Page 176 - LEIBY

176 Leiby – Border Smuggler

Chapter 23

Miriam looked around in bewilderment. She saw how the Jews
had taken hold of the nice man who had promised to take her
to Mama and were beating him to death.
She was filled with overwhelming fear. What if they’d do the
same thing to her? She had to escape, she didn’t want to live
with the Jews anymore, she was afraid. She had been so happy
on the farm; why did the boy who pretended to be her brother
insist on taking her away from Mama? In all the noise and
commotion, nobody noticed how Mirushka slipped out into
the quiet street and ran as fast as she could, looking for a safe
place where she could hide.
Suddenly she heard the sound of an approaching cart. To her
horror, she saw the nice Polish man who had come to save her
lying on the floor of the cart, his eyes tightly closed. The cart
was being driven by two Jewish youths who apparently were
city born and bred and had no idea how to lead the unruly
horses. Mirushka sneered at them privately. Why, Stefan, her
five-year-old neighbor, had known how to control horses better
than them! The cart lumbered laboriously on the asphalt road,
and she had no trouble keeping up with it. At one point, she
even managed to hang onto a projection jutting out from the