“It’s a sorry state you’ve come to, Pete, that you’d rob your own father. I’m only glad your mother isn’t here to see how low you’ve let yourself sink. You’re on the run again, aren’t you?”

“It’s none of your concern if I am. You’ve already disowned me, so what difference does it make?”

“What did you do, steal some more horses?”

“Killed some nigger soldiers, is all.”

“So now you’ve moved up to higher crimes. You’ve added murder to the list.”

“It ain’t murder, killin’ a nigger. The country’s overrun with them as it is.”

“But if they were soldiers the Federals won’t rest ‘til they have a noose around your neck.”

“There was thousands of soldiers killed in the war. What’s three more, especially with them bein’ black?” Pete took a threatening stance. “Now, where’s that money at?”

Tears glistened in the colonel’s dull eyes. “You’ll find a metal box in the bottom of my desk yonder.”

Pete took three quick strides and flung open the double doors in the lower part of the rolltop desk. He grabbed the box so eagerly that it slipped from his grasp and fell heavily to the floor. He lifted it to the desktop and nervously fumbled with the latch. He flipped the box open and plunged his hands into stacks of neatly banded currency. He yelled exuberantly. Then the yell broke off. His face fell.

“Confederate money!” He ripped the bands off several bundles before he turned in disbelief. “Confederate, every damned bit of it. But where’s the real money?”

“That’s it. That’s all there is.”

Pete let a handful of currency float to the floor. “You fool! You damned old fool! You were richer than Croesus, and you let it go to hell for a crazy notion.”

“Not crazy. You wouldn’t call it crazy if we had won.”

Pete could not contain his rage. He drove his fist into his father’s square chin. Colonel Dawkins staggered back, grasping at a chair. He missed it and fell heavily to the floor.

He made no effort to get up. He lay there, rubbing his hand across his bleeding mouth, then looking at it. In a voice so weak Pete barely heard it, he said, “I remember when you were eight, and you took diphtheria. You would have died, but your mother and I would not allow it.” Bitterly he shook his head. “Better you had died an innocent boy than to become what you are.”

Pete shouted, “Hurry up, Scully. we got to be movin’.”

Scully came out of the kitchen with a cloth sack. “Didn’t find much. Some bacon, some cold bread. Not even any coffee.”

“It’ll do. Let’s go.”

His father still lay on the floor, gasping as if he could not catch breath enough to fill his lungs. Pete barely yielded him a glance as he rushed out the door. He ran toward his tied horse, which took fright and pulled back hard against the reins. Pete had difficulty mounting him. Once in the saddle, he slapped the horse across the shoulders with the long reins. “Settle down, damn you!” For a moment it looked as if the animal would pitch.