Dickey Downy Part 7

"No," said my mother sorrowfully. "The G.o.d, Fas.h.i.+on, I told you of has his slaves all over the land. We will find them wherever we go, north, south, east, and west. No town is too small, no neighborhood too remote, but there will be found women ready to carry out his cruel laws."

Had we not been haunted by this vision of death which we were constantly meeting wherever women were congregated, we might have been happy in the fair land of rose blossoms and magnolias where we now sojourned. The air was soft and balmy, and the atmosphere filled us with a serene, restful languor quite new to those who had been accustomed to the brisker habits of a colder clime. Besides the birds there were many human visitors from the North spending the winter months here. Some sought this warmer climate for their health, others for pleasure, and these also soon fell into the easy-going, happy-go-lucky ways induced by the sluggish climate.

Among the birds the waxwings most readily acquired this delightful Southern habit of taking life easy. In fact the waxwings are inclined to be lazy, except when they are nesting; they are the most deliberate creatures one can find, but very foppish and neat in their dress.

Never will you find a particle of dust on their silky plumage, and the pretty red dots on their wings and tails look always as bright as if kept in a bandbox. They have, indeed, just reason to be proud of themselves, for they are very beautiful.

Hunters by scores were after them with bag and gun mercilessly killing them for the New York millinery houses. The slaughter was terrible, and made more easy for the hunters by reason of the poor birds flocking together so closely in such large numbers when they alighted in circles as is their habit. As they came down in dense droves to get their food, the red dots on their wing tips almost overlapping those of their fellows, dozens were slain by a single shot. They were very fond of the berries of the cedar trees, and after the other foods were gone they hovered there in great numbers. Here too, the hunters followed them and made awful havoc in their ranks. One man made the cruel boast that the winter previous he had killed one thousand cedar-birds for hat tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs.

Many of our family had located for a time near the coast, but here too, on these sunny plains, the death messengers followed us and slew us by the thousands.

We learned that one bird man handled thirty thousand bird skins that season. Another firm s.h.i.+pped seventy thousand to the city, and still the market called for more and yet more. The appet.i.te of the G.o.d could not be appeased.

I am sure this account of the loss of bird life must have seemed appalling to my mother, for I heard her moan sadly when it was talked about.

It was during my stay in the Southern islands that I first saw the white egret, whose beautiful sweeping plumes, like the silken train of a court lady, have so long been the spoils of woman, that the bird is almost extinct. As these magnificent feathers appear upon the bird only through the mating and nesting season, the cruelty of the act is still more dastardly. The attachment of the parent birds for their young is very beautiful to witness, yet this devotion, which should be their safeguard, is seized upon for their destruction, for so great is the instinct of protecting love they refuse to leave their young when danger is near, and are absolutely indifferent to their own safety.

Never shall I forget one sad incident which occurred while I was there.

Overhanging the water was an ancestral nest belonging to a family of egrets which had occupied it for some seasons. Unlike the American human species, in whom local attachment is not largely developed, and who take a new house every moving day, the egret repairs and fixes over the old house year after year, putting in a new brace there, adding another stick here, to make it firm enough to bear the weight of the mother and the three young birds which always comprise the brood.

The three pale-blue eggs in this nest had been duly hatched, and the fond mother was now brooding over her darlings with every demonstration of maternal affection. She was a beautiful creature with her graceful movement, her train of plumes, and her long neck gracefully curved.

The quick sharp boom, boom of the guns had been echoing through the swamp for some time, and the men were now coming nearer. The efforts of the poor mother to s.h.i.+eld her babies were piteous, but the hunters did not want them. Their scant plumage is worthless for millinery purposes. Possibly the mother might have escaped had she been willing to leave her dear ones; but she would not desert them, and was shot in the breast as the reward of her devotion. The nestlings were left to starve.

Would you think the woman who wore that bunch of feathers on her bonnet could take much pleasure in it?

