John Miller - The First Assassin

She returned to her seat on the tete-a-tete and handed Mazorca the key. “I’m here for you too,” she said in a low voice. “Let me know if there is anything you need.” She leaned across the couch and kissed Mazorca lightly on the lips. “I mean anything.”

A moment later, she led him upstairs.

Joe and Portia had never felt so tired. Two nights had passed since leaving the Bennett plantation. The physical effort was exhausting, and the nerve-wracking knowledge of what lay in store for them if they were caught only made matters worse.

Portia even found their general direction unsettling: all her life she had understood the promise of freedom lay to the north. In the night sky, she looked for the Big Dipper-or the Drinking Gourd, as she knew it-and spotted the two stars in that constellation that pointed toward the North Star. When she gazed up at the clear sky that first night, though, she realized she was heading the opposite way. This was intentional, of course: their destination was Charleston, which lay to the south. It just seemed unnatural.

She might have banished the thought from her mind if she and Joe had avoided simple blunders and made more progress. On their first night, however, a wrong turn had cost them a substantial amount of travel time. Neither Portia nor Joe was sure how far they had gone in those first hours, but they knew it was not far enough. At daybreak they retreated to the edge of an isolated meadow and ate most of their food. They tried to sleep, but it was a fitful effort for both of them. Their horses had wandered off. They could not take the risk of searching for them, so they would have to finish their journey on foot.

After the second night, the dim light of dawn had found them near a large plantation, where they observed a few field hands beginning their chores. Portia and Joe were not sure whether any of these slaves had spotted them, but they knew for certain that they had to find a new hideout for the day. A stand of trees rose about half a mile from the plantation, and they hustled into it. Leaves and branches concealed them from view.

“Do you think we’re safe here?” asked Portia.

“Safer than if we were still on that road,” replied Joe. “As soon as a white person sees us out there, we’re done.”

They were too anxious from their journey to sleep right away. They fed themselves from the small supplies of food that remained and cleared an area for lying down. This chore was just about finished when a dry branch cracked nearby. They looked toward the noise: a slave boy was coming toward them from the general direction of the plantation. He was perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old.

Joe pulled out his knife and went right for him. The big man was swift for his size. He raced forward, grabbed the boy by his collar, and threw him to the ground.

“Who’re you?” he demanded, holding his knife in front of the boy’s face.

The boy shook with fear. “Jeremiah,” he said in a quivering voice. “My name’s Jeremiah.”

Joe patted Jeremiah’s clothes to see if the boy carried weapons. There were none.

“Where you from, Jeremiah?”

“I live on the Stark plantation.”

“Oh no!” said Portia.

Joe looked at her. “What’s the matter?”

“I’ve heard of it before. We wanted to be at least this far after the first night.”

Joe returned his attention to the slave lying on his back. “How far to Charleston?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t mess with me, boy,” said Joe, flashing the blade.

“I don’t know. I ain’t never been there.”

“What should I do with him, Portia?”

“Don’t say our names!” she scolded.

“Sorry.”

“Let him up,” she said.

Joe took a step back and signaled for Jeremiah to sit on a log.

“What’re you doin’ here?” she asked.

“Just lookin’ around.”

“What are you lookin’ for?”

“I saw you comin’ down the road this mornin’.”

“So?”

“You seemed real nervous, the way you kept lookin’ at Mr. Stark’s house.”

Portia forced a laugh. “And what makes you think we been nervous?”

Jeremiah did not answer immediately. Then he asked, “You’re runaways, ain’t you?”

“No, we ain’t!”

“You got passes?”

“Yeah.”

“Lemme see.”

“No.”

“I think you’re runaways, and I wanna help you.”

“You’d get yourself in big trouble for somethin’ like that.”

“Nobody knows I’m here.”

“Were you the only one who saw us?”

“I don’t know. I think so. Lemme show you a better hidin’ spot than this.”

Joe looked at Portia. She shrugged. “I say let’s go,” she said.

“OK,” agreed Joe, who then turned to Jeremiah. “But if you try anything funny, boy, I’m gonna carve you up with this knife.”

“Don’t worry,” said Jeremiah. “Just follow me.”

A smooth-running creek ran about two hundred feet from where they started. It was so quiet Portia and Joe had not even known it was there. They paused for a moment to drink.

“We’re going to walk in the water,” said Jeremiah when they were done. “It will confuse the dogs.”

Portia and Joe had not mentioned dogs to each other since leaving the Bennett plantation, but the topic was not far from their minds. Slave catchers always worked with dogs-fierce beasts the size of wolves. They were trained with meat. They would kill their quarry unless they were called off. Slaves feared the dogs far more than they feared the slave catchers. When a chase was coming to an end, it was common for runaways to consider the slave catchers not as their doom but as their salvation. They would do almost anything to keep from being mauled by the dogs.

As they waded down the knee-deep creek, Portia knew they were covering their scent. She also understood the dogs were smart enough to recognize this trick and patient enough to follow along both sides of a stream for long distances in order to pick up the smell again.

After a while, their creek ran into a slightly bigger one. Jeremiah turned into it and started heading upstream. “If the dogs come this way, they’ll go downstream first,” he said.

“How do you know your way around here?” asked Portia.

“This is where my brothers and I come lyin’ out,” he said.

“We only do it for a couple of days at a time. But we ain’t been caught yet.”

“Ain’t you whipped for that?”

“Not enough to stop us from doin’ it again.”

They walked upstream for a few minutes. Suddenly Jeremiah stopped. There was a high bank on one side of the creek. “There’s a hollow behind there,” he said, pointing.

“Anybody lookin’ for you is gonna be comin’ from the stream or the main road.” He indicated the direction of the road, on the side of the stream opposite the bank. “You’ll see ’em before they see you-and you’ll hear ’em before that.”

“This is kind of you,” said Portia. “Have you helped others like this before?”

“Yes.”

“They been caught?” asked Joe.

“I’m two for five,” said the boy, with a big smile. “Five times I’ve helped, and two times they’ve gotten away from here without being found out.”

“That makes you more of a failure than a success,” said Joe.

“It’s not always my fault,” protested Jeremiah. “One time the people I helped stayed here at night and they were dumb enough to light a fire. They got caught.”

“The runaways that weren’t caught-what made them different?” asked Portia.

“They were smart.”

“How were they smart?”

“They traveled alone.”

Portia looked at Joe.

“That’s one reason I want you to succeed,” said Jeremiah, oblivious to the effect of his words. “I want you to be the first group I’ve helped get through.”