Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters

Chapter 335: Chapter 21: The Blacksmith and the Roast Pig_3

Winters saw an amusing scene: Mrs. Mitchell and her little daughter were driving a horse cart laden with iron-hooped barrels. It seemed they were on their way to deliver drinks to the people working in the tobacco fields.

Everyone else was busy, and the two ladies did not appear to be skilled at driving horses.

The heavy draft horse, with thick skin and flesh, was unabashedly nibbling the wheat in the roadside fields, utterly indifferent to the whip’s lashes from Mrs. Mitchell and her daughter and not showing the slightest intention to move forward.

Seeing this, Winters immediately went forward to help. He wasn’t skilled at driving either, but he could manage to lead the horse by the bridle and move forward.

When they reached the tobacco fields, Mitchell’s coachman saw the lieutenant leading the horse and quickly ran over to take over from Winters.

Mrs. Mitchell smiled in thanks to Winters, while Miss Mitchell nearly buried her face in her mother’s arm.

Seeing everyone working hard on the estate, Winters suddenly felt a twinge of shame.

“I’ll help out with the work, but you must remember to pay me,” Winters joked.@@novelbin@@

“I actually have a favor to ask of you,” Mrs. Mitchell said with a smile: “Mr. Mitchell is on the west side of the smokehouse. Could you please go and assist him? He could use a reliable helping hand.”

“Of course, ma’am,” Winters mounted Redmane and nodded in acknowledgment, then galloped towards the smokehouse.

Before he even arrived, Winters understood what was happening ahead.

A tempting aroma wafted through the air; it was the smell of roasting meat.

A few dozen meters west of the smokehouse, Gerard and his old Dusack buddies were busy at work.

The ground was covered with several huge arched wooden covers, with the smell and smoke seeping out through the slits in the boards.

No sooner had Winters seen the construction underneath an uncovered lid: beneath the wooden cover was a pit nearly a meter deep, lined with stones on its walls, and its bottom filled with wood and charcoal fires—it looked like a sort of makeshift oven.

Seeing Winters approach, Gerard waved at him happily, “Come on over! Give us a hand!”

Only when Winters reached Gerard did he understand why such a big “oven” was needed—because it was meant to roast an entire pig at once.

The whole pig, split from snout to tail, lay splayed on an iron frame, looking quite peaceful.

Gerard filled the pit with charcoal and wood, and it took the combined strength of six men to lift the pig halves and iron frame onto the flames and then cover it.

From a distance, pig squeals could be heard. Glancing at the traces of blood on the grass and the pig offal in wooden basins, Winters realized they were slaughtering and roasting the pigs right there.

He counted six smoking pits already on the ground, and at the makeshift pigpen not far away, there were at least twice as many porkers.

He asked in surprise, “Aren’t we roasting too many at once?”

“If you invite folks over to work, you’ve got to feed them well,” Gerard said with a smile all over his face.

Old Sergei was there too, laughing: “Mitchell’s roast pig is famous far and wide. Not just the captain’s family, but workers from other families too, they’ll all come running when they smell it, abandoning their work.”

“Tobacco harvest season is a rare festival,” another familiar voice reached Winters’s ears: “Only at this time of the year do we have enough fuel and time to roast whole pigs. Boy, you’re in for a treat; who knows when you’ll have such a feast again!”

“How come you’re here too?” Winters’s eyes widened as he saw the old mendicant monk.

“Came for the meat,” the monk answered simply.

“Why didn’t I see you helping to lift the frame just now?”

Monk Reed replied matter-of-factly, “Well, I can’t lift it, can I?”

“Alright then, I’ve got to go take a nap,” Old Sergei yawned: “I’ll come back later to relieve you.”

With that, Old Sergei ran off to a nearby flat spot and lay down.

“Take a nap?” Winters had never seen such preparation: “How long do we have to roast this for?”

Gerard scooped up a cup of sweet wine from a barrel next to him and handed it to the lieutenant: “About ten hours or so.”

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