Page:Cather--One of ours.djvu/113

Rh The roof was a flat thatch, and the weight of the snow had been too much for it. Claude wondered if he should have put on a new thatch that fall; but the old one wasn’t leaky, and had seemed strong enough.

When Dan got back they took turns, one going ahead and throwing out as much snow as he could, the other handling the snow that fell back. After an hour or so of this work, Dan leaned on his shovel.

“We’ll never do it, Claude. Two men couldn’t throw all that snow out in a week. I’m about all in.”

“Well, you can go back to the house and sit by the fire,” Claude called fiercely. He had taken off his coat and was working in his shirt and sweater. The sweat was rolling from his face, his back and arms ached, and his hands, which he couldn’t keep dry, were blistered. There were thirty-seven hogs in the hog-house.

Dan sat down in the hole. “Maybe if I could git a drink of water, I could hold on a-ways,” he said dejectedly.

It was past noon when they got into the shed; a cloud of steam rose, and they heard grunts. They found the pigs all lying in a heap at one end, and pulled the top ones off alive and squealing. Twelve hogs, at the bottom of the pile, had been suffocated. They lay there wet and black in the snow, their bodies warm and smoking, but they were dead; there was no mistaking that.

Mrs. Wheeler, in her husband’s rubber boots and an old overcoat, came down with Mahailey to view the scene of disaster.

“You ought to git right at them hawgs an’ butcher ’em today,” Mahailey called down to the men. She was standing on the edge of the draw, in her patched jacket and ravelled hood.