“Well?” the salesman said. “What you going to do? I’ve got to know, so I can know what to do, myself. Ain’t you got three hundred dollars?” Lucas mused upon the machine. He did not look up yet.
“We gonter find that money tonight,” he said. “You put in the machine and I’ll show you whar to look, and we’ll go halves on hit.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” the salesman said harshly. “Now I’ll tell one.”
“We bound to find hit, cap-tin,” the son-in-law said. “Two white men slipped in here three years ago and dug up twenty-two thousand dollars one night and got clean away wid hit fo’ daylight.”
“You bet,” the salesman said. “And you knew it was exactly twenty-two thousand because you found where they had throwed away the odd cents.”
“Naw, sir,” the son-in-law said. “Hit mought a been even more than twenty-two thousand dollars. Hit wuz a big churn.”
“George Wilkins,” Lucas said, still half inside the car and still without turning his head.
“Sir,” the son-in-law said.
“Shut up.” Now Lucas turned and looked at the salesman; again the salesman saw a face quite sober, even a little cold, quite impenetrable. “I’ll swap you a mule for it.”
“A mule?” the salesman said.
“When we find that money tonight, I’ll buy the mule back for your three hundred dollars.” The son-in-law had begun to bat his eyes rapidly. But nobody was looking at him. Lucas and the salesman looked at one another—the shrewd, suddenly attentive face of the young white man, the absolutely impenetrable face of the Negro.
“Do you own the mule?”
“How could I swap hit to you ef ’n I didn’t?”
“Let’s go see it,” the salesman said.
“George Wilkins,” Lucas said.
“Sir,” the son-in-law said. He was still batting his eyes constantly and rapidly.
“Go up to my barn and get my halter,” Lucas said.
II
Edmonds found the mule was missing as soon as the stablemen brought the drove up from pasture that evening. She was a three-year-old, eleven-hundred-pound mare mule named Alice Ben Bolt, and he had refused three hundred dollars for her in the spring. But he didn’t even curse. He merely dismounted and stood beside the lot fence while the rapid beat of his mare’s feet died away in the darkling night and then returned, and the head stableman sprang down and handed him his flashlight and pistol. Then, himself on the mare and the two Negroes on saddleless mules, they went back across the pasture, fording the creek, to the gap in the fence through which the mule had been led. From there they followed the tracks of the mule and of the man who led her in the soft earth along the edge of a cotton field, to the road. And here too they could follow them, the head stableman walking and carrying the flashlight, where the man had led the unshod mule in the softer dirt which bordered the gravel. “That’s Alice’s foot,” the head stableman said. “I’d know hit anywhar.”
Later Edmonds would realize that both the Negroes had recognized the man’s footprints too. But at the time his very fury and concern had short-circuited his normal sensitivity to Negro behavior. They would not have told him who had made the tracks even if he had demanded to know, but the realization that they knew would have enabled him to leap to the correct divination and so save himself the four or five hours of mental turmoil and physical effort which he was about to enter.
They lost the tracks. He expected to find the marks where the mule had been loaded into a waiting truck, whereupon he would return home and telephone to the sheriff in Jefferson and to the Memphis police to watch the horse-and-mule markets tomorrow. There were no such marks. It took them almost an hour to find where the tracks had vanished on to the gravel, crossing it, descending through the opposite roadside weeds, to reappear in another field a hundred yards away. Supperless, raging, the mare which had been under saddle all day unfed too, he followed the two shadowy mules at the backstretched arm of the second walking Negro, cursing the darkness and the puny light which the head stableman carried, on which they were forced to depend.
