"Once on the Blackshear place, they took all the fine looking boys and
girls that was thirteen years old or older and put them in a big barn
after they had stripped them naked. They used to strip them naked and
put them in a big barn every Sunday and leave them there until Monday
morning. Out of that came sixty babies.
"They was too many babies to leave in the quarters for some one to take
care of during the day. When the young mothers went to work Blackshear
had them take their babies with them to the field, and it was two or
three miles from the house to the field. He didn't want them to lose
time walking backward and forward nursing. They built a long old trough
like a great long old cradle and put all these babies in it every
morning when the mother come out to the field. It was set at the end of
the rows under a big old cottonwood tree.
"When they were at the other end of the row, all at once a cloud no
bigger than a small spot came up, and it grew fast, and it thundered and
lightened as if the world were coming to an end, and the rain just came
down in great sheets. And when it got so they could go to the other end
of the field, that trough was filled with water and every baby in it was
floating 'round in the water drownded. They never got nary a lick of
labor and nary a red penny for ary one of them babies."