Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/646

628 above, and the turkey cried for quarter at once. The lesson of the easy victory was not lost, and thenceforth the young cock fought turkeys with evident relish, always managing to reach their backs, and so routing them with ease and celerity. Our best rooster, however, was too strong and heavy to suit him, and encounters with this hard fighter were very unwelcome. While one of us fed the visitor, the other would catch the home champion, and by taking him around to the farther side of the barn let him enter the barn-yard on the trespasser's line of retreat. Of course, there would be a fight, and it was difficult for the jaunty intruder to make his escape in good order without many severe knocks. After a time he always kept a sharp watch on the dangerous corner of the barn-yard, and at any suspicious noise in that quarter he started for home in great excitement. At last he almost entirely ceased to visit us. In the cellar of a house in Buffalo, where a number of chickens and two or three turkeys which had been brought up from a farm on Grand Island were kept until wanted for the table, I once saw a young black Spanish cock fight and win a bloody battle with a very large gobbler. The turkey tried to escape his vindictive conqueror by taking refuge upon a board partition at least four feet high, between two empty coal-bins. There he stood and stretched his long neck out as far as possible. The victor flew up beside him and tried in vain to reach his head. Then he wasted a few savage pecks upon the gobbler's heavy wing, and gave that up in disgust. At last he appeared to study out a plan, and deliberately flew straight for the turkey's head, seized it with his beak, and hung on as long as possible. Then, dropping to the ground, he contentedly mounted again to the side of his terrified victim and repeated the punishment. This he did the third time, with perfect system, and would have gone on indefinitely had I not interfered to save the wretched bird. An Indian could not have taken more delight in torturing a vanquished foe. The most remarkable exhibition of cunning in cock-fights, however, that came under my observation, was witnessed in the barn-yard of a farm adjoining our Orleans County headquarters. There were three old roosters on the place, and they had divided up the territory instead of holding each one a certain rank in all of it. The cow-stable and a corner of the barn-yard adjacent belonged to a big clumsy partridge Cochin, the horse-stable and the grain-barn to a cock more black Spanish than anything else, and the end of the barn-yard farthest from the stables, with the house door-yard, to a white Leghorn. There were neutral zones, as the diplomats say, between every two divisions, and these were the scene of some sharp fighting and a great deal of crowing and hostile manoeuvring. One day the Cochin and the white Leghorn met in the barn-yard, and