impelled to throw out a
wing, reminding one of a boy walking across a brook on a log. This one
could fly only a little. The accident that had resulted in his captivity
he had recovered from, but the wing bone had not been properly set where
it was broken, and the short flights he attempted were very one-sided.
So when he wished to go anywhere he usually walked, and it was such a
walk as above described, or worse.

And when he did, it was to a place one would never have imagined that a
properly conducted and self-respecting eagle would have thought of. But
the bird seemed to have a liking for low resorts, and his special
weakness was the pig-pen. This was, as it should have been, outside the
walls, and was generally occupied by some eight or a dozen little,
sharp-nosed, pointed-eared, anti-Berkshire, Mexican pigs, whose business
it was to eat up all that was left from the dinner of more than a
hundred soldiers, and to be the heirs of all the condemned commissary
stores, and whose fate it was to be finally eaten themselves, say about
Christmas. The last lot that went in there is a distinct recollection to
me, aside from their doings with the eagle. They came from some
aboriginal hamlet on the banks of the Rio Grande, about a hundred miles
away. Each two of them had accommodations to themselves--a pen made of
willow sticks, tied together with raw-hide, and slung upon a donkey. The
long-suffering animal who had carried them so far had a round dozen for
his cargo. He was heaped and piled with pig-cages, and the topmost pair
of little swine were having an airy ride at the apex of a pyramid about
eight feet from the ground, swaying from side to side with a sea-sick
motion as the donkey walked; and they looked sick. A more unpromising
family was never reared even in New Mexico. Nevertheless they were
dropped over the side of the pen after much chaffering with the owner,
and at an expense of "four bits" each.

As soon as by some means he found out they were there, it was to the
pig-pen that this fatuous fowl resorted. I do not know why, but it was
not because he loved them, nor that he had especial business with them.
Making his way thither as best he could he would perch upon the side of
the pen and glare balefully down upon the occupants, who did not seem to
greatly care if he chose to amuse himself in that senseless manner. But
after a while he would drop down on the back of the nearest one, and
holding fast with his claws,