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By Root 1774 0

could see the beginning of a heavy, overcast day, I must have been staggering around, because Lorna pointed out a haystack and said we could sleep on the protected side, but only for a little while. It was the most dangerous thing we did, but we had good luck and slept undisturbed until well after sunup, perhaps even until eight o’clock or so. When we woke, we were much disheveled, and one thing I will always remember about that fateful day was that Lorna stood me up and brushed me down, picked the hay out of my hair and straightened my bonnet, and then carefully did the same to herself. She said, "Now, you cain’ be lookin’ like a runaway. You got to be lookin’ like a walker from dis place to dat place." She gave me a pear, and we walked on.

Well, I liked it. I liked the deception of it. When the day was well begun, there were folks all over the place, on horseback, in wagons, even in buggies. As we got farther from Independence, we got braver about who might or might not know Lorna, and certainly no one would know me. I walked with my head high, a woman with her gal. That militia fellow shouldn’t have betrayed my virtue like that! He had certainly done me a great wrong! I had believed him implicitly, because he was of good family, well spoken, and educated at, let’s say, Princeton, just like Papa. A girl such as myself, who had lost her parents, was surely unprotected in this world from the designs of scheming cads such as my erstwhile lover, and didn’t his wife and children look a sight! She was careworn, and they were bedraggled, two boys and two girls, all little ones, the children of a natural betrayer, who would betray them in the end, as well....

I smiled at my own story and raised my chin just a degree, for I had almost but not quite fallen. I had preserved myself in the end, had I not, for something better, and should I die before getting back to my relations in the east, well, I would know that I had lost nothing of real value—

"Whisht!" said Lorna, just behind my ear. I looked around, but only for a second, because Lorna said, "Don’ look!" I did glimpse a man and a woman approaching, coming down from their house on foot, and two slaves, a man and a half-grown girl, weren’t far behind them. Lorna whispered, "Turn ’round and slap me good, and do it now!"

I raised my hand and whipped around, and made such contact that Lorna’s head snapped back and her hand went straight to her cheek. Her eyes closed, but she said, "Dat war good."

I screamed, "You lost my shoes? You stupid girl! You left my shoes behind! That’s the last straw; I’m going to beat you for that! Ah!" I pretended to be surprised by the interruption, as the man and woman came up to us. I turned on them. "Can you believe this? Here we are in the middle of this godforsaken war, betrayed and abandoned, and she’s lost my other pair of shoes! How stupid can one gal be!" I took a deep breath and said, "You must tell me, are we in Kansas or in Missouri? I do believe I am lost, and I’m dreadfully afraid that if I get into Kansas by mistake, they’ll steal my girl and kill me!" I turned on Lorna. "Though don’t think that would be a loss! You are worse than useless!"

"Now, ma’am," said the man. "I kin see that your patience has been much tried here, but an’t no call for—"

"Yes," said the woman. They looked at me approvingly in spite of their remonstrations, and then the woman put her arm through mine. She said, "I saw you and your gal walking down the road here, and I said, ’I do wonder about them,’ because you know, we see just about everything around here, including niggah-stealing—"

I exclaimed, "Lord have mercy, we are in Kansas!"

"No, no, no," said the woman. "Kansas is five mile or more. You’re safe in Missouri now." And she turned me and walked me toward the house, which was no Day’s End Plantation but more of a western farmhouse. She said, "We’ve only got Delilah and Job here. He’s so old, we just take care of him, and she’s training. But back in Mississippi, before we came out here, we had ten in the field and five in the house! Our neighbor, Mr.