Cudjoe’s truck was parked on a slight incline, and down below that incline was a deep gully where the timber had been cut, but since that time the underbrush had grown up to what looked like higher than my head.
“We gonna make this truck disappear,” Poudlum said as he kicked the block of wood out from under the front tire.
I unwound the wire holding the driver’s side door and opened it so that Poudlum could slide inside and seat himself under the wheel. As soon as he did this, he said, “I’m gonna knock it out of gear.”
“You better jump out real quick as soon as you do,” I told him.
“I will,” he said as he depressed the clutch and shifted the gear into neutral, and then immediately jumped clear of the truck.
We stood there expecting it to go crashing down into the gully, but it didn’t move.
“We got to give it a little push,” I said.
We went behind the truck and got our hands underneath the bumper, leaned into it, pushed hard, and felt it begin to slowly move. Then it pulled away from us on its own as gravity took over.
It was an awesome sight as the truck gathered speed and rumbled down the incline, and then crashed into the bottom of the gully where it was swallowed up by bushes and saplings. When it came to rest the only thing visible was the very top of the cab.
“Quick!” Poudlum said. “We got to break the top out of some bushes, cover up these tracks and then throw them on top of the cab so it can’t be seen.”
When we finished, it was as if the truck had truly disappeared. The tire tracks ended abruptly, and the truck was just gone.
“What now?” I asked.
“We got to hide and wait on him,” Poudlum answered.
“What you think he’ll do?”
“He’s gonna be bumfuzzled, that’s for sure. He’ll probably think Miss Lucretia done used some voodoo to make his truck disappear, but I ain’t got no idea what he’ll do. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
“You think he’ll try to get away on foot?”
“I ’spect he will, and if he does, we just gonna have to follow him. Come on, let’s get outta sight. He ought to be showing up anytime!”
We concealed ourselves behind a big fallen pine tree that looked like maybe a storm had blown it down. It was directly across the logging road from where the truck had been parked and was resting on some broken limbs so that we could lay on our bellies and peek from underneath it.
We didn’t have to wait long before we saw Cudjoe emerge from the woods.
“This is gonna be good!” Poudlum whispered to me.
As we observed, he stopped a few feet from where the truck had been with a dazed and confused look on his face. After a moment or two he took off his pack, unslung our rifles, and also, to our relief, the pouch of gold, and rested them all on the ground.
He wiped the sweat from his face with his shirt sleeve; then he put his hands on his hips and turned in a complete circle real slow like he was attempting to get his bearings.
From underneath the fallen tree, we heard his words as he began to speak to himself, saying, “I know I left my truck here. I knows for sure I parked it right here.”
I could hear the desperation and the disbelief in his voice, when he said, “I shore does hope dey ain’t no voodoo going on here!”
“I told you he believed in it,” Poudlum whispered as Cudjoe finally went over to where his tire tracks ended. As he bent over to examine them, he said, “Uh huh, dey is definitely some voodoo involved wid dis situation! Auntie Lucretia done had some demon swallow up my truck and now I ain’t never gonna get outta here wid dis big sack of gold!
“Oh, Lawd, what to do, what to do?” he moaned as he sat down on the ground and held his head in his hands.
I almost felt sorry for him, but then I remembered how he had abandoned us in the panther pit, and that feeling quickly dissipated.
“Should have tied ’em all up,” Cudjoe continued to himself. “Dey probably done got to Mister Autrey’s place by now, and folks will be trying to run me down soon. What I gots to do is hightail it outta here, but I can’t do dat carrying all dis stuff. Ain’t worried ’bout dese,” he said as he tossed his pack containing the skins, and then our rifles, back into the edge of the woods.
“I can’t run wid dis heavy sack of gold, neither. Got to find somewhere to hide it and come back for it later.”
Then he picked up the pouch with the gold inside of it and looked around in desperation for a safe hiding place.
We watched as his eyes settled on the gulley which had swallowed up his truck. He made a decision, swung the pouch back, pushed off with his back foot and slung the bag with all his might.
