“You shore is a shooter, brudder!” Skeeter exclaimed. “Ef you ain’t gwine our way, us’ll see you later.”
As the three walked back to town, Shin said thoughtfully:
“Skeeter, I think you wus right when you said not to hab no shootin’ scrape about Whiffle. De way I feels now, ef dat Stranger nigger is gwine shoot fer my wife, he kin jes’ take her along ’thout no good objections from me!”
“Looky here, Skeeter,” Vinegar Atts announced, when they got back to the Hen-Scratch saloon. “Somepin is got to be did fer Shin Bone. Us cain’t let dat Stranger run off wid Shin’s wife. It’s ag’in’ conscience an’ religion.”
“How we gwine chase him?” Skeeter asked, glancing pityingly at Shin’s gloomy face. “Skeeter cain’t think up no scheme to apply to him. He don’t ’pear to be skeart to shoot it out wid nobody.”
“Dar is somepin or yuther dat eve’y nigger in de worl’ is skeart of, fellers,” Vinegar declared. “Less find out whut dat coon’s pertickler skeer is, an’ put it on him.”
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.