in thirty minutes cease to know north

from south, he arranged for my protection. He detailed an escort for me;

and the escort was once more the trustworthy man! The poor Virginian was

taken from his work and his comrades and set to playing nurse for me.

And for a while this humiliation ate into his untamed soul. It was his

lugubrious lot to accompany me in my rambles, preside over my blunders,

and save me from calamitously passing into the next world. He bore it in

courteous silence, except when speaking was necessary. He would show me

the lower ford, which I could never find for myself, generally mistaking

a quicksand for it. He would tie my horse properly. He would recommend

me not to shoot my rifle at a white-tailed deer in the particular moment

that the outfit wagon was passing behind the animal on the further side

of the brush. There was seldom a day that he was not obliged to hasten

and save me from sudden death or from ridicule, which is worse. Yet

never once did he lose his patience and his gentle, slow voice, and

apparently lazy manner remained the same, whether we were sitting at

lunch together, or up in the mountain during a hunt, or whether he

was bringing me back my horse, which had run away because I had again

forgotten to throw the reins over his head and let them trail.



"He'll always stand if yu' do that," the Virginian would say. "See how

my hawss stays right quiet yondeh."



After such admonition he would say no more to me. But this tame

nursery business was assuredly gall to him. For though utterly a man

in countenance and in his self-possession and incapacity to be put at

a loss, he was still boyishly proud of his wild calling, and wore his

leather straps and jingled his spurs with obvious pleasure. His tiger

limberness and his beauty were rich with unabated youth; and that force

which lurked beneath his surface must often have curbed his intolerance

of me. In spite of what I knew must be his opinion of me, the

tenderfoot, my liking for him grew, and I found his silent company more

and more agreeable. That he had spells of talking, I had already learned

at Medicine Bow. But his present taciturnity might almost have effaced

this impression, had I not happened to pass by the bunk-house one

evening after dark, when Honey Wiggin and the rest of the cow-boys were

gathered inside it.



That afternoon the Virginian and I had gone duck shooting. We had

found several in a beaver dam, and I had killed two as they sat close

together; but they floated against the breastwork of sticks out in the

water some four feet deep, where the escaping current might carry them

down the stream. The Judge's red setter had not accompanied us, because

she was expecting a family.



"We don't want her along anyways," the cowpuncher had explained to me.

"She runs around mighty irresponsible, and she'll stand a prairie-dog

'bout as often as she'll stand a bird. She's a triflin' animal."



My anxiety to own the ducks caused me to pitch into the water with

all my clothes on, and subsequently crawl out a slippery, triumphant,

weltering heap. The Virginian's serious eyes had rested upon this

spectacle of mud; but he expressed nothing, as usual.



"They ain't overly good eatin'," he observed, tying the birds to his

saddle. "They're divers."



"Divers!" I exclaimed. "Why didn't they dive?"



"I reckon they was young ones and hadn't experience."



"Well," I said, crestfallen, but attempting to be humorous, "I did the

diving myself."



But the Virginian made no comment. He handed me my double-barrelled

English gun, which I was about to leave deserted on the ground

behind me, and we rode home in our usual silence, the mean little

white-breasted, sharp-billed divers dangling from his saddle.



It was in the bunk-house that he took his revenge. As I passed I heard

his gentle voice silently achieving some narrative to an attentive

audience, and just as I came by the open window where he sat on his bed

in shirt and drawers, his back to me, I heard his concluding words,

"And the hat on his haid was the one mark showed yu' he weren't a

snappin'-turtle."



The anecdote met with instantaneous success, and I hurried away into the

dark. The next morning I was occupied with the chickens. Two hens were

fighting to sit on some eggs that a third was daily laying, and which

I did not want hatched, and for the third time I had kicked Em'ly off

seven potatoes she had rolled together and was determined to raise I

know not what sort of family from. She was shrieking about the hen-house

as the Virginian came in to observe (I suspect) what I might be doing

now that could be useful for him to mention in the bunk-house.



He stood awhile, and at length said, "We lost our best rooster when Mrs.

Henry came to live hyeh."



