Reece MacBride took a deep breath and focused again, but the body was still there. The wind had blown the sheet away, revealing a gray-haired man with a bullet hole in his temple. He had been dead for several hours. Already the fetid odor of death permeated the air, reminding him of the sickly stench of a battlefield after the fighting.Gazing toward the sky, Reece forced another breath past the lump in his throat and tried to ignore the hard knot that settled in his gut at the all too familiar sight of a dead Confederate soldier, a sight he had not seen in more than thirteen years. His breath rasping in his chest, he fumbled in his vest pocket for the silver dollar he always kept there. The past receded as he held the coin before his eyes and read the date inscribed there.1866 -- the war was over.His gaze returned to the body on the ground before him. This was 1878, for God's sake. What kind of man would carry his uniform with him for all these years, let alone put it on to die?Reece remembered the day he had first put on his own uniform and left his home and family.
