XI
I believe it now, Nell, to be my duty to give you our experience in the egg and poultry business. You may remember that the day our cows came to their new home several coops of chickens were brought with them; also that this occurred soon after we had moved here, when we were mud-bound in these hills, with nothing to eat but bacon and “spuds,” not having seen an egg for weeks. Well, the following morning, bright and early, those coops were thrown open, their unhappy prisoners fluttering out to freedom with a mighty clamor; and as they went crowing and cackling about the old log barn, their owners thought it the sweetest music ever heard. All day long I could think of nothing but those blessed hens, and the various ways of cooking eggs. For supper that night I had planned such an omelet as the world has scarcely seen; and for the next day, ham and eggs for breakfast, custard-pie for dinner, and devilled eggs for supper. That seemed the longest day I had ever known; but finally the clock struck five.
“Come, Tom, it’s time to gather the eggs,” I said, as I handed him a peach basket nicely lined with paper.
“At Uncle Jim’s we always gathered them in our hats,” he murmured reminiscently, as he marched off with it. During his absence I got out the long-unused Dover eggbeater and two bowls of large size, put the skillet on the stove, and stood ready for the fray. After some anxious waiting, in walked the gentleman with the basket bottom-side up, and never an egg in it. I stood in speechless amazement, looking at that empty basket, until Tom cried,—
“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.”
“Well, let it break; that would be better than slow starvation!”
“You are disappointed now, aren’t you, Katharine?”
“Of course I am, and I’m hungry, and I thought it was a hen’s business to lay eggs; and as we have forty-eight of them—”
“You thought,” he interrupted, “that we would get forty-eight eggs, did you?”
I’ll just tell you in confidence, Nell, that I had thought of forty-eight in my most sanguine moments; but now, under the amused looks of my inquisitor, I snapped out, “Of course not; I’m not so much of an innocent as to expect to leap from nothing to such sudden affluence; but I did look for two dozen eggs or so,—and it was not at all unreasonable, with all that mob of hens!”
“Come to think of it,” meekly answered the bearer of the eggless basket, “I have heard that hens never lay just at first, upon making a change of location;” adding consolingly, “but I guess we’ll get a half-dozen or so to-morrow.”
Several more days passed, and still there was no offering from the poultry-yard. I then ventured to ask, “Tom, do you think you feed the chickens enough?”
“Feed them enough? They look as if suffering from goitre; their crops are puffed out like toy balloons.”
“Then perhaps you feed them too much.”
“There you go now!”
“Well, I read to-day that hens should forage for a part of their living.”
“But if they won’t forage, what then? These chickens just stand on tiptoe round the granary, with their eyes fastened on the door, and never budge from there until it is time to waddle off to bed.”
A depressing silence followed this declaration; it certainly seemed a most baffling problem. After deep thought the lady remarked: “I’ve just been wondering, Tom, whether you really know how to hunt hens’ nests.”
“Good gracious, Katharine! I should think almost any man of average sense could, if he would bring the weight of his intellect to bear upon it, hunt hens’ nests!”
“You know that I mean find nests!”
“I can find these all right, having made them myself.”
“Oh! have you made some nests?”
“Have I? I’ve put up so many boxes the barn looks like a post-office.”
“Yes; but the article I read to-day said that hens liked secluded places for nests.”
“All right; I am fully prepared for the cloister-loving sisters. I’ve made nests under the mangers and in old barrels standing in dark corners, one in an old copper boiler, two choice ones in a disabled feed-box; in fact, all that mortal man can do has been done, and now ‘Serene I fold my hands and wait.’”
But this persistent woman wasn’t quite so serene. That night, when the gentleman was about to go through the usual form of looking for eggs, she remarked sagely: “It is more than likely those hens have hidden their nests; the article I read to-day says they often hide them, and I believe I’ll go with you and help search for them.”
“It’s no use, and it’s awfully muddy; but if nothing else will satisfy you, come on; only do leave that confounded basket,—I’m sick of the sight of it.”
Permission being thus graciously tendered, with be coming humility I followed my Chesterfieldian guide into the domains of chickendom. Then the still-hunt began. We searched high and low; inside, outside, and under the barn; looking through all the sheds, in clumps of ferns, and in the low bushes along the fence; peering into hollow logs and stumps as gravely and anxiously as if searching for the treasures of Captain Kidd.
Though our quest was fruitless, I learned that there are worse things in life than hunting for eggs on an Oregon ranch. Those old logs and stumps mantled in pretty green moss gave out an agreeable damp woodsy smell; the wet fir boughs exhaled a pleasant perfume; and just before us rushed the noisy little brook, its clear waters flashing through the tawny tassels of alders and overhanging willows decked with downy gray–green catkins, charming prophecies of swift-coming Spring. And suddenly we came upon Spring herself, in the guise of a little tree covered with delicate white pendent blossoms. In almost breathless excitement we broke off some of the pretty branches, the first wild blooms we had gathered in Oregon. It was to us then a beautiful stranger; we have since learned that it was the Indian peach tree. In summer-time its branches are laden with perfectly formed though very tiny peaches; they look hard and forbidding, and lacking the courage of the aborigines, we have not tasted them.
