In the Roaring Fifties by Edward Dyson (best classic books TXT) 📖

the gleaming yellow metal fired him with a passion that had in it all the frenzy the winning gambler feels, with an added sense of triumph and success. When Mike lifted the slides out and sluiced water over them, showing the gold lying thick and deep, he felt a miser's rapture, and yet had no great desire for wealth. He did not fear work, and had no love of luxury, so that the hunger for riches never possessed him; but this joy was something apart from avarice. The yearnings of untold generations after the precious gold have filtered the love of it into our blood, made the desire for it an instinct. Jim went to bed that night richer by over one hundred pounds than he had been when he rose in the morning.

Done and Burton logged up their shaft and rigged the windlass, and set about the methodical working of the claim. The second day's cleaning up was not as good as the first, but it was highly satisfactory. It was not usual for the miners to keep the gold about them for any length of time. If it was not carried to the storekeepers at Forest Creek, there were gold-buyers--buying for the Melbourne banks, as a rule--who called regularly, eager to exchange bank-notes for the virgin gold. On the afternoon of their third working day, Jim and his mate were leaning on the windlass, talking to two or three men who had gathered about, waiting for one of the gold-buyers then riding along the lead, when they were joined by a tall, fine-looking digger, with a remark ably handsome brown beard and bushy brows.

'Good-day, mates! Got a good thing here?' he said, seating himself on one of the logs.

'Oh, not so bad!'

The newcomer had dropped his revolver, apparently by accident. He stooped and picked it up, but instead of returning it to his belt, toyed with it absently as he made inquiries about the lead and the yields on the field. All eyes were attracted by the peculiar manner in which he handled the weapon, tossing it to and fro carelessly, and twirling it through his fingers with remarkable rapidity.

'That's a pretty clever trick,' said Thorn.

'This is no great shakes.' The owner of the beautiful beard twirled his revolver more rapidly. 'Lend me another.'

Thorn threw his, and the stranger caught it smartly, and juggled with the two.

Brigalow Dick, the gold-buyer, rode up. A particularly bright ex-trooper from Sydney, Brigalow Dick had a reputation as a safe man, and the horse he rode was one of the finest on the field. On one side of the front of his saddle was strapped the stout leather case carrying the gold, on the other was a bag containing money.

'Any gold to sell to-day, Burton?' asked Dick.

'Yes, in half a minute, old man,' replied Mike, deeply interested in the tricks of the juggler.

Brigalow Dick drew his horse up closer and watched the performance.

'Bet you're Californian, Whiskers,' he said.

The stranger nodded. 'Let me have another shooter,' he said.

A third was thrown to him, and he twirled the three in the air, discharging each into the tip as it reached his hand.

'Bravo! bravo!' The performance was growing quite exciting.

'That's simply nothing,' said the amateur prestidigitateur modestly. 'Throw me another, and I'll show what I call a damn good trick.' He cast his eye around the group. It lit upon the gold-buyer casually.

'Here you are.' Brigalow drew his revolver from his belt, and threw it.

'Very good, and many thanks,' said the stranger. He coolly placed the other revolver in his shirt, turned the gold-buyer's long six-shooter on its owner, and said: 'Come down off that horse, Richard, my boy!' Brigalow laughed uneasily, but did not stir. 'Comedown, curse you!' cried the other with sudden ferocity; and, springing to his feet, he seized Dick, and brought him heavily to the ground over his horse's rump. 'Lie there, or, by God, I'll scatter your brains on the grass!' said the juggler. 'The first man that moves will peg out a claim in hell to-night,' he continued, leading the horse away, and walking backwards himself, with the revolver pointed. No man doubted his word. Dick crouched on the ground, staring after him, furious, but quite beaten. Suddenly the robber sprang to the horse's back with a clean jump. 'Now, that is what I call damn good sleight of hand, Brigalow!' he cried; and, producing a short, heavy green-hide whip from his shirt, he lashed the horse mercilessly, and went riding at a breakneck pace down the gully, heading for the distant timber.

'Tricked!' cried the ex-trooper, jumping to his feet--' tricked by the great Blue Bunyip! Tricked like a kid!' He turned and ran for the troopers.

'I surmise Mr. Solo was lurkin' behind them there whiskers,' said a tall, thin Californian, when the party had somewhat recovered the surprise.

Jim started, recalling the encounter with Long Aleck in the Melbourne bar.

'Was that Solo, do you think?' he asked.

'Dead cert' replied the Californian. 'Them's his playful ways.'

'If you guessed it, why didn't you give a hint?'

'Not knowin', can't say; but it's just pawsible I ain't pushin' myself forward as a target this spring.'

Done found this indisposition to interfere in 'other people's business' very marked amongst the diggers; and their toleration of notorious evildoers was a pronounced feature of their easy-going character, encouraged, no doubt, by their contempt for the law, which appealed to them only as an instrument of oppression.

'This means a gallop for the troopers,' said Mike.

'They'll run him down!' ejaculated Jim at a venture.

