Stanley tried to sleep, not knowing when he’d get the chance again. He heard the showers and, later, the sounds of dinner. He heard the creaking of the Wreck Room door. His fingers drummed against the side of the hole. He heard his own heart beat.
He took a drink from the canteen. He had given Zero the water jars. They each had a good supply of onions.
He wasn’t sure how long he remained in the hole, maybe five hours. He was surprised when he heard Zero whispering for him to wake up. He didn’t think he’d fallen asleep. If he had, he thought it must have just been for the last five minutes. Although, when he opened his eyes, he was surprised how dark it was.
There was only one light on at camp, in the o ce. The sky was cloudy, so there was very little starlight. Stanley could see a sliver of a moon, which appeared and disappeared among the clouds.
He carefully led Zero to the hole, which was hard to find in the darkness. He stumbled over a small pile of dirt. “I think this is it,” he whispered.
“You think?” Zero asked.
“It’s it,” said Stanley, sounding more certain than he really was.
He climbed down. Zero handed him the shovel.
Stanley stuck the shovel into the dirt at the bottom of the hole and stepped on the back of the blade. He felt it sink beneath his weight. He scooped out some dirt and tossed it off to the side. Then he brought the shovel back down.
Zero watched for a while. “I’m going to try to refill the water jars,” he said.
Stanley took a deep breath and exhaled. “Be careful,” he said, then continued digging.
It was so dark, he couldn’t even see the end of his shovel. For all he knew he could be digging up gold and diamonds instead of dirt. He brought each shovelful close to his face, to try to see if anything was there, before dumping it out of the hole.
As he made the hole deeper, it became harder to lift the dirt up and out. It was five feet deep before he even started. He decided to use his efforts to make it wider instead.
This made more sense, he told himself. If Kate Barlow had buried a treasure chest, she probably wouldn’t have been able to dig much deeper, so why should he?
Of course, Kate Barlow probably had a whole gang of thieves helping her.
“You want some breakfast?”
Stanley jumped at the sound of Zero’s voice. He hadn’t heard him approach.
Zero handed down a box of cereal. Stanley carefully poured some cereal into his mouth. He didn’t want to put his dirty hands inside the box. He nearly gagged on the ultra-sweet taste. They were sugar- frosted flakes, and after eating nothing but onions for more than a week, he had trouble adjusting to the flavor. He washed them down with a swig of water.
Zero took over the digging. Stanley sifted his fingers through the fresh piles of dirt, in case he had missed anything. He wished he had a flashlight. A diamond no bigger than a pebble would be worth thousands of dollars. Yet there was no way he’d see it.
They finished the water that Zero had gotten from the spigot by the showers. Stanley said he’d go fill the jars again, but Zero insisted that he do it instead. “No offense, but you make too much noise when you walk. You’re too big.”
Stanley returned to the hole. As the hole grew wider, parts of the surface kept caving in. They were running out of room. To make it much wider, they would first have to move some of the surrounding dirt piles out of the way. He wondered how much time they had before the camp woke up.
“How’s it going?” Zero asked when he returned with the water.
Stanley shrugged one shoulder. He brought the shovel down the side of the hole, shaving off a slice of the dirt wall. As he did so, he felt the shovel bounce off something hard.
“What was that?” Zero asked.
Stanley didn’t know. He moved his shovel up and down the side of the hole. As the dirt chipped and flaked away, the hard object became more pronounced.
It was sticking out of the side of the hole, about a foot and a half from the bottom. He felt it with his hands.
“What is it?” Zero asked.
He could just feel a corner of it. Most of it was still buried. It had the cool, smooth texture of metal. “I think I might have found the treasure chest,” he said. His voice was filled more with astonishment than with excitement.
“Really?” asked Zero.
“I think so,” Stanley said.
The hole was wide enough for him to hold the shovel lengthwise and dig sideways into the wall. He knew he had to dig very carefully. He didn’t want the side of the hole to collapse, along with the huge pile of dirt directly above it.
He scraped at the dirt wall, until he exposed one entire side of the box-like object. He ran his fingers over it. It felt to be about eight inches tall, and almost two feet wide. He had no way of knowing how far into the earth it extended. He tried pulling it out, but it wouldn’t budge.
He was afraid that the only way to get to it was to start back up at the surface, and dig down. They didn’t have time for that.
“I’m going to try to dig a hole underneath it,” he said. “Then maybe I can pull it down and slip it out.”
“Go for it,” said Zero.
Stanley jammed the shovel into the bottom edge of his hole, and carefully began to dig a tunnel underneath the metal object. He hoped it didn’t cave in.
Occasionally he’d stop, stoop down, and try to feel the far end of the box. But even when the tunnel was as long as his arm, he still
couldn’t feel the other side.
Once again he tried pulling it out, but it was firmly in the ground. If he pulled too hard, he feared, he’d cause a cave-in. He knew that when he was ready to pull it out, he would have to do it quickly, before the ground above it collapsed.
As his tunnel grew deeper and wider—and more precarious— Stanley was able to feel latches on one end of the box, and then a leather handle. It wasn’t really a box. “I think it might be some kind of metal suitcase,” he told Zero.
“Can you pry it loose with the shovel?” Zero suggested. “I’m afraid the side of the hole will collapse.”
“You might as well give it a try,” said Zero.
Stanley took a sip of water. “Might as well,” he said.
He forced the tip of the shovel between the dirt and the top of the metal case and tried to wedge it free. He wished he could see what he was doing.
He worked the end of the shovel, back and forth, up and down, until he felt the suitcase fall free. Then he felt the dirt come piling down on top of it.
But it wasn’t a huge cave-in. As he knelt down in the hole, he could tell that only a small portion of the earth had collapsed.
He dug with his hands until he found the leather handle, and then he pulled the suitcase up and out of the dirt. “I got it!” he exclaimed.
It was heavy. He handed it up to Zero. “You did it,” Zero said, taking it from him. “We did it,” said Stanley.
He gathered his remaining strength, and tried to pull himself up out of the hole. Suddenly, a bright light was shining in his face.
“Thank you,” said the Warden. “You boys have been a big help.”