I paid no attention.



"He was a right elegant Dominicker," he continued.



I felt a little riled about the snapping-turtle, and showed no interest

in what he was saying, but continued my functions among the hens. This

unusual silence of mine seemed to elicit unusual speech from him.



"Yu' see, that rooster he'd always lived round hyeh when the Judge was

a bachelor, and he never seen no ladies or any persons wearing female

gyarments. You ain't got rheumatism, seh?"



"Me? No."



"I reckoned maybe them little odd divers yu' got damp goin' afteh--" He

paused.



"Oh, no, not in the least, thank you."



"Yu' seemed sort o' grave this mawnin', and I'm cert'nly glad it ain't

them divers."



"Well, the rooster?" I inquired finally.



"Oh, him! He weren't raised where he could see petticoats. Mrs. Henry

she come hyeh from the railroad with the Judge afteh dark. Next mawnin'

early she walked out to view her new home, and the rooster was a-feedin'

by the door, and he seen her. Well, seh, he screeched that awful I run

out of the bunk-house; and he jus' went over the fence and took down

Sunk Creek shoutin' fire, right along. He has never come back."



"There's a hen over there now that has no judgment," I said, indicating

Em'ly. She had got herself outside the house, and was on the bars of a

corral, her vociferations reduced to an occasional squawk. I told him

about the potatoes.



"I never knowed her name before," said he. "That runaway rooster, he

hated her. And she hated him same as she hates 'em all."



"I named her myself," said I, "after I came to notice her particularly.

There's an old maid at home who's charitable, and belongs to the Cruelty

to Animals, and she never knows whether she had better cross in front

of a street car or wait. I named the hen after her. Does she ever lay

eggs?"



The Virginian had not "troubled his haid" over the poultry.



"Well, I don't believe she knows how. I think she came near being a

rooster."



"She's sure manly-lookin'," said the Virginian. We had walked toward the

corral, and he was now scrutinizing Em'ly with interest.



She was an egregious fowl. She was huge and gaunt, with great yellow

beak, and she stood straight and alert in the manner of responsible

people. There was something wrong with her tail. It slanted far to

one side, one feather in it twice as long as the rest. Feathers on her

breast there were none. These had been worn entirely off by her habit of

sitting upon potatoes and other rough abnormal objects. And this lent

to her appearance an air of being decollete, singularly at variance

with her otherwise prudish ensemble. Her eye was remarkably bright, but

somehow it had an outraged expression. It was as if she went about the

world perpetually scandalized over the doings that fell beneath her

notice. Her legs were blue, long, and remarkably stout.



"She'd ought to wear knickerbockers," murmured the Virginian. "She'd

look a heap better 'n some o' them college students. And she'll set on

potatoes, yu' say?"



"She thinks she can hatch out anything. I've found her with onions, and

last Tuesday I caught her on two balls of soap."



In the afternoon the tall cow-puncher and I rode out to get an antelope.



After an hour, during which he was completely taciturn, he said: "I

reckon maybe this hyeh lonesome country ain't been healthy for Em'ly to

live in. It ain't for some humans. Them old trappers in the mountains

gets skewed in the haid mighty often, an' talks out loud when nobody's

nigher 'n a hundred miles."



"Em'ly has not been solitary," I replied. "There are forty chickens

here."



"That's so," said he. "It don't explain her."



He fell silent again, riding beside me, easy and indolent in the saddle.

His long figure looked so loose and inert that the swift, light spring

he made to the ground seemed an impossible feat. He had seen an antelope

where I saw none.



"Take a shot yourself," I urged him, as he motioned me to be quick. "You

never shoot when I'm with you."



"I ain't hyeh for that," he answered. "Now you've let him get away on

yu'!"



The antelope had in truth departed.



"Why," he said to my protest, "I can hit them things any day. What's

your notion as to Em'ly?"



"I can't account for her," I replied.



"Well," he said musingly, and then his mind took one of those particular

turns that made me love him, "Taylor ought to see her. She'd be just the

schoolmarm for Bear Creek!"



"She's not much like the eating-house lady at Medicine Bow," I said.



