Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [258]
One chilly morning in early November, when Massa Lea arrived in the mulecart, Uncle Mingo and George were waiting with the crowing, viciously pecking stags already collected in covered wicker baskets. After loading them into the cart, George helped Uncle Mingo catch his favorite old scarred, squawking catchcock.
“He’s just like you, Mingo,” said Massa Lea with a laugh. “Done all his fightin’ an’ breedin’ in his young days. Fit for nothin’ but to eat and crow now!”
Grinning, Uncle Mingo said, “I ain’t hardly even crowin’ no mo’ now, Massa.”
Since George was as much in awe of Uncle Mingo as he was afraid of the massa, he was happy to see them both in such rare good spirits. Then the three of them climbed onto the mulecart, Uncle Mingo seated alongside the massa holding his old catchcock, and George balancing himself in the back behind the baskets.
Finally Massa Lea stopped the cart deep in the pine grove. He and Uncle Mingo cocked their heads, listening carefully. Then Mingo spoke softly. “I hears ’em back in dere!” Abruptly puffing his cheeks, he blew hard on the head of the old catchcock, which promptly crowed vigorously.
Within seconds came a loud crowing from among the trees, and again the old catchcock rooster crowed, its hackles rising. Then goosepimples broke out over George when he saw the magnificent gamecock that came bursting from the edge of the grove. Iridescent feathers were bristled high over the solid body; the glossy tail feathers were arched. A covey of about nine hens came hurrying up nervously, scratching and clucking, as the rangewalk cock powerfully beat its wings and gave a shattering crow, jerking its head about, looking for the intruder.
Massa Lea spoke in a low tone. “Let him see the catchcock, Mingo!”
Uncle Mingo hoisted it high, and the rangewalk cock seemed almost to explode into the air straight after the old rooster. Massa Lea moved swiftly, grabbing the thrashing rangewalk cock in flight, deftly avoiding the wickedly long natural spurs that George glimpsed as the massa thrust it into a basket and closed the top.
“What you gawkin’ for, boy? Loose one dem stags!” barked Uncle Mingo, as if George had done it before. He fumbled open the nearest basket, and the released stag flapped out beyond the mulecart and to the ground. After no more than a moment’s hesitation, it flapped its wings, crowed loudly, dropped one wing, and went strutting stiffly around one hen. Then the new cock o’ the walk started chasing all the other hens back into the pine grove.
Twenty-eight mature two-year-olds had been replaced with year-old stags when the mulecart returned just before dusk. After doing it all over again to get thirty-two more the next day, George felt he had been retrieving gamecocks from rangewalks all his life. He now busily fed and watered the sixty cocks. When they weren’t eating, it seemed to him, they were crowing and pecking angrily at the sides of their pens, constructed so as to prevent their seeing each other, which would have caused some of them to get injured in their violent efforts to fight. With wonder, George beheld these majestically wild, vicious, and beautiful birds. They embodied everything that Uncle Mingo ever had told him about their ancient bloodlines of courage, about how both their physical design and their instincts made them ready to fight any other gamecock to the death anytime, anywhere.
The massa believed in training twice as many birds as he planned to fight during the season. “Some birds jes’ don’t never pink up an’ feed an’ work like de rest,” Uncle Mingo explained to George, “an’ dem what don’t we’s gwine to cull out.” Massa Lea began to arrive earlier