Читать книгу Frontier Humor in Verse, Prose and Picture - Палмер Кокс - Страница 21

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Yesterday, while in the back country, I saw an old woman in what would have been a very laughable predicament, had it not been a very pitiable one.

An unusually large vulture had for some time been soaring in the neighborhood, occasionally scraping acquaintance with one of the fat ewes grazing in the valley. Several of the farmers had felt the vexation of seeing him perched upon a lofty eminence and making the wool fly from some favorite Cotswold. They were justly enraged, and resolved to put a stop to his depredations.

They accordingly posted themselves nigh their flocks, and with guns heavily charged, awaited the advent of the rapacious bird. But he was no booby, and though his gizzard could digest a good-sized rib or hoof with all the ease of a Ballyshannon woman making away with a mealy potato, yet he hadn’t the least inclination to test its grinding power upon a charge of slugs or buckshot.

For several days thereafter he was known in the neighborhood as a “high flier.” With a pining maw he would sit upon some heaven-kissing crag, and with drooping head watch the fleecy flocks grazing in the green valley below. He found it difficult, however, to cloy the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a feast, and, emboldened by want, began to drop to a lower level when flying across the fields.

Yesterday, as mutton was out of the question, he resolved to try his beak upon some tougher viand, and while in the vicinity of the village, he swooped down upon a little old woman who was gathering chips in front of her cottage.

The poor old body had not the least warning of the vulture’s approach. As she stooped in the act of picking fuel enough to cook her evening meal he dropped upon her like an arrow.

THE OLD LADY’S ASCENT.

Fastening his powerful talons in the strong material of her loose-fitting garments, he spread abroad his mighty wings and began to haul her heavenward. The astonishment, anxiety and indescribable antics of the poor old lady when she found herself slowly but surely leaving terra firma by an unknown agency were indeed terrible to witness.

She knew not whether it was a gold-tinseled angel, or an iron-rusted demon, that was thus, in open day, and while she was yet in the flesh, unceremoniously translating her to some remote planet; she had no means of discovering; she was only certain she was going—that her direction was onward and upward. Her favorite hollyhock tickled her nose as she swept over her little garden, and the clothes-line, that for a moment seemed to baffle the vulture’s flight, was now stretching beneath.

She deployed her feet, regardless of appearances, first to the right, then to the left, above and below, vainly endeavoring to come in contact with something that would give her an inkling of what was responsible for this mysterious movement. There was a vague uncertainty about the whole proceeding well calculated to alarm her. Even though she succeeded in shaking herself loose, her fall would now be fearful, and each moment was adding to the danger. What could I do? I was powerless to save. I had no gun, and even if I had there would have been some grave doubts in my mind as to the propriety of firing, as I generally shoot low, and such an error in my aim could hardly have proved otherwise than disastrous.

There was no use striving to make the bird loosen his hold by hooting. If there had been any virtue in that sort of demonstration the old woman would hardly have been raised above the eaves of her shanty, for she was screaming in a manner that would have made a Modoc blush. The only thing that suggested itself, and that rather hurriedly, was to get out my pencil and paper and take a sketch as she appeared passing over her cottage in the vulture’s talons.

The blood, which at first forsook her cheeks through fear, was almost instantly forced back into her visage again by the pendant position of her head.

She beat the empty tin pan which she still retained in her hand, but the voracious and hunger-pinched vulture had no notion of relinquishing his hold on account of noise. On the contrary, he seemed to enjoy it, and with many a sturdy twitch and flap, and many an airy wheel, he still held his way toward a rugged promontory situated at the head of the valley. Fortunately, when he was twenty feet from the ground and about eighty rods from the cottage, the calico dress and undergarments in which mainly his talons were fastened, gave out, and the liberated woman dropped on hands and knees in the muddy bed of the creek, over which the bird was passing at the time.

While hovering over her, about to pounce down upon her and try the elevating business again, a sheep-herder who had seen the bird approaching the cottage, gave him a dose of buckshot, which broke one wing and left him at the mercy of his captor.