Heppner gazette. [volume] (Heppner, Morrow County, Or.) 1892-1912, 1904-03-10
Gallant Little Hale Robbins
By Charles Adams.
WTASTER HALE ROBBINS has near

Gejved last August in his remarkable
battle with two-white-headed eagles
accounts of which were published al
the time in several Maine newspapers
l3ut it makes ones heart ache to see
Ghe sears on the little fellow-great
blue livid sears that 60 to the bone;
sight on his face and scalp, eleven on
his right arm and shoulder, six on
81 he other arm, three down his back
and several others-Over 30 in all.
This lad of ten is indeed 'a battle
SCARED veteran." Some of these
scars he will carry to his grave-elo-
quent evidence of the pluck with
which he fought the big birds Of prey.
But thanks to the boys courage,
hIs little sister Lois, in whose defense
he made the fight, has but one light
scar upon her cheek. The two or
three red marks still visible on her
hand and wrist, when contrasted with
his wounds, show plainly how Hale
took the aggressive and bore the
J1runt of the battle. The fight was
fought to a finish. 1t was nearly an
hour after the eagles first swooped
down that last lucky blow Of the
corn-cutter brought the big female
10 the ground.
A local taXidermist has mounted
fhis eagle, and no ornithological col
lection within my knowledge pos
@esses a more savage-lOOking speci-
amen of Haliaetus leucocephalus. The
wings. from tip to tip, spread fully
SIX feet six inches.
The assault was not wholly unpro-
voked, although the children were not
10 blame for it. By i'll luck the birds
had just been disturbed by the fail
of one of their young from the nest
in the great elm tree.
The Robbinses live in clearing on
the ST. Croix river, in eastern Maine.
From their house to the district
school the road is a long one for lit
Sic siX-year-old Lois Robbins, and for
IA mile and half or more it traverscs
she forest. But up to the morning of
She encounter the child had not
missed a day of the summer term.
Hale had been his sisters trusty
x
enough to toddle out-of-doors, and the
child needed a protector there, for it
as rather wild sort of country, not
wholly free from wild animals. The
boy appears to have had no uncertain
Dr waverng sense of his fraternal re-
.spOnsiblnty. Ever since he was seven
wears old he had undertaken never
-;
That morning they set off for school
lust before eight o'clock. In addition
20 their dinner-pail and two books,
they carried a light woven bushel
basket and an old bush hook, or corn
cutter. as they called it, because their
father sometimes used it for cutting
rows of sweet corn in the garden.
This tool consisted of about IS inches
cut from the point of a wOrn-out hay
Scythe, so inserted in a rude wooden
handle that blade and handle stood
at right angles with each other.
Grandma Hale had asked Hale to
stop on his way home from school at
a sWale near the run, and cut
quantity Of thoroughwort and snake
head, two herbs much priced by the
old woman, which were then in flow
er, fit for gathering. The basket and
Cutting-hoOk were for this purpose,
but the children were told not to take
1hem to the schoolhouse, but to leave
them at Indian Jake's shanty," just
beyond the swale. The Indian is their
nearest neighbor, but at the time he
happened to be away from home,
guiding tourists at the lakes.
The eagles nest was an object of
constant interest to Hale, who often
stopped to watch the birds come and
Go from the elm tree, which stands
on bluff overlooking the river
AS the children came along that
morning little Lois espied one of the
eagles flying heavily to the tree, bear
ing a fish in it's talons, taken perhaps
from some fsh-hawk on the neigh
Boring lake. "Oh, look" the child
exclaimed, dropping the handle of the
basket and pointing with her finger.
There's the old eagle going to the
nest, and it's got a great thing in its
Sect"
''It is going to feed the young ones"
said Hale. "Now bark and you'll
hear 'em scream!"
The eagle bore the fish to the big
nest in the tree-top, and Immediately
he peculiar whistling cries of the
young were heard.
ooh, hear 'em squeam," cried Lois.
Don't they squeam high?"
1t was a large fish, and perhaps life
was not wholly extinct in it; when
-.orn by the young beaks and talons
81 may have given a spasmodic flop.
This was probably the reason that
one of the small birds was dislodged
from its place in the nest and fell.
An instant later it caught by its tai
41ns on a small, low limb of the tree
and hung there, swinging and scream