None of the wagon wheels was broken, and in the course of an hour or two, Willis and I succeeded in patching up the shattered body sufficiently to hold the hogs. But how to get the heavy brutes off the ground and up into the wagon was a task beyond our resources. When you try to take a live hog off its feet, he is likely to bite as well as to squeal. We had no tackle for lifting them.
At last Willis set off to get help. He was gone till dusk and came back without any one; but he had persuaded two Shakers to come and help us early the next morning—they could not come that night on account of their evening prayer meeting. One of the Shaker women had sent a loaf of bread and a piggin half full of Shaker apple sauce to us.
The lantern and bucket that went with Willis's wagon had been smashed; but I had a similar outfit with mine. So we tied the horses to trees near our improvised hog pound, and fed and blanketed them by lantern light. Afterwards we brought water for them from a brook not far away.
It was nine o'clock before we were ready to eat our own supper of bread and Shaker apple sauce. The night was chilly; our lantern went out for lack of oil; we had only light overcoats for covering; and as we had used our last two matches in lighting the lantern, we could not kindle a fire.
The night was so cold that we frequently had to jump up and run round to get warm. We slept scarcely at all. The hogs squealed. They, too, were cold as well as hungry, and toward morning they quarreled, bit one another and made piercing outcries.
"Oh, don't I wish 'twas morning!" Willis exclaimed again and again.
Fortunately, the Shakers were early risers, and long before sunrise three of them, clad in gray homespun frocks and broad-brimmed hats, appeared. They greeted us solemnly.
"Thee has met with trouble," said one of them, who was the elder of the village. "But I think we can give thee aid."
They proved to be past masters at handling hogs. From one of the halters they contrived a muzzle to prevent the hogs from biting us, and then with their help we caught and muzzled the hogs one by one and boosted them into the wagon. The good men stayed by us till the horses were hitched up and we were out of the woods and on the highway again. I had a little money with me and offered to pay them for their kind services, but the elder said:
"Nay, friend, thee has had trouble enough already with the lion." And at parting all three said "Fare thee well" very gravely.