Curtis and the third rider bound Sarah’s wrists with hemp rope and lifted her onto a spare saddle. She did not struggle or speak; she sat upright like a carving of stone as they set off at a gallop toward the jail in Cahaba.
Back at the plantation, Booker had discovered the open study door. His desperate shouting cleared the main house within minutes, sending the domestic staff fleeing into the yard. By midday, the news had swept across the quarters: Thornwood was dead, and the new girl had destroyed him in a manner so complete that grown men could not speak of it without shaking.
Dallas County Sheriff William Pritchard arrived at Thornwood that afternoon accompanied by six deputies and the county physician, Dr. Isaiah Hammond. They entered the study and closed the door behind them.
Hammond, an experienced surgeon who had tended field amputations during the Mexican War, emerged twenty minutes later looking physically ill. He walked to the edge of the second-floor gallery and gripped the railing, taking ragged breaths of air.
Pritchard stepped out beside him. “Isaiah?”
“William,” the doctor whispered, his voice shaking. “I’ve seen artillery wounds. I’ve dissected corpses. But what is in that room… what that girl did is beyond anything I can put into language. That is not an ordinary homicide. It is something else entirely.”
