“Been over to the pond lately, Josh?”
“Who, me? No, suh, you don’t ketch dis heah niggah hangin’ roun’ deah. Dat eah place hanted, boss, sho nuf hanted. Dey tell me you kin put a log in de watah deah and see it ’solve smack befo’ yo’ eyes.” And his own eyes rolled strangely and showed a broad expanse of white.
“Sounds bad,” said Mr. Graham, laughing as he turned to ride away. “No danger of his stealing any logs out of there,” he remarked to Scott when they were out of hearing. “Looked easy enough to see him cut that streak, didn’t it? Try it yourself once. It would take you ten minutes and then it would look like beaver work. That man has to make the rounds of his crop every week; over three thousand streaks a day.”
Just twenty men were putting two streaks a week over each one of those two hundred thousand cups. It seemed marvelous to Scott. In another place he saw a man with a large wooden bucket and a paddle going from tree to tree, emptying the cups. He emptied his bucket into barrels beside the road and a wagon collected the barrels. Scott could not help thinking what a glorious fire there would be if it ever got started in all that resin.
Before long they came in sight of a group of rough board buildings strung along the road like the main street of a small town.
“That,” Mr. Graham explained, “is the still. The darkies and their families live in those little board shacks pretty much as they used to in slavery days. The company keeps a store here for them, the superintendent lives in that house next to the store and the still is down at the other end of the street. It’s quite a town. They will use this camp for their turpentine operations for thirteen years and then log for three years more.”
Slovenly negro women, many of the older ones smoking pipes, gazed at them from the doorways, and shiny black pickaninnies rolled the whites of their eyes in awed attention as they passed. Near the store they met Mr. Roberts, the superintendent, coming home to dinner. He acknowledged Scott’s introduction very effusively and promptly invited them both in to dinner. His wife was of the cracker type and looked old at thirty-five.
In spite of the man’s cordiality Scott did not like his looks. He had a sallow, malarial complexion, shifty eyes and loose-knit, gangling build. There was a hard, cunning look about his mouth, and he wore a large revolver very conspicuously on his belt. Scott had the feeling that he was being very narrowly watched, but whenever he looked at Mr. Roberts he found him deeply absorbed in something else. They finished their salt pork, hominy and grease-soaked beet greens in comparative silence.
“Reckon maybe you’d like to see the still if you are new to these parts,” Mr. Roberts remarked to Scott.
“Yes,” Mr. Graham answered for him, “we both want to see it. I never get tired of hearing that old still growl.”