He gave a hilarious chuckle. "No, Em'ly knows nothing o' them joys. So

yu' have no notion about her? Well, I've got one. I reckon maybe she was

hatched after a big thunderstorm."



"In a big thunderstorm!" I exclaimed.



"Yes. Don't yu' know about them, and what they'll do to aiggs? A

big case o' lightnin' and thunder will addle aiggs and keep 'em from

hatchin'. And I expect one came along, and all the other aiggs of

Em'ly's set didn't hatch out, but got plumb addled, and she happened not

to get addled that far, and so she just managed to make it through. But

she cert'nly ain't got a strong haid."



"I fear she has not," said I.



"Mighty hon'ble intentions," he observed. "If she can't make out to lay

anything, she wants to hatch somethin', and be a mother anyways."



"I wonder what relation the law considers that a hen is to the chicken

she hatched but did not lay?" I inquired.



The Virginian made no reply to this frivolous suggestion. He was gazing

over the wide landscape gravely and with apparent inattention. He

invariably saw game before I did, and was off his horse and crouched

among the sage while I was still getting my left foot clear of the

stirrup. I succeeded in killing an antelope, and we rode home with the

head and hind quarters.



"No," said he. "It's sure the thunder, and not the lonesomeness. How do

yu' like the lonesomeness yourself?"



I told him that I liked it.



"I could not live without it now," he said. "This has got into my

system." He swept his hand out at the vast space of world. "I went back

home to see my folks onced. Mother was dyin' slow, and she wanted me.

I stayed a year. But them Virginia mountains could please me no more.

Afteh she was gone, I told my brothers and sisters good-by. We like each

other well enough, but I reckon I'll not go back."



We found Em'ly seated upon a collection of green California peaches,

which the Judge had brought from the railroad.



"I don't mind her any more," I said; "I'm sorry for her."



"I've been sorry for her right along," said the Virginian. "She does

hate the roosters so." And he said that he was making a collection of

every class of object which he found her treating as eggs.



But Em'ly's egg-industry was terminated abruptly one morning, and her

unquestioned energies diverted to a new channel. A turkey which had been

sitting in the root-house appeared with twelve children, and a family of

bantams occurred almost simultaneously. Em'ly was importantly scratching

the soil inside Paladin's corral when the bantam tribe of newly born

came by down the lane, and she caught sight of them through the bars.

She crossed the corral at a run, and intercepted two of the chicks that

were trailing somewhat behind their real mamma. These she undertook

to appropriate, and assumed a high tone with the bantam, who was the

smaller, and hence obliged to retreat with her still numerous family.

I interfered, and put matters straight; but the adjustment was only

temporary. In an hour I saw Em'ly immensely busy with two more bantams,

leading them about and taking a care of them which I must admit seemed

perfectly efficient.



And now came the first incident that made me suspect her to be demented.



She had proceeded with her changelings behind the kitchen, where one of

the irrigation ditches ran under the fence from the hay-field to supply

the house with water. Some distance along this ditch inside the field

were the twelve turkeys in the short, recently cut stubble. Again Em'ly

set off instantly like a deer. She left the dismayed bantams behind her.

She crossed the ditch with one jump of her stout blue legs, flew over

the grass, and was at once among the turkeys, where, with an instinct

of maternity as undiscriminating as it was reckless, she attempted to

huddle some of them away. But this other mamma was not a bantam, and in

a few moments Em'ly was entirely routed in her attempt to acquire a new

variety of family.



This spectacle was witnessed by the Virginian and myself, and it

overcame him. He went speechless across to the bunk-house, by himself,

and sat on his bed, while I took the abandoned bantams back to their own

circle.



I have often wondered what the other fowls thought of all this. Some

impression it certainly did make upon them. The notion may seem out of

reason to those who have never closely attended to other animals than

man; but I am convinced that any community which shares some of our

instincts will share some of the resulting feelings, and that birds and

beasts have conventions, the breach of which startles them. If there be

anything in evolution, this would seem inevitable; At all events,

the chicken-house was upset during the following several days. Em'ly

disturbed now the bantams and now the turkeys, and several of these

latter had died, though I will not go so far as to say that this was

the result of her misplaced attentions. Nevertheless, I was seriously

thinking of locking her up till the broods should be a little older,

when another event happened, and all was suddenly at peace.