Returning eggless to the house, Tom remarked resignedly, “Bert’s folks are in the same boat; that’s some comfort!”
“No, they are not; they have had three eggs. Mary told me so to-day.”
“Great Scott! I wonder Bert didn’t fire off a twenty-four-pounder after such an event!”
The report of those three eggs came to Tom like the explosion of a bomb in our camp. He declared fiercely that something must be done at once to stimulate the industry of our poultry-yard.
“Let’s make them a hot mash,” I suggested; “the article I read to-day advised it.”
“Great earth, Katharine! if you will kindly refrain from any further mention of ‘that article,’ I’ll make ’em a hot mash every hour in the day and every day in the year.”
“It’s just possible that you would overdo it,” retorted the aggrieved lady.
The next morning I prepared the “hot mash,” a terrible mess of corn-meal and bacon, and while I was deluging it with cayenne pepper the man of the house entered, and with that phenomenal memory of his remarked that “Uncle Jim’s folks” used black pepper; so we put in both. Then rummaging among various condiments, he exclaimed: “Paprika! That’s hot stuff! we’ll give ’em a dose. Mustard, stimulating and inspiring! Three tablespoonfuls will be about right. Ginger! Now we’ve struck it!—our hens lack ginger. Curry powder! What think you of that, Katharine?”
“It may be the one thing needful.”
“All right, in it goes!”
Liberally salted and stirred, the dish was pronounced fit for the gods. With the mixture in one hand, a dish of cold boiled potatoes in the other, the experimenter then advanced upon his victims.
Returning after a brief absence, he was asked, “How did those feathered frauds like their breakfast?”
“Oh, fine; they would eat live coals, I guess,—all but Mrs. Gummidge,”—a name he had given to a fussy, complaining old hen in a rusty black gown. “I first deferentially offered her the potatoes; she advanced mournfully, slowly drew up one foot, turned her head sideways, glared at them for one awful moment, and then turned scornfully away.”
“Why didn’t you try her with the hot Scotch?”
“I did; she took one nip, and walked off gloomily among the weeds.”
“Well, you see, Tom, down at Yarmouth Mrs. Gummidge ate marine food, and she isn’t quite used to mountain fare yet. I really think the poor old thing is homesick.”
A few days later he came in, shouting jubilantly, “Hurrah for Graham’s celebrated Poultry Tonic! Allow me, madam, to present you with the first product of our poultry-yard.”
“Oh, Tom, an egg! How lovely! Isn’t it white?”
“Yes, and uncommon large, don’t you think?”
“It is very large, and such a perfect oval!”
“I am inclined to think it’s a double-yolker,” he answered, eying it hungrily.
“Alas, Tom! the egg is but one, and we are two.”
A momentary struggle with self; then he said grandly,“ You cook it and eat it, Katharine.”
The offered sacrifice I regard as the noblest impulse of Thomas Graham’s life, and I do hope that his recording angel made a note of it. I was not quite selfish enough to take advantage of his magnanimity, and yet was so lacking of the stuff of which heroes are made that I could not sit calmly by and see him eat the precious egg alone. So it was regretfully laid away until another should be found. After three more days of suspense, Tom came in, saying, “What do you think of this insolence?” handing me an egg no larger than a quail’s.
That little egg instantly evoked from memory a picture of the old garden of “The House of the Seven Gables,” and stalking about in it, “with the dignity of interminable descent,” a grotesque little chanticleer, followed by his two little wives “and the one chicken of the world.”
I asked Tom if he thought it possible we had become the owners of one of the Pyncheon fowls.
“I don’t remember them.”
“Yes, you do; the heirloom of the Pyncheon family,”—mentioning some of their characteristics.
“Oh, yes! Now I know; according to tradition, they were once the size of turkeys, but had sort of petered out, like the family, until they became no larger than pigeons. I fancy the three venerable ancestors having died of old age, the youngest and sole survivor of that aristocratic race, finding it dull alone in the old garden, with perhaps a scarcity of snails about Maule’s well, started out to see the world, and has been led by kindly fate to the Ranch of the Pointed Firs, and that we now own that remarkable chicken, ‘that looked small enough to still be in the egg, and at the same time sufficiently old, withered, wizened, and experienced to have been the founder of an antiquated race.’”
We were so entertained by this notion that our disappointment was half forgotten, though Tom did say, “The eggs of those ancient fowls were famous for rare delicacy of flavor; and you might cook the two to-night, if in the flavor of the one you could find compensation for the size of the other.”
“Which I couldn’t, so we’ll just bide a wee.”
The very next day our impatience was rewarded by another egg of normal size. We ate the two with cannibalistic ferocity, and looked longingly at the shells.
Being a truthful chronicler, I cannot say that after this the eggs poured in in great abundance. That was our first experience of owning chickens, and also our first experience of a scarcity of eggs. Before embarking upon this enterprise, while gloating over the pages of poultry catalogues, we had visions—at least I had—of sending baskets, and even tubs, of eggs to the market. Alas for human hopes, even in the magical land of Oregon!