Page:Weeds (1923).pdf/244

 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.

She scowled darkly at the tub, her black brows drawing together. The bluish viscera, bubbling up in innumerable little rounded blobs, filled it almost to overflowing. Bloody fragments emerged along with the masses of intestines. The outside of the tub was daubed and streaked with blood. An unspeakable stench rose from it, mingled with the stale heat of the kitchen and grew every moment denser, more nauseating, more unbearable. She gagged and reeled. Then, with a quick movement of sudden determination, she threw on an old coat of Jerry's that hung beside the door and a faded cap that she wore when she milked or chored about the yard, and went out, slamming the door sharply behind her.

Going swiftly through the yard, looking neither to right nor to left, she passed the two men.

"Where you a-goin', Judy?" Jerry called after her in surprise.