Master steps up and knocks his hand off my face. It jerks me sideways and I stumble, falling into the grass.

“You may do what you wish with your own slaves, on your own plantation, but I am master here, and you will not touch any slave of mine.”

“She knows something, I tell you,” Gantly’s son says.

As the men argue above me, I glimpse Red running toward the field slave quarters like Beelzebub himself was after him. He’s seen the men. If he don’t get that runaway out of here, it’s both their necks.

“She swore she didn’t. I’m satisfied with that.” Master turns to me, where I’m still sprawled on the ground. “Finish your chores, Sarah.” He walks on toward the slave cabins. “Come on, if you’re coming, gentlemen,” he calls to the men over his shoulder.

They file past me, glaring at me as they go. The short one, the one I don’t recognize, gives me a silent kick as he passes.

“Ouch,” I squeal, clutching at my hip just above where he kicked me, so my hands don’t cover the mark clinging to the cloth from the greasy man’s boot.

Master stops his stride and turns back.

“You kicked my slave?” His sour is getting angry, just like I hoped.

I pretend more pain than I feel, struggling to sit up, putting on a show.

“I let you on to my plantation,” he roars, “generously aiding your search, and you disrespect my authority over my property?”

“She knows something,” the little greasy one says.

“I don’t care if she knows the whereabouts of every damn runaway in the state. You don’t tamper with what’s mine.” Master’s near about got fire coming out of his eyeballs.

Red’s out of sight, down the other side of the hill, so I stand, careful to limp a little bit, and brush myself off. With long, sure strides, Master marches on, trailing the three men behind him, not waiting for them to catch up.

It’s near dinnertime when I come in with the washing finished and head to the stairs to put it all away. At the bottom of the stairs, I hear Master and Missus in the parlor.

“He’s exactly the kind of man I’m fighting against. And the fact that he’s so rich makes it worse. It’s one thing to argue poor rations and rags as a temporary measure until you become profitable, as Parson does, but to have the means and choose to abuse them.”

I know he’s talking about the men from today and the slave that ran. I listen in, worried for Red.

“Matthew,” I hear Missus say, “you can’t force people to be better men.”

“But don’t you see, Martha, that is exactly what this new bill would accomplish. If we could pass legislation regulating slave treatment, we could enforce decency and morality within all the plantations. And fire a deathblow to the abolitionists in the North who claim that we all treat our slaves so barbarously. They would have to give up that cry, and then where would their movement be?”