“I hid hit in that gully where mine use to be,” George said. “Since them shurfs never found nothing there the yuther time, they’ll think hit aint no use to look there no more.”
“You fool,” Lucas said. “Dont you know a week aint going to pass from now to the next election without one of them looking in that gully just because Roth Edmonds told them there was a still in it once? And when they catch you this time, you aint going to have any witness you have already been married to since last fall.”
“They aint going to catch me this time,” George said. “I done had my lesson. I’m gonter run this one the way you tells me to.”
“You better had,” Lucas said. “As soon as dark falls you take that wagon and get that thing out of that gully. I’ll show you where to put it. Hah,” he said. “And I reckon this one looks enough like the one that was in that gully before not to even been moved at all.”
“No sir,” George said. “This is a good one. The worm in hit is almost brand-new. That’s how come I couldn’t git him down on the price he axed. That porch and well money liked two dollars of being enough, but I just made that up myself, without needing to bother you. But it aint worrying about gittin caught that troubles my mind. What I cant keep from studying about is what we gonter tell Nat about that back porch and that well.”
“What we is?” Lucas said.
“What I is, then,” George said. Lucas looked at him for a moment.
“George Wilkins,” he said.
“Sir,” George said.
“I don’t give no man advice about his wife,” Lucas said.
Chapter Two
I
ABOUT A HUNDRED yards before they reached the commissary, Lucas spoke over his shoulder without stopping. “You wait here,” he said.
“No, no,” the salesman said. “I’ll talk to him myself. If I cant sell it to him, there aint a—” He stopped. He recoiled actually; another step and he would have walked full tilt into Lucas. He was young, not yet thirty, with the assurance, the slightly soiled snap and dash, of his calling, and a white man.
Yet he even stopped talking and looked at the negro in battered overalls who stood looking down at him not only with dignity but with command.
“You wait here,” Lucas said. So the salesman leaned against the fence in the bright August morning, while Lucas went on to the commissary. He mounted the steps, beside which a bright-coated young mare with a blaze and three stockings stood under a wide plantation saddle, and entered the long room with its ranked shelves of tinned food and tobacco and patent medicines, its hooks pendant with trace chains and collars and hames. Edmonds sat at a roll-top desk beside the front window, writing in a ledger.
Lucas stood quietly looking at the back of Edmonds’s neck until the other turned. “He’s come,” Lucas said.
Edmonds swivelled the chair around, back-tilted. He was already glaring before the chair stopped moving; he said with astonishing violence: “No!”
“Yes,” Lucas said.
“No!”
“He brought it with him,” Lucas said. “I saw with my own eyes — —”
“Do you mean to tell me you wrote him to come down here after I told you I wouldn’t advance you three hundred dollars nor three hundred cents nor even three cents — —”
“I saw it, I tell you,” Lucas said. “I saw it work with my own eyes. I buried a dollar in my back yard this morning and that machine went right straight to where it was and found it. We are going to find that money tonight and I will pay you back in the morning.”
“Good!” Edmonds said. “Fine! You’ve got over three thousand dollars in the bank. Advance yourself the money. Then you wont even have to pay it back.” Lucas looked at him. He didn’t even blink. “Hah,” Edmonds said. “And because why? Because you know damn well just like I know damn well that there aint any money buried around here. You’ve been here sixty-seven years.
Did you ever hear of anybody in this country with enough money to bury? Can you imagine anybody in this country burying anything worth as much as two bits that some of his kinfolks or his friends or his neighbours aint dug up and spent before he could even get back home and put his shovel away?”
“You’re wrong,” Lucas said. “Folks find it. Didn’t I tell you about them two strange white men that come in here after dark that night three or four years ago and dug up twenty-two thousand dollars in a old churn and got out again before anybody even laid eyes on them? I saw the hole where they filled it up again. And the churn.”
“Yes,” Edmonds said. “You told me. And you didn’t believe it then either. But now you’ve changed your mind. Is that it?”
“They found it,” Lucas said. “Got clean away before anybody even knowed it, knowed they was here even.”
“Then how do you know it was twenty-two thousand dollars?” But Lucas merely looked at him. It was not stubbornness but an infinite, almost Jehovah-like patience, as if he were contemplating the antics of a lunatic child.
“Your father would have lent me three hundred dollars if he was here,” he said.
“But I aint,” Edmonds said. “And if I could keep you from spending any of your money on a damn machine to hunt buried gold with, I would do that too. But then, you aint going to use your money, are you? That’s why you came to me. You’ve got better sense. You just hoped I didn’t have. Didn’t you?”
“It looks like I’m going to have to use mine,” Lucas said. “I’m going to ask you one more time — —”
“No!” Edmonds said. Lucas looked at him for a good minute this time. He did not sigh.
“All right,” he said.
When he emerged from the commissary, he saw George too, the soiled gleam of the ruined panama hat where George and the salesman now squatted in the shade of a tree, squatting on their heels without any other support. Hah, he thought, He mought talk like a city man and he mought even think he is one.
But I know now where he was born at. The salesman looked up as Lucas approached. He gave Lucas one rapid, hard look and rose, already moving toward the commissary. “Hell,” he said, “I told you all the time to let me talk to him.”
“No,” Lucas said. “You stay out of there.”
“Then what are you going to do?” the salesman said. “Here I’ve come all the way from Memphis — And how you ever persuaded them up there in Saint Louis to send this machine out without any downpayment in the first place, I still dont see. And I’ll tell you right now, if I’ve got to take it back, turn in an expense account for this trip and not one damn thing to show for it, something is — —”
“We aint doing any good standing here, at least,” Lucas said. He went on, the others following him, back to the gate, the road where the salesman’s car waited. The divining machine sat on the back seat and Lucas stood in the open door, looking at it — an oblong metal box with a handle for carrying at each end, compact and solid, efficient and business-like and complex with knobs and dials. He didn’t touch it. He just leaned in the door and stood over it, blinking, bemused. He spoke to no one.
“And I watched it work,” he said. “I watched it with my own eyes.”
“What did you expect?” the salesman said. “That’s what it’s supposed to do. That’s why we want three hundred dollars for it. Well?” he said. “What are you going to do? I’ve got to know, so I can know what to do myself. Aint you got three hundred dollars? What about some of your kinfolks? Hasn’t your wife got three hundred dollars hid under the mattress somewhere?” Lucas mused on the machine. He did not look up yet.
“We will find that money tonight,” he said. “You put in the machine and I’ll show you where to look, and we’ll go halves in it.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” the salesman said harshly, with no muscle of his face moving save the ones which parted his lips. “Now I’ll tell one.” Lucas mused above the box.
“We bound to find it, captain,” George said suddenly. “Two white men slipped in here three years ago and dug up twenty-two thousand dollars in a old churn one night and got clean away fo daylight.”
“You bet,” the salesman said. “And you knew it was exactly twenty-two grand because you found where they had throwed away the odd cents they never wanted to bother with.”
“Naw sir,” George said. “Hit mought a been more than twenty-two thousand dollars. Hit wuz a big churn.”
“George Wilkins,” Lucas said. He was still halfway inside the car. He didn’t even turn his head.
“Sir,” George said.
“Hush,” Lucas said. He withdrew his head and upper body and turned and looked at the salesman. Again the young white man saw a face absolutely impenetrable, even a little cold. “I’ll swap you a mule for it,” Lucas said.
“A mule?”
“When we find that
