Her eyelids quivered, opened. For a moment the orbs were vacant, but
as she drew a deep breath she saw me. Her shapely hand sought her
throat-button, and finding my coat instead she turned once more to the
sod, moaning, "Brother! Mingo!"
"Is he Robelia?" I asked. "Come, we'll find him."
Clutching my coat to her breast, she staggered up. I helped her put
the coat on and sprang into the saddle. "Now mount behind me," I said,
reaching for her hand; but with an anguished look:
"Whah Mingo?" she asked. "Is dey kotch Mingo?"
"No, not yet. Your hand--now spring!"
She landed firmly and we sped into the woods.
My merely wounding Dandy was fortunate. It kept Hardy from following
me hotfooted or rousing the neighborhood. I dare say he wanted no one
but himself to have the joy of killing me.
At a "store" and telegraph-station I let my charge down into a wild
plum-patch, bought a hickory shirt, left my half-dead beast,
telegraphed my livery-stable client where to find him, and so avoided
the complication of being a horse-thief. Then I recovered Euonymus and
about ten that night the five of us met on the bank of a creek. Near
its farther shore, on a lonely railroad siding, we found a waiting
freight-train and stole into one of its empty cars; and when at close
of the next day hunger drove us out our pursuers were beating the bush
a hundred miles behind.
Fed from a negro-cabin and guided by the stars, we fled all of another
night afoot, and on the following day lost Mingo. At broad noon, with
an overseer and his gang close by in a corn-field, the seductions of a
melon-patch overcame him and he howled away his freedom in the jaws of
a bear-trap. His father and mother wept dumb tears and laid their
faces to the ground in prayer. Euonymus was frantic. With all her
superior sanity, she would not have left the region could she have
persuaded us to go on without her.
Well! Day by day we lay in the brush, and night after night fled on.
I could tell much about the sweet, droll piety of my three fellow
runaways, and the humble generosity of their hearts. No ancient
Israelite ever looked forward to the coming of a political Messiah with
more pious confidence than they to a day when their whole dark race
should be free and enjoy every right that any other race enjoys.
"Even a right to cross two races?" I once asked Luke, smilingly, though
with intense aversion.
"No, suh; no, suh! De same Lawd what give' ev'y man a wuck he cayn't
do ef he ain't dat man, give' ev'y ra-ace a wuck dey cayn't do ef dey
ain't dat ra-ace." I fancy he had been years revolving that into a
formula; or--he may have merely heard some master or mistress say it.
"Still," I suggested, "races have crossed, and made new and better
ones."
"I don't 'spute dat, suh; no, suh. But de Lawd ain't neveh gwine to
make a betteh ra-ace by cross'n' one what done-done e'en-a' most all
what even yit been done, on to anotheh what, eh----"
Sidney (Onesimus) put in: "What ain't neveh yit done noth'n'!" And her
mother sighed, "Amen!"