Two hours later they were in the creek bottom four miles away. He was walking too now, lest he knock his brains out against a limb, stumbling and thrashing among brier and undergrowth and rotting logs and branches where the tracks led, leading the mare with one hand and fending his face with the other arm and trying to watch his feet, so that he walked into one of the mules, instinctively leaping in the right direction as it lashed out at him with one hoof, before he discovered that the Negroes had stopped. Then, cursing out loud now and moving quickly again to avoid the invisible second mule which would be somewhere to his left, he discovered that the flashlight was now off and he too saw the faint, smoky glare of the lightwood torch among the trees ahead. It was moving. “That’s right,” he said rapidly. “Keep the light off.” He called the second Negro’s name. “Give the mules to Dan and come back here and take the mare.” He waited, watching the light, until the Negro’s hand fumbled at his. Then he released the reins and moved around the mules, drawing his pistol and still watching the moving flame. “Hand me the flashlight,” he said. He took the light from that fumbling hand too. “You and Oscar wait here.”
“I better come wid you,” the Negro said.
“All right,” Edmonds said. “Give Oscar the mules.” He didn’t wait, though from time to time he could hear the Negro behind him, both of them moving as quietly and rapidly as possible. The rage was not cold now. It was hot, and there was an eagerness upon him, a kind of vindictive exultation as he plunged on, heedless of brush or log, the flashlight in his left hand and the pistol in his right, gaining rapidly on the moving torch, bursting at last out of the undergrowth and into a sort of glade, in the centre of which two men stood looking toward him, one of them carrying before him what Edmonds believed at first to be some kind of receptacle of feed, the other holding high over his head the smoking pine-knot. Then Edmonds recognized George Wilkins’s ruined Panama hat, and he realized not only that the two Negroes with him had known all the time who had made the footprints, but that the object which Lucas was carrying was not any feedbox and that he himself should have known all the time what had become of his mule.
“You, Lucas!” he shouted. George flung the torch, arching, but the flashlight already held them spitted; Edmonds saw the white man now, snap-brim hat, necktie, and all, risen from beside a tree, his trousers rolled to the knees and his feet invisible in caked mud. “That’s right,” Edmonds said. “Go on, George. Run. I believe I can hit that hat without even touching you.” He approached, the flashlight’s beam contracting on to the metal box which Lucas held before him, gleaming and glinting among the knobs and dials. “So that’s it,” he said. “Three hundred dollars. I wish somebody would come into this country with a seed that had to be worked every day, from New Year’s right on through to Christmas. As soon as you niggers are laid by, trouble starts. I ain’t going to worry with Alice tonight, and if you and George want to spend the rest of it walking back and forth with that damn thing, that’s your business. But I want that mule to be in her stall by sunup. Do you hear?” Edmonds had forgotten about the white man until he appeared beside Lucas.
“What mule is that?” he said. Edmonds turned the light on him for a moment.
“My mule, sir,” he said.
“I’ve got a bill of sale for that mule,” the other said. “Signed by Lucas here.”
“Have you now,” Edmonds said. “You can make lamplighters out of it next winter.”
“Is that so?” the other said. “Look here, Mister What’s-your-name—” But Edmonds had already turned the light back to Lucas, who still held the divining machine before him.
“On second thought, I ain’t going to worry about that mule at all,” he said. “I told you this morning what I thought about this business. But you’re a grown man; if you want to fool with it, I can’t stop you. But if that mule ain’t in her stall by sunup tomorrow, I’m going to telephone the sheriff. Do
you hear me?”
“I hears you,” Lucas said.
“All right, big boy,” the salesman said. “If that mule is moved from where she’s at until I’m ready to move her, I’m going to telephone the sheriff. Do you hear that too?” This time Edmonds jumped, flung the light beam at the salesman, furious and restrained.
“Were you talking to me, sir?” he said.
“No,” the salesman said. “I’m talking to him. And he heard me.” For a while longer Edmonds held the light beam on the other. Then he dropped it, so that only their legs and feet showed, planted in the pool and its refraction as if they stood in a pool of dying water. He put the pistol back into his pocket.
“Well, you and Lucas have got till daylight to settle that. Because that mule is to be back in my barn at sunup.” He turned and went back to where Dan waited, the light swinging and flickering before him; presently it had vanished.
