friend Colton racing like a guard dog across the upper meadow, barreling headfirst into his longtime nemesis. The two boys hit the ground with a thud, and when Twitch lost his grip on the mother crow, she bounded loose in a flutter of feathers and delivered two fierce pecks to his unprotected face, taking the sight of one eye as revenge for the dark, lifeless mounds scattered across the blanket of heather surrounding us.
Being close to him in age, I had watched Twitch grow from a devilish boy into an ill-tempered, deviant young man who now found the same wicked pleasure in clipping the wings of the errant flocks some say migrate northward through the night.
“Slave catchin’ is a messy business,” he often boasted upon returning from one of his monthlong missions across the western mountain peaks into northern Kentucky. “If any ol’ sucker could do it, there wouldn’t be no slaves to catch.”
I suppose it was one of the few truths he ever spoke, but I paid him no mind. All I knew was, whatever his unseemly trade entailed, it took him far off from the Ridge, allowing us to maintain a peaceful balance despite the growing unrest whispering beyond the mountains on the Virginia horizon.
Now, with my milky cheeks flushing in the warm spring breeze, I wished I had taken notice of him as I carried Aunt Augusta’s purchases to the carriage. In three charging strides, Twitch stood nose to nose with Winston. Disguising my terror with one flutter of my Southern belle eyes, I tugged at the sheepskin vest hanging from Twitch’s bony frame.
“Oh, leave him be, Twitch,” I pleaded politely. “He didn’t do anything.” The roll of my Virginia drawl, a subtle mix of hill-country twang and Southern society, was as unmoving as the determined scowl chiseled on Twitch’s craggy face. My weakly delivered attempt at interceding on Winston’s behalf went unheeded as Twitch unraveled his bullwhip from his belt.
“Get over to the livery stable, boy,” Twitch said as he spat what remained of his soggy cigar across Winston’s muslin shirt. Jutting his whiskered chin toward the wagon house across the dusty street, Twitch raised his whip and with one long swirl cracked it at Winston’s feet.
“Hannalore Blessing,” snapped a shrill voice behind me. “A proper young lady would be sitting in the carriage, unengaged in slave matters.”
My face paled beneath the starched brim of my cotton bonnet as I stepped back in muted obedience and allowed Aunt Augusta’s tall, prim figure to march past my lowered eyes. Though she was my dear, departed mother’s only sister, I feared her as you would a resentful and domineering marm of an orphanage. My eyes lifted with false courage once I realized she was wasting no venom on me.
“What is the meaning of this, Twitchell?” she demanded with a cool arch to her brow. “You have no right to lay a whip against my property.”
“I mean no disrespect, Augusta,” Twitch said with a tug of his frayed slouch hat. “But this thickheaded buck is makin’ familiar notions that ain’t proper for his kind to presume outside his own. Partic’arly with a young lady of such fine and privileged upbringin’ as Miss Hannah.”
My voice rose in protest, though my mutterings were quickly swallowed as Aunt Augusta silenced me with a frosty glance. Still, her fierce presence gave me hope for Winston’s safety. Not even Twitch would dare challenge the mistress of one of the longest-established plantations in the county. Her wealth and standing were second only to that of her husband’s brother, Mooney Reynolds, who boasted two hundred acres of tobacco and hogs. When I became Aunt Augusta’s ward, I was required to address him as Uncle Mooney, though he was no uncle to me, by blood or affection. The fact that Twitch was Uncle Mooney’s overseer in slave matters would be of no concern to Aunt Augusta. Unlike her genteel Southern counterparts who only concerned themselves with the social duties associated with their husbands’ successful lot in life, Aunt Augusta was a force to be reckoned with. Widowed nearly fifteen years before, Aunt Augusta maintained a modest but highly profitable tobacco plantation beyond the foul breezes of Uncle Mooney’s hog pens. She bowed to no one, least of all the son of a drunkard murderer, who was hanged for slicing the throat of his young wife.
“Now, Augusta, this here buck may be yours, but overseein’ is my business. And none does it better than me. I seen plenty