had. His eyes fascinated Digger.
Man's takin his own photographs, he thought. Probably better than hers, and apt to last a lot longer, to boot. He's storin her up to put in a book someday and she don't even know it. At last the woman had been ready to take a few pictures. She had the Beaumonts shake hands over that gravestone a dozen times if she had them do it once, and it was pretty gawdam raw that day, too. Ordered them around just like she did that squeaky, mincing assistant of hers. Between her braying New York voice and the repeated orders to do it over again because the light wasn't right or their faces weren't right or maybe her own damned ass**le wasn't right, Digger had kept expecting Mr Beaumont - not exactly the longest-tempered of men according to the gossip he'd heard - to explode all over her. But Mr Beaumont - and his wife, too - seemed more amused than pissed off, and they just kept on doing what the High-Class Cunt from the City told them to do, even though it had been right nippy that day. Digger believed that, if it had been him, he would have gotten a might pissed off at the lady after awhile. Like in about fifteen seconds. And it was here, right where this stupid gawdam hole was, that they had planted that fake gravemarker. Why, if he needed any further proof, there were still round marks in the sod, marks which had been left by that High-Class Cunt's heels. She had been from New York, all right; only a New York woman would show up in high heels at the end of slop season and then goose-step around a cemetery in them, taking pitchers. If that wasn't -
His thoughts broke off, and that feeling of coldness reasserted itself in his flesh again. He had been looking at the fading tattoos left by the photographer's high heels, and as he looked at those marks, his eye happened on other, fresher marks.
2
Tracks? Were those tracks?
'Course they ain't, it's just that the doofus who dug this hole flang some of the dirt further than he did the rest of it. That's all it is.
Except that wasn't all, and Digger Holt knew it wasn't. Before he could even get to the first blotch of dirt on the green grass, he saw the deep impression of a shoe in the pile of dirt closest to the hole.
So there's footprints, so what? Did you think whoever done this just sorta floated around with a shovel in his hand like Caspar the Friendly Ghost?
There are people in the world who are quite good at lying to themselves, but Digger Holt wasn't one of them. That nervous, scoffing voice in his mind could not change what his eyes saw. He had tracked and hunted wild things all his life, and this sign was just too easy to read. He wished to Christ it wasn't.
Here in this pile of dirt close to the grave was not only a footprint, but a circular depression almost the size of a dinner dish. This dimple was to the left of the footprint. And on either side of the circular print and the foot-mark, but farther back, were grooves in the dirt that were clearly the marks of fingers, fingers which had slipped a little before catching hold. He looked beyond the first footprint and saw another. Beyond that, on the grass, was half of a third, formed when some of the dirt on the shoe which stepped there fell off in a clump. It had fallen off, but remained moist enough to hold the impression . . . and that's what the three or four.others which had originally caught his eye had done. If he hadn't come so cussed early in the morning, while the grass was still wet, the sun would have dried the earth and it would have fallen apart in loose little crumbles that meant nothing.
He wished he had come later, that he had gone out to Grace Cemetery first, as he had set out to do when he left home.
But he hadn't, and that was all.
The fragments of footprints petered out less than twelve feet from the (grave)
hole in the ground. Digger suspected the dewy grass farther on might still hold impressions, though, and he supposed he would check on that, although he didn't much want to. For the time being, however, he re-directed his gaze to the clearest marks, the ones in the little pile of dirt close to the hole.
Grooves which had been drawn by fingers; a round impression slightly ahead of them; a footprint beside the round mark. What story did that configuration tell?
Digger hardly had to ask Iiimself before the answer dropped into his mind like the secret woid on that old Groucho Marx show, You Bet Your Life. He saw it as clearly as if he had been here when it happened, and that was precisely why he didn't want any more to do with this at all. Gawdam creepy was what it was.
Because look: here's a man standing in a new-dug hole in the ground. Yes, but how'd he get down there?
Yes, but did he make the hole, or did someone else do it?