Page:Scarlet Sister Mary (1928).pdf/194

 enough for outside needs were cursed with the most terrible pest the plantation had ever known. The cotton stalks grew taller than they ever had done, their leaves stayed green through the worst droughts, but they made no fruit for they fed multitudes of boll-weevils from the first warm days of the spring until a killing frost came. Then the moss on the old oak trees made warm pleasant beds to keep the pests safe through the winter.

Some people called the creatures boll-weevils, others called them boll-evils, some people thought God made them to turn the thought of people to Him, others thought Satan had sent them; but no matter who was right, the wicked things destroyed every lock of cotton year after year and no man or charm or conjure could rule them.

The white landowners sent poison machines to scatter poison dust over the fields. Night after night the strange things droned and whined spreading their poison clouds, but the rain always came and washed the fields clean and fresh again. It must have been that the weevils could eat poison and thrive. The stuff that was meant to kill them seemed to make them grow fatter and stronger than ever. Cotton's time was out. In the fall, competition had always been keen and people had asked each other, "How many