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, Snow-Shoes 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 buy--hang round
the pub all day, and yet had stuff to sell," Watty murmured.
The men smoked silently for a few minutes.
"How much did they get, again?" Bully Bryant asked.
"Couple of months," George said.
"Police protect criminals--everybody knows that," Snow-Shoes said.
Sitting on the dump just beyond the shade the shelter cast, he had been
listening to what the men were saying, the sun full blaze on him, his
blue eyes glittering in the shadow of his old felt hat. All eyes turned
to him. The men always listened attentively when Snow-Shoes had anything
to say.
"If there's a policeman about, and a man starts ratting and is caught,
he gets a couple of months. Well, what does he care? But if there's a
chance of the miners getting hold of him and some rough handling ... he
thinks twice before he rats ... knowing a broken arm or a pain in his
head'll come of it."
"That's true," George said. "I vote we get this bunch ourselves."
"Right!" The Crosses and Bully agreed with him. Watty did not like the
idea of the men taking the law into their own hands. He was all for law
and order. His fat, comfortable soul disliked the idea of violence.
"Seems to me," he said, "it 'd be a good thing to set a trap--catch the
rats--then we'd know where we were."
Michael nodded. "I'm with Watty," he said.
"Then we could hand 'em over to the police," Watty said.
Michael smiled. "Well, after the last batch getting two months, and the
lot of us wasting near on two months gettin' 'em jailed, I reck'n it's
easier to deal with 'em here--But we've got to be sure. They've got to
be caught red-handed, as the sayin' is. It don't do to make mistakes
when we're dealin' out our own justice."
"That's right, Michael," the men agreed.
"Well, I reck'n we'd ought to have in the police," Watty remarked
obstinately.
"The police!" Snow-Shoes stood up as if he had no further patience with
the controversy. "It's like letting hornets build in your house to keep
down flies--to call in the police. The hornets get worse than the
flies."
He turned on his heel and walked away. His tall, white figure,
straighter than any man's on the Ridge, moved silently, his feet,
wrapped in their moccasins of grass and sacking, making no sound on the
shingly earth.
Men whose claims had not been nibbled arranged to watch among
themselves, to notice exactly where they put their spiders when they
left the mines in the afternoon, and to set traps for the rats.
Some of them had their suspicions as to whom the rats might be, because
the field was an old one, and there were not many strangers about. But
when it was known next day that Jun Johnson and his wife had "done a
moonlight flit," it was generally agreed that these suspicions were
confirmed. Maud had made two or three trips to Sydney to sell opal
within the last year, and from what they heard, men of the Ridge had
come to believe she sold more opal than Jun had won, or than she herself
had bought from the gougers. Jun's and Maud's flight was taken not only
as a confession of guilt, but also as an indication that the men's
resolution to deal with rats themselves had been effective in scaring
them away.
When the storm the ratting had caused died down, life on the Ridge went
its even course again. Several men threw up their claims on the hill
after working without a trace of potch or colour for months, and went to
find jobs on the stations or in the towns nearby.
The only thing of any importance that happened during those dreary
summer months was Bully Bryant's marriage to Ella Flail, and, although
it took everybody by surprise that little Ella was grown-up enough to be
married, the wedding was celebrated in true Ridge fashion, with a dance
and no end of hearty kindliness to the young couple.
"Roy O'Mara's got good colour down by the crooked coolebah, Michael,"
Potch said one evening, a few days after the wedding, when he and
Michael had finished their tea. He spoke slowly, and as if he had
thought over what he was going to say.
"Yes?" Michael replied.
"How about tryin' our luck there?" Potch ventured.
Michael took the suggestion meditatively. Potch and he had been working
together for several years with very little luck. They had won only a
few pieces of opal good enough to put into a parcel for an opal-buyer
when he came to Fallen Star. But Michael was loth to give up the old
shaft, not only because he believed in it, but because of the work he
and his mates had put into it, and because when they did strike opal
there, the mine would be easily worked. But this was the first time
Potch had made a suggestion of the sort, and Michael felt bound to
consider it.
"There's a bit of a rush on, Snow-Shoes told me," Potch said. "Crosses
have pegged, and I saw Bill Olsen measurin' out a claim."
Michael's reluctance to move was evident.
"I feel sure we'll strike it in the old shaft, sooner or later," he
murmured.
"Might be sooner by the coolebah," Potch said.
Michael's eyes lifted to his, the gleam of a smile in them.
"Very well, we'll pull pegs," he said.
While stars were still in the high sky and the chill breath of dawn in
the air, men were busy measuring and pegging claims on the hillside
round about the old coolebah. Half a dozen blocks were marked one
hundred feet square before the stars began to fade.
All the morning men with pegs, picks, and shovels came straggling up the
track from the township and from other workings scattered along the
Ridge. The sound of picks on the hard ground and the cutting down of
scrub broke the limpid stillness.
Paul came out of his hut as Potch passed it on his way to the coolebah.
Immediately he recognised the significance of the heavy pick Potch was
carrying, and trotted over to him.
"You goin' to break new ground, Potch?" he asked. Potch nodded.
"There's a bit of a rush on by the crooked coolebah," he said. "Roy
O'Mara's bottomed on opal there ... got some pretty good colours, and
we're goin' to peg out."
"A rush?" Paul's eyes brightened. "Roy? Has he got the stuff, Potch?"
"Not bad."
As they followed the narrow, winding track through the scrub, Paul
chattered eagerly of the chances of the new rush.
Roy O'Mara had sunk directly under the coolebah. There were few trees of
any great size on the Ridge, and this one, tall and grey-barked, stood
over the scrub of myalls, oddly bent, like a crippled giant, its great,
bleached trunk swung forward and wrenched back as if in agony. The mound
of white clay under the tree was already a considerable dump--Roy had
been working with a new chum from the Three Mile for something over a
fortnight and had just bottomed on opal. His first day's find was spread
on a bag under the tree. There was nothing of great value in it; but
when Potch and Paul came to it, Paul knelt down and turned over the
pieces of opal on the bag with eager excitement.
When Michael arrived, Potch had driven in his pegs on a site he had
marked in his mind's eye the evening before, a hundred yards beyond
Roy's claim, up the slope of the hill. Michael took turns with Potch at
slinging the heavy pick; they worked steadily all the morning, the sweat
beading and pouring down their faces.
There was always some excitement and expectation about sinking a
new hole. Michael had lived so long on the fields, and had sunk
so many shafts, that he took a new sinking with a good deal of
matter-of-factness; but even he had some of the thrilling sense of a
child with a surprise packet when he was breaking earth on a new rush.
Neither Michael nor Paul had much enthusiasm about the new claim after
the first day or so; but Potch worked indefatigably. All day the thud
and click of picks on the hard earth and cement stone, and the
shovelling of loose earth and gravel, could be heard. In about a
fortnight Potch and Michael came on sandstone and drove into red opal
dirt beneath it. Roy O'Mara, working on his trace of promising black
potch, still had found nothing to justify his hope of an early haul.
Paul, easily disappointed, lost faith in the possibilities of the shaft;
Michael was for giving it further trial, but Potch, too, was in favour
of sinking again.