They went straight down the road, with its sand almost hard and dry again after a day of blazing sun. Jackson drove at a recklessly fast pace, smoking a cigarette, watching the road that glowed and vanished under the lamp rays. A little mist was rising.
“I had trouble to get away,” said Jackson. “Sis wanted to know where I was goin’. I wouldn’t tell her. Reckon she thought it was a poker game somewhere. Hanna saw me, too, but he didn’t say nothin’.”
They passed a group of buildings, a deserted house and small barn. To the left a dim opening appeared among the pines, apparently a mere trail.
“Here’s where we turn off,” said the driver. “Lucky it’s a sandy road.”
For a few hundred yards they went between pines, mostly scarred with Craig’s turpentine mark. The wheels splashed through a tiny, unbridged creek. The pines gave way to cypress and sycamore and bay trees, tall black shapes whose branches almost met over the roadway. The wheels ran noiselessly on the stoneless ground. The sky seemed black as the earth; there was nothing but the long bars of brilliance cast through the haze by the lamps, falling on unending tree trunks, peeled white trunks, dark trunks overrun with creepers, tall spikes of bear grass, jungles of titi.
Lockwood lost all knowledge of where he was going. The trail wound and curved, but young Power seemed to know it like the palm of his hand. Then the road rose a little. Lockwood caught the ghostly gleam of trees marked with the turpentine gash, and Jackson stopped the car.
“We’re close there now,” he said. “Reckon we’ll leave the car here. Better turn her round, though,” he added. “An’ I’ll leave the engine runnin’. We might want to get away right quick.”
There was a little open ground at one side, and he ran the car off the trail and turned it around. They left it behind a clump of small pines, and groped forward on foot. Within fifty yards the road widened. There was a breath of cooler air. A wide-open space lay ahead. As he advanced he saw that it was the dark expanse of the river.
There was a clear space of perhaps half an acre on the shore, closed on three sides by dense woods, except where the road entered. It was a small, seldom-used landing where cotton and sirup were occasionally shipped, and a square, board warehouse stood on high posts close to the water.
“This here’s where I generally meet ’em,” said Jackson in a low voice. “Reckon Bob’s got his boat not fur away. I’ll give him a blow.”