Rhoda of the Underground

by Florence Finch Kelly

“No, no. You can’t leave your case. That would be too suspicious. I’ll manage it.”

“Don’t walk home—take this buggy.” They were already rushing to the gate and he went on as he assisted her to the seat: “There’s not a minute to lose. Hanscomb’s getting ready now to start out with his men.”

She was soon in the cross street upon which backed their row of outbuildings. Here a wide door gave entrance to the woodshed. It was kept padlocked and she had to waste a few minutes finding Jim to unlock the door. The young negro, dazed by this sudden awakening to danger, was hustled into the buggy, a small, uncovered, box-seated vehicle. Rhoda made him double up in the little space at her feet and covered him with a carriage rug. Then over her own lap and down over him she spread an ample robe, which Jim hastily tucked in at the sides.

“I’ll try to reach Gilbertson’s with him,” she said to the faithful black man as the horse sprang forward at her whip’s touch. She made a détour around several blocks and struck into the street leading to the country in the first valley beyond the house. This lost several minutes at the start, but she reflected that if the marshal should arrive in time to see her driving straight away from the house he might be suspicious enough to make chase at once. As it was, one of his men, on guard at their gate, saw her buggy as it turned from a cross street into the country road, but, at the moment, thought nothing of it. Looking back, she saw the men ride up to their gate and knew that they would search the house.

“They’ll have their trouble for their pains,” she thought. “But wasn’t it a narrow chance! You poor boy, I’m going to save you, anyway!”

She wondered what hint had come to the marshal’s ears, and decided it must have been suspicion rather than actual knowledge that had brought him to search their house at this particular time. Most likely the fugitive had been seen on his way to their house by some of the many eyes ever on the alert for such as he, and her father’s reputation as a strong anti-slavery man and abolitionist had given Marshal Hanscomb a pretext.

“But he’ll never think of looking in the woodpile,” she told herself with a smile of satisfaction. “That secret is perfectly safe, for nobody knows it but us and Horace. Our little hiding place will be as safe as ever, even if they do search the house!”

She looked back anxiously from the top of the high hill, whence the road entered a sparsely wooded belt of country, and saw that the horses were still hitched at their side gate. “I’m getting a good start, even if they do follow me,” she reflected, “and I guess I can make Gilbertson’s.”

But the horse was a slow traveler and, although she urged him constantly with voice and whip, to Rhoda’s anxious eyes they seemed to cover the ground at but a snail’s pace. She thought they must have been on the road nearly an hour when, from the top of a long, sloping hill, she glanced backward and saw a party of four mounted men crossing the rise she had just left behind. She recognized it at once as Marshal Hanscomb and his aids. They were riding at a much faster pace than her horse could equal and she knew that in a few minutes they would surely overtake her and, in all probability, stop her and search the buggy.

For one brief flash the thought crossed her mind what that would mean—arrest, trial, and afterward imprisonment. But that fleeting picture was instantly gone and in its place came the vision of the lad at her feet being carried back to scourging and slavery. As she urged the horse down the hill at a reckless pace she remembered that he was about to be sold “down south”—that land of fears and terrors which to the negroes of the border states was a doom almost as awful as was the fiery gulf which threatened the impenitent sinner. It occurred to her that the hill was the same one where she had met the slave, Andrew, on that momentous day of the previous summer.