Beautiful Joe (11 page)

The
morning after we arrived in Riverdale, I was up very early and walking around
the house. I slept in the woodshed, and could run outdoors whenever I liked.

The
woodshed was at the back of the house and near it was the tool shed. Then there
was a carriage house, and a plank walk leading to the barnyard.

I ran up
this walk, and looked into the first building I came to. It was the horse
stable. A door stood open, and the morning sun was glancing in. There were several
horses there, some with their heads toward me, and some with their tails. I saw
that instead of being tied up, there were gates outside their stalls, and they
could stand in any way they liked.

There was
a man moving about at the other end of the stable, and long before he saw me, I
knew that it was Mr. Wood. What a nice, clean stable he had! There was always a
foul smell coming out of Jenkins’s stable, but here the air seemed as pure
inside as outside. There was a number of little gratings in the wall to let in
the fresh air, and they were so placed that drafts would not blow on the
horses. Mr. Wood was going from one horse to another, giving them hay, and
talking to them in a cheerful voice. At last he spied me, and cried out, “The
top of the morning to you, Joe! You are up early. Don’t come too near the
horses, good dog,” as I walked in beside him; “they might think you are another
Bruno, and give you a sly bite or kick. I should have shot him long ago. ’Tis hard
to make a good dog suffer for a bad one, but that’s the way of the world. Well,
old fellow, what do you think of my horse stable? Pretty fair, isn’t it?” And
Mr. Wood went on talking to me as he fed and groomed his horses, till I soon
found out that his chief pride was in them.

I like to have
human beings talk to me. Mr. Morris often reads his sermons to me, and Miss
Laura tells me secrets that I don’t think she would tell to anyone else.

I watched
Mr. Wood carefully, while he groomed a huge, gray cart-horse, that he called
Dutchman. He took a brush in his right hand, and a curry-comb in his left, and
he curried and brushed every part of the horse’s skin, and afterward wiped him
with a cloth. “A good grooming is equal to two quarts of oats, Joe,” he said to
me.

Then he
stooped down and examined the horse’s hoofs. “Your shoes are too heavy,
Dutchman,” he said; “but that pig-headed blacksmith thinks he knows more about
horses than I do. ‘Don’t cut the sole nor the frog,’ I say to him. ‘Don’t pare
the hoof so much, and don’t rasp it; and fit your shoe to the foot, and not the
foot to the shoe,’ and he looks as if he wanted to say, ‘Mind your own
business.’ We’ll not go to him again. ‘’Tis hard to teach an old dog new
tricks.’ I got you to work for me, not to wear out your strength in lifting about
his weighty shoes.”

Mr. Wood
stopped talking for a few minutes, and whistled a tune. Then he began again. “I’ve
made a study of horses, Joe. Over forty years I’ve studied them, and it’s my
opinion that the average horse knows more than the average man that drives him.
When I think of the stupid fools that are goading patient horses about, beating
them and misunderstanding them, and thinking they are only clods of earth with
a little life in them, I’d like to take their horses out of the shafts and harness
them in, and I’d trot them off at a pace, and slash them, and jerk them, till I
guess they’d come out with a little less patience than the animal does.

“Look at
this Dutchman—see the size of him. You’d think he hadn’t any more nerves than a
bit of granite. Yet he’s got a skin as sensitive as a girl’s. See how he
quivers if I run the curry comb too harshly over him. The idiot I got him from
didn’t know what was the matter with him. He’d bought him for a reliable horse,
and there he was, kicking and stamping whenever the boy went near him. ‘Your
boy’s got too heavy a hand, Deacon Jones,’ said I, when he described the horse’s
actions to me. ‘You may depend upon it, a four-legged creature, unlike a
two-legged one, has a reason for everything he does.’ ‘But he’s only a draught
horse,’ said Deacon Jones. ‘Draught horse or no draught horse,’ said I, ‘you’re
describing a horse with a tender skin to me, and I don’t care if he’s as big as
an elephant.’ Well, the old man grumbled and said he didn’t want any thoroughbred
airs in his stable, so I bought you, didn’t I, Dutchman?” and Mr. Wood stroked
him kindly and went to the next stall.

In each
stall was a small tank of water with a sliding cover, and I found out afterward
that these covers were put on when a horse came in too heated to have a drink.
At any other time, he could drink all he liked. Mr. Wood believed in having
plenty of pure water for all his animals and they all had their own place to
get a drink.

Even I had
a little bowl of water in the woodshed, though I could easily have run up to
the barnyard when I wanted a drink. As soon as I came, Mrs. Wood asked Adèle to
keep it there for me and when I looked up gratefully at her, she said: “Every
animal should have its own feeding place and its own sleeping place, Joe; that
is only fair.”

