After a few months of this sort of trainin' they got purty good
at it. I had one two-year-old rooster that made fifty-four mile
an hour behind one of those sixty-horsepower Panhandles. When
cars didn't come along often enough, they'd all turn out and
chase jack-rabbits. They wasn't much fun at that. After a
short, brief sprint the rabbit would crouch down plumb terrified,
while the Honk-honks pulled off triumphal dances around his
shrinkin' form.
Our ranch got to be purty well known them days among
automobeelists. The strength of their cars was horse-power, of
course, but the speed of them they got to ratin' by
chicken-power. Some of them used to come way up from Los Angeles
just to try out a new car along our road with the Honk-honks for
pace-makers. We charged them a little somethin', and then, too,
we opened up the road-house and the bar, so we did purty well.
It wasn't necessary to work any longer at that bogus placer.
Evenin's we sat around outside and swapped yarns, and I bragged
on my chickens. The chickens would gather round close to listen.
They liked to hear their praises sung, all right. You bet they
sabe! The only reason a chicken, or any other critter, isn't
intelligent is because he hasn't no chance to expand.
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