One day Sally, a foolish young black girl, tries to run away.
She is caught again within an hour.

"No - Please nooo!!!"

"Keep quiet! - You, good for nothing lazy slut!
You will be worth a lot more as an example to the others than you have been in the fields! 

 

   

"Ahhh !"

"Look at her closely bimbos!  That is what is going to happen to any one of you who tries to get away from here !"
 

That evening the convicts lay down dead tired as always, and fall asleep almost right away on the bare dirt floor.  Even though the evening´s show was frightening, it was only something most of them had seen before.
 
All except one!  Lee-Ann stays awake. The overseer has forgotten to lock the door. This might be her big chance. Nobody will expect an escape the very same evening after a hanging.  She also knows that she cannot wait much longer.  In a year or so she will be so scarred and misshappen from the hard labor and beatings, that anyone who sees her even in a clean dress, will get suspicious.
 

Slowly Lee-Ann opens the door and sneaks out. 
The moon is full and the night feels fresh and cold. 
She holds her leg irons, trying not to make any noise. She is afraid everybody must have been awakened by the sound of her beating heart.
 

For the first time in many many months, she can stretch her back and take a deep breath, without risking to be struck by the whip for taking a break.

But she has to keep walking.  When they discover she is missing, they will send the hounds after her.
 

All night Lee-Ann makes her way through the bushes, trying not to make any more tracks than absolutely necessary.

 
  

At sunrise she collapses and has to take an hour´s rest, but she is free - free ...


  

I have to get these damned irons off but they are so strong.  The only stones I can find break when I try - 
Oh damn !

 

Lee-Ann has to continue her flight.  For a long time she follows a stream to shake off the hounds she can hear far away.
 

That evening she climbs up a tree were she stays for 2 days and nights, until she no longer can hear the hounds.


 

Thirsty, she drinks from the stream and finds some berries to eat.  Being used to the rotten food and water at the prison farm, she thinks they taste marvellous.

She can´t stay in the woods for ever, and in these striped clothes she will be caught quickly.  After taking a bath and washing her hair in the cold stream, she sneaks up to a lonely farmhouse. 
 

 For the second time in her life Lee-Ann has to steal.
 

She also takes the washing line to string up her legirons, so they won´t rattle on the ground and give her away. 
 

The next day the young escapee walks along the road in the direction of the nearest state border. In her new dress and clean hair, she looks like a farmer´s daughter coming back from the nearest town
 

"Please, can you tell me the way to Richmond?"

Every time she meets somebody, she sits down by the side of the road pretending to rest and asks for the way to somewhere, so nobody sees the cuffs on her ankles or gets suspicious,  about what a young woman is doing alone on the road.
 

Eight days after her escape and only a few miles from the border, Lee-Ann freezes, when she sees a poster with her picture.  At the same moment she can hear somebody coming up from behind.

She stands tied up for three days in a barn. 
Once in a while she tries in desperation to get free, but the ropes are too tight.  

For the elderly farmer and his wife, who had recognized Lee-Ann from the poster, $50 is a lot of money, falling on a very dry place.

Lee-Ann was young and strong and could easly have fought herself free when they grabbed her, but at that moment she couldn´t let herself harm them.  She didn't have a violent nature and had never hit anybody in her entire life.  And now it is too late!
 

"So finally we found the lost lamb!  
Now we better bring it back to the pen."

Lee-Ann sobs in despair as she is dragged to the car. After first having stripped off all her stolen clothes, he has bound her hands so tightly behind her back, that they are already almost numb.