The Blood of the Land Read Online Free Page B

already done gone and murdered a woman tonight, what’s one more? Especially a black one!”
    It was foolish talking back to Tucker, for more than one slave had been whipped for it on the McCreary land, and he stood armed and panicked now. But Dorcas was weary beyond reckoning. Her Power still shrieked. And all at once she didn’t care about the risk of the foreman shooting her. She half-knelt, half-fell down at Elias Sutherland’s side, her hands afire anew as her palms sought the places where his life’s blood was oozing forth.
    Elias, though, seized both her wrists before she could touch him. “No,” he croaked. “Ain’t got nothin’ left. Let me go to her. I’ve got to free her from the blood. Let me go.”
    By rights she should have denied him; her Power demanded release, and her conscience bewailed the thought of giving free rein to yet more death. It didn’t matter that Elias was white, or that she knew barely anything of him. She knew enough: that he was a good man who’d risk himself to aid the likes of her and Caleb. And that he had Power, like her. Because of that, she pulled back her hands and whispered, “Go to your Jenny, Elias.”
    And because of what little she knew of him, as his last breath left him, Dorcas wept. The magic in the earth and river shifted with his passing; it would have been all too easy to let herself follow it, to claim the rest and succor it offered and to the white man’s hell with anything else.
    But she wouldn’t do that to Caleb. Couldn’t, not when Harriman Tucker had a gun drawn upon them both.
    With an effort that made her tremble, Dorcas lifted her head. Caleb was sitting up, and though gray tinged the deep rich brown of his cheeks, she was certain she’d stopped his bleeding. McCreary remained in an unmoving sprawl. The sight of him should have made her want to retch, but not even the wrongness that had been Jenny Sutherland’s shade—or what it had done—could make her sorry that her master’s son was gone.
    The sight of him, though, visibly discomfited Harriman Tucker. “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name,” he whispered. His gaze darted from McCreary to the other men and back again, and with each twitch of his stare, his expression grew more heartsick.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Dorcas said. Not out of pity, for she couldn’t muster pity for the man, working as he did for the McCrearys. But she knew the look he was wearing, the look of a man whose world had just burned to ash around him. For that, at least, she could feel regret.
    Tucker made a strangled sound that might have been amused had it anything to do with laughter. “Are you? After what’s just happened—after this deviltry—you can say that to my face? These men are dead!”
    â€œIf you’re going to send us to join ’em,” Caleb grunted, “then get it done.”
    The gun shook in Tucker’s hand; with a growl of frustration, he steadied it with his other, right in left. But to Dorcas’ surprise, he squeezed his eyes shut. His face contorted in grief. Then his hands dropped, taking the gun’s barrel off them, and he spun away without firing a shot. “I cannot,” he rasped. “Holy God forgive me. I cannot add to this night’s death.”
    Relief welled in Dorcas, though she dared not give it release, not yet. She traded glances with Caleb and then carefully stood, an inch or two at a time, until she made it to her feet. “Then don’t,” she said. “End it here. Let us go.”
    â€œHe might say we killed ’em,” Caleb warned as he stood just behind her.
    â€œBut he won’t,” Dorcas answered. “Because he knows we didn’t. Don’t you, Mister Tucker?”
    That too was foolish, placing their trust in a man who served their master—but they had no other choice, she thought. Tucker stood