'The man occupyin' my socks is bettin' ten ounces agin all the feathers off a wart-hog that they don't,' answered the Californian.

'But look at the weight he carries!'

'You're a bright boy--a most remarkably bright boy!' drawled the American, 'an' I guess you'll pick up a heap o' knowledge afore you die out, but up to now you don't know much about Solo. He kin ride like the devil, an' fight like the hosts of hell, an' he's ez full o' tricks ez a pum'kin's full o' pips. I tell you, Amurka's proud of her son.'

'Who sez he's American?' asked a digger, resenting the appropriation.

'Well, sir, if he ain't he's that good an imitation he might's well be the real thing.'

About half an hour later three troopers came cantering through Diamond Gully, looking very smart in their Bedford cords and shining top-boots, and the diggers yelled derisive orders, and greeted them with cries of contempt, jeering them from every hole along the lead. 'Jo!' was the favourite epithet hurled at the troopers and all representatives of constituted authority. Done never discovered the origin of the term, but into it the diggers compressed all the hatred they felt for unjust laws, domineering officials, and flagrant maladministration.

'I thought you knew this Solo,' said Jim to his mate that evening.

'Well,' replied Mike, 'I reckoned I did; but he changes his disguises pretty smartly, 'r else that was another party in the same line o' business.'


IX

IN the four days and a half of their first week on the field Burton and Done cleared close upon seven hundred pounds. By the end of the second week they had worked out their first mine, and Jim possessed eight hundred pounds. They tried another claim, and bottomed on the pipeclay. The hole was a duffer. They tried a third, and cut the wash once more. This claim was not nearly so rich as their first, but rich enough to pay handsomely, and Mike, young as he was, was too old a miner to abandon a good claim on the chance of finding a better. By this time Jim was feeling himself quite an experienced digger; he could sink a straight shaft, knock down wash-dirt with the best, and pan off a prospect as neatly and with as workmanlike a flourish as any man on the field. He was rapidly coming into close touch with the life about him, adopting the manners of his associates, and slowly wearing down that diffidence which still clung to him in the society of strangers. He was reticent, but there remained no suspicion, no animosity towards his kind. Looking back a year, he could hardly recognise himself; the Jim Done of Chisley seemed an old man by comparison. Already Jim of Forest Creek could laugh at Jim o' Mill End, but the consciousness of an escape from a horror remained. How serious he had been in those days! How he had permitted himself to suffer! Thank God, it was all gone!

Going into the tent on the afternoon of the second Sunday, Jim found his mate asleep on one of the bunks. In the hollow of his out-thrown hand lay a cheap lacquered frame containing a daguerreotype of a girl's face. A sudden contrition smote Jim; he turned anxiously to his bunk, throwing the clothes left and right. The vest he had worn when he left the Francis Cadman lay under the pillow. He dived his finger into the watch-pocket, and heaved a sigh of relief. Yes, it was there, safe and sound. He held Lucy Woodrow's miniature, gazing on it, suffused with chastened emotions. Heavens! how beautiful she was, and so gentle and generous! What an ass he had been! He kissed the picture very tenderly, and with a bit of twine secured it in the pocket of his jumper in dangerous proximity to his heart.

Jim Done had now seen much of the fanciful night life of the camps. A populous lead presented a picturesque appearance by night. The illuminated tents and the flaring camp-fires dotted the field thickly, and where the tents of the business people were drawn in line and something like a main street formed, slush lights and kerosene torches flamed and swinging oil-lamps lit up the scene. Here the wilder spirits assembled and drank square gin, and gambled in the canvas shanty bars, or danced with fine frenzy to music provided by some enterprising German Fraeulein stolidly grinding a hurdy-gurdy. There were numerous sly grog-shops amongst the tents, and most of the storekeepers sold illicit drink with open impudence. These places were often centres of roaring, ribald life after nightfall; but the majority of the diggers lay in groups about their camp-fires, chatting quietly or reading the most recent papers available, and were peaceably inclined, easy-going citizens.

It was the fiercer side of existence on the fields that appealed most directly to Jim; he loved the strong colour, the exultant animation, the devil-may-care character, that marked the gatherings in the bars and the gambling-saloons. He took little active part in the playing and the drinking, but the feverish energy of the men and the stirring scenes provided such vivid contrast to what he had hitherto known and seen of life that his soul was greedy for it all. To Mike these scenes were all familiar; his attitude towards them was one of quiet indifference, and he regarded Jim's rapture with the amused tolerance a sedate, elderly gentleman feels for the enthusiasm of a little boy.

The mates had shifted their tent to a convenient position near the claim they were now working, and were camped within two hundred yards of the establishment of Mrs. Ben Kyley, laundress and baker. Mrs. Kyley was a big-limbed, fresh-coloured, dimpled woman, whose native canniness did not, militate in the least against an amazonian joviality that made her hail-fellow-well-met with half the diggers on the field. Her voice was the loudest amid the clamouring tongues in her