The pouch arched high into the air and began to descend toward the center of the gully.
Cudjoe had turned to begin his escape an instant before the bag ripped through the foliage and landed directly on the cab of the truck with a loud metallic clank.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
“Uh oh,” Poudlum whispered.
Cudjoe turned slowly and his gaze descended into the gully to the spot where the heavy pouch had ripped through the foliage to reveal a bright spot of blue—-the top of the cab of his truck.
“We might ought to ease on out of here,” Poudlum whispered.
We started crew-fishing on our bellies, trying to get deeper into the woods before we were detected. We were across the clearing from the gully and Cudjoe disappeared from our vision when he went crashing down into the gully toward his truck.
We took advantage of the opportunity to stand up, and Poudlum immediately said, “Let’s circle around and see if we can get to our rifles while he’s down there!”
“You think he’ll figure out what we done?” I asked.
“Course he will, and he’s gonna be mad. Come on, we got to hurry!”
By the time we got to where Cudjoe had cast off his pack and our rifles we could hear him cursing and raving down in the gulley. Then we heard the engine of the truck start up.
“You don’t think he can drive up out of that gully, do you, Poudlum?”
“We should have done like you said and flattened his tires, but it’s too late now. Maybe that old truck won’t climb up out of there.”
We decided to leave the pack with the skins for now, but we happily picked up our rifles and checked the chambers. They were both empty.
“You got any bullets left in your pockets?” Poudlum asked.
“I got four or five,” I said as I searched for them in my pocket.
“Give me two of them and let’s load up.”
“What you got in mind?”
“If he gets that truck out of there we got to shoot one of his tires out. We can’t let him get away with the gold!”
“But he was gonna leave it.”
“Yeah, but that was when he thought his truck was gone. If he gets it out of there the gold will be gone with him. Let’s get up a little closer so we can get a bead on one of them tires,” Poudlum said as we both chambered a bullet and rammed it home by sliding the bolts forward and down.
We heard the sound of the truck’s engine change as it went into a lower gear and began to labor.
“We got to find us a good spot so we can get off a shot without being seen,” Poudlum said. “Come on and let’s get up to the edge of the clearing.”
We found a good spot, and we both knelt on the opposite sides of a big pine and leveled our weapons.
I could hardly believe my eyes as I observed the old truck slowly emerge from the cover of the small trees and begin to nose up the steep side of the gully. Fear leaped into my heart as I imagined ahead and in my mind’s eye saw the truck racing away with Miss Lucretia’s future disappearing around a curve in the old logging road.
What if we missed with our rifles. My mind raced attempting to think of what else we could possibly do if that happened.
Then Providence lent a hand. A dark cloud had been gathering and suddenly the heavens burst open with raindrops as big as dimes and as thick as sugar cane stalks. In a matter of seconds, the ground was sopping wet.
We scrunched up close to the tree trunk to avoid the storm’s full fury. Then we heard the sound of wheels spinning.
I strained my eyes through the downpour, and saw the dim outline of the truck, about halfway up the side of the gully. Then it began to slowly lose ground, inch by inch.
The rain came down harder and quicker, with a roar like a freight train. The truck began to slide backward, faster and faster, and finally came to a halt with the back half of it once again submerged in the foliage at the bottom of the gully.
We watched as Cudjoe emerged from the cab of the truck. We couldn’t hear what he was saying, but it was evident he was cursing the heavens as he looked skyward and shook his fist.
That was when we knew he had given up on driving his truck out of the gully, and that our plan had worked after all, with a little help from Mother Nature.
His upper body disappeared for a moment as he leaned back inside the cab of the truck. Then our panic returned when we saw him drag out the pouch filled with the gold.
Instead of whispering any more I had to almost yell over the noise of the storm to make myself heard, “He’s getting away with it again, Poudlum!”
As Cudjoe clawed his way up the side of the gully with one hand and drug the pouch with the other, I asked Poudlum, “What we gonna do?”
