Читать книгу Four-Footed Americans and Their Kin - Mabel Osgood Wright - Страница 4

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T was circus day down at East Village. Not the common circus, with a Lion, Elephant, a cage or two of Monkeys, a fat clown turning somersaults, and a beautiful lady floating through paper hoops, but a real American circus—the Wild West Show, with its scouts, frontiersmen, Broncos, bucking Ponies, Indians, and Buffaloes.

Of course the House People at Orchard Farm made a holiday and went down to see the show, giving many different reasons for so doing. Dr. Hunter and Mr. Blake said it was their duty as patriotic Americans to encourage native institutions, and Mrs. Blake said that she must surely go to see that the young people did not eat too many peanuts and popcorn balls. The young people thought that going to the circus was a must be, unless one was ill, or had done something very, very wrong, that merited the severest sort of punishment. Mammy Bun, too, who had been groaning about pains in her bones for fully a week, took out her best black bonnet trimmed with a big red rose,—headgear that she only wore on great occasions,—saying:—

"Pears to me nuffin eber does ma reumatiz de heap o' good like hearin' a real circus ban' a playin'. Land alibe, honies! I feel so spry alreddy seems like I'se could do a caike walk dis yer minit."

*****

It was October. Everything looked cheerful at the farm. The maples were dressed in dazzling red and yellow; heaps of red and yellow apples lay under the orchard trees, and the house and barns wore a glistening new coat of yellow paint, with white trimmings and green blinds.

A deeper yellow shone from the fields where jolly pumpkins seemed to play hide-and-seek behind the corn stacks, which the children called wigwams when they played Indian. Everything looked as thrifty as if the outdoor season was beginning instead of nearly at an end; and well it might, for it had been many years since the old farm held such a family. There would be no closed blinds, leaf-choked paths, or snow-drifts left to bury the porch, this winter.

"Yes, the Chimney Swift was right," said the Meadowlark in the old field, to the Song Sparrow who was singing cheerfully in a barberry bush. "We shall be better off than before these House People came; they have already begun to scatter food in the barnyard, though there are enough gleanings about to last us citizens until snow comes. The village boys never think of coming up here now to shoot, as they used to every season when the wind began to blow cold"; and the Meadowlark flew to the top rail of the fence, boldly showing his yellow breast, and giving a note or two to tell how trustful he was.

"Where have you been all summer?" asked Comet, the young trotter, of the big brown farm horses, who had come to drink at the spring in the pasture below the barns. "It is so long since I have seen you I was afraid that you had been sold."

"Oh no, youngster!" replied Tom. "Jerry and I have only been summering up at the wood lots at the far end of the farm. We had our shoes off all the time, and could amuse ourselves as we liked. We never saw a harness or wagon; all the work we did was to roll in the grass or wade in the river to keep the flies off. The grazing up there was simply delicious, you know,—all sorts of relishing little bits of herbs mixed in with the grass.

"Now that we have had our rest, it is our turn to work, and gray Bess and Billy have gone to the paddock, and we have come to take their places. There is plenty to do on this farm in fall and winter, though it is very lonely. I can remember, when I was a four-year-old, that House People lived in the big barn with all the windows, and they used to ride over the snow in the low wagon without wheels, and we all had fine times together."

"There are fine times here now," said Comet, shaking his mane importantly; "but of course you do not know about them, because you have been away. House People are living here again. We all have great fun and the best of eating, with more picnics than ploughing for the horses. Children play about the farm, who feed me with bunches of pink clover and little lumps of nice-tasting stuff they call sugar. I mistrusted it at first, it looked so like the hard pebbles in the brook, but it chewed up all right when I nibbled some."

"You don't look as if you had been having half enough to eat, in spite of the good times," said Tom, pityingly. "Only look at your ribs. I can count every one of them. If you were harnessed to a plough, you would come apart at the very first pull. How could you drag a load of hay? As for working in the threshing-machine, those little feet of yours would catch between the slats. What use are thin horses, anyway?" concluded Tom, rather rudely, not realizing that his remarks were impolite, while Jerry looked proudly along his fat sides and pawed the ground with a hoof nearly as large as a dinner plate.

Comet was going to answer angrily and say something very saucy about clumsy work horses, but he stopped himself in time, being every inch a thoroughbred; for good breeding shows in the manners of animals as well as in House People.

"No," he answered after a moment, "I can't plough, nor drag a load, nor work the threshing-machine; but horses are made for different kinds of work. You do not think a cow useless because she gives milk instead of doing any sort of pulling, do you? Now I can drag the little wagon over to the railway station—where the great iron horse drags the string of covered wagons along the ground on the queer shiny fence rails—in half the time it takes you to go round the ten-acre lot. When I hear that horse coming, breathing hard and roaring, I prick up my ears, and you can hardly see my feet when they touch the road, for I do not want that great roaring horse to get there before I do. So the master is pleased, and always takes me. How would you like to go fast like that?" said Comet, smiling behind a bunch of grass.

"I couldn't go fast if I wanted to," said Tom, honestly. "I tried it once, when a plough-chain fell and banged my heels. They called it running away, I believe. My! how warm I was. Everything looked red as the sun in August, and a warm rain storm rolled off my coat on to the grass. That is what it seemed to me, but the farmer said, 'Tom is too fat and soft. See how he sweats!' and they skimped my dinner for a month."

"Well, then, to continue," said Comet. "We animals haven't been shut up all summer except in stormy weather; the bars have been down between all the best pastures. Even Sausage, the sow, and her nine little pigs, have been out walking every day, and her sty has had fresh bedding in it the same as if they were Cow or Horse People.