The next
horses Mr. Wood groomed were the black ones, Cleve and Pacer. Pacer had
something wrong with his mouth, and Mr. Wood turned back his lips and examined
it carefully. This he was able to do, for there were large windows in the
stable and it was as light as Mr. Wood’s house was.

“No dark
corners here, eh Joe!” said Mr. Wood, as he came out of the stall and passed me
to get a bottle from a shelf. “When this stable was built, I said no dirt holes
for careless men here. I want the sun to shine in the corners, and I don’t want
my horses to smell bad smells, for they hate them, and I don’t want them
starting when they go into the light of day, just because they’ve been kept in
a black hole of a stable, and I’ve never had a. sick horse yet.”

He poured
something from a bottle into a saucer and went back to Pacer with it. I
followed him and stood outside. Mr. Wood seemed to be washing a sore in the
horse’s mouth. Pacer winced a little, and Mr. Wood said: “Steady, steady, my
beauty; ’twill soon be over.”

The horse
fixed his intelligent eyes on his master and looked as if he knew that he was
trying to do him good.

“Just look
at these lips, Joe,” said Mr. Wood “delicate and fine like our own, and yet
there are brutes that will jerk them as if they were made of iron. I wish the
Lord would give horses voices just for one week. I tell you they’d scare some
of us. Now, Pacer, that’s over. I’m not going to dose you much, for I don’t
believe in it. If a horse has got a serious trouble, get a good horse doctor,
say I. If it’s a simple thing, try a simple remedy. There’s been many a good
horse drugged and dosed to death. Well, Scamp, my beauty, how are you, this
morning?”

In the
stall next to Pacer, was a small, jet-black mare, with a lean head, slender
legs, and a curious restless manner. She was a regular greyhound of a horse, no
spare flesh, yet wiry and able to do a great deal of work. She was a wicked
looking little thing, so I thought I had better keep at a safe distance from
her heels.

Mr. Wood
petted her a great deal and I saw that she was his favorite. “Saucebox,” he
exclaimed, when she pretended to bite him, “you know if you bite me, I’ll bite
back again. I think I’ve conquered you,” he said, proudly, as he stroked her
glossy neck; “but what a dance you led me. Do you remember how I bought you for
a mere song, because you had a bad habit of turning around like a flash in
front of anything that frightened you, and bolting off the other way? And how
did I cure you, my beauty? Beat you and make you stubborn? Not I. I let you go
round and round; I turned you and twisted you, the oftener the better for me,
till at last I got it into your pretty head that turning and twisting was addling
your brains, and you had better let me be master.

“You’ve
minded me from that day, haven’t you? Horse, or man, or dog aren’t much good
till they learn to obey, and I’ve thrown you down and I’ll do it again if you
bite me, so take care.”

Scamp
tossed her pretty head, and took little pieces of Mr. Wood’s shirt sleeve in
her mouth, keeping her cunning brown eye on him as if to see how far she could
go. But she did not bite him. I think she loved him, for when he left her she
whinnied shrilly, and he had to go back and stroke and caress her.

After that
I often used to watch her as she went about the farm. She always seemed to be
tugging and striving at her load, and trying to step out fast and do a great
deal of work. Mr. Wood was usually driving her. The men didn’t like her, and
couldn’t manage her. She had not been properly broken in.

After Mr.
Wood finished his work he went and stood in the doorway. There were six horses
altogether: Dutchman, Cleve, Pacer, Scamp, a bay mare called Ruby, and a young
horse belonging to Mr. Harry, whose name was Fleetfoot.

“What do
you think of them all?” said Mr. Wood, looking down at me. “A pretty
fine-looking lot of horses, aren’t they? Not a thoroughbred there, but worth as
much to me as if each had pedigree as long as this plank walk. There’s a lot of
humbug about this pedigree business in horses. Mine have their manes and tails
anyway, and the proper use of their eyes, which is more liberty than some
thoroughbreds get.

“I’d like
to see the man that would persuade me to put blinders or check-reins or any
other instrument of torture on my horses. Don’t the simpletons know that
blinders are the cause of well, I wouldn’t like to say how many of our
accidents, Joe, for fear you’d think me extravagant. and the check-rein drags
up a horse’s head out of its fine natural curve and presses sinews, bones, and
joints together, till the horse is well-nigh mad. Ah, Joe, this is a cruel
world for man or beast. You’re a standing token of that, with your missing ears
and tail. And now I’ve got to go and be cruel, and shoot that dog. He must be
disposed of before anyone else is astir. How I hate to take life.”