The Judge's setter came in one morning, wagging her tail. She had had

her puppies, and she now took us to where they were housed, in between

the floor of a building and the hollow ground. Em'ly was seated on the

whole litter.



"No," I said to the Judge, "I am not surprised. She is capable of

anything."



In her new choice of offspring, this hen had at length encountered an

unworthy parent. The setter was bored by her own puppies. She found the

hole under the house an obscure and monotonous residence compared with

the dining room, and our company more stimulating and sympathetic than

that of her children. A much-petted contact with our superior race had

developed her dog intelligence above its natural level, and turned her

into an unnatural, neglectful mother, who was constantly forgetting her

nursery for worldly pleasures.



At certain periods of the day she repaired to the puppies and fed them,

but came away when this perfunctory ceremony was accomplished; and she

was glad enough to have a governess bring them up. She made no quarrel

with Em'ly, and the two understood each other perfectly. I have never

seen among animals any arrangement so civilized and so perverted.

It made Em'ly perfectly happy. To see her sitting all day jealously

spreading her wings over some blind puppies was sufficiently curious;

but when they became large enough to come out from under the house and

toddle about in the proud hen's wake, I longed for some distinguished

naturalist. I felt that our ignorance made us inappropriate spectators

of such a phenomenon. Em'ly scratched and clucked, and the puppies ran

to her, pawed her with their fat limp little legs, and retreated beneath

her feathers in their games of hide and seek. Conceive, if you can, what

confusion must have reigned in their infant minds as to who the setter

was!



"I reckon they think she's the wet-nurse," said the Virginian.



When the puppies grew to be boisterous, I perceived that Em'ly's

mission was approaching its end. They were too heavy for her, and their

increasing scope of playfulness was not in her line. Once or twice they

knocked her over, upon which she arose and pecked them severely, and

they retired to a safe distance, and sitting in a circle, yapped at

her. I think they began to suspect that she was only a hen after all.

So Em'ly resigned with an indifference which surprised me, until I

remembered that if it had been chickens, she would have ceased to look

after them by this time.



But here she was again "out of a job," as the Virginian said.



"She's raised them puppies for that triflin' setter, and now she'll

be huntin' around for something else useful to do that ain't in her

business."



Now there were other broods of chickens to arrive in the hen-house, and

I did not desire any more bantam and turkey performances. So, to avoid

confusion, I played a trick upon Em'ly. I went down to Sunk Creek and

fetched some smooth, oval stones. She was quite satisfied with these,

and passed a quiet day with them in a box. This was not fair, the

Virginian asserted.



"You ain't going to jus' leave her fooled that a-way?"



I did not see why not.



"Why, she raised them puppies all right. Ain't she showed she knows how

to be a mother anyways? Em'ly ain't going to get her time took up for

nothing while I'm round hyeh," said the cowpuncher.



He laid a gentle hold of Em'ly and tossed her to the ground. She, of

course, rushed out among the corrals in a great state of nerves.



"I don't see what good you do meddling," I protested.



To this he deigned no reply, but removed the unresponsive stones from

the straw.



"Why, if they ain't right warm!" he exclaimed plaintively. "The poor,

deluded son-of-a-gun!" And with this unusual description of a lady, he

sent the stones sailing like a line of birds. "I'm regular getting stuck

on Em'ly," continued the Virginian. "Yu' needn't to laugh. Don't yu' see

she's got sort o' human feelin's and desires? I always knowed hawsses

was like people, and my collie, of course. It is kind of foolish, I

expect, but that hen's goin' to have a real aigg di-rectly, right now,

to set on." With this he removed one from beneath another hen. "We'll

have Em'ly raise this hyeh," said he, "so she can put in her time

profitable."



