Patricia Rice Read Online Free

potato patch out behind the kitchen garden.
    He'd learned not to cry many long years ago, and he didn't cry now. He just let the hate build up inside him, nourishing his rage, feeding his determination. He would bring them down someday. He already had the basic tools in his hands. He might not be tall and strong like his brother. He might not have riches and power like Homer and his ilk, but he knew how to hurt them where it hurt the most—in their pockets.
    By the time Joshua found him and carried him back to his room, Pace's agile brain had already sketched the outline of a plan. When the big black fieldhand laid him down on his bed, Pace whispered, "Tell Tessie to be ready tomorrow night. I'm getting her out of here."
    Joshua's battered face screwed up in a frown of worry. "You ain't goin' nowheres for a while, Marster Pace. Them ribs need bindin'. You lucky you ain't coughin' blood."
    "Tessie will be worse off than I am, and Charlie won't leave her alone now. You want her to go through that again tomorrow night?"
    Joshua looked sick and turned his hulking back away. "She ain't gonna be in fittin' condition to run. She'll need her mammy. We cain't jist take her 'way like that."
    Pace leaned wearily against the pillows. "It's your choice, Josh. If you think you and Mammy can slip away too, then I'll take the lot of you, but it won't be easy. My mother expects Mammy there with her all the time. How will you get her out of the house?"
    Josh's broad shoulders straightened. "I'll get her out. You get Mammy and my little girl outa here, and I'll stay behind and keep them dogs away. See iffen I don't."
    Pace nodded even though Josh couldn't see him. "All right. Tomorrow at midnight, down by the old cotton-wood. If those dogs follow, we're all in big trouble and won't anyone get away for a long spell." When Joshua started for the door, Pace said with a catch in his throat, "I'm sorry. Josh."
    The big man didn't turn around but bent his head and answered in a voice raw with unshed tears, "Ain't nothin' you coulda done, boy. Ain't nothin' none of us coulda done."
    Pace clenched his fists and stared unseeingly at the ceiling long into the night. There had to be something someone could do, and it looked like it fell on him to do it.
    He'd much rather cry and pretend it wasn't so.
    * * *
    Pace slipped out of the house early next morning before his mother could see the blackened circle around his eye and the swollen angry red of his jaw. He didn't have much interest in looking in the mirror himself. He didn't think he should expose his mother to it.
    His ribs ached with such pain that he gasped for breath by the time he rode into town, but he'd made a promise, and he meant to keep it. He might not be good for much of anything, but he could at least keep a promise.
    He rode the back alleys, avoiding Homer's store on the main street, skirting the mayor's house where another of Charlie's good old boys resided. Joe Mitchell was twenty-four and still lived in his father's house. He didn't have much incentive to do elsewise. The elegant mansion with its fancy ironwork brought all the way from New Orleans was the finest house in town. It came provided with servants to do the housework and cook the meals. Joe's dead mother couldn't complain about the hours her son kept, and his father kept too busy with his own late hours to notice what his boy did. Pace had heard Charlie and his friends snickering over the women they'd sneaked into the mayor's mansion while the mayor was out politicking with the Frankfort bigwigs. Joe had everything a man could want and didn't lift a hand to earn any of it.
    Pace didn't hold any bitterness on account of Joe's having everything while he would have nothing. It was a fact of life known since birth that Charlie would inherit the farm and everything on it, and Pace would have to make his own way in this world. He didn't find that thought in the least dismaying. First chance he got, he was going off to college to