The man stood hesitantly beside the back of the farm truck. Dust covered him and the truck, and dried mud coated his boots and the legs of his overalls.
Ralph Hansom kept well back from the mud and the dust and the man, as if by doing so he could hold himself aloof from the poverty that had spawned his visitor. "What did you bring, Jackson? I've got better things to do than stand out here all morning playing guessing games."
Tom Jackson gestured toward the tarpaulin-covered bundle in the back of the truck, almost invisible among the spare tire and boxes of broken tools and debris.
"Haul it out. You know I have to examine it. Too many of you people have tried to pawn off bogus trash on me."
Grimacing, Jackson climbed into the back of the truck and wrestled two baskets from beneath the tarp and to the rear of the truck bed. Only then did Hansom step forward. The first, a peck basket, obviously the one Jackson thought the prize, was over half full of objects Hansom had long ago identified as fresh-water pearls. He plunged his hand into the basket, confirming that pearls actually filled it, and not a hidden layer of dirt or gravel or bone. Then he turned his attention to the other, larger, bushel basket.
A pile of thin leaves of copper, engraved but green and fused together, lay wedged near the top. He glanced at the copper but moved it out of his way. A half-dozen conch shells were next. And then—Hansom told himself to breathe, to betray no emotion—as one by one he lifted six engraved shell gorgets from the basket, finding only one of them chipped, and then pushed aside four bones, leg probably—why the hell did these people think he was interested in bones?
Something lay on its side in the bottom of the basket. Tentatively, not letting himself hope, he touched it, then lifted out a stone statuette almost a foot tall and in the shape of one of the recurring heathen images he had seen engraved on the shells.
A pipe. Without the stem, of course; the stem had probably long ago rotted away. But a pipe? God! He fought not to suck in his breath. He had heard of these pipes, but this was the first he'd seen.
"Well," Jackson asked. "It's good, isn't it?"
The little girl had come from behind the house, unnoticed. Barefooted and almost as dusty as Jackson, she stopped by the rear of the truck and reached for the pile of copper. "Pretty," she said, touching it reverently.
Ralph Hansom looked at his four-year-old daughter. The child's Choctaw blood showed in her dark hair, her bronze-gold coloring, in the fineness of her hands. Ralph's stomach revolted when he thought of this child springing from his loins. She had no class, and as she had just demonstrated by reaching for the junk copper, no taste and no knowledge. Just like her mother.
Her mother, however, had had the advantage of money and land.
"Ellie!" Ralph yelled. "Come and get your brat out of my way!"
A woman appeared on the long back porch. "Lucy," she called softly. "Come in the house. You know better than to bother your father."
Bitch, Ralph thought. She'd said that deliberately, goading him in front of this piece of white trash. But maybe he could make it work to his advantage.
Lucy clutched the copper. "Pretty," she said again. Ralph disengaged her fingers from her treasure. "Pretty!" she screamed.
"Ellie!"
Soundlessly the woman left the porch and walked to the truck. She reached down and gathered the child in her arms, crooning softly to her in her own language as she carried her to the house. For once Ralph bit back his habitual order for her to speak English. Jackson had seen and heard enough.
"How much?" Jackson asked.
Ralph sifted a few of the pearls through his fingers and waved dismissively toward the rest. "Ten dollars."
Jackson paled beneath the dust. "Ten dollars? God, man. I've snuck in there every night for two weeks, digging all night and hiding the hole the next day, lied to my brother-in-law to get his truck, drove down here—more'n a hundred miles before I get back home. I got a family to feed."
"Sorry," Ralph told him. "But this stuff is broken and rusted. I won't be able to get much more than ten for it myself. So if you know someone else who'll buy it, take it to them."
"Wait!" Jackson called out as Ralph turned to leave. "Twenty. And I'll get you more. Not broken. It's there, Hansom. And I know where it is."
Ralph looked at him. Slowly and carefully he reached over and picked up the copper. "My kid liked this," he said. "I'll give you twelve fifty. You bring me more, not broken, and we'll work out a deal."