"What caliber is it?" Buck asked.

"Japs don’t use calibers. Why do you think they lost? Besides being yellow Commie slants and all that."

"Well, it had to have had a bullet."

"Daddy showed me one, once. Long as your little finger."

"I remember that," Sarah said. "Maybe the bullet’s in that old cigar box with his medals."

The widow cleared her throat. A tarry crumb stuck to her lower lip. "He threw that stuff out. Figured they’d be grandkids running around here before long."

She shot a stare at Buck, as if his worthless seed had refused to take root in Ridgehorn soil, as if he were personally responsible for Jacob’s dying without ever meeting a third-generation descendant.

Alfred lifted the barrel of the gun, pressed the thick wooden stock to his shoulder, and sighted to a spot somewhere near the setting sun outside the window. "Man, bet you could really knock down a deer with this thing."

"Or a buck," Marlene said.

"Ain’t you funny?" Buck said. To the widow, he said, "Reckon this will go up on the block, too. No grandkids, you might as well sell it off."

"We don’t have enough money to buy it and the tractor, too," Sarah said.

"Don’t be dumb," Buck said. "You don’t buy it, you inherit it. I say if we get the tractor, then Alfred here deserves the Jap rifle. Marlene can have-well, what would you rather have, Marlene, the Dodge pickup or Old Laddie?"

Old Laddie was Jacob’s horse, high-spirited in his day, before they gelded him and turned him out to pasture. He was experienced with plow-and-harness, but when you had a tractor you didn’t need to mess with draft animals. Now Laddie mostly spent the day in the shade of the willows by the creek, his dark tail sweeping flies, his nose wet with age.