Graves poked in the fire with a stick. Dragging out a metal fitting, he waited until Pruitt poured water over the blackened metal, then reached down and tossed it aside. There was already a pile of metal plates and bolts, enough to fill a bucket.

“Fill that empty bucket with what metal will fit,” Graves said to Pruitt, “then dump it in the bayou. Bring back a full bucket of water.”

Pruitt bent down and began tossing the warm metal pieces into the bucket.

Graves walked over to where the digging was progressing and whispered to Taylor, “How far you down?”

“About three feet,” Taylor noted.

“That’s deep enough. Help pull the twins over here and drop them in their grave.”

Dan climbed from the hole. The cattails were almost out, and the light had grown dim. “Ain’t much of a hole, Mr. Taylor.”

“No, it ain’t, Dan,” he said, “but it’ll have to do.”

As if on cue, Graves, Pruitt, and Thomas appeared, dragging one of the cannon.

“Jack,” Graves whispered, “you and Dan on one side, me and Sol on the other.”

Walking the few feet to the hole, they tossed it in, then walked back and repeated the procedure with the second gun.

“Ain’t much of a hole, Jack,” Graves said, grinning.

“That soil was a damn shade harder than it looked, Henry,” Taylor said.

Dan began to shovel dirt over the guns, as Graves stepped back and wiped his hands on his pants. “Let me have your pocketknife, Sol,” he said quietly.

Sol reached into his pocket, removed the knife, and flipped it open. He handed it to Graves, who pricked his finger and handed it back. Thomas did the same, then handed it to Taylor, who reached up and handed it to Bamett.

“Now, men,” Graves said, “this is a blood pact that we tell no one about any of this until such time as the Confederacy rises again.”

The men touched fingers together.

“The Twin Sisters stay hidden,” Taylor said, “until they are safe.”

The men repeated the mantra.

“Mark a few trees with the ax,” Graves said, “and spread leaves over the hole.”

Taylor grabbed the ax and hacked marks into several nearby trees, while Pruitt and Thomas covered the area with leaves and branches. Graves walked a few yards to the east and stared into the distance. He could just make out a light inside a top-floor room of a three-story house in Harrisburg. Taking his bearings from all points on the compass, he walked back Barnett had turned the wagon around and was pointed back toward the tracks.

“Let’s get on out of here,” Graves said quietly.

“We’re here, John,” Graves said easily.

Barnett was staring out the window. “Seems so long ago, Henry,” he said, “like it was a dream.”

Graves and Barnett stepped off the train in Harrisburg into a vastly different world. Harrisburg was slowly being absorbed into Houston, and the area had been greatly built up in the last four decades. Graves had become a doctor, while Barnett was now a successful businessman in Gonzales. The men had aged and were no longer the wild-eyed youthful soldiers of 1865. Graves’s hair was more white than blond. Barnett, for his part, sported salt-and-pepper hair and a middle-aged paunch. Over the years, the pair had lost touch with Taylor and Thomas. It was rumored that Taylor had settled in Oklahoma in the land rush of 1889. It was said Sol Thomas had gone north to the Dakota Territories when gold was discovered, then died when he stepped out in the street in Deadwood during a bank robbery and caught a stray bullet. No one really knew. Dan had chosen to remain in Graves’s employment after he was freed. He had passed away in 1878 when an outbreak of yellow fever swept through the South.

“Let’s start back at the Harris House,” Graves said, staring up as a Ford Model C backfired on the street outside, then puttered away.

The two men walked the short distance to Myrtle Street, then looked around in surprise. The block where the hotel had been located had been razed. To the north was a new building with a sign that said “Harrisburg Electrical Cooperative.”

“Let’s ask in there,” Graves said.

Barnett nodded and followed Graves inside.

The clerk at the counter looked up as the two men entered. “Can I help you?”

“There used to be a hotel named the Harris House,” Graves said, smiling. “You familiar with that?”

“No,” the clerk said, “but hold on. Jeff,” he shouted in back.

An older man walked out carrying a rag. He wiped his hands. The man was tall and lean. His hair was going to gray, and he had a neatly trimmed beard.

“Jeff’s been around these parts forever,” the clerk said.

“Do you know where the Harris House Hotel was located?” Graves asked.

“I haven’t heard that name in thirty years,” Jeff said, “since just after the War of Northern Aggression.”

“We stayed there just after the war,” Barnett offered.

“After the war,” Jeff said. “You boys Yankees?”

“No, sir,” Graves said, “rebels. I’m Dr. Henry Graves from Lometa, this here’s John Barnett of Gonzales.”

Jeff nodded. “Good. I don’t trust Yankees.”

“About the hotel,” Barnett said.

“You men are two blocks south of where the old hotel was located,” Jeff said. “The streets were all changed ’bout ten years after the war when they relaid the railroad tracks. It’s all different around here now.”

“The tracks were moved?” Graves said anxiously.

“Sure enough,” Jeff said. “This city’s been all changed around since you was last here.”

“There used to be a three-story house near the bayou,” Graves said quickly. “You know the house I mean?”

“The old Valentine place,” Jeff said. “That’s still there. Three blocks north and two blocks west.”

“Thanks a lot,” Barnett said.

“No problem,” Jeff said. “If you need some more help finding something, you just give me a shout.”

That day, Graves and Barnett searched for where the cannon were buried.

But that, and all subsequent searches, turned up nothing.

Every time we return from searching for the Twin Sisters cannon in Harrisburg, we swear we’ll never go back. It’s the only sane thing to do. I don’t wish to demean the good citizens of Harrisburg, but I can envision more exotic locales to spend a holiday. Why we’ve come four times to torture ourselves, I’ll never know. That we go again and again borders on psychosis, which means we have definitely lost contact with reality.

Like other searchers who have become addicted to the Twin Sisters, some of whom have looked half a lifetime, I believe that, despite the fragmentary and incoherent evidence, they are buried somewhere around Harrisburg. This isn’t all that inconceivable when you consider that I believed in the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and virgins until my fortieth birthday.

No one really knows what happened to the famed Twin Sisters cannon that were put to good use by Sam Houston at the battle of San Jacinto. Stories circulated that they were dumped in Galveston Bay to keep them out of the hands of Union soldiers, or sent north after the war where they were melted down, or — the most fabulous tale of all — buried after the war in Harrisburg. The truth is probably lost in the mists of time.

The only good source is the eyewitness account of a Union soldier stationed in Houston who found the cannon lying in a pile with several others near his barracks. Corporal M. A. Sweetman, who was about to be mustered out of the army, wrote in his diary, on July 30, 1865: