He had found a shovel in the car, placed conveniently at the side where it could be used for just such an emergency as this.

For fifteen minutes he had been using that shovel in a shelving bank of loose gravel just under an outcropping of rhyolite a rod or so behind the car and well out of sight of Nolan.
He was beginning to consider his excavation almost deep enough to bury two ten-gallon kegs and forty bottles of whisky, when the shadow of a head and shoulders fell across the hole.

Casey did not lift the dirt and rocks he had on his shovel.

He froze to a tense quiet, goggling at the shadow.
"What are yuh doing, Casey?
Trying to outdig a badger ?" Mack Nolan's chuckle was friendliness itself.
Casey's head snapped around so that he could cock an eye up at Nolan.
He grinned mechanically.

"Naw.