Part 18

"What did he do, Jim?"

"Jes' trompled de li'l teeny chickens an' eat up all de corn an' wouldn't let nobody come nigh him. An' he was dat swelled up!"

Katy laughed, and turning to the Colonel, said:

"Tell me about that one."

The Colonel ruminated for a moment, looked at Chad with a half-humorous expression, and motioned to little Jim to come over and stand by his chair so that he could hear the better, his own arm still about Katy, her head on his shoulder.

"About that big gobbler, Katy, that was so bad they had to put him in a coop?"

"Yes, that very one."

"Well, when I fust knew him he was a little teeny turkey--oh, not near so high as Jim; 'bout up to Jim's knees, I reckon. He'd follow 'round after his mammy and go where she wanted him to go and mind her like a nice little turkey as he was. He didn't live on my plantation then--he lived on Judge Barbour's plantation next to mine. Well, one day, Aunt Nancy--that dear lady over there--wanted a fine young turkey, and this little knee-high turkey was growin' to be a big turkey, and so she brought him over and gave him the run of the barnyard.

"She was just as good to him as she could be. She made a nice clean place for him to live in, so his feathers wouldn't get dirty any mo', and he didn't have to run 'round lookin' for grasshoppers and beetles and little worms as he did at home, but he had a nice bowl of mush eve'y day and a place to go to sleep in all by himself, and Aunt Nancy did everythin' she could to make him comfo'table.

"Well, what do you think happened? Just as soon as that turkey found out he was bein' taken caare of better than the hens and the roosters and all the other little turkeys he had left at home, he began to put on airs. He breshed his feathers out and he strutted around same as if he owned the whole barnyard, and he'd go down to the pond and look at himself in the water; and he got so proud that whenever old Mrs. Hen or old Mr. Rooster would say 'Good-mornin'' to him as kind and as nice as could be, he wouldn't answer politely, but he'd stick up his head and go 'Gobble-gobble-gobble!' and then he'd swell up again and puff out his chest and march himself off. Pretty soon he got so sassy that nobody could live with him. Why, he didn't care what he did and who he stepped on. He trampled on two po' little chicks one day that were just out of the shell and mashed them flat and did all sorts of dreadful things."

"What an awful turkey! Poor little chickens," sighed Katy. "Go on."

"Next thing he did was to steal off and smoke cigarettes."

Katy raised her head and looked up into the Colonel's eyes.

"Why, turkeys can't smoke, can they?"

"Oh, no--of co'se not--I forgot. That's another story and I got them mixed up. Where was I? Oh, yes, when he got so sassy."

Katy dropped her head on his shoulder again. Jim was now listening with all his might, his only fear being that Chad or Miss Nancy or the knocker on the front door would summon him before the story was ended.

"Well," continued the Colonel, "that went on and on and on till there wasn't any livin' with him. Even dear Aunt Nancy couldn't get along with him, which is a dreadful thing to say of anybody. So one day"--here the Colonel's voice dropped to a tone of grave importance--"one day--Mammy Henny--that's the wife of Chad over there by the table, crep' up behind this wicked, sassy little turkey, when he was swellin' around so big he couldn't see his feet, and she grabbed him by the neck and two legs, and befo' he knew where he was, plump he went into a big coop, and the door was shut tight. He hollered and squawked and flapped his wings terrible, but that didn't make any diff'ence; in he went and there he stayed. He pushed with his long legs, and stuck his head out through the slats, and did all he could to get out, but it was no use. Next day Mammy Henny got a great big knife--oh, an awful long knife----"

"How long?" asked the child.

"Oh, a dreadful long knife--'most as long as Jim, here"--and the Colonel laid his hand on the boy's shoulder--"and she sharpened it on a big grindstone, and Mammy Henny put some corn in the little trough outside the slats, and when this bad, wicked turkey poked his head out--WHACK--went the knife, and off went his head, and he was dead--dead--dead!"

As the solemn words fell from his lips, the Colonel broke into a laugh, and in a burst of tenderness threw his arms around the child and kissed her as if he would like to eat her up.

Katy was clapping her hands now.

"Oh, I'm just too glad. And the poor little chickies--served him just right. I was afraid he'd get out and run away."

The Colonel stole a look at Jim. The scrap stood looking into the fire, a wondering expression on his face. How much of the story was truth and how much fiction evidently puzzled Jim.

During the telling everybody in the room, Fitz, Miss Nancy--all of us, in fact,--had been watching Katy's delight and Jim's eager brown face, turned to the Colonel, the whites of his eyes big as saucers. Watching, too, the Colonel's impartial manner to both of his listeners--black and white alike--the only distinction being that the black boy stood, while the white child lay nestled in his arms.

Chad, as the story progressed, had crept up behind the Colonel's chair, where he could hear without being seen, and was listening as eagerly as if he were a boy again. He had often told me that his old master, the Colonel's father, used to tell him and the Colonel stories when they were boys together, but I had never seen the Colonel in the rôle before.

When the allusion to the cigarettes escaped the Colonel's lips a smile overspread Chad's visage, and a certain triumphant look crept into his eyes. With the child's laughter still ringing through the room, Chad tapped Jim on the arm, led him to one side, held his lean, wrinkled finger within an inch of the boy's nose and said in a sepulchral tone:

"Did ye hear dat? Do ye know who dat sassy, low-lived, mizzable, no-count, ornery turkey was, dat kep' a-swellin' up, thinkin' he was free an' somebody great till dat caarvin' knife tuk his head off? Dat's you!"

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