Dawson turned from the window and clasped his hands behind his back. He glanced at Red with mild hostility.
Red scratched his beard and looked at Dawson. “We’re in this together,” he said. “We have to live together in this room and make whatever plans might benefit us all.”
“I guess Bradford has told you about my fault.”
Tim spoke softly. “Forget about that.”
Dawson nodded almost gratefully. “But you can leave me out of your plans,” he said, looking down at Mills who had fallen asleep with the orange in his hand, “and these poor wretches couldn’t walk as far as the city limits.” Dawson stared out the window again. “You’d have to have wings to get away from here,” he said with a bitter laugh.
Red turned away impatiently and sat down on the floor. Tim moved to the other window, and reached through the bars and raised the creaking sash, propping it up with a stick he found on the sill.
Just across the way Tim saw a white building that seemed to be a school. It was closed now, but a scattering of children romped in the yard. Four little girls were playing tag on a patch of grass, and two boys laughed and wrestled under a tree.
Beside the school was a one-story house, neat and clean, with a garden in front. A woman with a basket over her arm was just coming out of the house.
In the vacant lot the guards were ordering the prisoners into ranks. Tim watched as they moved along the street toward the east.
The river glistened like a sheet of polished steel in the citron light of the summer sun. Tim could see the shapes of islands where the Congaree joined the Saluda and the Broad. Columbia Canal followed the near shore of the Congaree and disappeared behind trees near the edge of town. The city was laid out in squares, their pattern broken by a handsome park just across the way.