'Aurora!' said Mike.
Jim went up the rope suspended in the shaft hand over hand. Aurora was
standing by the windlass smiling down at him. The girl was remarkably
well dressed. The gown she wore was too florid, perhaps, for that sickly
refinement which abhors colour, but it suited her tall figure and her
hale and exuberant good looks. As he came up the shaft the picture she
made standing in the sunlight, with a background of sun-splashed,
vari-coloured tips, and one drowsing gum-tree fringed with the gold and
purple of young growth, gave him a thrill of joy, so vivid she seemed, so
fresh. She had occupied his mind little since the departure from Diamond
Gully; but seeing her again so radiant, he was glad through and through,
and laughed with pure delight when she met him at the shaft's mouth with
a kiss. Once upon his feet, he clasped her in his arms. Her walk along
the lead had attracted a good deal of attention, and the embrace was the
signal for a sympathetic cheer from the miners about, and the men whirled
their hats in the air.
'Arrah! Won't ye sarve the bla'gards all alike, darlin'?' cried a young
fellow on the left.
Aurora bowed low, and scattered kisses over the field with both hands,
winning another cheer. Jim watched her with pride. After all, she it was
who stood as his goddess of gaiety in the twelve months of absolutely
happy life that had marked the reaction from the brutal stupidity and
sourness of that other existence. He owed her much gratitude, much
tenderness. He kissed her again almost reverently.
'Did you think I was never coming, Jimmy?' she asked softly.
Jim practised the virtue of equivocation. It had never occurred to him
that she would come, but he would rather have bitten a piece off his
tongue than have said so just then.
'So you made up your mind to follow the moment I told you I was going?'
he said.
'What else? Could I have bid you good-bye so glibly? Could you have
walked off with a smile and a kiss, and never a word of coming again?'
'Darling, I can never want to lose you.'
'Whist' no words fer the future!' she said, reverting to her whimsical
brogue. 'We're weak mortals, an' every one iv us is born again wid the
new sun. I'd not have ye bind the strange man ye may be to-morrow wid
oaths, an' I won't bind the unknown colleen I may be for the likes iv
ye.'
'But to-day?'
'To-day? To-day I love you with a big, big heart!' she said, with deep
feeling. 'Kiss me!'
'Knock off!' cried Burton, whose head appeared suddenly at the mouth of
the shaft. 'I reckoned you'd had time to get through with that.'
'Och! we've been a long time gittin' through wid it, an' we're not
through yet,' said Aurora, shaking Mike warmly by the hand. 'You may have
one for yourself--there.' She placed her finger on a dimple, and Mike
kissed her gallantly enough. 'Ah!' she sighed, 'you love another. The
kiss betrays you.'
Something that might have been a blush, had the deep tan of his skin
permitted such a thing, warmed Burton's cheek.
'And where's Mrs. Ben?' he asked.
'Somewhere about the field.'
'They are with you?' said Jim.
'To be sure; and the whole business--bakery, laundry, and light
refreshments--has followed at my skirt with proper humility.'
'They pitch tents here?'
'Ben and Mary are now seeking a good business site.'
'Adjacent to a hollow tree?'
'The same bein' a convanyint haunt fer Mary Kyley's familiar evil
shpirits.'
Done laughed, giving Aurora a one-armed, parenthetical hug. 'They
wouldn't part with you, then?'
'They would not, nor I with them. Dan's been as good as a mother to me.
But how is the luck, boys?'
'Great,' answered Mike. 'We dropped on a patch here.'
'Come and see us cradle the last tubful, and I'll give you the prettiest
bit in the hopper,' said Jim.
'Not a colour! The heart nugget you gave me long ago has worn tender
places all over me.' She tugged at the thin ribbon about her neck. 'I'll
carry no more.'
Done did not press the point, although he knew that she took gifts of
quaintly-shaped nuggets from the other men with the indifference of a
queen accepting tribute.
Mrs. Ben Kyley greeted the mates with noisy joviality when they met, and
Ben took his pipe from his mouth, and said he was 'right down blarsted
glad,' which amounted to quite a demonstration, coming from him. Within
two days the tents were up, and Mrs. Kyley's business was resumed, and
was carried on as at Diamond Gully, and with much the same success. But
here for some time Ben's services as 'chucker-out' were more in
requisition, spirits being more unruly on Jim Crow. One night he even had
to fight a five-round battle with a riotous young Cousin Jack, in which
engagement Done seconded him by special request. Ben triumphed, but came
out of the contest with a black eye and an inflamed nose of a
preposterous size, at which Mary was virtuously indignant.
'You, a professional, fighting for diversion like any fool of a
gentleman!' she said scornfully.
'Man mus' keep his hand in,' replied Ben.
'If you can't attend to your duties without making such a mess of
yourself, you'd better have a month's notice. What was the good of me
taking on a pugilist if I'm to have fighting about the place
continually?'
'Come, come, Mrs. Ben,' said Jim; 'if you treat him like this when he
wins, what would you do if he lost?'
'Divorce him and take up with the Cornishman!' replied the raffish
washerwoman, exploding into Gargantuan laughter.
Done had often thought of Ryder since the night of the troopers' raid on
Mrs. Kyley's grog-store, but had seen nothing of him in the meantime.
Mike recalled him to his mind again as they were lying out in the
moonlight on a Sunday night about two weeks later.
'Remember the chap that tried to throttle Stony that night in the Black
Forest?' he said. 'Saw him on the lead to-day.'
'You did? Ryder was hunting Stony on Diamond Gully.'
'He's gettin' pretty warm, then. Stony's here too. That's his tent above
the bend to the left. He's a hatter, an' works a lone hand in the shallow
ground.'
'Then trouble's brewing for Mr. Stony.'
'You seemed to feel for him. Better drop him the word, hadn't you?'
'No. My sympathies are with the other man, and as he means something
short of manslaughter, Stony can take his chances.'
It was not long after this that Jim encountered Stony in Mary Kyley's
tent. He was drinking alone, and drinking with the feverish haste of a
man who deliberately seeks intoxication. He was more tremulous than when
Done first met him, and his face had the colour, and looked as if it
might have the consistency, of putty. The man was an instinctive hater:
he lived alone, worked alone, and desired no companionship. Previous to
the gold discoveries he had served for years in the capacity of shepherd
on one of the big Australian sheep-runs, and had lived cut off from
communion with his kind in the great lone land, absorbing into his blood
the spirit of solitude that broods in the Bush and in time robs man of
his gregarious impulses.
Jim had been in the shanty about an hour, and was standing with his back
to the counter; Stony was sitting in the corner, his hands clasped
between his knees, his eyes fixed upon the floor, unconscious of his
surroundings, when the flap of the tent was lifted, and Ryder stepped in,
running a keen, searching eye over the company. Jim saw him start as his
gaze encountered Stony. He paused for a moment, and then slipped back
into darkness, dropping the tent-door after him. Done understood his
intention. 'He will wait,' he said to himself, and determined to watch
events. Ryder had awakened in him an extraordinary interest.
Stony sat in a state of abstraction for close upon half an hour, and when
he arose and left the place Jim followed him. The night was dark, and
Stony had disappeared, but the young man walked quietly in the direction
of the hatter's camp. He could see nothing of either man, and had decided
that he was mistaken regarding Ryder's intention, when a low but
blood-chilling sound--the noise made by a man fighting against
strangulation--broke upon his ear. He had been seeking for this, but the
shock unnerved him for a moment.