“Spects dey’s scared, Mr. Joe. Scared of spirits, I reckon.”
“Yes, suh, capt’n!” said another, gaining courage to speak out. “Some of our boys was down yere one night huntin’ ’possums, an’ dey seed mighty queer things—yessuh, powerful queer. Dere was queer lights movin’ round dis way, dat way, an’ people travelin’ ’bout. But, capt’n, dem waren’t no real lights, an’ dem waren’t no real human men.”
“Everybody knows dat ol’ Marshall place is full of ha’nts!” another chipper muttered.
“What nonsense!” cried Joe. “Come, let’s see where the cups were robbed.”
They did not have to go far. From one of the first pines in the orchard the cup was missing. In its place, a red cord with a piece of black cloth and a severed chicken’s head hanging from it had been tied around the tree.
“What foolishness is this?” exclaimed Joe angrily, tearing down the mysterious red decoration.
None of the men replied. They shuffled their feet and looked stealthily at one another. Even Sam looked furtive. No white man ever quite fathoms a negro’s superstition. What the red string meant the turpentine workers did not know themselves, but it stirred in them dim, barbaric ideas of voodoo and conjuring, and they were desperately afraid of it.
“Some one’s been trying to scare you,” said Joe. “Ghosts don’t steal gum, do they? Spirits! Spirits of turpentine, I reckon!”
It was a rather feeble joke, but a little joke goes a long way with negroes, and they all laughed uproariously. They brightened up at once, and under the protection of the white man’s presence, they ventured into the woods. For some distance Joe found no more cups missing; but as he rode on he began to find more and more robbed trees, and soon he came to a tract where hardly a cup remained. There were no more red strings, however.
The theft of the gum was not very important, but the loss of the galvanized cups was a much more serious matter. So many of Burnam’s cups had been crushed in the wreck of the storm that the supply of extra ones was low. They were expensive now, and, worse still, it would take a week or two to get a fresh shipment.