Shortly after dark on Christmas night, Harriet had started the march north with her passengers. The path they traveled was not an easy one. One safe house had company. Many wagons and carriages stood in the yard. There was no quilt hung on the clothesline as a signal. Harriet knew that meant it wasn't safe to ask for help. The people at that station feared their visitors might betray them. Harriet led her band of cold and wet people back into the woods. They huddled together all day, using their body heat to try to keep each other warm.

Slave catchers were out with dogs, but the fugitives walked on that night. They slogged through the rain and the mud. They were cold, hungry, wet and miserable. It was hard going and one of the men lost heart

"My shoes is about done. My feet is bleeding. I can't go on." He fell to the ground and pointed to his injured feet. "You all can go, but I'm going back."

Harriet knew she couldn't allow the man to turn back. He would give himself up in the first town he came to. Then everyone would know where to look for them. The slave-catchers would bring hounds and back track to pick up her trail. She didn't dare take that kind of chance. Harriet reached into her pocket for the pistol she always carried. She held it at her hip, level with the man's head.

"Dead men tell no tales." Harriet stared at him. Rain or no rain, she didn't blink. "You can come with us, or you can stay right here. But understand me—you ain't going back."

The tired man put his broken shoes back on, got to his feet and wiped the rain out of his eyes with shaking hands. "I be come with you. I come with you, right now. I'll try to make it somehow."

Author Arline Chase

Arline Chase is a writer who writes "some of everything." She is the author of the novel The Ghost Dancer, a romantic tale of adventure and spirituality, and co-author of the non-fiction title How To Promote Advertise & Market Your Published Book and author of five ebooks, all available from www.ebooksonthe.net. You can visit her website at www.arlinechase.com or contact her by email at arline@ezy.net . As a writer, Arline has published six books and more than 500 freelance stories and articles in national, regional and local publications, including Working Woman, Fate, Firehouse, Chesapeake Bay, and Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine. Her novel, The Ghost Dancer, received the "Critics Choice" award from Scribes World Magazine. Literary fiction has appeared in Calyx, New England Writers Network, Shangri-La, and 'Shore Writers' Sampler. She received the Governor's Award for fiction in 1984, for a novella based on family history called The Drowned Land. A short story collection that includes that title was an "Eppie" (Excellence in Electronic Publishing) finalist in 2000. As a newspaper reporter, Arline received the Jim Miller award from Independent Newspapers for best news feature in 1990 and the INI Excellence award for editorial page editing in 1994. As a teacher, Arline has led workshops and appeared on panels at writers's conferences on the East Coast, including Malice Domestic a national mystery writers conference held in Washington, DC, and for more than twenty years at the International Women's Writing Guild Summer Conference at Skidmore College. She is an instructor at the Writers Digest Correspondence School, a critic for the Writer's Digest Criticism Service, and has taught writing classes a number of colleges on the Delmarva Peninsula.