The Black Opal Katharine Susannah Prichard (best free novels txt) 📖

with restrained excitement. He was too preoccupied to notice Michael’s movement, or what he was doing.

“Snowshoes been here?” he asked, breathlessly.

“No,” Michael said. “Why?”

He stretched out his hand to take the opal which lay winking in the light and put it among the others. Potch’s excitement died out.

“Oh, nothing,” he said, lamely. “I only thought I saw him making this way.”

The sound of a woman laughing outside the hut broke the silence between them. Michael lifted his head to listen.

“Who’s that?” he asked;

Potch did not reply. The blue dark of the night sky, bright with stars, was blank in the doorway.

“May I come in?” a woman’s voice called. Her figure wavered in the doorway. Before either Potch or Michael could speak she had come into the hut. It was Maud, Jun Johnson’s wife. She stood there on the threshold of the room, her loose, dark hair windblown, her eyes, laughing, the red line of her mouth trembling with a smile. Her eyes went from Michael to Potch, who had turned away.

“My old nanny’s awful bad, Potch,” she said. “They say there’s no one on the Ridge knows as much about goats as you. Will you come along and see what you can do for her?”

Potch was silent. Michael had never known him take a request for help so ungraciously. His face was sullen and resentful as his eyes went to Maud.

“All right,” he said.

He moved to go out with her. Maud moved too. Then she caught sight-of the piece of opal lying out from the other stones on the table.

“My,” she cried eagerly, “that’s a pretty stone, Michael!” She turned it back against the light, so that the opal threw out its splintered sparks of red and gold.

“Just been noodlin’ over some old scraps⁠ ⁠… and came across it,” Michael said awkwardly.

It seemed impossible to explain about the stones to Maud Johnson. He could not bear the idea of her hearing his account of Paul’s opals before George, Watty, and the rest of the men who were his mates, had.

“Well to be you, having stuff like that to noodle,” Maud said. “Doin’ a bit of dealin’ myself. I’ll give you a good price for it, Michael.”

“It’s goin’ into a parcel,” he replied.

“Oh, well, when you want to sell, you might let me know,” Maud said. “Comin’, Potch?”

She swung away with the light, graceful swirl of a dancer. Michael caught the smile in her eyes, mischievous and mocking as a street urchin’s, as she turned to Potch, and Potch followed her out of the hut.

II

Days and months went by, hot and still, with dust-storms and blue skies, fading to grey. Their happenings were so alike that there was scarcely any remembering one from the other of them. The twilights and dawns were clear, with delicate green skies. On still nights the moon rose golden, flushing the sky before it appeared, as though there were fires beyond the Ridge.

Usually in one of the huts a concertina was pulled lazily, and its wheezing melodies drifted through the quiet air. Everybody missed Sophie’s singing. The summer evenings were long and empty without the ripple of her laughter and the music of the songs she sang.

“You miss her these nights, don’t you?” Michael said to Potch one very hot, still night, when the smoke of a mosquito fire in the doorway was drifting into the room about them.

Potch was reading, sprawled over the table. His expression changed as he looked up. It was as though a sudden pain had struck him.

“Yes,” he said. His eyes went to his book again; but he did not read any more. Presently he pushed back the seat he was sitting on and went out of doors.

Michael and Potch were late going down to the claim the morning they found George and Watty and most of the men who were working that end of the Ridge collected in a group talking together. No one was working; even the noodlers, Snowshoes and young Flail, were standing round with the miners.

“Hullo,” Michael said, “something’s up!”

Potch remembered having seen a gathering of the men, like this, only once before on the fields.

“Ratting?” he said.

“Looks like it,” Michael agreed.

“What’s up, George?” he asked, as Potch and he joined the men.

“Rats, Michael,” George said, “that’s what’s up. They’ve been on our place and cleaned out a pretty good bit of stuff Watty and me was working on. They’ve paid Archie a visit⁠ ⁠… and Bully reck’ns his spider’s been walking lately, too.”

Michael and Potch had seen nothing but a few shards of potch and colour for months. They were not concerned at the thought of a rat’s visit to their claim; but they were as angry and indignant at the news as the men who had been robbed. In the shelters at midday, the talk was all of the rats and ratting. The Crosses, Bill Grant, Pony-Fence, Bull Bryant, Roy O’Mara, Michael, and Potch went to George Woods’ shelter to talk the situation over with George, Watty, and Cash Wilson. The smoke of the fires Potch and Roy and Bully made to boil the billies drifted towards them, and the men talked as they ate their lunches, legs stretched out before them, and leaning against a log George had hauled beside the shelter.

George Woods, the best natured, soberest man on the Ridge, was smouldering with rage at the ratting.

“I’ve a good mind to put a bit of dynamite at the bottom of the shaft, and then, when a rat strikes a match, up he’ll go,” he said.

“But,” Watty objected, “how’d you feel when you found a dead man in your claim, George?”

“Feel?” George burst out. “I wouldn’t feel⁠—except he’d got no right to be there⁠—and perlitely put him on one side.”

“Remember those chaps was up a couple of years ago, George?” Bill Grant asked, “and helped theirselves when Pony-Fence and me had a bit of luck up at Rhyll’s hill.”

“Remember them?” George growled.

“They’d go round selling stuff if there was anybody to