The prairie chickens now became the musicians of the morning and evening
on the uplands, with their wild and intense and almost insane chorus,
repeated over and over until it seemed as if the meaning of it must be
forced upon every mind like a figure in music played with greatening
power by a violinist so that the heart finally almost breaks with
it--"Ka-a-a-a-a-a, ka, ka, ka, ka! _Ka-a-a-a-a-a-a,_ ka, ka, ka, ka, ka,
ka, ka! KA-A-A-A-A-A-A, ka, ka, ka, ka, ka, ka, ka, ka!"--Oh, there is
no way to tell it!--And then the cock filled in the harmony with his
lovely contribution: facing the courted hen, he swelled out the great
orange globes at the sides of his head, fluffed out his feathers,
strutted forward a few steps, and tolled his deep-toned bell, with all
the skill of a ventriloquist, making it seem far away when he was on a
near-by knoll, like a velvet gong sounded with no stroke of the hammer,
as if it spoke from some inward vibration set up by a mysterious
current--a liquid "Do, re, me," here full and distinct, there afar off,
the whole air tremulous with it, the harmony to the ceaseless fugue in
the soprano clef of the rest of the flock--nobody will ever hear it
again! Nobody ever drew from it, and from the howling of the wolves, the
honking of the geese, the calls of the ducks, the strange cries of the
cranes as they soared with motionless wings high overhead, or rowed
their way on with long slow strokes of their great wings, or danced
their strange reels and cotillions in the twilight; and from the myriad
voices of curlew, plover, gopher, bob-o-link, meadowlark, dick-cissel,
killdeer and the rest--day-sounds and night-sounds, dawn-sounds and
dusk-sounds--more inspiration than did the stolid Dutch boy plodding
west across Iowa that spring of 1855, with his fortune in his teams of
cows, in the covered wagon they drew, and the deed to his farm in a flat
packet of treasures in a little iron-bound trunk--among them a
rain-stained letter and a worn-out woman's shoe.
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