It was not accomplished at once; for Em'ly, singularly enough, would

not consent to stay in the box whence she had been routed. At length we

found another retreat for her, and in these new surroundings, with a

new piece of work for her to do, Em'ly sat on the one egg which the

Virginian had so carefully provided for her.



Thus, as in all genuine tragedies, was the stroke of Fate wrought by

chance and the best intentions.



Em'ly began sitting on Friday afternoon near sundown. Early next morning

my sleep was gradually dispersed by a sound unearthly and continuous.

Now it dwindled, receding to a distance; again it came near, took a

turn, drifted to the other side of the house; then, evidently, whatever

it was, passed my door close, and I jumped upright in my bed. The high,

tense strain of vibration, nearly, but not quite, a musical note, was

like the threatening scream of machinery, though weaker, and I bounded

out of the house in my pajamas.



There was Em'ly, dishevelled, walking wildly about, her one egg

miraculously hatched within ten hours. The little lonely yellow ball of

down went cheeping along behind, following its mother as best it could.

What, then, had happened to the established period of incubation? For

an instant the thing was like a portent, and I was near joining Em'ly in

her horrid surprise, when I saw how it all was. The Virginian had taken

an egg from a hen which had already been sitting for three weeks.



I dressed in haste, hearing Em'ly's distracted outcry. It steadily

sounded, without perceptible pause for breath, and marked her erratic

journey back and forth through stables, lanes, and corrals. The shrill

disturbance brought all of us out to see her, and in the hen-house I

discovered the new brood making its appearance punctually.



But this natural explanation could not be made to the crazed hen. She

continued to scour the premises, her slant tail and its one preposterous

feather waving as she aimlessly went, her stout legs stepping high with

an unnatural motion, her head lifted nearly off her neck, and in

her brilliant yellow eye an expression of more than outrage at

this overturning of a natural law. Behind her, entirely ignored and

neglected, trailed the little progeny. She never looked at it. We went

about our various affairs, and all through the clear, sunny day that

unending metallic scream pervaded the premises. The Virginian put out

food and water for her, but she tasted nothing. I am glad to say that

the little chicken did. I do not think that the hen's eyes could see,

except in the way that sleep-walkers' do.



The heat went out of the air, and in the canyon the violet light began

to show. Many hours had gone, but Em'ly never ceased. Now she suddenly

flew up in a tree and sat there with her noise still going; but it had

risen lately several notes into a slim, acute level of terror, and was

not like machinery any more, nor like any sound I ever heard before or

since. Below the tree stood the bewildered little chicken, cheeping, and

making tiny jumps to reach its mother.



"Yes," said the Virginian, "it's comical. Even her aigg acted different

from anybody else's." He paused, and looked across the wide, mellowing

plain with the expression of easy-going gravity so common with him. Then

he looked at Em'ly in the tree and the yellow chicken.



"It ain't so damned funny," said he.



We went in to supper, and I came out to find the hen lying on the

ground, dead. I took the chicken to the family in the hen-house.



No, it was not altogether funny any more. And I did not think less of

the Virginian when I came upon him surreptitiously digging a little hole

in the field for her.



"I have buried some citizens here and there," said he, "that I have

respected less."



And when the time came for me to leave Sunk Creek, my last word to the

Virginian was, "Don't forget Em'ly."



"I ain't likely to," responded the cow-puncher. "She is just one o' them

parables."



Save when he fell into his native idioms (which, they told me, his

wanderings had well-nigh obliterated until that year's visit to his home

again revived them in his speech), he had now for a long while dropped

the "seh," and all other barriers between us. We were thorough friends,

and had exchanged many confidences both of the flesh and of the spirit.

He even went the length of saying that he would write me the Sunk Creek

news if I would send him a line now and then. I have many letters from

him now. Their spelling came to be faultless, and in the beginning was

little worse than George Washington's.



The Judge himself drove me to the railroad by another way--across the

Bow Leg Mountains, and south through Balaam's Ranch and Drybone to Rock

Creek.



"I'll be very homesick," I told him.



"Come and pull the latch-string whenever you please," he bade me. I

wished that I might! No lotus land ever cast its spell upon man's heart

more than Wyoming had enchanted mine.