Since I didn’t press him, he was full of a strange tale about the Negroes left by Skene on his place: how they seemed to be entirely without brains, knowing nothing and understanding nothing when he had sought their help in finding axes and other tools. Zelph, said Nathaniel, had sat down with a few of them, and played with his dice, and shown them how to play. They had played for hours. Zelph had lost nearly all his money. Then, suddenly and surprisingly, he had won it back, together with two axes which Skene’s Negroes had unearthed from beneath their cabin floors.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Nathaniel concluded, “if those black men know more than they pretend to know. I wouldn’t wonder but what, if you and Steven Nason went and talked to ’em, we might find they had more than axes hidden away.”

It takes a Negro, I knew, to understand a Negro. “Zelph,” I said, “if those black men of Skene’s have tools, we need ’em. You quit work right now and go to see ’em. I’ll give you till tomorrow night to get all their tools. If you don’t get ’em, we’ll tear down their cabins and dig up the floors.”

Zelph fished his dice from his pocket, worked them tenderly in one black paw: then dropped them deftly onto a flattened pink palm. “Nick!” he said. The dice showed a five and two—seven. Zelph laughed in a way that presaged ill for the belongings of Skene’s Negroes.

Cap Huff, smelling strongly of rum, peered over Zelph’s shoulder. “You can’t do that again,” he said.

Zelph closed his paw over the dice. “How much you bet I can’t?”

“I bet you a million dollars you can’t.”

“How much real money?” Zelph persisted.

“How much?” Cap asked. “Why, ten dollars Continental.”

Zelph shook his head. “Ten dollars Continental ain’t worth throwing for.” He again dropped the dice into his outspread palm. They showed a six and a one—another seven.

Cap watched Zelph depart, his elbows thrust well out, after the manner of Negroes when they feel important. “By God,” he said, “it ain’t natural, the way those things act! I’ll bet he does something to ’em, and I got to find out what!”

… Cap had chosen one of Skene’s horse-sheds for our living quarters. He had brought hay from the barn and spread it on the floor, and in one corner he had buried his keg of rum.

The horse-sheds faced the south and were open to that side, the arched openings set off with uprights. Thus they were airy and cool on hot nights; and we could look out at our cook-fire from our bunks, which we built of logs along the sides and back, and filled with balsam tips.