122 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



he came from the woods knowing. He accepts 

 the fenced and cluttered farm, turns it into the 

 tall, timbered river-bottom, and lives his primal 

 forest life among the corn-cribs and Baldwin ap- 

 ple trees as of old. He has not turned aside by- 

 one quill's breadth from his original wild ways. 

 He roosts in the bare tops of the apple trees or 

 along the ridge-pole of the barn, as if the jaguars 

 and panthers were still prowling for him; he wakes 

 in the night, gobbles, ducks, and spreads his round 

 targe of a tail over him to ward off the swoop of 

 the imaginary owl. He breaks the hen's egg out 

 of jealousy, in order to prolong the honeymoon ; 

 she steals her nest from him and covers her eggs 

 in leaving the nest, just as she used to; and when 

 the small bands of any neighborhood are gathered 

 into a flock to be driven to market, as they still 

 are in the less settled parts, the old flock-spirit 

 returns to them, and they fall into the odd migra- 

 tion habits of their wild forebears, who used to 

 congregate in vast numbers in the autumn and 

 follow the course of the river-banks, sometimes 

 across several States, as they fed on the autumn 

 mast. 



The early accounts of their hesitancy and in- 



