Several long deep gashes
on one of the pigs showed where a panther had thrust in his paw by a
crack and tried to seize a victim.
But my story is only half told.
* * * * *
An old adage says, "It is a poor rule that won't work both ways;" and so
thought Jacob. He resolved in the morning, that if the creatures should
come back the next night, as they would be quite apt to do, he would
turn the tables and try to teach them the pleasure of being imprisoned
in a pig-sty.
Anybody who has lived in a region infested by carnivorous animals, knows
how they prowl around the settler's cabin the night after any fat
animal, cattle or swine is killed, for the meat. They snuff the blood
from afar in the forest, and hasten to the place to have a tooth, or a
paw, in the division of the spoils. Knowing this peculiarity of
panthers, Jacob and Polly held a consultation, and as it was about time
in the autumn to make pork of the pigs, they decided to perform that
work during the day. The scent of blood would serve as a double
inducement for his visitors to return.
So, in the afternoon, the task was done, the pen and vicinity being the
scene of the slaughter, and all the bloody tidbits placed inside the
door. Every such thing was arranged to attract the animals into the sty
if possible. The meat was placed safely in the garret of the house.
The door of the pen was so constructed as to open and shut something
like the lower sash of a window, by sliding up and down, a peg holding
it open by day and closed by night.
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