Collection 3: "Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad" by Ann Petry

But a few days afterward, a goodly number of slaves would be gone from the plantation.

Yet when morning came, they invariably discovered that a group of the finest slaves had taken to their heels.

She had told them about the place where they would stay, promising warmth and good food, holding these things out to them as an incentive to keep going.

The man who stood in the doorway looked at her coldly, looked with unconcealed astonishment and fear at the eleven disheveled runaways who were standing near her.

Somehow she would have to instill courage into these eleven people, most of them strangers, would have to feed them on hope and bright dreams of freedom instead of the fried pork and corn bread and milk she had promised them.

She managed to dispel their fear of pursuit, so that they would not become hysterical, panic-stricken.

She heard the familiar guttural voice say, “Who’s there?”

For a while, as they walked, they seemed to carry in them a measure of contentment; some of the serenity and the cleanliness of that big warm kitchen lingered on inside them.

For a while, as they walked, they seemed to carry in them a measure of contentment; some of the serenity and the cleanliness of that big warm kitchen lingered on inside them.

They fell silent, sullen, suspicious.

She waited for the moment when some one of them would turn mutinous.

Ellen pretended to be very ill—her right arm was in a sling, and her right hand was bandaged, because she was supposed to have rheumatism.

She told them about Frederick Douglass, the most famous of the escaped slaves, of his eloquence, of his magnificent appearance.

Then she told them of her own first vain effort at running away, evoking the memory of that miserable life she had led as a child, reliving it for a moment in the telling.

Then she told them of her own first vain effort at running away, evoking the memory of that miserable life she had led as a child, reliving it for a moment in the telling.

Sometimes she thought she had become nothing but a voice speaking in the darkness, cajoling, urging, threatening.

She gave the impression of being a short, muscular, indomitable woman who could never be defeated.

They had come to trust her implicitly, totally.

It was the largest number I ever had at any one time, and I had some difficulty
in providing so many with food and shelter, but, as may well be imagined,
they were not very fastidious in either direction, and were well content with
very plain food, and a strip of carpet on the floor for a bed, or a place on the
straw in the barnloft.

The climate itself made for an ease of living that could never be duplicated in this bleak, barren countryside.