“George Wilkins,” Lucas said.
“Sir,” George said.
“Find that pine-knot and light it again.” George did so; once more the red glare streamed away in thick smoke, upward against the August stars of more than midnight. “Now grab a holt of this thing,” Lucas said. “I got to find that money now.”
But when day broke they had not found it, the torch paling away in the wan, dew-heavy light, the white man asleep on the wet earth now, drawn into a ball against the dawn’s wet chill, unshaven, with his dashing city hat, his necktie, his soiled shirt and muddy trousers rolled to his knees, and his mud-caked feet whose shoes gleamed with polish yesterday. They waked him. He sat up, cursing. But he knew at once where he was, because he said: “All right now. If that mule moves one foot out of that cotton house, I’m going to get the sheriff.”
“I just wants one more night,” Lucas said. “That money’s here.”
“What about that fellow that says the mule is his?”
“I’ll tend to him in the morning. You don’t need to worry about that. Besides, ef ’n you try to move that mule yourself, the sheriff gonter take her away from you. You leave her whar she’s at and lemme have one more night with this-here machine. Then I kin fix everything.”
“All right,” the other said. “But do you know what it’s going to cost you? It’s going to cost you just exactly twenty-five dollars more. Now I’m going to town and go to bed.”
He put Lucas and George out at George’s gate. They watched the car go on down the road, already going fast. George was batting his eyes rapidly. “Now whut we gonter do?” he said. Lucas roused.
“Eat your breakfast quick as you can and come on to my house. You got to go to town and get back here by noon.”
“I needs to go to bed too,” George said. “I’m bad off to sleep too.”
“Ne’mine about that,” Lucas said. “You eat your breakfast and get up to my house quick.” When George reached his gate a half hour later, Lucas met him, the check already written out in his laborious, cramped, but quite legible hand. It was for fifty dollars. “Get it in silver dollars,” Lucas said. “And be back here by noon.”
It was just dusk when the salesman’s car stopped again at Lucas’s gate, where Lucas and George, carrying a long-handled shovel, waited. The salesman was freshly shaved and his face looked rested; the snap-brim hat had been brushed and his shirt was clean. But he now wore a pair of cotton khaki pants still bearing the manufacturer’s stitched label and still showing the creases where they had been folded on the store’s shelf. He gave Lucas a hard, jeering stare as Lucas and George approached. “I ain’t going to ask if my mule’s all right,” he said. “Because I don’t need to. Hah?”
“Hit’s all right,” Lucas said. He and George got into the rear seat beside the divining machine. The salesman put the car into gear, though he did not move it yet.
“Well?” he said. “Where do you want to take your walk tonight? Same place?”
“Not there,” Lucas said. “I’ll show you whar. We was looking in the wrong place. I misread the paper.”
“You bet,” the salesman said. “It’s worth that extra twenty-five bucks to have found that out—” The car had begun to move. He stopped it so suddenly that Lucas and George, squatting gingerly on the front edge of the seat, lurched forward before they caught themselves. “You did what?” the salesman said.
“I misread the paper,” Lucas said.
“What paper? Have you got a letter or something that tells where some money is buried?”
“That’s right,” Lucas said.
“Where is it?”
“Hit’s put away in the house,” Lucas said.
“Go and get it.”
“Ne’mine,” Lucas said. “I read hit right this time.” For a moment longer the salesman sat, his head turned over his shoulder. Then he looked forward. He put the car in gear again.
“All right,” he said. “Where’s the place?”
“Drive on,” Lucas said. “I’ll show you.”
It was not in the bottom, but on a hill overlooking the creek—a clump of ragged cedars, the ruins of old chimneys, a depression which was once a well or a cistern, the old worn-out fields stretching away and a few snaggled trees of what had been an orchard, shadowy and dim beneath the moonless sky where the fierce stars of late summer swam. “Hit’s in the orchard,” Lucas said. “Hit’s divided, buried in two separate places. One of them’s in the orchard.”
