Lonely Tom—The Story of a Pifion Jay 
By JOHN HAMMITIT, Santa Fé, New Mexico 
HETHER he was a disgusted bachelor, a heartbroken widower, or 
merely a disappointed lover, I have never been able to satisfac- 
torily settle. His coming into my possession and into my life,— 
the forming of a bond of sympathy and affection, which, on my part, out- 
lasted the short span of our acquaintance—was of itself peculiar; and his 
reasons for departing this life so suddenly are equal mysteries. But, possibly 
I am getting ahead of my story. 
It had been a beautiful day from the early hour when a friend and I started 
on a business trip of some forty miles across the prairie until our return in the 
late evening. To me the prairie country never appealed very strongly, so I 
may not be a good judge of fine days on the level plains; but this day was as 
fine as any I had ever seen in the West. Long, rolling expanse of pasture- 
land, knee-high in grass and flowers, stretched in every direction, scintillating 
with golden gleams, as the rays of the patient sun, now slowly sinking below 
the cardboard edge of the plain, bathed all in a subdued golden light. The 
vastness and loneliness of the prairie was relieved by occasional buttes, which, 
rising like pyramids in their solemn grandeur, made the quiet still more 
impressive, and gave one the feeling that here indeed the dross and sham of 
life had slipped away, and he stood face to face with his real inner self. These 
buttes were also of real value, for, besides relieving the tense sameness of the 
landscape, they were guides to the newcomer and tenderfoot, should he ever 
be wise enough to tell the difference between any two of them. 
The sun had now reached that point where all was wrapped in a subdued, 
mellow, golden glow—a warm, delicious liquid fire—the true charm of the 
prairie, giving it a beauty that few painters have been able to reproduce. 
The flowers, mostly of the daisy order, sparkled in the last rays of the sun, and 
even the somber sage and shoestring took on an added glory. A hush—still- 
ness as of expectancy—was over all when, as I said before, he came. 
I am not generally given to day-dreaming, and on trips of this kind usually 
keep my eyes open for all things interesting, but this event was unheralded. 
My first knowledge of it was a flapping of wings, a circling near and around 
our heads, and a voice that seemed, more than any thing else, to be a human 
call for help restricted in utterance. Out of the Nowhere into the Now, was 
a fitting description of his sudden appearance. After a few circlings around 
our heads and many of his strange calls, out over the darkening prairie for 
several hundred yards he flew, when, just as we had about given him up and 
decided he had taken his departure, back he came with that strange weird cry, 
like the “Nevermore” of Poe’s Raven, to repeat his peculiar antics. 
It has ever been a pet theory of mine that the different species of animals, 
including the genus Homo, have points of strong resemblance. Notice the 
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