CHAPTER VIII

THE PRISON

Like a long-caged bird Thou beat'st thy bars with broken wing And flutterest, feebly echoing The far-off music thou hast heard, --_Arthur Eaton._

This was my last day of liberty for many, many months. The very next evening I was stunned by a stone thrown by a small boy who accompanied a hunter. Picking me up he ran toward his father, who was coming back from the neighboring swamp with his loaded gamebag.

"This bird isn't dead," said the boy, holding me up to view, "and I'm going to put it in a cage and train it to talk."

"Crows are the kind that talk. That's no crow nor no starling neither," answered the man. "Better give it to me to kill. I'll pay you a penny for it."

"Naw, you don't," and the boy drew back, at the same time closing his hand over me so tightly that I feared I would be crushed. "I'm going to keep him, I tell ye. He's mine to do what I please with, and I ain't agoing to sell him for a penny, neither."

So saying he ran along in front of his father till we reached the mule cart. Into this clumsy vehicle they climbed and soon we were jogging over the sandy road to their home. As we drove along the man computed, partly to himself, partly aloud, how much money the contents of his game-bag would bring him. The result must have been satisfactory, for presently he observed:

"Purty fair day's wages, but I believe I could make more killing terns and gulls than these birds. Bill Jones and the hunters up on Cobb's Island last year got ten cents apiece for all the gulls they killed.

Forty thousand were killed right there. Oh, it's bound to be a mighty good business for us fellows as long as the wimmen are in the notion, that is, if the birds ain't all killed off."

"Air they getting scarce?" questioned the boy. The man ejected a mouthful of dark, offensive juice from between his grizzled whiskers before replying.

"Yes, purty tol'ble scarce. So much demand for 'em is bound to clean the birds out. There used to be heaps of orioles an' robins an' larks an' blackbirds an' waxwings through the country, but they're getting played out too, since the wimmen tuk to wearin' 'em on their bunnets."

"Well, no woman sha'n't have my bird for her bunnet," and the boy gave me another friendly pinch that nearly broke my bones. "I'm a going to put it in that old cage that's out in the shed and give it to Betty, if she wants it."

"Humph! she won't keer for it. You'd better kill it. Betty won't be bothered with it."

"She may give it away, or let it loose, or do what she pleases with it, then," was the boy's reply.

I learned from their further conversation that the hunter sold his game to another man who cured the skins for s.h.i.+pment to the city. To this dealer the bag which held my dead companions was taken and I saw them no more. Arriving at the hunter's home I was put under a bucket that I might not escape, while my captor prepared my prison for me. It was an almost needless precaution for I had been so cramped between his fingers that I feared I could never again use my legs or wings. Just before putting me in my rude prison house he brought a pair of shears and bade Betty clip my wings.

"Oh, I'm afraid it will hurt it!" she exclaimed, pus.h.i.+ng away the extended scissors.

"Nonsense, you ninny! What if it does hurt it?" and he roughly knocked my bill with his hand.

"Now that's real mean, Joe. You're a scaring it to pieces. Here, d.i.c.key Downy, I'm going to give you a pretty name if you belong to me; let me hold you. Why, its little heart is a thumping as if 'twould burst through its body."

Joe was reluctant to loosen his grasp, and between being pulled first one way and then the other by the two children, I was badly bruised.

Finally I was permitted by my young captor to enter the cage, where I sank, trembling and exhausted, to the floor, and remained there all night, being too sore to ascend the perch.

As may be imagined I was very sorrowful and unhappy. The separation from my mother and my dear companions, coupled with the fear that I might never again wing my blithesome flight through the bright blue sky, but spend the balance of my life in this miserable cell, filled me with despair. Frantic but useless were my efforts to escape. In vain I beat my head against the hard steel bars; in vain I endeavored to crowd my body between them. My prison was too secure.

At length I found that fluttering back and forth buffeting my wings against the sides of my cell only injured me and availed nothing. Then it was I wisely made the resolution to endure my imprisonment as cheerfully as possible. I soon began to regain my strength and spirits and, save that I was deprived of my liberty, I had no special fault to find for some days with my treatment from Betty, who was now regarded as my owner and keeper.

