The riders were out of sight now, but he continued down the road almost unconsciously, deep in plans. He took no notice of how far he had walked, until he felt planks resounding hollowly under his feet. He had come to a bridge, an immensely long bridge of timber, crossing a small creek bordered by dense swamp. He crossed the bridge and peceived a road, apparently not greatly in use, that led away to the left into the woods.
He remembered Mr. Ferrell’s directions. This must be the trail to the turpentine camp, and now that he had come so far he determined to go on and interview Charley Craig. A job in the pine woods would exactly suit his purposes in every way just then, and he needed the wages it would earn. This was no moment to break in on his gold reserve.
He turned down the road to the left, which curved off uncertainly among the pines. The ground was marked here and there by the ruts of heavy wagons; he detected also the corrugated imprint of a motor’s tire, and within a few rods he began to see traces of the turpentine industry.
The ground was rising from the creek swamp into pine land, grown with pines of all sizes, from bushy shrubs to immense trunks rising arrow-straight and without a branch to the feathery, palmlike crest a hundred feet from the earth. Nearly every pine of more than eight inches in diameter had a great slash of bark chipped from one side, showing the bare wood smeared and frosted with drops of gum, oozing, dripping, or crystallized into solid white or bluish masses, looking livid and diseased. At the lower edge of this slash a tin gutter was fixed, collecting the slow ooze of the gum, and leading it into a large tin cup that hung from a hook.
All this was very familiar to Lockwood, and he regarded it with something of an expert eye. Under the stimulus of the hot weather the gum was flowing freely. Many of the cups were nearly full of the intensely sticky, whitish mass that exhaled a sharp, wholesome odor. Everywhere he looked the trees had been turpentined; the camp was evidently running at full blast; and a little way farther he came upon a negro “chipper” who was taking off a fresh slice of the bark with his razor-edged tool like a light adze.
The road wound about through the pines and crossed a gallberry flat. He heard voices and came out into the clearing where the camp itself was built.
There were thirty or forty negro families living in the camp, and women and children swarmed about the cabins, staring at the stranger. Lockwood approached the still—a huge brick furnace with a built-in copper retort, sheltered by a corrugated iron roof and topped by a tall chimney. Lumps of rosin littered the earth; empty and full rosin barrels stood everywhere; there was a powerful smell of pine and tar and turpentine, but the still was not working that day.
No white man was in sight, but he picked out a house of superior quality, painted green and with curtained windows, which must be the quarters either of Craig himself or of the foreman. Close to it stood a long, low building, much resembling the Atha post office, which was undoubtedly the commissary store. This place is always the real center of a turpentine camp, and Lockwood went in to make inquiries.
A young man without coat or vest, smoking a cigarette, greeted the visitor with lazy affability. Lockwood inquired for the chief.
“He’s just now come in,” said the clerk, and he knocked at the door of the inner office, and then opened it.