A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton - Michael R. Phillips [82]
Katie was sobbing and calling my name and stroking my hand and face, and it seemed like forever before Emma got back. She knelt down beside my head, the bottom half of her dress wet from the stream. Katie took hold of the hem of it and gently began to dab at my face and eyes. The cool wetness seemed to get through to my brain and finally I was able to open my eyes a crack.
Katie saw my eyelids flutter and went wild with joy.
“Oh, Mayme!” she cried.
I felt her kissing my face and eyes and cheeks and forehead. She was weeping, and her hot tears mingling with the cold dampness of Emma’s dress revived me a little more.
I opened my eyes a bit wider and tried to force a feeble smile to my lips, then lifted my hands and pulled the two faces down to mine. For a minute we just lay there embracing each other—Emma and Katie crying like a couple of babies. I didn’t have the strength to cry. I just lay there relieved. Vaguely out of the corner of one eye I saw Jeremiah’s face where he was kneeling behind them. I was too weak even to wonder how he came to be there, but I tried to smile.
The next voice I heard was his.
“Dose men be boun’ ter come back before long,” he said. “If dey fin’ dat we spoiled dere lynchin’, dey’s like ter string up all three ob us next time.”
“You’re right,” said Katie, “we’ve got to get out of here.”
With some difficulty they got me to my feet. Jeremiah lifted me onto one of the horses. Now that I was coming awake, all the pain from every part of my body was coming awake too. But I tried not to show it because I didn’t want Katie to worry about that right then.
“Jeremiah,” said Katie. “You’re stronger than me. You ride with her and keep her in the saddle.”
He climbed up behind me, and it felt good when he put his arms around me to grab on to the saddle horn. It hurt and it was all I could do to stay in the saddle, even with Jeremiah holding me to keep me from falling over.
Katie mounted the other horse, then reached down and pulled Emma up behind her.
“Hold on to me, Emma,” she said.
Katie and Jeremiah led the two horses back to the woods where they had hidden. There we stopped. My brain was still faint from pain and hunger and thirst. But I was awake enough to help Emma figure where we were and how to get back toward the road without running into anyone from the McSimmons plantation. We went slow. Katie was listening hard for any sound of voices or horses. She knew what Jeremiah had said was true and we were still in a lot of danger.
We didn’t go back on the McSimmons road at all but eventually made it to the main road to Oakwood. Katie got off while the rest of us waited on the horses out of sight. She walked out of the woods on to the road to make sure it was safe. When she saw no one, she came back and we continued on. We still had to pass the place where the Mc-Simmons road turned off. When we saw it in the distance we again went off the road into the woods and underbrush till we were well past it.
We were hardly on the road again when we heard thundering hooves coming.
“Off the road!” cried Katie.
She and Jeremiah led the horses back into the trees. We were barely out of sight when five or six riders galloped past on the way from Greens Crossing to Oakwood.
“Dat’s dem,” said Emma. “Dey’s huntin’ fer us!”
“Well, if they’re going back in the opposite direction from where we’re going,” said Katie, “they’re not going to find us.”
As soon as they were out of sight, they led us back onto the road. And now Katie tried to urge the horses along faster. Jeremiah did the same until they were going too fast and the bouncing and jostling hurt and I started to cry out from the pain. They slowed a little and continued on as fast as I could stand it.
FOUR SISTERS AND A FRIEND
42
WE RODE