Underground to Canada by Barbara Smucker

Author:Barbara Smucker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PENGUIN GROUP (CANADA)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THERE WASN’T MUCH DANGER from slave catchers on the high mountain paths at night. But even without them, this wild place was terrifying and strange for Julilly and Liza. High-pitched animal cries that they had never heard before echoed in and out of the tall black mountain peaks. Their path sometimes became “slim as the string bindin’ a cotton bale,” as Liza exclaimed.

The girls held onto one another and once Julilly had to grab a swaying tree limb to keep from slipping down the mountain’s side. Liza fell against her, hanging to her waist. They climbed up again on their hands and knees.

“If that North Star wasn’t up there steady, beckonin’ to us,” Julilly shuddered, “I couldn’t go on.”

Before long, a strange, nervous wind began to blow. It skittered about—twirling up the stones along the path—then jumping into the trees and making ugly, swaying brushes of the giant pines.

A cloud smashed across the moon and erased their path. It was dark now, as dark as the deep end of a cave. The air began to chill. Julilly and Liza stopped climbing and held onto the trunk of the nearest tree. The wind lashed around them like a slave owner’s whip.

Someplace near by there was a long, cracking noise and then a thud. When the flashes of lightning came, Julilly and Liza could see a giant tree, torn from the earth with its raw, useless roots exposed to the storm. Thunder pounded in the sky, and then rain swept down like moving, walls of water. Another flash of lightning. This time the girls saw a flat place close at hand, shielded by an overhanging rock.

“Get all the tree limbs you can find, Liza, and pile them under that rock,” Julilly screamed above the wind.

The pile grew high. They dragged heavy limbs that could not blow away.

“Now we’ll dig a place under this rock,” Julilly screamed again.

They scraped and grovelled. Their hands bled; but a small shelter did take shape, big enough for the two of them to squeeze inside. They shoved their bundles ahead of them.

“It’s dry in here.” Liza rubbed her hands over the ground.

But their newly-patched clothes dripped with water, and they chilled each time the wind blew through their makeshift hovel. There was nothing to do but take their clothes off, wring the water from them as best they could, and hang them over branches that were still dry. They covered themselves with pine needles and bunches of dried leaves and dug deeper with sticks into the dry earth.

They lay down close to each other for warmth. Somehow they slept, and when they woke the wind had stopped blowing.

Mountain birds chirped their early morning songs and a faintly pink sun spread shyly across the sky. The girls peered through their shelter of branches. Fallen limbs and scattered leaves crisscrossed over the ground.

“Looks like somebody stirred the whole place up with a big wooden spoon.” Julilly pushed her head clear of the branch above her.

“Nobody is gonna come lookin’ for run-away slaves in this mess.

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