A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck Page A

I was still holding in my arms. “You tried that bitch on weasel yet?”
    “No. But I hear you got one.”
    “A big one,” Papa said. “Mean as sin.”
    “Papa,” I said, “why do folks weasel a dog? Is it for the sport of it?”
    “No,” Papa said, “there’s earthy reason. ’Cause once you weasel that dog, that dog’ll hate weasels until her last breath. She’ll always know when there’s one around and she’ll track it to its hole, dig it out, and tear it up. A man who keeps a hen house got to have a good weasel dog.”
    “That’s the truth of it,” Ira said. “Every weasel in the county will keep wide of my little Hussy.”
    When the three of us walked into the tackroom I was still carrying Hussy. Soon as we got there, that burlap jumped around like it was loco. And I could feel Ira’s little terrier shaking in my arms. Just like she knew what was going to happen, and what she’d got to do to stay alive. She was whining, too. Just loud enough to hear.
    “I got an idea she’ll make a good weasel dog,” Ira said.
    “We’ll see,” said Papa.
    He picked the sack off its peg. Inside, the weasel was hissing and spitting. He couldn’t see a dog, and she couldn’t see him. But they knew. They sure knew of each other.
    “I’ll get a barrel,” I said. Handing the bitch to Ira, I ran up to the cellar where there was a good size apple barrel that was empty and waiting for this year’s orchard. It had a wooden lid on it which made it perfect for what we wanted it for. I set the barrel on its side. Holding the lid under one arm, I rolled the barrel down to where the men were waiting. Ira was holding his terrier, and Papa had the neck of the burlap bag tight in his hand. I stood the barrel up on its end, mouth open, and holding the lid ready.
    “In you go, Hussy,” Ira said, placing his little bitch inside the barrel. “You give him what for.”
    She sure was shaking, that dog. It made the whole barrel sort of tremble. Papa came forward with the sack.
    “Is your lid ready?” he said to me.
    “All set.”
    “Soon’s I drop him from the sack, you lid that barrel and keep it lidded, hear?”
    “Yes, Papa.”
    Without more ado, Papa just emptied the sack. He poured the weasel right down inside the barrelon top of the dog. I slammed the lid into place. I could hardly hold it on, and Ira come over to keep the barrel upright. Papa, too.
    We heard a lot of scratching and chasing and biting inside the dark of that barrel. The dog was bigger, but the weasel sure had the darkness on his side. To be honest, I thought a fight between a dog and a weasel was going to be a real excitement. But I hated every second of it. The whole thing seemed senseless to me and I was mad at myself for standing there to hold down the barrel lid. I even felt the shame of being a part of it. From the look on Papa’s face I could see that maybe he wasn’t enjoying it so much either.
    At last all the noise stopped. There wasn’t a sound. Papa nodded to me, and I slipped the lid a crack, just enough to let some light in so we could look down inside. Then we heard the dog cry. It was a whine that I will always remember, the kind of sound that you hear but never want to hear again.
    Ira pulled the lid of the barrel away and looked inside. The weasel was dead. Torn apart into small pieces of fur, bones, and bloody meat. There was blood all over the inside of that barrel, from top to bottom. The dog was alive, but not much more. One of her ears was about tore off and she was wet with blood. She just danced her little feet, splattering thepool of blood in the bottom of the barrel. And making that sound in her throat that almost begged someone to end her misery.
    Ira reached down to lift her out of the barrel. As he picked her up, her teeth bared and she ripped open his hand. He gave out a yell and dropped her on the ground. One of her front paws was chewed up so bad, it wasn’t even a paw anymore. All of the bones in that foot must