There was no answer to this inquiry, and the three sat silent for a long time, smoking their pipes in gloomy meditation. At last Vinegar sprang to his feet with a yell.
“I got it!” he howled. “A nigger is skeart of anything dat he don’t know nothin’ about. Dead folks, pest-houses, ha’nts, bein’ all by yo’ lonely in de dark, hospitals—niggers is skeart of all dem things, because us don’t know nothin’ about ’em. You cain’t ax none of dem things a decent question an’ git a respeckful respondence.”
“Whut is dat Stranger nigger igernunt about?” Shin asked, his eyes gleaming with hope.
“Pigs!” Vinegar howled. “Is you niggers done fergot dat Marse Tom pulls off his big pig drive to-morrer?”
“Dat don’t he’p us none,” Skeeter said disdainfully.
“It do!” Vinegar declared. “Us’ll git Marse Tom to put dat exput-shootin’ nigger at de shootin’-post, an’ when he sees dem wild pigs swoopin’ down on him, he’ll jes’ nachelly sprout a couple o’ feathers an’ fly away from dar. Dem hawgs will run him plumb to de Gulf of Mexico.”
“I gitcher!” Skeeter exclaimed. “Yo’ mind is suttinly popped off a noble idear. Less go see Marse Tom.”
The most interesting event of the year in Tickfall is the wild-hog hunt. Gaitskill owned the Little Moccasin Swamp, and he had let hundreds of hogs run wild in that jungle and shift for themselves. They lived on the mast and traversed the forest in bands of a hundred or more. They never fattened, being of the razorback variety; but they furnished plenty of cheap pork every year for the hundreds of negroes employed on the Gaitskill plantations.
The weather was cool, and the time had come for the fall drive. There had been no rain for months, the swamp was dry underfoot, and a great picnic crowd assembled from all over the Parish.
Hundreds of men and hundreds of dogs spread out across the swamp, fan-shape, making every sort of a noise that would drive the hogs before them to a point near the Gaitskill hog camp. Here Little Moccasin Lake upon one side and Alligator Lake upon the other were divided by a narrow ridge of land, where the slaughter of the animals would take place.