Underground to Canada Read Online Free PDF Page B

down. The small lunch and fifteen minute rest seemed no longer than the time it took for a mosquito to bite.
    The slaves still picked when twilight came, and the red sun had slipped away to cool its fire under the earth. The long walk back to the slave quarters was silent, except for the shuffle of tired feet dragging through the dust.
    That night it was as dark as a snake hole in the long, low cabin where Julilly and Liza lay on their heap of rags on the hard dirt floor. There wasn’t a wisp of wind and the heat of the day stayed inside like a burning log.
    Julilly ached with tiredness and hunger gnawed wildly at her stomach. There had been only turnips and a little side meat served for supper. The other slave girls along the floor slept heavily, but Liza was restless. Her hand reached out in the dark and touched Julilly.
    â€œYou is a friend,” the crippled girl whispered; “no one else ever picked the high cotton that my poor ol’ back won’t stretch to.”
    Julilly felt a strong urge to protect this beaten, crippled girl, who had once tried to run away. All alone Liza had run into the swamp—waded into the sticky water and slept with no covering until Sims tracked her down.
    Julilly moved closer to her and began whispering to her about life at the Hensen plantation and the sale to fat ol’ Sims.
    Eventually she repeated her mother’s words about Canada and the freedom that country held for every slave. To her surprise Liza had heard about Canada too, and the two girls talked dreamily before drifting into sleep.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    THE HOT DAYS of cotton picking went on and on at the Riley plantation. Since the day she had first jogged up the elegant road with the swaying moss hanging from the giant oak trees, Julilly had not seen the fine big house or Massa Riley or his Missus. She knew only the long, low sleeping cabin in the “nigger quarters,” and the cotton fields, where the big branches shot out in all directions with blossoming white bolls, popping out like pure white feathers from a thousand swans.
    Sims’ savage lashings became a part of every day. So far, Julilly hadn’t been touched. Her filled basket of cotton at the end of every day always weighed a hundred pounds. She saw that Liza filled hers too. It was a fearful business to tote the baskets of cotton to the ginhouse for weighing and have Sims find them short. The old people suffered most. Twenty-five lashes on the back with the cat-o’-nine tails was their punishment if they didn’t meet the measure.
    Julilly sickened with each blow.
    More and more she and Liza talked of Canada. But they watched that no one listened. There were whippings for any kind of talk of running away. Sometimes, however, the other slave girls in their cabin heard them and offered fearful words of caution.
    â€œWhen I lived in Tennessee ,” one girl said, “my Massa said that folks in Canada would skin a black man’s head, eat up all his children, and wear their hair as a collar on their coats.”
    â€œI hear tell,” another whispered, “it’s so cold in that country that the wild geese and ducks have to leave there in the winter. It’s not a place for men and women.”
    Another girl said, “Nothin’ but black-eyed peas can be raised in Canada.”
    Julilly tried not to listen. She must keep her mind on just one thought. Mammy Sally said this country was a place where slaves were free and it was a place where they would meet. It lay there waiting beneath the big North Star.
    Each night Julilly and Liza searched the shower of stars in the black sky above the slave quarters until they found the brightest one. It stood guard above the row of lesser stars that resembled a drinking gourd.
    ONE MORNING there was a sprinkle of rain. Julilly and Liza cooled their feet in a puddle beside the tool house.
    â€œI feel in my bones, Liza,” Julilly almost laughed, “that