"We had so much freedom that I thought at first that there would be a great many fights, but we have all behaved beautifully. Even Nanny Baa, the stubborn old sheep, and Corney, the mischievous goat, have not butted any one or fought each other.

"We've had a chance to hear about the world and the other animals in it too, for a circus has been camping a few fields further down."

"I don't like a circus," interrupted Jerry, decidedly. "There are always a lot of bad-smelling, foreign beasts in cages with a circus, that a respectable farm fourfoot should not encourage. Then there is a terrible noise,—worse than milk-pans falling off the fence,—that they call a band; it makes me forget myself and dodge and dance all over the road. Yes, indeed, I well remember the first circus I ever heard. It came here when we were five-year-olds. Tom and I upset a load of cabbages, and they rolled all the way down Long Hill into the brook."

"There were no foreign wild beasts in this circus," said Comet, proud of his knowledge. "I put my head through the fence bars and had a fine chance to talk to some of the horses. There were several kinds of Horse Brothers there that I had never seen before; different even from the long-eared Donkey and Mule Brothers." Here Comet stopped, took a bite of grass and a drink of water, waiting to see if Tom and Jerry were interested.

They were, and as Comet looked up he saw that some of the other animals were coming down to drink,—Daisy, the finest cow in the herd, and Nanny Baa, sauntering all alone, the other sheep not having yet missed her, while Corney, the goat, whose whole name was Capricornus, danced about on a rock, charging at an imaginary enemy in the sky.

Tom, Jerry and Comet.

"What other horses did you see?" asked Tom and Jerry together, as the others came up.

"There were small horses, homely and thin, with straight necks and rolling eyes. Some of these were brown, and some all mixed brown and white. They ran up and down the field, clearing the old division fence at a jump. These were called Indian Ponies, and men they called Indians, with small eyes and dark rusty faces, rode on them for exercise. Beside these there were some others, called Burros, with longish ears, who did not seem to know how to either trot or run, and some of the small horses kept jerking and humping up their backs, so that the men could not ride them.

"Who told you all these names?" asked Tom, suspiciously.

"There was an old horse who did not work in the circus, but only helped draw wagons, who stayed by the fence and talked to me. He had seen a great deal of life in his day, and what do you think he said about those strange horses? That they were not born and raised on nice farms like you and me; that they came from the west country where they run wild until they are old enough to work, and they live in great flocks as the Crows do hereabouts. Every horse has a mark on his side, put there by the man who owns him. When they are young they have fine sport, but when it is time for them to work, men ride after them on swift horses and catch them by throwing a rope loop over their heads, and sometimes this hurts them very much, and they are also sorry to leave their friends.

"Out in the west country where these horses lived, the plains are full of fourfoots,—not Horse and Cow People,—but real wild fourfoots, strange as any of the Elephants or Lions. There are more kinds of them than you could ever dream of, even if you ate a whole bushel of oats for supper.

"The Horse said that they belong to older American families than any of us farm animals, and that once these four-footed Americans and the Red Indian Brothers, who lived in tents, owned all the country, and there were no real House People or farm fourfoots here at all."

"That must have been a long time ago," said Jerry. "I remember my grandmother, and she never said anything about wild people, and I never knew about any other animals but ourselves."

"Who am I, pray?" squealed a Squirrel, scampering along the fence. "How ignorant you are not to know that I belong to a very old family."

"You don't count," neighed Jerry. "I never thought you were an animal."

"Not an animal, hey? I will show you what a sharp-toothed animal I am, some fine day, and nibble up your dinner when you are asleep," and the Squirrel jumped over Jerry's back, and ran up a tree.

"My friend told me," continued Comet, "that some of those wild fourfoots are working for their living in this very circus. They are quite rare now, though they used to be as plentiful in the west pastures as ants in a hill. He showed me some of these beasts this very morning when they were being led down to the village."

"What did they look like?"

"Something like bulls, with low backs and great heavy heads, all bushy with thick brown wool. My friend said they are called Bison by the Wise Men; but in the circus and out where they used to live, every one calls them Buffaloes."

"I wonder if they are related to me?" said Daisy, who had joined the group.

"They are not as handsome as you, though they might belong to your family," said Comet, politely.

"Perhaps I may have some wild cousins," said Sausage, rooting up the turf. "I wonder what they eat?"

"I should like to go and meet my wild relations, if I have any," said Corney. "I wonder if they could beat me at butting and sliding down hill?"

"Humph, it is very strange about all these wild things," said Jerry. "I—My, they are making that bang noise again, down at the village!"

"That is the band. I think the circus is over," said Comet.

"Which Horse Brother dragged the people down there, and who went?" asked Daisy, who was always inquisitive.

"They all went, and they walked with their own feet, because the Doctor knows that we do not like smells and noises," said Comet. "They are coming back up the hill now. Nat is following 'way behind, carrying something. Ugh! It is a big snake, and he has it by the tail. I hate snakes; they look up so suddenly out of the grass when one is feeding, and they always seem to be by the nicest bunch of clover."

"Perhaps the people will stop here to rest, and we may hear something about our wild brothers," said Daisy.

"I think Dodo has sugar for me," said Comet to Tom and Jerry. "I will drop a piece, and you can pick it up, and see how you like it."

"Comet is quite a gentleman, if his ribs do show," muttered Tom to his companion, looking pleased, while the other animals lingered about the spring, waiting for the House People.

"Here are the horses that I haven't seen before from the grass farm; and Comet, too, and Daisy!" cried Dodo, climbing over the fence. "Please stop a bit, Uncle Roy, and let me give them some of my popcorn balls; I'm sure they will like them, and Corney simply loves peanuts."

"What did I tell you?" whispered Comet to Tom, as Dodo chirped for him to come to her.