Disclaimer: Do not own.

Keep riding, Kate. Keep riding, girl.

Just keep going.

Don't turn back.

Just keep going.

You mustn't stop. You can't stop.

There's nothing you can do.

Ride that horse.

Just a bit further.

Just a few more hours…

They'll kill you if they find you…

The excruciating thoughts fill her head. The only thing stopping Kate from bursting into an utter mess of distressed tears and cries is the steady beating of the horse's hooves on the ground.

She can envisage the town.

She can see them finding the sheriff.

She can see them torching what is left of her beloved schoolhouse.

She can see them making their children retch and wail as they make them throw up the inferior and diseased 'nigger peaches'.

She can hear them lecturing the poor children…

'They're impure. It's for you own good. You don't want to end up like Kate.'

But what do they know about love?

All they care of is keeping a society free of cultural equality.

Supremacists.

All they are is despicable, hateful, loathsome, sybaritic and intolerant supremacists.

Kate bets they don't understand more than one of those words, let alone any of them.

She bets they don't appreciate grammar, or spelling, or diction, or poetry, or the fine arts.

Not like Sam.

Her Sam.

Sam the Onion man…

They are all undereducated twits, twats, twots…

Jerks, Knuckleheads, Killjoys, murderous, ravenous pigs…

They are everything wrong with the world and more.

But the thing that hurts Kate the most, the thing that cuts her so deep she can almost feel it tear her apart, the thing that caused her to scream such a scream and causes her to wail and sob as she dismounts her horse is so painful she can't even begin to contemplate the immense pain she is in.

They found him.

Her boy.

Sam.

Her Sam.

Sam the Onion Man.

She can feel the sheriff's arms trying to hold her.

Trying to grab her.

Trying to force her.

She can feel her skin turn cold.

Sam's arms made her feel warm. Warmth she had never once felt.

'Take a drink,' Kate whispers to her horse as it stands dumbly at the water.

She remembers the proverb and smiles gently.

Sam would have liked this.

'You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.' He would have said. 'Or in my case, my stubborn old donkey.'

She mounts her horse and digs her heels into its sides.

It will be hours before she can properly rest.

It will be hours before she can sit and cry and grieve.

It will be hours.

Ride that horse. Ride him, girl. You have to get away.