on Dick, the Sandhill Crane.



285



thing else—you could hear him laugh for a mile. But, if I beat him,

he didn’t have nothin’ to say ! ”


By this time he had grown about five feet, so tall that, as

Mrs. Derby explained, “ he could stretch up and feel of my face. Go

and lay down on the ground and pretend we was asleep, and he’d

feel ’round and then come and poke ’round in our heads, as if pickin’

himself, and take hold of our eyelids, to make us open our eyes—he

never would hurt—and all the time kept up a low talkin’. Then he’d

go to sleep—fold up his legs and sit down flat and put his head on

his shoulders.


“ Along in the summer, a hawk or eagle or something

swooped down at him or a chicken, and Dick screamed and the old

man went out with a gun, and Dick went right up into the air and

sailed ’round, and when the bird dropped he dropped and picked him

up and throwed him ’round and laughed and peeped and made all

sorts of crane noises.


“ He loved a gun—loved to go with the old man a’hunting.

If the old man would kill a goose, he’d act as if he was tickled to

death. When it began to get cold and there was snow on the ground,

he couldn’t foller huntin’, for they’re a tender bird, and we’d have to

shut him up. He knew just as well as we did when some of us was

gettin’ ready to go huntin’, and he’d get uneasy.” He got so that

he would go off before it was time to shut him up. “ Then,” as she

said, “ he’d fly up in the air and sail round till he’d find us. If there

was snow on the ground, he’d stand on a hill first on one foot and

then on the other till he got off a ways, and then he’d fly and light

down by us and laugh.”


In the fall he had roosted between the creek and the pond,

“But,” she went on, “when it got too cold for him to do that, I’d

ketch him and put him in behind the cows. One cold night I

wanted to get him in, bad—I knew it was goin’ to freeze—but he

said Peep, and Keet, keet, and got away from me. In the morning he

didn’t come. I went up with my heart in my mouth—I expected to

find him dead. I got up there and he was standing on one leg, the

other one froze in the ice. I thought his leg was froze, and I says,


‘ Dick ! ’ and he says, Peep, as pitiful. I broke the ice for him and

took him under my arm and hiked for home and stood him in a tub



