The Runaway

by Veronica Tower

  The Runaway

  By

  Veronica Tower

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The Runaway by Veronica Tower

  Red Rose™ Publishing

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  Red Rose™ Publishing

  Copyright© 2011 Veronica Tower

  ISBN: 978-1-4543-0051-9

  Cover Artist: Shirley Burnet

  Editor: Keren Childers

  Line Editor: Pam

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews. Due to copyright laws you cannot trade, sell or give any ebooks away.

  This is a work of fiction. All references to real places, people, or events are coincidental, and if not coincidental, are used fictitiously. All trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, and registered service marks are the property of their respective owners and are used herein for identification purposes only.

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  The Runaway

  By

  Veronica Tower

  Chapter One

  The Escaped Slave

  The sun hung high over head by the time Carson found the location of the carcass. He was out in the heat on a broken down burro three miles from home because he’d seen the buzzards circling and there was always the chance that the scavengers had found meat he could eat. It had been another bad year for crops and any meat Carson could put on the table—even scavenged carcasses—helped stave off starvation here on the edge of nowhere in the Oklahoma Territory.

  He dismounted and drew his Sharps rifle. It was a muzzle-loading long gun with a full charge of black powder behind one of Carson’s precious bullets. He hoped not to need the gun but it was best to be sure. Even dying, a coyote could cause him a world of hurt that just might result in the buzzards getting two meals today instead of one.

  Two of the big birds were on the ground now—ugly critters braver and stronger than their fellows. They had pecked at their prey; impatiently testing the dying animal’s remaining strength. It had tried to shield itself from their unwanted attention by crawling between two large rocks and the boulders combined with the buzzards’ bodies and the waves of heat shimmering off the plain obscured it from Carson’s view. He approached slowly, whacking the first bird with the butt of his rifle when it failed to immediately give up its prize and retreat. Bullets and powder were too precious and the long gun took too long to reload to shoot the bird if he didn’t have to.

  The buzzard staggered a few steps and returned to the air. Its friend followed it, calling out in anger to their fellows. Carson ignored them, crouching down to peer between the stones to see what sort of animal he had found and how difficult it was going to be for him to get it out. He jumped back in surprise when he found a woman.

  She lay stretched out on her stomach, cheek to the ground, dark flesh covered in dust and a torn cotton smock. Her feet were cut and swollen from many days of walking unshod over rough ground. He might have thought that she was dead, but then the buzzards would have already been into her. Chances were that she had been conscious not too long ago.

  Carson prodded the body and got no response, so he lay the Sharps down out of the woman’s reach and carefully pulled her out from between the rocks. Her dark skin was dry to the touch—sun burnt no doubt although it hadn’t turned red like his did. Her lips were cracked from lack of moisture, her face swollen with thirst. He went back to his burro to recover his water skin, squirting the slightest trickle onto her parched lips. They opened feebly in response, so he gave her a little more, careful not to do more than dampen the flesh. She couldn’t drink if she wasn’t conscious, but maybe the water would help revive her.

  It didn’t.

  Carson recapped his water skin and tied it to the burro alongside the Sharps. Then he picked up the unconscious woman, cradling her in his arms until he could set her on the burros back. He had to hold her in place as he began to guide the burro on the walk back to his little shack.

  She was very light with little meat left beneath the flesh. She’d been on the road a long time—a runaway most likely—and the journey had taken a grueling toll on her body.

  He hoped that she would make it.

  Carson’s home was a one room shack in the middle of his arid farm. He had a larger structure—somewhat sturdier than his house—that served as his barn. He’d lived here in this Godforsaken part of the Oklahoma Territory for nigh on seven years now and he still didn’t know who held the actual title to the place. It was empty when he happened upon it and if the bad weather held up for another year or two it would be empty again when Carson moved on.

  He laid the colored woman on his own pallet and checked her temperature with his hand on her forehead. Her flesh felt burning hot. He left her to go out back and draw water from the little seep hole in the back yard. There were times that little hole turned into a full blown pool and even a pond, but today it stretched barely four feet across and was rarely more than eighteen inches deep. If the rain didn’t return soon, even this little bit of moisture would be gone.

  Carson carried the bucket of water back into the house and poured it into a cast iron kettle which sat on the firestones in the center of the room. He blew the ashes to life and fed in fresh wood. The smoke quickly filled the upper reaches of the shack before escaping through a hole cut for that purpose into the roof.

  When the fire burnt strongly enough to sustain itself, Carson returned his attention to the woman. He wasn’t certain how to help her and was a little bit afraid to try. He didn’t see too many men in the course of a year and hadn’t seen a woman in three. So he had damn little idea about how to go about doctoring one of them.

  Her burnt skin held a dark ebony hue. Her hair was long and tangled. The smock she wore looked more patched then whole with still more tears in the garment that needed mending. The flesh of her hands and feet wasn’t in much better condition. She’d walked a long way without shoes.

