I made hard work of it. It was narrow. She pulled at my ankles. Finally I was inside. She leaned across me, her weight on me, and pulled the weeds and vines back to cover the hole. At first I could not see, and then my eyes became used to the light. Daylight came weakly through the hole. The hole itself, the slit in the rocks, was not over thirty inches long and fourteen inches high at its widest point. Inside it widened out to about five feet, and the ceiling was about three feet high. It was perhaps seven feet deep.
She said, in a low voice, "Timmy found it. He was climbing on the rocks one day and he found it. It's always dry and clean in here. See, the sand is dry, and feel how fine it is. It became our place. It became my favorite place in the whole world. I used to come here alone, too. When things got too—rugged. We used to keep things here. A box with candles and cigarettes and things. Nobody in the world could ever find us here. We kept blankets here and pillows. We called it our house. Kid stuff, I guess. But it was nice. I never thought I'd come back here."
"Then this is the place he meant."
"Let's look."
It was easy to dig in the sand. She found the first one. She gave a little gasp of pleasure when she found it. She dug it out of the soft sand. We held it close to the weak daylight and opened it. The wire clamp slid off easily. The rubber ring was stuck to the glass. I pulled the top off. The bills were tightly packed. I pulled some of them out, two tens and a twenty.
We both dug in the place where she had found it. We found three more jars. That was all. We lined them up against the wall. I could see the money through the glass. I looked at the money. I remembered how I had thought it would be. I had thought it would be an answer. But I had found the answer before I found the money. Now it meant only that perhaps it could still be traded for a life.
"Now he's coming this way," she whispered.
I heard him when he called again. "Howard! Tal Howard!" We lay prone, propped up on our elbows, our heads near the small entrance, her cheek inches from mine.
"Tal Howard!" he called, alarmingly close. He was passing just below us, his head about six or seven feet below the ledge.
He called again at a greater distance, and then all we could hear was the sound of the river.