Promise Bridge by Eileen Clymer Schwab Read Free Book Online Page A

animal in de woods. Now, I can’t touch de medicine closet without permission, but if yo’ heart is set on it, then I’ll have my boy, Elijah, fetch me some herb poultice from the cabin. It helps some when Massa’s whip lays open de skin.”
    “Oh, Esther Mae,” I said, reminded of her husband’s suffering the previous day. “I am so sorry about what happened to Winston in town.”
    “Don’t say nothin’ more, chile,” she said with an agitated wave of her arms. “Don’t want no more brought down upon us.”
    I hushed in shame and followed Esther Mae through the kitchen and into the side yard, where hours earlier I had promised Marcus I would come to the peak after breakfast. I waited outside the gate of the fence that sectioned the yard. Esther Mae trotted across the front lawn and down the knoll into Mud Run. I watched as she waved Elijah into their cabin to fetch the poultice, and that’s when I noticed Winston gingerly running a brush over the back of a mare alongside the stables. Our eyes locked. To my surprise, he did not turn away. Stiff and sore, he nodded politely and then turned his attention back to the horse.
    Winston was a gentle soul and the most amiable of any slave I had ever encountered. Because he was our carriage driver, I found myself in his company almost as much as in Granny Morgan’s and Esther Mae’s. Fatima and Tessie also worked in the house, although their duties usually kept them in the sewing room. However, they rarely spoke when I joined them during my afternoon needlework. Winston, on the other hand, was always quick to give me a wink and a grin, as if we shared some grand secret joke between us. I could never quite figure it out, but it was oddly comforting and never inappropriate or forthright. Unlike the indelicate winks directed my way by Twitch when no one else was aware.
    “Miz Hannah, my mama says to fetch this to you,” Elijah said, handing me a preserve jar half- filled with a brown salve. “Says you should bring back what you don’t use so she can send it with my daddy when he leaves with Miz ’Gusta tomorr’y.”
    I waved down to Esther Mae, who stood, arms folded, on her doorstep. “Tell your mama I will return it this afternoon.”
    “Yas’sum.” He grinned with a pleasant smile as quick as his father’s. As he scampered off, I went to the shed for a berry tin and headed up the mountain.
    I could barely contain my feet in an unobtrusive march until I reached the meadow, where I broke free into a full-out run. Unrestrained breaths were soon bursting from my bosom as I pushed upward to the peak without so much as a moment’s rest. I slowed my pace when I reached the shadowed coolness of the pine hollow. If not for the exuberant trill of a scarlet tanager hidden somewhere in the treetops, it would have been easy to believe that there wasn’t another heart beating within a hundred miles. A strange swell of anticipation filled me as I neared the rocky ridge that held my secret.
    Suddenly, the unmistakable snap of footsteps on twigs peppered through the trees behind me. I stopped in my tracks, barely a stone’s throw from the cave entrance, unsure of whether to run or face the threat head-on. Fear pounded in my chest as I frantically scanned the trees around me. The crunch of heavy boots sent me scampering like a frightened squirrel in another direction, in the hope of misdirecting my pursuer away from Marcus and Livetta. Kicking up pine needles and mossy cakes of dirt, I fled deeper into the hollow; however, the footsteps came with me and closed the gap between us.
    “Hannah! Where are you going?”
    I looked over my shoulder and saw Colt trotting along the wooded path. I stopped and dropped to my knees, relieved but confused. He hurried past me toward the cave, with a large sack over his shoulder and a small wooden box in the crook of his arm.
    “Land sakes, Colt, you frightened me to death.”
    “Didn’t you hear me call out to you? I saw you enter the