He
sauntered down the walk to the tool shed, went in and soon came out leading a
large, brown dog by a chain. This was Bruno. He was snapping and snarling and
biting at his chain as he went along, though Mr. Wood led him very kindly, and
when he saw me he acted as if he could have torn me to pieces. After Mr. Wood
took him behind the barn, he came back and got his gun. I ran away so that I
would not hear the sound of it, for I could not help feeling sorry for Bruno.

Miss Laura’s
room was on one side of the house, and in the second story. There was a little
balcony outside it, and when I got near I saw that she was standing out on it
wrapped in a shawl. Her hair was streaming over her shoulders, and she was
looking down into the garden where there were a great many white and yellow
flowers in bloom.

I barked,
and she looked at me. “Dear old Joe, I will get dressed and come down.”

She
hurried into her room, and I lay on the veranda till I heard her step. Then I
jumped up. She unlocked the front door, and we went for a walk down the lane to
the road until we heard the breakfast bell. As soon as we heard it we ran back
to the house, and Miss Laura had such an appetite for her breakfast that her
aunt said the country had done her good already.

After
breakfast, Mrs. Wood put on a large apron, and going into the kitchen, said: “Have
you any scraps for the hens, Adèle? Be sure and not give me anything salty.”

The French
girl gave her a dish of food, then Mrs. Wood asked Miss Laura to go and see her
chickens, and away we went to the poultry house.

On the way
we saw Mr. Wood. He was sitting on the step of the tool shed cleaning his gun “Is
the dog dead?” asked Miss Laura.

“Yes,” he
said.

She sighed
and said: “Poor creature, I am sorry he had to be killed. Uncle, what is the
most merciful way to kill a dog? Sometimes, when they get old, they should be
put out of the way.”

“You can
shoot them,” he said, “or you can poison them. I shot Bruno through his head
into his neck. There’s a right place to aim at. It’s a little one side of the
top of the skull. If you’ll remind me I’ll show you a circular I have in the
house. It tells the proper way to kill animals. The American Humane Education
Society in Boston puts it out.

“You don’t
know anything about the slaughtering of animals, Laura, and it’s well you don’t.
There’s an awful amount of cruelty practiced, and practiced by some people that
think themselves pretty good. I wouldn’t have my lambs killed the way my father
had his for a kingdom. I’ll never forget the first one I saw butchered. I
wouldn’t feel worse at a hanging now. And that white ox, Hattie—you remember my
telling you about him. He had to be killed, and father sent for the butcher. I
was only a lad, and I was all of a shudder to have the life of the creature I
had known taken from him. The butcher, stupid clown, gave him eight blows
before he struck the right place. The ox bellowed, and turned his great black eyes
on my father, and I fell in a faint.”

Miss Laura
turned away, and Mrs. Wood followed her, saying: “If ever you want to kill a
cat, Laura, give it cyanide of potassium. I killed a poor old sick cat for Mrs.
Windham the other day. We put half a teaspoonful of pure cyanide of potassium
in a long-handled wooden spoon, and dropped it on the cat’s tongue, as near the
throat as we could. Poor pussy—she died in a few seconds. Do you know, I was
reading such a funny thing the other day about giving cats medicine. They hate
it, and one can scarcely force it into their mouths on account of their sharp
teeth. The way is, to smear it on their sides, and they lick it off. A good
idea, isn’t it? Here we are at the hen douse, or rather one of the hen houses.”

“Don’t you
keep your hens all together?” asked Miss Laura.

“Only in
the winter time,” said Mrs. Wood, “I divide my flock in the spring. Part of
them stay here and part go to the orchard to live in little movable houses that
we put about in different places. I feed each flock morning and evening at
their own little house. They know they’ll get no food even if they come to my
house, so they stay at home. And they know they’ll get no food between times,
so all day long they pick and scratch in the orchard, and destroy so many bugs
and insects that it more than pays for the trouble of keeping them there.”

“Doesn’t
this flock want to mix up with the other?” asked Miss Laura, as she stepped
into the little wooden house.

“No; they seem
to understand. I keep my eye on them for a while at first, and they soon find
out that they’re not to fly either over the garden fence or the orchard fence.
They roam over the farm and pick up what they can get. There’s a good deal of
sense in hens, if one manages them properly. I love them because they are such
good mothers.”

