The Tale of Old Mr. Crow

XXI

THE CROW CAU­CUS

“Where are all those crows go­ing?” John­nie Green asked his fa­ther one evening. He point­ed to a long line of big black birds that strag­gled across the sky. They came from across the val­ley. And they were trav­el­ling fast to­ward the pine woods near the foot of Blue Moun­tain. “They seem to be in a hur­ry,” said John­nie Green.

His fa­ther took one look at the pro­ces­sion and laughed.

“They're go­ing to a crow cau­cus, I guess,” he an­swered.

And then John­nie want­ed to know what a cau­cus was. He asked so many oth­er ques­tions, too, that Farmer Green didn't suc­ceed in an­swer­ing them all un­til they had al­most fin­ished their sup­per.

Now, it was the cus­tom of old Mr. Crow and many of his dusky friends to gath­er at sun­set in the pine woods and hold a _meet­ing_. That was what Farmer Green meant when he said they were go­ing to a _cau­cus_. And if he could have been there him­self he would have been as­ton­ished at the things he would have heard.

But for some rea­son he was nev­er in­vit­ed to at­tend one of those twi­light meet­ings. Per­haps it was be­cause dis­agree­able re­marks were some­times made about Farmer Green!

On that evening when John­nie no­ticed the flight of Mr. Crow's cronies to­ward the woods some­thing hap­pened at the meet­ing that dis­pleased that old gen­tle­man. Be­ing the biggest--as well as the old­est--crow in the neigh­bor­hood, for years past he had called ev­ery such meet­ing to or­der. And he had al­ways done most of the talk­ing, too.

But old Mr. Crow was late that night. When he reached the pine woods he found that a stranger had tak­en his ac­cus­tomed seat in a great tree and was al­ready ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing in a loud and com­mand­ing voice.

And no­body paid any at­ten­tion to old Mr. Crow. No­body made room for him. He had to take a back seat on a limb that was crowd­ed with bois­ter­ous young fel­lows, who kept push­ing and pok­ing one an­oth­er. It was most an­noy­ing.

“Who's that per­son that's so fond of hear­ing him­self talk?” Mr. Crow asked some­one in the next tree. He spoke in such a loud voice that ev­ery­body could hear him. And the stranger cried out sharply:

“Si­lence!”

There­upon ev­ery­one looked around at Mr. Crow and frowned.

He felt both an­gry and un­com­fort­able. And for a lit­tle while he sat as still as he could and lis­tened to the stranger's re­marks.

Now, the new­com­er was talk­ing about the hard times. He said that there weren't as many grasshop­pers as usu­al that year, and that Farmer Green had put tar on his corn be­fore he plant­ed it and that the rats had stolen most of his young chick­ens (of course that left very few for _them_), and that the wild berry crop was poor.

Ev­ery­body agreed with the stranger. And ev­ery­body nod­ded his head, as if to say, “That's quite true!”--at least, ev­ery­body but Mr. Crow. He was de­ter­mined that he would not agree with any­thing the stranger said. And so he shout­ed, “Non­sense!” at the top of his lungs.

A mur­mur ran through the meet­ing. And there were cries of “Put him out!”

“That's what I say, too!” Mr. Crow bel­lowed.

And then he could hard­ly be­lieve his ears when some­one near him said, “They mean you!”