Location:The Millford road — the Halbrook holding; the stone barn; the yard
Date/Time:TC1858.03.02 – TC1858.03.03
Somebody had swept the bare strip after the laying, and the broom marks were still in it, faint parallel lines running the long way.
Ovid Crowe sat on a bucket turned over at the edge of the last course with the strip in front of his boots and the north wall beyond it. Three paces of earth, wall to wall. Two hours of looking, and he knew where every one of the lines went.
Bett had posted him here at full dark. She'd come in off the door with her split knuckles wrapped and stood over the strip and said, "Watch it. Say if it moves," and gone back out without telling him what moving would look like. He hadn't asked; if he had to ask, he wasn't the right person to be sitting on the bucket.
That took one from the West Five. Bett had said so out loud, at the door, so that nobody would find it out later. West's a four tonight. Nobody had argued about that either.
