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                            15
     
                       Inside, Nicki found the small dwelling meticulously clean.  Her gaze fell on the corner where the rations should have been.  Behind the wooden table and two chairs sat barely enough food to feed a child.  What do they do with their food ?  She glanced down at the occupied straw mattress, all thoughts of the small supply of food escaping her.  The babe lay in the crook of her mother's arm, sleeping peacefully.
                       A surge of tenderness shot through Nicki.  How could Betsy sleep with such precious, new life beside her? 
                       "Come on, mam'zelle," Odessa whispered.  "There's thirteen more bebes to see.  I'm sure one is woke, him."
                       Nicki followed Odessa out of the door and down the steps.  The first three cabins she visited filled her with thoughts of the small lives she saw, thinking they were beautiful, even in their blackness.  If a black baby were raised the same way as a white baby, would it be just as intelligent?  Perhaps, under the right circumstances, maybe a black baby was capable of learning.  It was a radical idea, but one not without merit.
                      Her thoughts took an increasingly dark turn, however, as she visited more of the cabins and saw less and less food.
                       "Odessa, have you noticed the scarcity of the food?" she asked, her anger rising as she and the slave woman departed the eighth cabin.
                       "I be blind not to see, mam'zelle, because a lot of the cabins are like that.  I wonda what Masta Charles thinkin', me."
     
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                       "So do I," Nicki sneered, losing some of her interest in visiting the new additions to the slave quarters.  Instead, she went into the cabins to inspect the food.               All of the cabins were well scrubbed and fresh smelling, but the food was skimpy in most of them.
                       "Why is this?"  Her brittle words bit into air, the tension as thick as cane syrup.
                       Nervously clasping their hands, people looked wide-eyed from one to the other.  The older Negroes were reluctant to talk.  However, the youngsters had no such problem.  They gathered around, eager to speak.
    "Masta Williams," blurted one little boy.
    "Hesh, Elmo!  Jus' hesh up!" an old man admonished.
                       The little boy went behind the old man and took his hand.  No one said anything else.
                       Nicki turned to Odessa.  "Don't breathe a word of this to my PaPa until I find out what has happened."
                       Storming down the pathway, Nicki hurriedly went back to the blacksmith's shop.  Untethering Nur, she flung herself into the saddle.  Turning her horse abruptly, she went back through the cane fields where she had seen the overseer.  He wasn't there.
                       "Masta Williams?  He don' gone ta da river road ta stretch his hoss's laigs," a female slave informed Nicki, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her hand.
    Nicki nodded and headed in that direction.  When she reached
    the road, she looked around and  saw no sign of him.
     
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