  Carson swallowed his sense of propriety and lifted the hem of the woman’s dress just high enough to expose her knees. They too were lacerated and scabbed. She’d been tough enough and scared enough to crawl when her feet gave out. She had grit, this runaway. Her body had given out—not her spirit.

  He wondered if the slave hunters were still on her trail or if she’d lost them on the arid plain. The reward for capturing an escaped slave would be quite good—powerful motivation for her pursuers to keep after her. He reckoned they’d try and take her if they caught up with her here.

  Carson spit on his own dirt floor and considered what he should do. Two years without and he still missed his chewing tobacco. Want was one of the drawbacks of being poor. So was loneliness.

  He went out to his mule, removed its pack and his rifle and carried both back into his shack. The rifle—still loaded—went on hooks above his single door. The pack he propped against one of the walls. The water was still a long way from boiling so he couldn’t clean the woman’s wounds yet—not that he was sure that he ought to. They needed cleaning, but she was a right pretty woman and that made him uncomfortable. He remembered touching her dress to expose her knees a
nd felt himself stir beneath his rope belt. Had he ever had a woman in this house before?

  She’d been very light when he lifted her on to the old burro. He should cook some food—a soup would be good. He could start by feeding her the broth until she was ready for something heartier. He poked around in his meager supplies filling a pot with a handful of grain and his last scraps of dried meat. Then he went into his garden to find three small potatoes and a couple of stunted carrots. The garden fared better than his fields because he could water it from the seep hole behind the house. But truth be told, neither area was doing well. If he didn’t get at least a little rain soon he’d be moving on even earlier than he feared.

  Carson returned to the house and added some water from the pot to his soup pan, then went back to looking at the woman. He decided he had to clean her torn up flesh. He didn’t have much that he could bandage her wounds with, especially if his efforts got her bleeding again. He found the old burlap sack with his mother’s clothes in it. He wore his departed father’s things himself and used his mother’s old dresses to patch the holes. He found a scrap of skirt and dunked it in the pot of warming water. Then he knelt down beside the woman and lifted her hand.

  There were calluses and scars beneath the more recent damage, yet the thin little hand still felt delicate. He’d never held a woman’s hand before—least not since he was grown.

  He began by wiping the dust and grit clear then began to pay more serious attention to the dozen little cuts that marred the palm and fingers. The palm was a paler shade than the rest of her skin—a feature Carson had never noticed in colored flesh before—not that he had much experience with slaves or runaways to base an impression upon.

  The woman groaned.

  The sound startled Carson. He wasn’t used to another person making sounds in his house. He didn’t make that many himself. He dropped the woman’s hand, his eyes darting to her face, but there was no sign that his ministrations had awakened her.

  Certain that she remained unconscious, he gently picked up her hand and resumed cleaning it. Three of her cuts bled as he tended them, but none with such force that he feared he’d harmed her.

  When he finished, Carson carefully placed the woman’s hand on her stomach and picked up the other one. Her left hand was less damaged than the right and his efforts didn’t disturb her restless sleep. He set the little hand down atop its mate and repositioned himself near the runaway’s feet.

  The damage was much more severe here—the cuts more numerous and much deeper. Carson wet the cloth again. The water had grown hot enough to make touching it unpleasant but he didn’t let that deter him. He picked up the woman’s right foot, braced it against his thighs, and began to clean the abused sole.

  Never quite waking, the woman tossed and tried to turn in response to his efforts. The hem of her dress slipped higher on her legs showing an expanse of brown thigh that distracted Carson from his task and made his blood surge. He forgot her lacerated foot in the nigh overpowering urge to touch her—to run his fingers up that smooth flesh and discover for himself the differences between man and woman.

  He took a deep breath, shaking his head to help him resist the impulse. It would be so easy. He was already holding her foot, massaging the tortured flesh with the thumbs of both hands. All he had to do was shift his ministrations to her calf, then work his way up past her battered knees. He could pretend he was still cleaning her as he slipped higher—pushing the hem of the dress above him as he went.

  His flesh turned to iron beneath his rope belt. His heart pounded. He could feel the blood pulsing in his throat. His fingers itched to begin the journey, but he held them in place cleaning the woman’s legitimate wounds—and no more.

  Her foot bled more freely than her hands had. The cuts ran deeper. A sharp wooden splinter had penetrated the skin just south of the toes. He worked at it for a minute trying to wiggle it out with his fingers before finally drawing his knife to use the sharp end like a needle.

  A subtle change in the woman’s breathing alerted Carson that she had awakened. He looked at her face and found frightened eyes peering up at him from the pallet. Her gaze embarrassed him. Of course she was frightened. She was a woman in a strange man’s bed and he held a knife in his hand. He wanted to put her at ease, but didn’t know what to say.

