On a steel-cold January morning with the frozen lake booming and the wind whining along the telephone wires—a morning so cold that the pump in the kitchen was frozen and three inches of ice capped the stock tanks—the Brailsfords rolled out at four to begin butchering. They left the deep warmth of their feather-beds, came down the narrow, precipitous back stairs worn in hollows by years of weary feet.
Early Ann thawed the pump with hot water from the tea kettle; Sarah started the oatmeal, ham and eggs, toast and coffee. Gus scratched a peep-hole in the hoar frost on the window pane and looked out into the ten-below moonlight.
"It's a cold day to butcher," Sarah said. "Mightn't we wait a few days, Stanley?"
"Hank Vetter says he ain't got a pork chop left in his shop."
"I suppose if we must, we must."
The men pulled on arctics, wrapped red mufflers about their necks, drew on their worn dogskin coats and fur caps, and taking milk pails and lanterns went out to the barns. They had no time this morning to carry water for the stock. They chopped holes in the ice on the tanks; drove the animals out to drink. The water froze as it streamed from the beasts' lips. Breath froze in white clouds about the horses' nostrils. The great bull, led by the nose, bellowed and snorted in the lantern light. The horses' hooves rang on the frozen mud of the barnyard.
"It's a rip snorter today," said Stud, coming in from the barns. He warmed his hands over the roaring stove.
Sarah dipped him hot water from the reservoir and poured it into the wash basin. She hung his coat toward the fire to keep it warm, and hastened to serve the breakfast. While they ate they argued the all-important problem of which animals were to die; and by five-thirty they were ready to begin the day's work.
Sarah, steeling herself for the ordeal; Early Ann, who pretended she did not mind slaughtering; Gus, who had a sentimental fondness for every animal on the place; and Stud, for whom this day was the climax of the hog-raising season, trooped down the hill to the slaughter house, started a fire in the stove, and carried water to fill the great iron kettle just outside the slaughter house door.
Stud began whetting his knives on his butcher's steel, making a sound which cut through Sarah's flesh like a blade. He liked to whet knives. And he could not deny it, he liked to slaughter. He had the finest butchering equipment of any farmer on Lake Koshkonong. Sticking, boning, and skinning knives in their rack—the steel blades and brass studs in the rosewood handles gleaming in the lantern light; the biggest butchering kettle in the township; the best pair of hand-wrought gambrels, hung from the finest reel on the strongest hickory axle.