I was always glad when Joe was absent from home, for he was vicious as well as rough. One of his favorite tricks was to dash my cage hard against the wall, laughing boisterously as he did so to see how it frightened me. The concussion was frequently so great that my claws could not hold to the perch, and I would be tossed helplessly from side to side with my feathers ruffled and broken. There was but one thing Joe liked better than this cruel sport, and that was gingerbread; and my tortures were often stopped by Betty's producing a slice of this delicacy which she had saved from her own luncheon for this particular purpose. When I discovered that Joe could be bought off with gingerbread it can be imagined that I was always glad on the days when the pungent odors of cinnamon, ginger, and mola.s.ses issued from the cook-stove. It was a surety of peace, of a cessation of hostilities as long as the cake lasted.

All went fairly well for a little while, but as the novelty of possession gradually wore off, my little jailer grew negligent and left me much of the time without water or food. Frequently my throat was so parched from thirst that I could not utter a protesting chirp. I knew no other way to attract attention to my wants than to flutter to the bars and thrust out my head; unfortunately this action was attributed to wildness and a desire to escape, and I was allowed to suffer on.

"That bird is the most annoying, restless thing I ever saw," complained Betty's mother one evening when I was thus trying to tell them my cup was empty. "It spends all its time poking its head through the wires or thras.h.i.+ng around in the cage, instead of getting up on its perch and behaving itself quietly as a decent bird should."

"Do you reckon it's sick?" suggested Betty, and she came to my cage and looked at me attentively.

"Reckon it's hungry, you mean," growled her father, who was in one corner of the kitchen cleaning his gun.

"She never feeds it any more," commented the mother. "What's the use of keeping it? I'd wring its neck and be done with it. Betty don't keer a straw for it."

"Yes, I do," cried the little girl. "I'll get it something to eat this very minute."

These spasms of attention only lasted a day or two, however, when my young keeper would lapse into carelessness, and again I would be allowed to go with an empty crop and a dry throat. My beautiful plumage grew rusty from this irregularity and continual neglect, and although I am not a vain bird, my dingy appearance was a source of daily grief and mortification to me. When Betty was not too busy playing she sometimes hung my cage outside the door of the cottage, but often for days together through the pleasant summer I was left hanging in the kitchen, sometimes half-choked with smoke or dampened with steam. No wonder I drooped and ceased my cheerful song.

The days when I was put out of doors were indeed gala days to me. Many families of young chickens lived in the back yard, and the pipings of the little ones and the scoldings of the mothers when their children ran too far away from them, were always amusing to listen to and gave me something to think about which kept my mind off my own troubles.

I liked to watch the hens with their fuzzy broods tumbling about them, or with the older chicks when they scratched the ground and ceaselessly clucked for them to come to get their share of what was turned up in the soil; meanwhile they kept a sharp lookout with their bright eyes to see that no outsider shared in the feast. And how angrily did they drive it away should a chick from another brood heedlessly rush in among them to get a taste.

One old hen in particular interested me very much. I noticed her first because of her pretty bluish color and the dark markings around her neck, but I soon came to pity her, for she made herself quite unhappy and seemed to take no comfort in anything. She was usually tied to a tree by the leg, and although her string was long it seemed always just a little too short to reach the thing she wanted. To make matters worse she had a bad fas.h.i.+on of rus.h.i.+ng wildly around the tree and getting her string wound up shorter and shorter until at last she could not stir a step, but would hang by one foot foolishly pulling as hard as she could. It always seemed to me that her chickens were more disobedient than the rest, because they knew she could not get to them nor follow them.

Joe sometimes slyly threw pebbles at this blue hen to scare her and make her jump and pull at the string, when he thought his mother was not looking. As pay for his sport he often got his ears cuffed, for though his mother did not seem to notice how cruelly he teased me, she would not allow him to frighten her fowls.

"Don't you know that a hen that's all the time skeered won't lay?" was the lesson she tried to impress on him as she punished him.