The question caught Snoop off guard and he laughed. “Besides drinking?” When Harry nodded yes, he said, “I knew when he was going to read because he’d clean up.”
“Why?” Harry couldn’t understand what cleanliness had to do with reading.
“The library. He didn’t want to get thrown out. He’d go on these jags. Go most every day for a week or two, then pick up an odd job, stop.”
“Ever go with him?”
Brownie in hand, Snoop smiled. “Ma’am, I’m not a reader. But Frank was educated. Some of us graduated from high school. Some not, but Frank was, I think, the only college graduate on the mall. Could be wrong. We don’t much talk about stuff like that.”
“I see. Well, did he ever tell you what he was reading?”
Snoop thought for a minute. “Once he said whoever writes a book isn’t dead. Never thought of that. He liked history stuff.”
Harry smiled, watching him enjoy the triple-rich brownie. “Ginger was a history professor,” she said.
“What’s the dog’s name?”
“Tucker.”
“She’s watchful.”
Harry grinned. “She is one of my best friends.”
“I protect her,” Tucker spoke.
Snoop reached down to pat Tucker’s glossy head. “What kind of dog is she?”
“A Pembroke corgi. Like the Queen of England has.”
His eyes twinkled for a moment. “Good choice.”
“Snoop, do you still have my card?”
“Do.” He reached in his back pocket, retrieved it.
She reached in hers, handing him Cooper’s card. “Here. I know she’s a cop, but she’s my neighbor and a solid friend. Straight up. If you need her, if there’s trouble, call. She isn’t going to drag you off.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know, but there’re two murders close in time, two men who knew each other, even though that connection ended back in 1975.”
“Ma’am, the professor was at one end, and Frank was down here. I don’t see how they can be connected, and I don’t see how it can touch me or any of us.” He swept his hand to indicate the others who more or less lived on the mall.
“Snoop, I hope that’s true. But if someone is frightened or needs to protect something, that person might think you know more than you do. Be watchful like Tucker.” She paused. “Actually, Snoop. Be really careful.”
February 20, 1781
“One, two, three, heave!” Charles commanded three other men, who helped him pick up one end of a huge log.
The four men on the other end labored to raise it as Charles and his side did. They eased this heavy burden onto a horizontal pile of three logs, staked perpendicular with other narrowed logs. They had no iron nails, and pegs didn’t work to secure the sides of a new barracks. Given the lack of tools, chains, or nails, Corporal Ix figured the only possible solution was to drop logs between two stakes. The difficulty was in driving narrow logs that had their ends cut to a point into solid ground. Still, they did it. Hard work helped ward off the cold when lifting or chopping, but once a man stood still, the winds cut to the bone. Better to keep at it.
Each new barracks being built had an outside fire to warm men between tasks. The prisoners would run up, hold their hands to the fire, even lift up their freezing feet.
Every few hours one man from each of the work parties would return to his barracks to feed the fire. When the day’s work was finished, at least they would be able to walk into a somewhat warm room.
And the new barracks would ease the overcrowding.
Dark gray clouds bore down on them from the north, having rolled over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Charles was learning to read the weather. Winter in these climes, harsh as it may be, he could bear. It was the New World summers that tested man and beast.
The log settled on top of the others.
“Sir,” Corporal Ix called from the other end of the new side, “we need the pulley and the rope is frayed.”
“Damn,” Charles muttered under his breath as he walked over to the rudimentary pulley that the Hessian had created.
“It won’t last,” the engineer predicted.
“Can we finish this side?”
“Lieutenant, maybe one more log, two.” He held up two fingers in his torn gloves. “When it breaks, well?” He shrugged.
“All right. Take charge, Corporal. I’ll seek out Captain Schuyler. He’s here somewhere. Maybe we can find more rope.”
He walked toward the main house serving as headquarters as well as the commandant’s residence, a point of dissatisfaction on the commandant’s side. The soles of his boots gapped in sections, the cold seeping through, and when it snowed his feet were always wet and ice cold. It hurt to walk.
A little wind devil twirled in front of him, debris swirling, and a bit of sleet as the clouds finally reached him.
Squinting, he saw Captain Schuyler striding toward the house, coming from the direction of the stables.
“Captain,” Charles called to him, trotting in the tall man’s direction, then slowing, as trotting hurt worse than walking.
“Lieutenant.” John Schuyler smiled. “Filthy weather.”
“I fear frostbite as much as I feared battle.”
“Did you fear battle?” Schuyler’s eyebrows rose up.
“Yes, until the guns opened. Then I was fine,” the blood Englishman honestly replied.
“H-m-m. I miss it.” Looking at the shivering lieutenant, Schuyler kindly offered, “Come back to the stables. It’s warmer there. The heat from the horses’ bodies does help and we’d be out of the wind.” He glanced up at the house. “I am not needed there. Just going for news.”
“And what have you heard?”
The wind, perhaps fifteen miles an hour, smacked them in the face as they walked to the barn.
“The old-timers say this is the worst winter they remember.”
Charles smiled. “What do you say, Captain?”
“Nothing. I can’t do anything about it.”
Smiling, they ducked into the sturdy barn, privates and corporals tending to the animals, each of whom had a blanket or a rug as well as good hay.
“Ah.” Charles breathed relief, stamped his feet lightly.
“What I have heard is everyone is in winter quarters. And the Crown refuses to budge on accepting the prisoner-of-war terms fashioned at Saratoga. Your long march presages a long stay.”
Charles nodded. “Hard on some of the men. They truly thought they would be going home so long as they took an oath not to return and fight here. For me, I would have tried to get sent to the Caribbean. Somewhere I could serve but not break my oath here.”
“I lay this at Burgoyne’s door. He refused to list and describe all officers under his command who had been captured.”
Charles considered this. “Yes, we heard that.” When Schuyler’s black eyebrows rose up, Charles smiled. “Prisoners have big ears.”
They both laughed.
“I wouldn’t want to be in Gentleman Johnny’s shoes.” Schuyler called the British general by his nickname. “The loss of Saratoga will weigh on him the rest of his life.”
“Yes, it will, and given his position, his flamboyance, he will never rest.” Charles felt some sympathy for the general. “I was looking for you. Could you spare my men heavy rope? Corporal Ix has rigged up a pulley so we can build barracks faster, and the rope is about to go.”
“Private.”
A young man, fifteen, perhaps, stood up straight. “Yes, Sir.”
“If there is heavy rope in here or up in the loft, bring it to me.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Let’s get out of the aisle. A thrown bale of hay is as bad as a cannonball, especially the way these lads toss them around.” Schuyler turned and ducked, for the door was low, into a tidy room at the southern end of the barn.
Rows of saddles hung on the wall; the odor of leather was comforting. The bits on the bridles gleamed. Harnesses took up one entire wall.