Scully motioned toward the back porch. Colonel Dawkins stood there, staring. “This could be your dyin’ day I do believe that old man’d shoot you, son or not.”

“There was a time he would’ve, but somethin’s been took out of him. Maybe it’s losin’ the war, or maybe it’s losin’ Mama, I don’t know. He acts as mean as ever, but look in his eyes and you’ll see he ain’t the man he was.”

“I looked in his eyes, and they still scared me.”

The hole was four feet deep when a field hand’s shovel struck a rock. He raised up, sweat rolling down his face. “Ain’t nothin’ more down here.”

Pete’s confidence began to waver. Scully said, “Maybe your memory ain’t as good as you thought it was.”

Pete reluctantly admitted, “Maybe I missed it by a foot or two. Dig the hole out wider, thisaway.”

At last Colonel Dawkins stepped down from the small back porch and strode out to where the woodpile had been. He challenged Pete, “You think you’re mighty smart, but you’re making a fool of yourself.”

“The hell I am. I saw you myself, buryin’ a whole bucketful of Yankee money. I figure by rights it’s mine because of all the work I done around here for nothin’.”

“You’re several months too late. I already dug it up.”

Pete felt as if an ax handle had struck him across the stomach. “What did you do with it?”

“I gave it to the cause. The Confederacy needed it to buy guns in Mexico.”

Pete wanted to believe his father was lying, but he knew instinctively that he was not. Though the old man would not have spent that money on himself or any of his family, he would squander it on a lost cause. “You fool! You damned old fool!”

Triumph glowed in Caleb Dawkins’s eyes. “When I saw the men start digging, I knew why you wanted to stay. You weren’t content just to steal horses from me. You were going to steal my money, too. Well, now there’s nothing here for you except a lot of hard work. So, when are you leaving?”

Pete gritted his teeth. “That’d tickle you plumb to death, wouldn’t it? But this country owes me, and one way or another I’m goin’ to collect. If not from you, then from anywhere and anybody I can.” He turned angrily on Jethro. “Fill that hole up before somebody falls in it.”

Scully said, “It looks like a grave to me.”

The colonel walked back into the house. Pete kicked a clod of dirt and broke it into a dozen pieces.

Scully said, “Seems like there ain’t much use in us stayin’ around here.”