“Who? Me! Mas’ Rafe, you hu’t me feelin’s fuh talk ’bout bait dese tuckrey wid rice! Weh me fuh git rice? Dese tuckrey nebbuh see uh rice sence dem bawn!”
“How did the rice get in their crops?”
“Dem got rice een dem craw? Mas’ Rafe, dem tuckrey mus’be bin spang Willtown dis mawnin’ fuh use een Baa’nwell’ ricefiel’, en’ full dem craw, en’ attuh dat dem come six mile to de bline’ weh uh kill’um.”
“But it is only five miles from Willtown to Beaver Dam, Sabey, and six miles to the Stackyard, where you didn’t kill the turkeys!”
Completely cornered, Sabey grinned. “Mas’ Rafe, you sho’ hab uh good onduhstan’ fuh know nigguh! Nigguh ent fuh fool you! No, suh!”
And then the former slaveholder bought the game shot on his own land and baited with his own grain, from the freedman who had stolen both, which is not infrequently the way of former slave-holders in dealing with former slaves.
THE GATOR HUNTER
Crook-legged, pumpkin-colored, yellow-wooled, green-eyed Sabey—the mightiest turkey hunter on Pon Pon—sat in the midsummer sunshine at his cabin door and talked, partly to himself and partly to his black wife, Bess, who busied herself within. A protracted drought was over the land, and Sabey’s summer harvest was at hand. Hunting turkeys and ducks in the winter, he was equally successful in his summer quest for the much-esteemed fresh water terrapins which abounded in the backwaters and the sluggish lily-covered canals that intersected the abandoned inland ricefields. They found a ready market on the plantations or at the railway station, whence they were shipped to Charleston, to appear on the tables of her discriminating gourmets in the form of highly spiced soups and stews. These big terrapins were frequently offered for sale by negroes who surprised the slow creatures while crossing the road or path on their way from one canal or pond to another, or trapped them in some shallow water hole. A few negroes even hunted them occasionally, the only equipment necessary being an empty crocus bag and a pair of legs—naked or trousered—with bare feet attached. Sneaking as close as possible to the floating log on which the terrapins sunned themselves, the hunter crept up until they became alarmed and slid off into the water, when he jumped in after them, and if the water was not more than three or four feet deep he could usually locate them by feeling about on the bottom near the log with his bare feet, when he would bob his head and his hands under, and the prize would go into the sack hung about his neck. But Sabey followed successfully, not only the ordinary methods of capture, but during dry spells adopted the hazardous expedient of going down into the alligator holes after them. As Prairie dogs, owls and rattlesnakes live together in the same burrows on the Western plains, terrapins are always found in alligator holes with their hosts in dry spells when the water is low, and he who would secure them must either get the alligator out first, or go down into the hole with him—one a difficult, the other a dangerous, adventure.
In the cruel midsummer droughts that sometimes occurred in the low-country, even the wet savannas and backwaters were parched to desert dryness. The muddy bottoms, ordinarily covered with water, even the shallower canals and ditches, sun-baked and cracked open, were abandoned by the life that sometime swam or waded in the waters now receded. Only the deeper places held water, and these roiled with the teeming fish and eels and terrapins that cluttered up the muddy pools. Crane and heron—greater and lesser—flew squawking overhead, or stalked along the marges taking heavy toll of their helpless prey, while in the mud round about countless tracks of otter, mink and raccoon showed that, like lions at the African water holes, these lesser creatures, too, held nightly carnival at the water. Now came the human spoilers—negroes with “jampots” or “churnpots”—cylindrical contrivances about fifteen inches in diameter by thirty inches in height, made of canes tied together with hickory bark thongs, and looking like tall, bottomless waste-baskets. Wading in the shallow waters, the fisherman holds his jampot by the upper rim with both hands, churning the water in front of him. Apprised by splash or flutter that a fish has been trapped, he reaches one hand into the cage, withdraws his catch, which he bestows in a bag hung about his neck, and “churns” again. When conditions were favorable for this form of fishing, the negroes, in the years immediately following the war, caught not only the coarse mudfish and “cats” which they so affect, but destroyed also countless thousands of trout and bream and other fine food fish. In Sabey’s time, almost every other negro in the well-watered districts owned a jampot, and the making of this was an important side line of the old plantation chair and basket-makers, but, synchronously perhaps with the destruction of the fish, the art, or the practice, of “churning” passed away, and it is seldom heard of now.
Now that a “hebby dry drought” was on, Sabey licked his chaps in pleasant anticipation. No rain was in prospect. The roaring of alligators is regarded by low-country weather sharps as a sign of coming rain, but, although the old bulls had bellowed lustily at dawn on several consecutive mornings, the sun still blazed from a cloudless sky and the heat waves danced and shimmered in the breathless air, giving point to the saw that in a drought all signs fail, which was once strikingly illustrated by an old-time plantation driver, whose master, needing rain, drew comfort from the persistent bellowing of the alligators. “Did you hear those ’gators this morning, Scipio? That should bring rain.”