Journals from the soldiers, and from Washington himself, tell that their trail would have been easy to follow, for it was marked with bloody footprints. Some nights they couldn't start a fire, for the snow and frozen rain never let up, and they had few tents. They had almost no food left, and their main meal was a little flour mixed with water, or raw meat. Back at the farm, Nate was cared for and healing, hidden away in the straw, with three blankets and a fine pair of moccasins from the farmer. Benjamin was not so lucky, for halfway in that hard march, he woke one morning to find his shoes stolen.
Hard times can make people do bad things, even to steal from a young boy.
By the time they neared Valley Forge, exactly one week before Christmas, he was leaving his own trail of blood in the snow. Valley Forge was just bare fields and woods - any shelter they would have to build themselves. It was Benjamin's turn to stand watch, for they treated him half-way as a soldier now, and he went to his post and stood on his hat, to protect his bare feet some from the snowy ground. At midnight, the snow stopped, and an eerie silence filled the campground. That was when he saw the strange light, deeper in the woods.