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The skull of the monster slowly revealed itself

A shard of yellowed tusk poked through the dark soil

Two muddied men knelt in the dirt on either side of the excavated hole One of them was Billy Preston’s father; the other, his uncle Billy stood over theed to be included on this trip In the past, he’d always been left behind in Philadelphia with his mother and his baby sister, Nell

Pride spiked through hi here

But at the e of fear

Maybe that was due to the sun sitting low on the horizon, casting tangled shadows over the encaing up all week

Others gathered around: the black-skinned slaves who hauled stones and dirt; the priers; and of course, the cryptic French scientist named Archard Fortescue, the leader of this expedition into the Kentucky wilderness

The latter—with his tall bony fra him of an undertaker in his black jacket and waistcoat He had heard whispered ruaunt fello the man dissected corpses, performed experiments with the arcane artifacts It was even said he had once participated in the mummification of a deceased fellow scholar, a man who had donated his body and risked his immortal soul for such a macabre endeavor

But the French scientist had come with credentials to support him Benjaroup, the Ae He had apparently ih the exact details remained unknown Additionally, the Frenchinia, the e site

It hy they were still here—and had been for so long

Over the passing weeks, Billy had watched the surrounding foliage slowly turn fros had begun to frost At night, winds stripped the trees, leaving skeletal branches scratching at the sky At the start of each day, Billy had to sweep and rake away piles of leaves fro site It was a constant battle, as if the forest were trying to rebury what lay exposed to the sun

Even now, Billy held the hay-bristled broom and watched as his father—dressed in muddy breeches, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows—cleared the last of the dirt from the buried treasure

“With great care now” Fortescue warned in his thick accent He swept back the tails of his jacket to lean closer, one fist on his hip, the other hand leaning on a carved wooden cane

Billy bristled at the implied condescension in the Frenchman’s manner His father knew all the woods, froinia to remote tracts of Kentucky, better than any man Since before the war, his father had been a trapper and trader with the Indians in these parts He’d even once met Daniel Boone