  He settled for grunting, “Gotta splinter here.” His voice came out deeper than he intended—fogged from disuse. When the woman didn’t answer him, he tightened his grip on her foot and touched the cold steel tip of his knife to the infected flesh.

  The woman hissed and kicked her foot free of Carson’s hand. He didn’t fight with her—letting her go to prove he meant no harm. She scooted further away from him until she banged her head and shoulder against the wall of his shack.

  Carson waited for her to realize he hadn’t harmed her.

  She touched her foot without ever taking her eyes off him and puss and blood coated her finger tips. She brought her hand close to her face before glancing ever so briefly at the fluid.

  Carson wiped his blade on the leg of his pants and sheathed the knife. He got up slowly and walked to the other side of his tiny shack to give the woman as much space as possible. Then he sat down again so that she could feel safer still.

  She continued to stare at him with big doe eyes—still frightened despite his efforts to calm her.

  “You want water?” Carson asked.

  He advanced slowly to the bucket beside the fire and scooped out a cupful of liquid. Then he set the cup down about half way between them before returning to the far wall and sitting back down.

  The woman stretched out to snag the cup without ever taking her eyes off of Carson. She tentatively took a single sip, and then greedily swallowed the entire contents of the cup.

  Carson gestured toward the bucket and the woman crawled forward and drank again, quickly refilling the cup to drink a third time.

  “Whoa,” Carson told her. His voice began to function better. “You have to slow down. If you drink too much too quick, you’ll get sick.”

  The woman didn’t listen to him, filling the cup a fourth time. Carson stood up and she scooted back away from him until her back pressed firmly against the wall of the shack again.

  Carson edged forward toward the cook pot. The soup was nowhere near done but he scooped out a bowlful of its contents anyway and eased forward to set it near the woman’s feet. He backed away again and watched as she hungrily devoured its contents.

  The food seemed to calm her a little—not that it was enough to fill her belly. Carson sat back against the wall and watched her approach the little fire again. She scooped out another cup of water, drank it, and then refilled the soup bowl, all the while warily watching him.

  When she finished the second bowl, she slipped back against the far wall and resumed staring at him.

  Normally Carson was quite content with silence, but normally he was by himself. Having a strange woman in his home upset his calm demeanor. He wanted to hear her voice, wanted further evidence that she was real and he wasn’t imagining this. “That foot can’t heal ‘til we get that splinter out,” he told her.

  The woman’s hand reflexively lowered to the infected sole of her foot. “How’d I get here?” she asked.

  Carson shivered at the soft tones of her voice. It was all real. A poor runaway slave girl sat on the dirt floor of his home. “I found you,” he told her. “Buzzards led me to you. I carried you back here on my burro. You want more food?”

  “Yes.”

  Carson got back to his feet and eased forward, extending his arm ahead of him to reach for the bowl. The slave woman gave it to him, careful not to let their fingers touch as she handed it to him.

  Carson turned his back on her and refilled the bowl from the pot. When he finished he saw that most of the food parts of the soup were gone and the water bucket was near empty.

  He handed the bowl back to the woman. “I’ll go refill the water bucket. When I get back we can tak
e another look at that foot.”

  He picked up the bucket without waiting for a response and crossed to the door of his shack. He paused. “You got a name, girl?”

  “Delilah.”

  “Pretty,” he said. He tried to remember where he’d heard that name but couldn’t recall. He guessed it must have been in the bible. His mother used to read it to him on Sundays in place of going to church.

  He stepped out the door and returned to his seep hole.

  Chapter Two

  The Sodbuster

  As soon as the man left, Delilah cursed herself. “Stupid girl! Why’d you have to give him your real name? You just made it easier for the Colonel to find you!”

  She looked around the little hovel for a way to defend herself. This man was dirt poor. She’d lived better as a slave in Arkansas. There was no possible way that he would forego turning her in for the reward.

  She saw the rifle hanging above the shack’s only door and tried to stand to retrieve it. The pain in her swollen right foot was so great that she collapsed again, sprawling across the dirt floor. Tears poured from her eyes. She had to move quickly. She had no idea how long he would be gone.

  She forced herself to her hands and knees and crawled to the rickety door. The long gun was just a few feet above her head. Midway up the door were hooks to hold a board which would bar the door from opening. She planted her good left foot firmly beneath her and caught hold of one of the hooks with her hand. Then she hauled herself into a standing position and reached for the rifle.

  The door pulled open, startling Delilah and causing her to lose her precarious balance. With reflexes a rattlesnake would envy, the man dropped the bucket and caught her, pulling her tight against him so she wouldn’t hit the ground. Her throat constricted with fear. His lean body felt hard and strong against her flesh while her own muscles felt so very weak. She could hear his heart pounding in his chest.