As the last bucket was emptied into the kettle, Luther turned and swung his cap at John Hunter and Jake, who were passing in the bobsled.
“Hunters,” he explained. “Have you met them yet?”
“No,” replied Noland. “Who are they? He drives a good team.”
“Nearest neighbours on th’ west over there,” Luther said, pointing to the roofs of the Hunter place, plainly to be seen over the rise of land between. “They’re th’ folks for you t’ know—th’ only ones with book-learnin’ around here. Goin’ t’ stay with th’ Chamberlains long?”
“No,” replied the other, with a look of reticence; “that is, only for a time. He don’t hire much, he tells me. I’m just helping him till he gets his fencing tightened up and this work done. Why?”
“Well, I was just a thinkin’ that that’s th’ place for you. Hunter hires a lot of work done, and—and you’d like each other. You’re th’ same kind of folks. I wonder how he come t’ be takin’ ’is man along t’ town with ’im? Th’ was a trunk in th’ back of the sled too, but that may ’a’ been for Mrs. Hunter. That was ’is mother with ’im.”
There was not much time to speculate about future work, there was much to be done in the present, and before noon five limp bodies had been dragged from the pens to the scalding barrel, plunged into the steaming water, turned, twisted, turned again, and after being churned back and forth till every inch of the black hides was ready to shed its coat of hair and scarf-skin, were drawn out upon the wheelbarrow. Then a gambol-stick was thrust through the tendons of the hind legs and the hogs were suspended from a cross pole about six feet from the ground, where they hung while the great corn-knives scraped and scratched and scrubbed and scoured till the black bodies gradually lost their coating and became pink and tender looking and perfectly clean. They were then drawn and left to cool and stiffen.
The sloppy, misty weather made the work hard because of the frozen earth under the melting snow, and the steaming, half foggy atmosphere was too warm for comfort of men working over an open fire and a steaming barrel of hot water, but by noon the butchering was finished. To the new man it was a journey back to childhood. How well he remembered the various features of preparation: the neighbours asked in to assist, the odours pleasant and unpleasant, the bustling about of his mother as she baked and boiled and stewed for the company, the magic circle about the pens from which he was excluded when the men went forth with the rifle, and the squeal which followed the rifle’s crack, and the fear which gripped him when he thought the poor pig was hurt, but which was explained away by his father, who, proud of his marksmanship, assured him that “that pig never knew what hit it.”
In addition to the fact that the man had spent his childhood on a farm, he had the happy faculty of entering into the life of the people among whom he found himself. He entertained the little group at the dinner table that day with a description of his mother’s soap-making, and discussed the best ways of preparing sausage for summer use as if he himself were a cook; and as Luther listened he was convinced that the Hunter home was the proper place for him to settle down.
At two o’clock Luther started home with some spareribs, wrapped in one of Liza Ann’s clean towels, under his arm. It was early, but nothing more could be done at Silas’s house till the carcasses were cold enough to cut and trim, and, besides, there was an ominous looking bank of dull gray cloud in the northwest. Luther swung along the road toward the west energetically.