Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/143

 mixture on the stove, I asked, “What in the world is that?”

“This, madame, is lard and cayenne pepper,—a dose designed for a sick hen.”

“How do you know she is sick?”

“If you saw a hen moping around, humped up like this, and catching her breath so,”—graphically illustrating,—“you would conclude that she wasn’t enjoying the best of health, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d think she had the blues, at least. What does ail her?”

“That I can’t tell you.”

“Who suggested that mixture?”

“This mixture was used with unparalleled success at my uncle Jim’s.”

“Oh! As a remedy for what?”

“Don’t ask so many questions. I don’t know what it was given for, and I don’t care; it’s the only chicken remedy I wot of, and when one of ours seems indisposed she’s going to get a dose of it.”

With this defiant declaration the gentleman went out to visit his patient, while I looked up a bulletin on Poultry from our Agricultural College. I was appalled to learn of the diseases chicken flesh is heir to. It seemed that if we succeeded in saving even one, it would be as a brand snatched from the burning. In my pursuit of information I had just stumbled upon a poser as the doctor returned.