"And no corn for the big pigs," said Cassowary presently. "I'll have to go to the grain-room again. Dad will dock Big Chief's weekly pocket money for this. I hope he won't leave him a cent."
"I'd hate to kill one of those feasting brown things," said Dallas. "They do seem to enjoy life so much."
"Kill them!" squealed Cassowary. "I'd like to see you try. They're never killed. They're sold to stockmen--good stockmen. Big Chief found one farmer was going to ring the snout of London Fog there, and he howled so that Dad had to call off the sale."
"To prevent their rooting. This farmer lived in a good fat farming country. Up here it's wild and poor land for farms. We use the pigs to clear fields for grain."
"They root the soil from around stumps and rocks. The men either pile up the rocks or put them in a crusher to make good roadbeds."
"That's a fine road along the lake," said Dallas.
"Yes, because Dad believes that good roads open up a country. He says he wishes his crusher would break enough rocks to make a highway to the North Pole."
"Your Dad is a perfectly splendid man," said Dallas enthusiastically.
"Isn't he!" said the girl. Then she lowered her voice and put her head close to the boy's. "I cry myself to sleep some nights thinking what would I do if Dad died."
"This seems a safe sort of a place," said Dallas consolingly.
"It is and it isn't. One day he fell from a tree and hurt his back. He's too bold."
My young master's mind took a youthful skip. "I say," he observed, "you tell me you don't kill pigs, but you must kill sheep. I saw a skin."
"Mr. Talker did it. That was Mrs. Goodbody. We didn't eat her. She was sold. Dad gets our meat from across the lake. We couldn't eat our friends. Mrs. Goodbody didn't know what was happening to her. Mr. Talker held out some salt. She followed him to the little electric house. She licked the salt, then she just fell down peacefully. There's some new way of killing sheep. I don't know what it is."
"Of course," said Dallas uneasily, "we all have to die."
"Dad says to live well and not fuss about death and when our time comes he says he hopes we'll all go as comfortably as our animals do. It isn't the death that's bad, Cousin. It's the teasing and torturing before death."