I turned to the videos. There were seven clips in all. The sound was muffled, but I was pretty sure I could make out three voices—one male, two female.

“How much do you need?” The first woman spoke in a rich contralto; she’d had serious vocal training. Emerald Ferring, I presumed.

“Not much, I just want to collect a good cross section. Hold the bag for me.” The other woman’s voice was thin with age. Doris.

“Just a second.” August, in an urgent undertone. “I heard something.”

Emerald whispered, “Where?”

“In the field, right behind you.”

A brief silence, then a soft chuckle from Doris. “That’s a badger, city boy. They have a burrow around here. You got this?”

The question seemed directed at August, because he held the camera for a few seconds over what I’d first thought was empty air but now saw was a black plastic bag, held by gloved hands while someone else dumped soil into it.

“How will you know where you took your samples from?” August asked.

“Just like a sailor,” Doris said. “Latitude and longitude readings. Put this first tag on this first bag. I worked out where to dig before we came out, you know. We’ll move on here, about fifteen steps to the left. Let me check my little GPS doohickey.”

The camera shut off while someone wrapped the tag around the bag and Doris checked her GPS. The next two video clips looked the same, no real conversation except murmured directions between August and Doris. At the fourth, though, Doris asked for a light.

“It’s a risk, but I want to see what I’ve found.”

A narrow beam shone on crumbly dirt in the palm of Doris’s hand. She brushed the top of it with gentle fingers to expose what looked like tiny twigs. I paused the video, tried to enhance it, but the flashlight hadn’t carried enough wattage.

“What is it?” Emerald asked.

“Bones,” Doris said. “Raccoon, maybe, or badger. I’ll just slip them into their own bag, see if they have a story to tell about what’s in this dirt.”

As she sealed the bag, her trowel fell, hitting something with a thud. She handed the bag to Emerald and grunted, straining to heft whatever it was from the ground. August turned off the camera—I was guessing to lend her a hand. I held my breath, wondering, until the camera came back on. Doris was shining her flash on some large object—metal, from its dull gleam, so something that didn’t corrode.

Maybe it was a solid-gold samovar that a Russian immigrant had buried to keep out of the hands of the pro-slavery forces during the Civil War. He’d died at Antietam, and his widow hadn’t known where to look for it.