He Insisted Upon My Staying At The House, But I
Finally Convinced Him That The Proper Place For Me Was In Camp, And I
Went On With Him.
The island was very small, and the highest point
above water could not have been over two feet.
Of course everything
had to be upon it - horses, mules, wagons, drivers, Faye and I, and the
two small squirrels, and the chickens also. In addition to our own
traveling menagerie there were native inhabitants of that
island - millions and millions of mosquitoes, each one with a sharp
appetite and sharp sting. We thought that we had learned all about
vicious mosquitoes while in the South, but the Southern mosquitoes are
slow and caressing in comparison to those Montana things.
It was very warm, and the Chinaman felt sorry for the chickens shut up
in the boxes, where fierce quarrels seemed to be going on all the
time. So after he had fed them we talked it over, and decided to let
them out, as they could not possibly get away from us across the big
body of water. There were twenty large chickens in one big box, and
twenty-seven small ones that had been brought in a long box by
themselves. Well, Charlie and one of the men got the boxes down and
opened them. At once the four or five mother hens clucked and
scratched and kept on clucking until the little chicks were let out,
when every one of them ran to its own mother, and each hen strutted
off with her own brood.
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