Chapter 14 Summary

The Peck family does not have enough food to eat for the winter, partly because the apple crop was bad and partly because Papa cannot hunt effectively because he doesn't own a proper deer rifle. Papa, despite his ill health, has sat outside in the cold and even the rain, waiting for a deer to pass by, but it has not happened. When Pinky never comes into estrus, much less gestates a litter of pigs, the family knows what has to be done, even though it is not spoken aloud until one Saturday morning, when Papa tells Robert that they should go "get it done."

Papa readies the tools and Robert fetches Pinky out of her pen. Neither has had much appetite for their breakfast earlier. Even at the last moment, Robert betrays his boyishness by wishing that something could happen to save...