“I hear somebody digging,” Bookwright whispered. “How do I know it’s Flem Snopes?”
“Hasn’t Henry been laying here every night since ten days ago, listening to him? Wasn’t I right here last night with Henry myself, listening to him? Didn’t we lay right here until he quit and left and then we crawled up there and found every place where he had dug and then filled the hole back up and smoothed the dirt to hide it?”
“All right,” Bookwright whispered. “You and Armstid have been watching somebody digging. But how do I know it is Flem Snopes?”
“All right,” Armstid said, with a cold restrained violence, almost aloud; both of them could feel him trembling where he lay between them, jerking and shaking through his gaunt and wasted body like a leashed dog. “It ain’t Flem Snopes then. Go on back home.”
“Hush!” Ratliff hissed. Armstid had turned, looking toward Bookwright. His face was not a foot from Bookwright’s, the features more indistinguishable than ever now.
“Go on,” he said. “Go on back home.”
“Hush, Henry!” Ratliff whispered. “He’s going to hear you!” But Armstid had already turned his head, glaring up the dark slope again, shaking and trembling between them, cursing in a dry whisper. “If you knowed it was Flem, would you believe then?” Ratliff whispered across Armstid’s body. Bookwright didn’t answer. He lay there too, with the others, while Armstid’s thin body shook and jerked beside him, listening to the steady and unhurried whisper of the shovel and to Armstid’s dry and furious cursing. Then the sound of the shovel ceased. For a moment nobody moved. Then Armstid said,
“He’s done found it!” He surged suddenly and violently between them. Bookwright heard or felt Ratliff grasp him.
“Stop!” Ratliff whispered. “Stop! Help hold him, Odum!” Bookwright grasped Armstid’s other arm. Between them they held the furious body until Armstid ceased and lay again between them, rigid, glaring, cursing in that dry whisper. His arms felt no larger than sticks; the strength in them was unbelievable.
“He ain’t found it yet!” Ratliff whispered at him. “He just knows it’s there somewhere; maybe he found a paper somewhere in the house telling where it is. But he’s got to hunt to find it same as we will. He knows it’s somewhere in that garden, but he’s got to hunt to find it same as us. Ain’t we been watching him hunting for it?”
Bookwright could hear both the voices now speaking in hissing whispers, the one cursing, the other cajoling and reasoning while the owners of them glared as one up the starlit slope. Now Ratliff was speaking to him. “You don’t believe it’s Flem,” he said. “All right. Just watch.” They lay in the weeds; they were all holding their breaths now, Bookwright too. Then he saw the digger — a shadow, a thicker darkness, moving against the slope, mounting it.
“Watch,” Ratliff whispered. Bookwright could hear him and Armstid where they lay glaring up the slope, breathing in hissing exhalations, in passionate and dying sighs. Then Bookwright saw the white shirt; an instant later the figure came into complete relief against the sky as if it had paused for a moment on the crest of the slope. Then it was gone.
“There!” Ratliff whispered. “Wasn’t that Flem Snopes? Do you believe now?” Bookwright drew a long breath and let it out again. He was still holding Armstid’s arm. He had forgotten about it. Now he felt it again under his hand like a taut steel cable vibrating.
“It’s Flem,” he said.
“Certainly it’s Flem,” Ratliff said. “Now all we got to do is find out tomorrow night where it’s at and — —”
“Tomorrow night, hell!” Armstid said. He surged forward again, attempting to rise. “Let’s get up there now and find it. That’s what we got to do. Before he — —” They both held him again while Ratliff argued with him, sibilant and expostulant. They held him flat on the ground again at last, cursing.
“We got to find where it is first,” Ratliff panted. “We got to find exactly where it is the first time. We ain’t got time just to hunt. We got to find it the first night because we can’t afford to leave no marks for him to find when he comes back. Can’t you see that? that we ain’t going to have but one chance to find it because we don’t dare be caught looking?”
“What we going to do?” Bookwright said.
“Ha,” Armstid said. “Ha.” It was harsh, furious, restrained. There was no mirth in it. “What we going to do. I thought you had gone back home.”
