Hello, dear readers! My guest today shares an excerpt from Bandy, a story of a boy so lonely he befriends a pigeon and a young enslaved girl who plans to escape through the Underground Railroad. Sounds like a unique and touching adventure!
~ Samantha
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Bandy: An Excerpt
Guest Post by Craig R Hipkins
The afternoon dragged along. Every cracking branch put Isaac on his guard. He kept the derringer loaded and at half cock. Joy had another episode and this one was longer than the one she had earlier in the day. Isaac had kept her as comfortable as possible next to the fire.
As nightfall approached, she felt much better, and they each ate a stale biscuit and a few slabs of bacon. It was a lean meal, but enough to give them energy to continue on their way.
They decided to use the railroad. There was a stillness in the air, and they would be able to hear the clomping of hooves if any horses approached. Isaac prayed Joy wouldn’t have another one of her headaches. They seemed to come on with little warning and were debilitating.
A short time later, they passed by another small village of ramshackle houses. Isaac noticed a blacksmith’s shop. The smithy, a raw-boned man with bulging biceps was hard at work at the forge and did not even notice their passing. The glowing light of a furnace left them longing for the warmth of a fire. With any luck they would be in Portsmouth by midnight.
They were about a mile past the forge when the sound of a neighing horse grabbed their attention and they quickly darted off the tracks into a stand of pines. They crouched down behind some brambles and waited.
A lone horseman came into view. He was a thickset man with a dark beard riding a large stallion, his menacing profile bathed in the moonlight. Isaac immediately felt a gnawing wave of fear in the pit of his stomach. The mounted man had obviously seen them. He had stopped and was peering in their general direction. He was most certainly a bounty hunter.
Isaac quietly pulled his derringer from his small holster and capped it. He felt Joy’s hand find his free one. They glanced at each other nervously.
“Come on out, yuh murderin’ boy! I done seen yuh along with that little slave girl yuh travelin’ with!”
Isaac’s pulse began to race. If he were older, he would pull this man from the saddle and pummel him for that comment.
“Let’s go, boy! I ain’t got all day now. Yuh come outta those bushes and don’t give me no trouble and ah’ll make sure yuh git a fair trial. If not, it ain’t gonna go well with yuh!”
Isaac weighed his options. The way he looked at it, he had three. He could surrender—an option which he immediately dismissed. His second option was to fight it out with the man. He had the drop on him but surely the bounty hunter had a weapon of some kind on his person, almost certainly a revolver, which would neutralize his one-shot derringer. His third and final option was to sit still and do nothing. Let the bounty hunter come to them. There was a chance, albeit a slim one, that he would not find them in the darkness. He chose option number three and quietly whispered his intentions to Joy, who wholly agreed with him. They waited. They would let their pursuer make the next move.
