“It makes me no never mind,” said Hawks. “I was a farmer before; reckon I will be again. All I lost was time.”
“Doesn’t it bother you any that you gave four years of your life for nothing?”
“Wish we coulda won,” shrugged Hawks. “But there’s a lot gave more than I did. General Jackson did. The boys I joined up with-most of them won’t be going back at all.”
Tom Bridgeford slowed his horse to let the wagon go ahead of them. “That’s war for you. Nobody wins but the politicians. Why, I bet as soon as the ink is dry on the peace treaties, the career officers will be worming their way back into the Union Army, and the politicians will be trying to get appointed to offices under whatever govenment is running things. It’s the rest of us who’ll be out of luck, broke in health and nothing to show for it.”
“They made us officers,” Hawks pointed out. “My folks will be mighty proud of that.”
“Well, my folks are dead,” said Bridgeford. “In an epidemic that happened thanks to this war, and the way I see it, the noble Confederacy still owes me a considerable debt of gratitude.”
Gabriel Hawks smiled at his friend. “You want them to make you a general, Tom?”
Bridgeford eased his horse close to Hawks’s plug mare. Looking about him to see that no one was watching, he leaned over and whispered, “Do you know what’s in that middle wagon, Gabriel Hawks?”
The bantam farmer from the Blue Ridge shook his head. “Blankets, maybe. Hardtack?”
“Think again. I looked this morning before we started rolling. The whole Confederate treasury went with us on the train when we left Danville. And when the group disbanded in Little Washington, they paid the soldiers, and then they divided up the rest of the money. Mr. Semple carried off about eighty bars of gold bullion in that wagon.”
Hawks paled and glanced at the covered wagon. It was battered and muddy; it didn’t look like a rolling treasure chest. “But that gold is government money, Tom.”
“What government? Lee surrendered, and those men we’ve been escorting for a month are headed for the ends of the earth. You want to turn it over to the Yankee government so maybe they can pay their soldiers to come burn some more of our farms?”
“I’m no thief,” said Hawks. They rode on in silence for a couple of minutes while he mulled it over. “I can’t think of anybody that ought to have that money, though.” Bridgeford said nothing. “Still, I wouldn’t kill nobody for it,” said Hawks.
“Reckon I wouldn’t either,” said Bridgeford, cantering ahead.
They didn’t say any more about it that day. They just kept heading southeast, trying to outrun the enemy and avoid the bands of raiders who prowled the undefended roads. When DeBruhl was shot by bushwhackers and Glover’s cough got so bad he couldn’t sit up anymore, there were only six of them. Doyle, the dark-eyed youth from Alabama, slipped away to go home, and Semple took the others to go scouting and foraging, leaving his two lieutenants in a clump of woods to guard the wagons. At dusk they hadn’t returned, so Hawks and Bridgeford took turns standing guard all night. They dared not risk a campfire.
When the sky turned clabbered with daylight, Hawks, who hadn’t been asleep, got up and put his ragged blanket back in the wagon. “You there, Tom?” he called softly.
From the shadows of the pines, Bridgeford emerged, his rifle balanced in the crook of his arm. Even the crickets were quiet. He turned to look out at the white ribbon of road, still and silent in the graying light. “They’re not coming back,” he said.
Hawks turned to look at the wagon. He licked his lips and shivered a little from the night air. “They should have been here by now.”
“I guess we ought to move on out of here before whoever got them finds us,” said Bridgeford. He looked for a long time at the tarp-covered wagon they had guarded through the night. “I don’t think it would be wise to take that along,” he said at last. “If Mr. Semple does come back, he’d hunt us down for sure if we made off with the wagon, and even if he didn’t catch us, we’d attract too much attention. I don’t have a mind to fight it out with bushwhackers along these roads, even for a ton of gold.”
Hawks nodded. “It’s more money than we’d need in a lifetime, and it would seem foolish to die after we done lived through the war.”
Bridgeford began to saddle his horse. “I haven’t seen Semple so much as look at the gold since we left Little Washington. I don’t reckon he’d miss half a dozen bars. At least, not in time to catch us.”
He burrowed in under the tarp and lifted out a brick of Confederate gold, dull in the dawn grayness. “It’s heavy, right enough,” he said, handing it to Hawks. “I make it twenty pounds. Thirty, perhaps. We could put them in our haversacks, if we got rid of some provisions. I think my horse could bear the weight of three of them if I let him take his time on the journey.”
“Three of them would be a deal of money,” said Hawks. “But if we turned up with blocks of gold, somebody’d hang us sure. Leastways they’d confiscate it, wouldn’t they?”
“They would if they caught us with it anytime soon. We must see to it that they don’t. Hide it in a safe place for a while. Years, if need be, till things in the country cool down again.” As he spoke, Bridgeford was lifting out bars of gold. Three for Hawks; three for himself. He put the bricks in his haversack, leaving on the ground the half a canteen he’d used as a dinner plate, some hardtack, and a cast-iron frying pan. “Once the country cools down a bit from this war, we can go back for our buried gold and figure out a way to cash it in. There’s jewelers in Wilmington that might help me out with that. We’d better get going, though, before it gets to be full day. I’d hate to lose my newfound fortune to Mr. Semple now.”
“Where are we going?” asked Hawks, looking away down the empty white road.
Bridgeford hoisted himself into the saddle and trotted off toward the woods. “Our separate ways, Hawks,” he said. “And may the good Lord take a liking to you.”
“