We were in
the little wooden house by this time, and I looked around it with surprise. It
was better than some of the poor people’s houses in Fairport. The walls were
white and clean, so were the little ladders that led up to different kinds of
roosts, where the fowls sat at night. Some roosts were thin and round, and some
were broad and flat. Mrs. Wood said that the broad ones were for a heavy fowl
called the Brahma. Every part of the little house was almost as light as it was
outdoors, on account of the large windows.

Miss Laura
spoke of it. “Why, auntie, I never saw such a light hen house.”

Mrs. Wood
was diving into a partly shut-in place, where it was not so light, and where
the nests were. She straightened herself up, her face redder than ever, and
looked at the windows with a pleased smile.

“Yes,
there’s not a hen house in New Hampshire with such big windows. Whenever I look
at them, I think of my mother’s hens, and wish that they could have had a place
like this. They would have thought themselves in a hen’s paradise. When I was a
girl we didn’t know that hens loved light and heat, and all winter they used to
sit in a dark hencoop, and the cold was so bad that their combs would freeze
stiff, and the tops of them would drop off. We never thought about it. If we’d
had any sense, we might have watched them on a fine day go and sit on the
compost heap and sun themselves, and then have concluded that if they liked
light and heat outside, they’d like it inside. Poor biddies, they were so cold that
they wouldn’t lay us any eggs in winter.”

“You take
a great interest in your poultry, don’t you, auntie?” said Miss Laura.

“Yes,
indeed, and well I may. I’ll show you my brown Leghorn, Jenny, that lay eggs
enough in a year to pay for the newspapers I take to keep myself posted in
poultry matters. I buy all my own clothes with my hen money, and lately I’ve
started a bank account, for I want to save up enough to start a few stands of
bees. Even if I didn’t want to be kind to my hens, it would pay me to be so for
sake of the profit they yield. Of course they’re quite a lot of trouble.
Sometimes they get vermin on them, and I have to grease them and dust carbolic
acid on them, and try some of my numerous cures. Then I must keep ashes and
dust wallows for them and be very particular about my eggs when hens are
sitting, and see that the hens come off regularly for food and exercise. Oh,
there are a hundred things I have to think of, but I always say to any one that
thinks of raising poultry: ‘If you are going into the business for the purpose
of making money, it pays to take care of them.’”

“There’s
one thing I notice,” said Miss Laura, “and that is that your drinking fountains
must be a great deal better than the shallow pans that I have seen some people
give their hens water in.”

“Dirty
things they are,” said Mrs. Wood; “I wouldn’t use one of them. I don’t think
there is anything worse for hens than drinking dirty water. My hens must have
as clean water as I drink myself, and in winter I heat it for them. If it’s
poured boiling into the fountains in the morning, it keeps warm till night.
Speaking of shallow drinking dishes, I wouldn’t use them, even before I ever
heard of a drinking fountain. John made me something that we read about. He
used to take a powder keg and bore a little hole in the side, about an inch
from the top, then fill it with water, and cover with a pan a little larger
round than the keg. Then he turned the keg upside down, without taking away the
pan. The water ran into the pan only as far as the hole in the keg, and it
would have to be used before more would flow in. Now let us go and see my beautiful,
bronze turkeys. They don’t need any houses, for they roost in the trees the
year round.”

We found
the flock of turkeys, and Miss Laura admired their changeable colours very
much. Some of them were very large, and I did not like them, for the gobblers
ran at me, and made a dreadful noise in their throats.

Afterward,
Mrs. Wood showed us some ducks that she had shut up in a yard. She said that
she was feeding them on vegetable food, to give their flesh a pure flavor, and
by-and-by she would send them to market and get a high price for them.

Every
place she took us to was as clean as possible. “No one can be successful in
raising poultry in large numbers,” she said, “unless they keep their quarters
clean and comfortable.”

As yet we
had seen no hens, except a few on the nests, and Miss Laura said, “Where are they?
I should like to see them.”

“They are
coming,” said Mrs. Wood. “It is just their breakfast time, and they are as
punctual as clockwork. They go off early in the morning, to scratch about a
little for themselves first.”

As she
spoke she stepped off the plank walk and looked off towards the fields.

Miss Laura
burst out laughing. Away beyond the barns the hens were coming. Seeing Mrs.
Wood standing there, they thought they were late, and began to run and fly,
jumping over each other’s backs, and stretching out their necks, in a state of
great excitement. Some of their legs seemed slicking straight out behind. It
was very funny to see them.

They were
a fine-looking lot of poultry, mostly white, with glossy feathers and bright
eyes. They greedily ate the food scattered to them and Mrs. Wood said, “They
think I’ve changed their breakfast time, and tomorrow they’ll come a good bit
earlier. And yet some people say hens have no sense.”