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When we got there, Jacob put his rifle back behind the truck’s front seat and started searching for his flashlight, while Lou and I emptied the money onto the tailgate. We were both a little stunned, I think, at the number of packets that spilled from the bag, mesmerized by the sight of so much wealth, and that’s probably why we didn’t notice the sheriff’s truck until it was almost upon us. Perhaps if we’d seen it earlier, if we’d made out its headlights when they were still hovering on the edge of the horizon, two yellow pinpricks moving slowly toward us, I would’ve acted differently. I would’ve had time to think things through, to consider my options with a little more care, so that when the truck finally got close enough for me to make out the bubble light on its roof, I might’ve decided to tell Sheriff Jenkins about the plane. I could’ve shown him the money, explained how we were just about to call him up on the CB, and, by doing that, I would’ve ended the whole thing right then and there, would’ve handed it to the sheriff in a nice, tidy bundle, disposing of it before it had a chance to unravel and entangle us all.
    But it didn’t happen like that: the truck was no more than two hundred yards away when we noticed it. We heard it first, heard its engine, the crunch of its tires against the frozen road. Lou and I looked up at the same time. A half second later Jacob pulled his head from behind the seat.
    “Shit,” I heard him say.
    Without thinking, acting purely on instinct, like an animal burying its store of food, I slammed shut the tailgate. The money tumbled out across the truck bed, the packets making a soft thumping sound against the metal floor. We’d dropped the duffel bag to the ground after we’d emptied it, and I bent to pick it up now. I draped it across the money, covering it as best I could.
    “Go up front with Jacob,” I whispered to Lou. “Let me do the talking.”
    Lou shuffled quickly away, his head bowed. Then the sheriff was there, his brakes squeaking as he came to a stop on the opposite side of the road. He leaned across the seat to roll down the window, and I stepped out to greet him.
    Technically Carl Jenkins wasn’t really a sheriff, though that’s what everyone called him. Sheriff was a county position, and Carl worked for the town. He was Ashenville’s only policeman, a position he’d held for nearly forty years. People called him Sheriff simply from a lack of any other possible title of respect.
    “Hank Mitchell!” he said as I came toward him, his whole face smiling, as if he’d been driving along just now hoping he’d run into me. I didn’t know him that well; we were no more than nodding acquaintances, but I always felt like he was sincerely pleased to see me. I think he made everyone feel that way, even strangers; he had that quality about him, a disarmingly unguarded avuncularity, a smile that caught you by surprise.
    He was a small man, shorter than I. His face was perfectly round, with a wide, shiny forehead and a small, thin-lipped mouth. There was an air of properness about him, an elegance: his khaki uniform was invariably perfectly pressed, his nails clipped, his thick white hair combed and carefully parted. He smiled often and always had a clean, freshly scrubbed smell about him, a sweetish mixture of talcum powder and shoe polish.
    I stopped a few feet short of his truck.
    “Engine trouble?” he asked.
    “No,” I said. “Dog trouble.” I felt remarkably calm. The money was just a small thought in the very back of my head. I could tell he wasn’t going to get out of his truck, so I knew we wouldn’t have a problem. I told him about the fox.
    “He treed it?” Carl asked.
    “We thought so, but we didn’t get more than a hundred yards into the park before he came running back.”
    Carl peered at me over the rim of his half-raised window, a look of concern on his face. “What happened to your head?”
    I touched the bump with my hand,