Chapter 480

"Pa! Pa! Something terrible's happened!" Walter's third son Nathaniel stumbled into the yard, his face ashen.

Old Walter was organizing farming tools when the shout made him fumble his hoe. It clattered to the ground. His third son had always been steady—if he was this panicked, disaster had struck.

"What is it?" Walter's heart pounded.

"The pigs—all collapsed in the pen!" Nathaniel stamped his feet. "Foaming at the mouth, they're dying!"

Walter's vision darkened. Those forty hogs were their family's entire hope! Two more months and they'd be ready for market, each weighing at least two hundred pounds. After losing money all year to livestock illnesses, this batch was supposed to recoup their losses.

"Move!" Walter grabbed the medicine kit and ran to the pen.

Silence. Forty hogs lay motionless, white foam dripping from their mouths. Walter's stomach clenched—he knew these symptoms too well. Swine fever.

"Boil the herbs!" His voice shook. Their ancestral remedy had cured countless pig ailments, but this time, doubt gnawed at him.

The medicine did nothing. By noon, over a dozen hogs had died. Walter crouched outside the pen, fingernails digging into his palms.

"Pa...should we call the veterinary station?" Nathaniel ventured.

"Nonsense!" Walter lurched upright. "Those vaccines cost two dollars per dose—how much medicine could we buy with that?" But as another hog stiffened, his throat tightened. "Go...fetch them."

The young vet arrived swiftly but shook his head after examination. "Too late. They're beyond saving."

Walter slumped at the pen's entrance, watching the last hog take its final breath. Forty hogs—gone. He pounded the dirt, mud cramming under his nails.

A whole year's labor—wasted.