“We’ll just have to follow him on foot!” he shouted back. “Stay in the edge of the woods along side the road and don’t let him out of sight!”
We followed him about halfway down the logging road until he came to a stop and disappeared behind a big black gum tree on the side of the road.
The rain was still coming down, when I asked Poudlum, “What you think he’s doing?”
“I ain’t sure. Let’s just watch for a minute.”
After about a minute, he emerged back on the road empty-handed, cast a cautious look all around, and then took off running toward the main road.
“He’s spooked, afraid of Miss Lucretia’s voodoo, and thinks we done already gone for help. He’s running away and plans to come back for the gold sometime later.”
“Well, he ain’t gonna find it,” I said.
“That’s for sure,” Poudlum said. “He’s gone. Come on and let’s go get the pouch.
We found the gold buried in a shallow hole behind the tree where Cudjoe had stopped. It was covered with a thin layer of dirt, dried leaves, and dead limbs.
“He didn’t hide it very well,” I said.
“He was in a hurry,” Poudlum said. “We need to be, too. It’s getting on nigh to noon. By the time we get back to our camp and then to Mister Autrey’s place it’s gonna be late in the day.”
By the time we got back to where Cudjoe’s pack was the rain had stopped, but we were both as wet as drowned rats. The sack of gold was heavy so we split the load up. Poudlum carried it while I carried the two rifles and the pack. It was slow going because our clothes and boots were also wet and heavy, plus we would stop every once in a while and be real still and listen, just in case Cudjoe changed his mind and came back.
The dogs met us a little ways before we got back to the camp, wagging their tails and whining with pleasure.
When we came into the clearing it looked deserted, but when I called out Sister Gal’s head popped out through the tent flaps, and I could see the concern in her eyes.
“It’s all right,” I told her. “Cudjoe’s gone and we got the gold!”
Both she and Miss Lucretia came out of the tent then, looking us over and feeling of us to make sure we were whole and all right.
They had put some dry wood inside the tent before it stormed and we soon had a fire going to dry out by. While we were doing that we told them how we had beat Cudjoe to his truck and what had happened after that.
When we finished, Miss Lucretia said, “I declare, you boys is blessed, and de Good Lawd be looking out fo’ y’all!”
We broke down our camp and when we left we were all four laden like pack mules. Miss Lucretia had her fortune back, and she was carrying it. Sister Gal carried Cudjoe’s pack, while Poudlum and I carried the tent, our rifles and the rest of our camping gear.
Along the way, I could almost feel Miss Lucretia’s apprehension about going back out into the world. “Lawd, have mercy,” she said. “I don’t even knows where I’m gonna be staying tonight.”
“Mister Autrey will put us up tonight,” Sister Gal told her. “And tomorrow we’ll take you home with us.”
“Ain’t got nothing to wear,” Miss Lucretia lamented.
“We brought you a real nice dress to wear,” Sister Gal reassured her.
“About what time you think it is?” I asked Poudlum.
“Probably about three or four o’clock.”
“They’ll be coming in here looking for us soon.”
“We ought to be there in a half hour or so. Maybe we can get there before they start getting too worried about us,” Poudlum said.
“’Spect I won’t be seeing you boys no mo’ after today,” Miss Lucretia said with a sad tone to her voice.
I could tell she did feel some better after we both promised we would come visit her after she got settled.
Suddenly I heard the dim drone of voices up ahead, and I could see the light of the clearing at the edge of the forest.
“Look up yonder!” I told everyone. “We’re almost there!”
Miss Lucretia reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder and said, “Wait, something we got to do first.”
When we had all stopped, she set the gold down, reached up, and I heard the rattling of the bones, as she removed the drogue from around her neck and let it fall to the ground.
Poudlum and I realized at the same time that we were still wearing ours. We took them off and dropped them along beside hers.
After we did that, she lifted her eyes up toward Heaven, and said, “I’m casting off dis last remnant of voodoo, ’cause I has received my salvation!”