LITMIR.BIZ

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check on the camp setup and see that everything is running smoothly, then get ready. I’ll leave you gentlemen to agree on the final assignments and action. The day is moving on. We need to be prepared to start with the battle at sundown.”

      “Hell, I hope they got a uniform that will fit me!” He winked. Ramsay was a good guy. He had a small house that had once been a working plantation, but his land had been eaten up over the years. Plantation actually meant farm, and Ramsay had no farmland left at all. He spent most of his time in the city, where he actually was a working artist making a nice income.

      “I’m off to join the Yankees!”

      “Thanks!” Charles Osgood lifted a hand to Ramsay, and then to Ashley, looking dazed. He was getting the prime role for the day, and he still seemed to be surprised.

      It didn’t mean as much to Ramsay, Ashley thought, watching him as he walked from the stables to the old barn. He was from here; he’d been born a part of it all. He’d played soldiers over and over again, and though it had been magnanimous of him to hand over the role, she wasn’t sure that Ramsay hadn’t decided that being a Yankee might not be that bad a thing for the day. After all, they ended the day with the Pledge of Allegiance and the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Even if they did begin it with a rousing chorus of “Dixie”!

      She left Cliff’s to make a quick check of the horses. “Thank God you darlings don’t care if you’re Yankees or rebels!” she said affectionately, pausing to rub Abe’s ears. She saw that the tack for the Northern cavalry was ready for each of the mounts, saddles and saddle blankets set on sawhorses and the bridles with their insignias hanging from hooks right outside the stalls. Abe, Jeff, Varina, Tigger, Nellie and Bobby were all groomed and sleekly beautiful, ready to play their parts. She paused to give Varina a pat; she loved all the horses, but Varina was her special mare, the horse she always chose to ride.

      Leaving the stables, Ashley paused for a moment to look across the expanse of acreage to the left, where the tents of the living encampment had been set up. She could see the sutler’s stretch of canvas, and she walked over to see who was working that day. Tourists—parked way down the river road—were milling around the goods for sale. She heard children squealing with delight as they discovered toys from the mid-nineteenth century, just as she heard women ooh and aah over some of the corsets and clothing. She saw that a crowd had gathered around the medical tent where reenactors were doing a spectacular job of performing an amputation. The patient let out a horrific scream, and then passed out. Dr. Ben Austin—playing his ancestor, also Dr. Ben Austin—stood in an apron covered in stage blood and explained the procedure. Ben would later be part of the battle reenactment, but for now, he was explaining medicine. Ashley reached him in time to capture part of his spiel.

      “Amputation was frequently the only choice for a Civil War surgeon, and field surgeons could perform an amputation in as little as ten minutes,” Ben told the crowd. “Chloroform existed, but it was scarce. The South had alcohol. When the surgeon could, he would do everything in his power to make the traumatic operation easier for his patient, but at major battles, the pile of amputated limbs could easily grow to be five feet tall. There was no real understanding of germs, and more men died from disease than from wounds or bullets. To carry that further, more men died in the Civil War than in any other American war, and more men died at Sharpsburg, or Antietam, as those of you from the North might know it, than died during the D-Day invasion.”

      Ben saw Ashley watching him and lifted a bloody hand. Well, it was covered in faux blood from the faux surgery. Ben knew how to be dramatic. She smiled and waved in return and went on, stopping to chat with some of the women who were cooking, darning or sewing at the living-encampment tents. There were soldiers around as well, explaining Enfield rifles to little boys, whittling, playing harmonicas or engaging in other period activities. One laundress was hanging shirts and long johns out to dry—a nice touch, Ashley thought.

      “When the war started, the North already had a commissary department—and the South didn’t,” Matty, the sutler’s wife, was explaining to a group who stood around the campfire she had nurtured throughout the day. “Hardtack—dried biscuits, really—molasses, coffee, sugar, salted beef or pork and whatever they could scrounge off the land was what fed the soldiers, and the South had to scramble to feed the troops. Didn’t matter how rich you were—you were pretty much stuck with what could be gotten. There were points, especially at the beginning of the war, during which the Southern soldiers were doing all right. They were on Southern soil. But war can strip the land. What I’m doing here is boiling salted beef and trying to come up with something like a gravy to soften up the hardtack. With a few precious spices, salt and sugar, it won’t be too bad. A few people can taste, if they like! Of course, I’ve made sure that our hardtack has no boll weevils. The soldiers were fighting every kind of varmint, big and small, to keep their own food.”

      Everything seemed to be in perfect order; Ashley’s dreams had been for nothing.

      Except, of course, that the reenactment always made her think about Jake.

      They were due to leave soon, within the next few days, but since Adam Harrison’s group was still in New Orleans, they finished with the training they were doing there, and waiting for the move, Jake had agreed to go wandering around the French Quarter with his fellow newly minted agent, Whitney Tremont.

      “I must admit, I’m going to be sorry to leave New Orleans,” Whitney said. She stared out toward Jackson Square. “There was so much paperwork after the Holloway case, it felt like we were picking up the pieces for days at first. But it’s been nice to have this bit of time to get ready for our move, since we’re all taking up residence in the D.C. area. Though, I’m ex-cited—I mean, we’re going to have offices, Jake. Like really cool offices, in a building in Alexandria—with help! A forensics lab! State-of-the-art equipment.”

      Jake grinned. “Yes, it’s going to be interesting to get settled in.”

      Whitney grinned back. Her skin was like the café au lait that sat before them. He knew that the others had thought the two of them might wind up together, but what they had formed instead was a friendship, deep and binding.

      “But it was good, I think—just being thrown together as freelancers of a sort for our first case. Don’t you think?” she asked. “But federal positions … though I don’t think we really get to stay in those fancy buildings that often, do you?”

      “We’re like any other team or unit for the FBI, I believe. The cases come in, and I’m assuming that Adam Harrison and Jackson Crow decide what looks like something we should take on. We’ll get to discuss the situation then. And make the plans.”

      “Do you think that any of us could put a case forward?” she asked.

      “Sure.” He smiled. “Let’s face it, Whitney, we are an experiment in paranormal investigations. We’re unique, and I’m sure there are those who will make fun of the ‘Krewe of Hunters’ unit.”

      “Not anymore. Not after the Holloway case,” she said proudly.

      “We have to keep proving that we’re good at what we do,” Jake said. The name “Krewe” they’d given themselves had begun as a joke, but they’d become a real crew through their passion for the work.

      “Hmm,” Whitney said, twirling her straw in her iced café au lait. “It’s here somewhere.”

      “Here? What’s here? Sometimes you make no sense.”

      That made her laugh. “Only sometimes? I think that our new case is going to be here. Somewhere in Louisiana.”

      “We’re about to move to Alexandria,” he pointed out.

      “I don’t know … I just have a feeling. I don’t think we’ll be going yet. You wait and see.”

      “What makes you think that?” Jake asked. Whitney’s prowess was with film, sound and video. But she also seemed to have amazing intuition. Of course, they had all been gathered into the group because of their intuition, their ability to solve problems where others could not, but where Angela Hawkins

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