it. You may know that I put everything I had in that smack when I tell you that not until later, when I found that one of my cheeks was scorched, did I know that his gun had gone off.
He wiggled, and I hit him again.
Then I was sitting astride him, my flashlight hunting for his pistol. I found it, and yanked him to his feet.
As soon as his head cleared I herded him into the front cellar and got a globe to replace the one I had smashed.
“Now dig it up,” I ordered.
That was a safe way of putting it. I wasn’t sure what I wanted or where it would be, except that his selecting this part of the cellar to wait for me in made it look as if this was the right place.
“You’ll do your own digging!” he growled.
“Maybe,” I said, “but I’m going to do it now, and I haven’t time to tie you up. So if I’ve got to do the digging, I’m going to crown you first, so you’ll sleep peacefully until it’s all over.”
All smeared with blood and dirt and sweat, I must have looked capable of anything, for when I took a step toward him he gave in.
From behind the lumber pile he brought a spade, moved some of the barrels to one side, and started turning up the dirt.
When a hand—a man’s hand—dead-yellow where the damp dirt didn’t stick to it—came into sight I stopped him.
I had found “it,” and I had no stomach for looking at “it” after three weeks of lying in the wet ground.