ver the squire now. Craning his flabby neck,
the squire could make out the unwholesome contour of the huge bird. He
could see the ragged black wings--a buzzard's wings are so often ragged
and uneven--and the naked throat; the slim, naked head; the big feet
folded up against the dingy belly. And he could see a bell too--an
undersized cowbell--that dangled at the creature's breast and jangled
incessantly. All his life nearly Squire Gathers had been hearing about
the Belled Buzzard. Now with his own eye he was seeing him.

Once, years and years and years ago, some one trapped a buzzard, and
before freeing it clamped about its skinny neck a copper band with a
cowbell pendent from it. Since then the bird so ornamented has been seen
a hundred times--and heard oftener--over an area as wide as half the
continent. It has been reported, now in Kentucky, now in Texas, now in
North Carolina--now anywhere between the Ohio River and the Gulf.
Crossroads correspondents take their pens in hand to write to the
country papers that on such and such a date, at such a place, So-and-So
saw the Belled Buzzard. Always it is the Belled Buzzard, never a belled
buzzard. The Belled Buzzard is an institution.

There must be more than one of them. It seems hard to believe that one
bird, even a buzzard in his prime, and protected by law in every
Southern state and known to be a bird of great age, could live so long
and range so far and wear a clinking cowbell all the time! Probably
other jokers have emulated the original joker; probably if the truth
were known there have been a dozen such; but the country people will
have it that there is only one Belled Buzzard--a bird that bears a
charmed life and on his neck a never silent bell.

* * * * *

Squire Gathers regarded it a most untoward thing that the Belled Buzzard
should have come just at this time. The movements of ordinary, unmarked
buzzards mainly concerned only those whose stock had strayed; but almost
anybody with time to spare might follow this rare and famous visitor,
this belled and feathered junkman of the sky. Supposing now that some
one followed it today--maybe followed it even to a certain thick clump
of cypress in the middle of Little Niggerwool!

But at this particular moment the Belled Buzzard was heading directly
away from that quarter. Could it be following him? Of course not! It was
just by chance that it flew along the course the squire was takin