James decided his brothers could have done worse, even if they had gone a long way from home to find their wives. But despite their example, he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to marry. He might get somebody as easily dissatisfied as Annie and spend the rest of his life looking for reasons not to go home.

Though the families worked together in daytime during the harvest, they went to their own homes at night, for they had cows to milk, chickens to tend, and hogs to feed. Andrew and James had caught up several of Andrew’s free-running pigs from the woods and penned them to fatten on corn and whatever minor leavings the kitchen table might yield. Come winter’s cold, the pigs would be converted into hams, bacon, and sausage. The hens ran free in the daytime, but at night they roosted within a tall picket enclosure as varmint-proof as Andrew had been able to make it. There were plenty of four-legged predators around which had a taste for chickens, or whatever else they could catch.

It was the two-legged variety that started the trouble for James. One starry night he spread his blankets as usual some distance from the house. The black dog preferred the children’s company in the daytime, but when they were put to bed in the cabin at night, the animal would join James, lying down beside him. The dog was company of sorts, though given to getting up in the night and running around a while, barking at any varmints he found prowling. When he came back he would often lie there and chew noisily on a bone he had preserved for that purpose until James would curtly tell him to go to sleep.

This night a low growl awakened James. “Shut up, dog,” he said irritably. But the dog kept growling until James decided there was something different in his manner this time. A wolf, maybe, or even a bear. James reached for the long rifle he kept just beneath the edge of the blanket to protect it from morning’s dew. He pushed to his bare feet and felt around for his boots. The dog moved out away from him a little, back arched, the growl coming from deep in the throat.

From down at the hog pen, James heard a sudden squealing. Nothing put up a noise like a pig caught and unable to break away. It had to be something bigger than a raccoon or even a coyote to grab hold of a half-grown pig, he thought. In his underwear, he held the rifle against the poor light of a quarter moon and primed it. Then he set off in a trot toward the sound of the squealing.

He saw a dark form coming out over the top rail of the hog pen and knew immediately that this was no wolf or bear. This was a man, holding a squealing, kicking pig in his arms while he broke into a run.