“Provided the fellow that wrote you the letter ain’t come back and joined it all up again,” the salesman said. “What are we waiting on? Here, Jack,” he said to George, “grab that thing out of there.” George lifted the divining machine from the car. The salesman had a flashlight himself now, quite new, thrust into his hip pocket. He didn’t put it on at once. “By God, you better find it first pop this time. We’re on a hill now. There probably ain’t a man in ten miles that can walk at all that won’t be up here inside an hour, watching us.”
“Don’t tell me that,” Lucas said. “Tell hit to this-here three hundred and twenty-five dollar buzz-box I done bought.”
“You ain’t bought this box yet, big boy,” the salesman said. “You say one of the places is in the orchard. All right. Where?”
Lucas, carrying the shovel, went on into the old orchard, the others following. The salesman watched him pause, squinting at trees and sky to orient himself, then move on again, pause again. “We kin start here,” he said. The salesman snapped on the light, handcupping the beam on to the metal box which George carried.
“All right, Jack,” he said. “Get going.”
“I better tote it,” Lucas said.
“No,” the salesman said. “You’re too old. I don’t know yet that you can even keep up with us. Get on, Jack!” So Lucas walked on George’s other side, carrying the shovel and watching the small bright dials in the flashlight’s contracted beam as they went back and forth across the orchard. He was watching also, grave and completely attentive, when the needles began to spin and jerk and then quiver. Then he held the box and watched George digging into the light’s concentrated pool and saw the rusted can come up at last and the bright cascade of silver dollars about the salesman’s hands and heard the salesman’s voice: “Well, by God! By God!” Lucas squatted also; they faced each other across the pit.
“I done found this much of hit, anyhow,” he said. The salesman, one hand upon the scattered coins, made a slashing, almost instinctive blow with the other as if Lucas had reached for the coins. Squatting, he laughed harshly at Lucas across the pit.
“You found? This machine don’t belong to you, old man.”
“I bought hit,” Lucas said.
“With what?”
“A mule,” Lucas said. The other laughed at him, harsh and steady across the pit. “I give you a billy sale for hit.”
“Which never was worth a damn. It’s in my car yonder. Go and get it whenever you want to.” He scrabbled the coins together, back into the can. He rose quickly out of the light, until only his legs showed in the new, still-creased cotto
n pants. He still wore the same low black shoes. He had not had them shined again—only washed. Lucas rose also, more slowly. “All right,” the salesman said. “This ain’t hardly any of it. Where’s the other place?”
“Ask your finding machine,” Lucas said. “Ain’t it supposed to know?”
“You damn right it does,” the salesman said.
“Then I reckon we can go home,” Lucas said. “George Wilkins.”
“Sir,” George said.
“Wait,” the salesman said. He and Lucas faced each other in the darkness, two shadows, faceless. “There wasn’t over a hundred here. Most of it is in the other place. I’ll give you ten per cent.”
“Hit was my letter,” Lucas said. “Hit ain’t enough.”
“Twenty. And that’s all.”
“I wants half,” Lucas said. “And that mule paper, and another paper to say the finding machine belongs to me.”
“Tomorrow,” the salesman said.
“I wants hit now,” Lucas said. The invisible face stared at his own invisible one. Both he and George seemed to feel the windless summer air moving to the trembling of the white man’s body.
“How much did you say them other fellows found?”
“Twenty-two thousand dollars,” Lucas said.
“Hit mought a been more,” George said. “Hit wuz a big—”
“All right,” the salesman said suddenly. “I’ll give you a bill of sale for the machine as soon as we finish.”
“I wants it now,” Lucas said. They went back to the car. While Lucas held the flashlight, they watched the salesman rip open his patent brief case and jerk out of it and fling toward Lucas the bill of sale for the mule. Then they watched his jerking hand fill in the long printed form with its carbon duplicates and sign it and rip out one of the duplicates.