"Fill her up agin, Judy--not full, jes half," Jerry called back, as he hurried away after bringing back the empty wash boiler.
She threw an old jacket over her shoulders and went out to the well for water. Coming back into the stuffy heat of the kitchen from the fresh, frosty air, the place seemed more foul and stinking than ever. Her stomach heaved tumultuously. Her knees trembled and she sank for a few moments into the old rocking chair.
Through the window she could see the men sousing the hog up and down in the scalding barrel, pulling him half way out, turning him a little and plunging him back again. The steam from the hot water rose up into the frosty air like a cloud of white smoke.
The baby began to cry and she got up wearily and warmed some milk for him, then crumbled a corn cake into it and fed it to him from a spoon. Having put him into dry diapers, she set him back on the quilt and went again to her washing.
The second hog and the third were soon killed, scraped, hung up, and disemboweled. Joe was a hog butcher of much experience and prided himself upon the quickness and neatness with which he could do the work. The three carcasses hung with stiffly spraddled hind legs from the three gibbets, trim, bright, and spotlessly clean against the dun-colored frowsiness of the yard. Snap, puffed up with the pride and arrogance of butchering day, stalked about the carcasses and would not let even a hen approach the enticing little pools of blood that dripped from their noses. When the cat attempted to sniff delicately at one of them, he ran her off onto the nearest fence; and when Joe Barnaby's dog tried to sidle up unobtrusively, he flew at him with bristling hair. Ominous growls alternated with sharp, excited barks.
Suddenly the kitchen door was flung open letting in a cold draught of fresh air, and Joe and Jerry, their coats and overalls streaked with blood, appeared bearing between them a galvanized iron tub full of steaming pig guts. They set the tub down in the middle of the floor with a heavy thump and made for the door.
"You'd better run 'em through quick, Judy, afore they git cold. An' I think there's one that's cut into. Watch out fer it," Jerry called back. He was already outside.