Read Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV for Free Online

labor and suffering of the blacks that had been stolen from their native land and brought against their will to this dark continent of America. It was these whose hearts Peggy reached for, especially the strong ones, the ones who might have the courage to make a difference.
    And her labors were not in vain. When she left a place, people were talking—no, to be honest they were quarreling—over things that before had never been openly questioned. To be sure, there was suffering. Some of those whose courage she had helped awaken were tarred and feathered, or beaten, or their houses and barns burnt. But the excesses of the slavemasters served only to expose to others the necessity of taking action, of winning their freedom from a system that was destroying them all.
    She was on this errand today. A hired carriage had come to fetch her to a town called Baker’s Fork, and she was well on the way, already hot and tired and dusty, as summer travelersalways were, when all of a sudden she felt curious to see what was up a certain road.
    Now, Peggy wasn’t one to be curious in any ordinary way. Having had, since childhood, the knack of knowing people’s inmost secrets, she had learned young to shy away from simple curiosity. Well she knew that there were some things folks were better off not knowing. As a child she would have given much not to know what the children her age thought of her, the fear they had of her, the loathing because of her strangeness, because of the hushed way their parents talked of her. Oh, she would have been glad not to know the secrets of the men and women around her. Curiosity was its own punishment, when you were sure of finding the answer to your question.
    So the very fact that she felt curious about, of all things, a rutted track in the low hills of northern Appalachee—that was the most curious thing of all. And so, instead of trying to follow the track, she looked inside her own heartfire to see what lay down that road. But every path she saw in which she called to the carriage driver and bade him turn around and follow the track, every one of those paths led to a blank, a place where what might happen there could not be known.
    It was a strange thing for her, not to know at all what the outcome might be. Uncertainty she was used to, for there were many paths that the flow of time could follow. But not to have a glimmer, that was new indeed. New and—she had to admit—attractive.
    She tried to warn herself off, to tell herself that if she couldn’t see, it must be the Unmaker blocking her, there must be some terrible fate down that road.
    But it didn’t
feel
like the Unmaker. It felt right to follow the track. It felt
necessary,
though she tingled a bit with the danger of it. Is this how other people feel all the time? she wondered. Knowing nothing, the future all a blank, able to rely only on feelings like this? Is this tingling what George Washington felt just before he surrendered his army to the rebels of Appalachee and then turned himself over to the king he had betrayed?Surely not, for old George was certain enough of the outcome. Maybe it’s what Patrick Henry felt when he cried out, Give me liberty or give me death, having no notion which of the two, if either, he might win. To act without knowing . . .
    “Turn around!” she called.
    The driver didn’t hear her over the clattering of the horses’ hooves, the rattling and creaking of the carriage.
    She thumped on the roof of the carriage with her umbrella. “Turn around!”
    The driver pulled the horses to a stop. He slid open the tiny door that allowed words to pass between driver and passengers. “What, ma’am?”
    “Turn around.”
    “I ain’t took no wrong turn, ma’am.”
    “I know that. I want to follow that track we just passed.”
    “That just leads on up to Chapman Valley.”
    “Excellent. Then take me to Chapman Valley.”
    “But it’s the school board in Baker’s Fork what hired me to bring