Chapter One
Clement and Norris were in the woods of Lobbans Ridge, cutting yam sticks when they saw two men digging away. Three other men stood around. Clement gestured to Norris to keep quiet as the latter was about to fall a tree.
He crept forward to get a closer look at what they were doing. It was around two o’clock in the afternoon.
They were in the district of Spring Vale, a large district five miles north of Linstead. The two men watched as the relief diggers finished digging the hole. They could see that it was a large hole, enough to hold a body.
The five men left and went and opened their car trunk and took out a large canvas covered object. The men had little trouble carrying it to the hole.
They dumped the bag into the hole, then heaped dirt on it. An hour after the men left, the two men were still arguing as to what to do. Clement believed that they should report what they saw, to the police.
Norris was of the opinion that they should find out what it was that the men had just buried.
“I’m sure that a body was in that tarpaulin,” Clement opined.
“I haven’t heard of anybody being killed around here lately. Although if it was a body, they could have killed him somewhere else and just dumped the body in Spring Vale,” Norris opined.
“So, what should we do?” Clement asked.
“I vote that we find out what they were hiding before we do anything.”
Both men realized that they only had machetes. They would need a shovel for getting out all that dirt. Pedro was an old man living about half a kilometer from the woods.
He did manual labor and therefore had these kinds of tools all over his yard. When the men reached, he was not there.
They were, however, lucky to find two shovels in some amount of disrepair. They then made their way back to the woods. Norris was the first to start digging.
“What if we find a body and Pedro finds out that we borrowed his shovels and then the police find the dead body. Aren’t we digging ourselves into a grave?”
Norris saw the look of fear in his eyes and knew that the man was about to give up.
“We have to find out what those men buried in that hole,” he said.
“As far as I am concerned, it’s a body they put down there. We heard those men say so, didn’t we?”
“Far as we know it could be money they hid down there. I vote we dig for it.”
“I’m sure those guys belong to the Coleman gang. It was either a body or money they were hiding.”
He looked at Norris. The man was brave and had once put a gunman to flight, but he would stand no chance against Coleman and his friends. He was tall and was thirty years of age. He, Clement was of medium height and built and was and was four years older.
“How are we sure that Coleman and the others won’t catch us?”
Clement asked.
Norris grabbed up his shovel and moved off. Clement followed him to where they had seen the men digging the hole. Norris started to shovel out the dirt.
“You’re going to stand there and stare or are you going to help me? If you don’t help me and I find that money it will be all mine.”
“Suppose you find a body, what are you going to do?”
“Just re-bury it, what do you think I should do? Call a morgue or the police and tell them that I’ve found a dead body?” Norris asked as he threw out dirt.
The sarcasm in his voice spurred Clement into action and he grabbed his shovel and started to dig out dirt too.
The two men got down to the digging. They were matching each other, shovel full for shovel full. Finally, they reached the parcel.
“What if Pedro comes home and find his tools missing?” Clement asked.
“He has so many of them all strewn over his yard. He won’t miss two shovels that have no more use than to be thrown away.”
“He’ll want to know why we borrowed them. You knows how cantankerous he is already.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll find something to tell him. You know how he loves rum. We can buy some and give him.”
Clement burst out laughing.
“I could do with some right now.”
“If these bags contain what I think they do, you can drink all the white rum you’ll ever need.