The Tale of Old Mr. Crow

XII

A RACE WITH THE TRAIN

Old Mr. Crow was fond of gay clothes. Per­haps it was be­cause he was so black that he al­ways chose bright col­ors. Any­how, so long as he could wear a bright red coat and a yel­low neck­tie--or a bright red neck­tie and a yel­low coat--he was gen­er­al­ly quite hap­py.

All his neigh­bors knew who he was as far as they could see him. No mat­ter if they caught on­ly a flash of yel­low or of red, they were pret­ty safe in say­ing, “There goes old Mr. Crow!”

Well, it hap­pened that dur­ing the sum­mers that he spent in Pleas­ant Val­ley Mr. Crow some­times went on ex­cur­sions.

“It's so dull here!” he would of­ten say. “I like to see things _hap­pen_, once in a while.” And that was the rea­son why he was of­ten to be seen fly­ing far down to the oth­er end of the val­ley, over the vil­lage. There were many in­ter­est­ing sights there.

What Mr. Crow liked most of all was to watch the trains puff­ing along the rail­road, which ran close to the riv­er in that part of Pleas­ant Val­ley.

Some­times he flew di­rect­ly over the trains and raced with them. He of­ten claimed that they were al­ways try­ing to beat him. “But they can't do it,” he boast­ed.

At last there came a day when some­thing hap­pened that made Mr. Crow feel proud­er than ev­er. He had gone down to the vil­lage, wear­ing his bright red coat. And a lit­tle way be­yond the fur­thest house he perched in a tree by the side of the rail­road and wait­ed for the train to pass. He had heard it snort­ing at the sta­tion and he knew it was about to start.

Pret­ty soon the train came thun­der­ing up the track. And as soon as it reached him Mr. Crow start­ed to race with it. He had no trou­ble in beat­ing it, as he al­ways did. And then he did some­thing he had nev­er done be­fore. As soon as he had passed the en­gine he swooped down and flew right across the track in front of it.

All at once the train set up a ter­ri­ble noise. It seemed to Mr. Crow that it ground its teeth. And it came to a sud­den stop, hiss­ing as if it were very an­gry.

Old Mr. Crow was the least bit star­tled. He alight­ed in the top of a tall elm. And while he watched, two men jumped down from the en­gine and walked along the track for a while.

Then they crawled back in­to the en­gine; and the train went slow­ly on again.

“That's queer!” said Mr. Crow to him­self. “I nev­er saw that hap­pen be­fore. It looks to me as if the train was pret­ty an­gry be­cause I beat it. And if that's the case, I'm com­ing back here to-​mor­row at the same hour and race the train again.”

You can see just from that that Mr. Crow was some­thing of a tease. All his life he had teased his neigh­bors. And now he felt more im­por­tant than ev­er, be­cause he thought he had found a way to tease a rail­road train.