Ollie heard the old bed give an extra loud groan, as if the sleeper had drawn himself up in it with suddenness; following that came the quick scuffling of bare feet on the floor.
“Don’t you touch me! Don’t you lay hands on me!” she heard the bound boy warn, his voice still husky with sleep.
“I’ll skin you alive!” threatened Isom. “You’ve come here to work, not to trifle your days away sleepin’. A good dose of strap-oil’s what you need, and I’m the man to give it to you, too!”
Isom’s foot was heavy on the floor over her head, moving about as if in search of something to use in the flagellation. Ollie stood with hands to her tumultuous bosom, pity welling in her heart for the lad who was to feel the vigor of Isom’s unsparing arm.
There was a lighter step upon the floor, moving across the room like a sudden wind. The bound boy’s voice sounded again, clear now and steady, near the top of the stairs where Isom stood.
“Put that down! Put that down, I tell you!” he commanded. 42 “I warned you never to lift your hand against me. If you hit me with that I’ll kill you in your tracks!”
Ollie’s heart leaped at the words; hot blood came into her face with a surge. She clasped her hands to her breast in new fervor, and lifted her face as one speeding a thankful prayer. She had heard Isom Chase threatened and defied in his own house, and the knowledge that one lived with the courage to do what she had longed to do, lifted her heart and made it glad.
She heard Isom growl something in his throat, muffled and low, which she could not separate into words.
“Well, then, I’ll let it pass–this time,” said Joe. “But don’t you ever do it any more. I’m a heavy sleeper sometimes, and this is an hour or two earlier than I am used to getting up; but if you’ll call me loud enough, and talk like you were calling a man and not a dog, you’ll have no trouble with me. Now get out of here!”
Ollie could have shouted in the triumph of that moment. She shared the bound boy’s victory and exulted in his high independence. Isom had swallowed it like a coward; now he was coming down the stairs, snarling in his beard, but his knotted fist had not enforced discipline; his coarse, distorted foot had not been lifted against his new slave. She felt that the dawn was breaking over that house, that one had come into it who would ease her of its terrors.