“Shut up, Henry,” Ratliff said. He rose to his knees, though he still held Armstid’s arm. “We agreed to take Odum in with us. At least let’s wait till we find that money before we start squabbling over it.”
“Suppose it ain’t nothing but Confederate money,” Bookwright said.
“All right,” Ratliff said. “What do you reckon that old Frenchman did with all the money he had before there was any such thing as Confederate money? Besides, a good deal of it was probably silver spoons and jewellery.”
“You all can have the silver spoons and jewellery,” Bookwright said. “I’ll take my share in money.”
“So you believe now, do you?” Ratliff said. Bookwright didn’t answer.
“What we going to do now?” he said.
“I’m going up the bottom tomorrow and get Uncle Dick Bolivar,” Ratliff said. “I ought to get back here a little after dark. But then we can’t do anything here until after midnight, after Flem has done got through hunting it.”
“And finding it tomorrow night,” Armstid said. “By God, I ain’t — —” They were all standing now. Armstid began to struggle, sudden and furious, to free his arm. But Ratliff held him. He flung both arms around Armstid and held him until he stopped struggling.
“Listen,” Ratliff said. “Flem Snopes ain’t going to find it. If he knowed where to look, do you think he’d a been here digging for it every night for two weeks? Don’t you know folks have been looking for that money for thirty years?
That every foot of this whole place has been turned over at least ten times? That there ain’t a piece of land in this whole country that’s been worked as much and as often as this here little shirt-tail of garden? Will Varner could have raised cotton or corn either in it so tall he would have to gather it on horse back just by putting the seed in the ground.
The reason ain’t nobody found it yet is it’s buried so deep ain’t nobody had time to dig that far in just one night and then get the hole filled back up where Will Varner wouldn’t find it when he got out here at daylight to sit in that flour-barrel chair and watch. No sir. There ain’t but one thing in this world can keep us from finding it.”
Armstid had ceased. He and Bookwright both looked toward Ratliff’s indistinguishable face. After a while Armstid said harshly:
“And what’s that?”
“That’s for Flem Snopes to find out somebody else is hunting for it,” Ratliff said.
It was about midnight the next night when Ratliff turned his buckboard into the cedars again. Bookwright now rode his horse, because there were already three people in the buckboard, and again Armstid did not wait for Ratliff to tie the team. He was out as soon as the buckboard stopped he dragged a shovel clashing and clanging out of the dog kennel box, making no effort whatever to be quiet, and was gone limping terrifically into the darkness before Ratliff and Bookwright were on the ground. “We might as well go back home,” Bookwright said.
“No, no,” Ratliff said. “He ain’t never there this late. But we better catch up with Henry anyway.” The third man in the buckboard had not moved yet. Even in the obscurity his long white beard had a faintly luminous quality, as if it had absorbed something of the starlight through which Ratliff had fetched him and were now giving it back to the dark.
Ratliff and Bookwright helped him, groping and fumbling, out of the buckboard, and carrying the other shovel and the pick and half-carrying the old man, they hurried down into the ravine and then ran, trying to overtake the sound of Armstid’s limping progress.
They never overtook him. They climbed up out of the ditch, carrying the old man bodily now, and even before they reached the foot of the garden they could hear the sound of Armstid’s rapid shovel up the slope. They released the old man, who sank to the ground between them, breathing in reedy gasps, and as one Ratliff and Bookwright glared up the dark slope toward the hushed furious sound of the shovel. “We got to make him stop until Uncle Dick can find it,” Ratliff said. They ran toward the sound, shoulder to shoulder in the stumbling dark, among the rank weeds.
“Here, Henry!” Ratliff whispered. “Wait for Uncle Dick.” Armstid didn’t pause, digging furiously, flinging the dirt and thrusting the shovel again all in one motion. Ratliff grasped at the shovel. Armstid jerked it free and whirled, the shovel raised like an axe, their faces invisible to one another, strained, spent. Ratliff had not had his clothes off in three nights, but Armstid had probably been in his for the whole two weeks.
“Touch it!” Armstid whispered. “Touch it!”
“Wait now,” Ratliff said. “Give Uncle Dick a chance to find where it’s at.”
“Get away,” Armstid said. “I warn you. Get outen my hole.” He resumed his furious
